In the 1990s, Yvonne Vera wrote garden letters to friends, lovers, and readers of Bulawayo’s Chronicle newspaper. They were literary meditations, writings that questioned if the myth of the garden could be hijacked from its colonial origins and used to restore a sacred relationship with nature for Black people. In this monograph, Tadiwa Madenga travels to Bulawayo to retrace Yvonne Vera’s life and works through her letters, columns, novels, gallery curations, and her former homes. It is a story written for those who love gardens and those who seek to trespass them.
decomposed, anarranged and reproduced by Chimurenga
An edition of The Breathers is available in print at the Chimurenga Factory (157 Victoria Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town) or from our online store.
This article and other work by Chimurenga are produced through the kind support of our readers. Please visit our donation page to support our work.
“Insurrections was and is a project and an idea. The project brought together poets, composers and musicians from South Africa and India – although an Ethiopian or two crept in since to make description difficult! It was put together to produce a CD, a mini-tour of both countries, and to make a lot of noise. As an idea, it marked the beginning of a voyage that could go in many exciting directions because it experimented with something non-trivial: does the musical language of these spaces produce a new way of doing things?”
Music Notebook is at once a scrapbook, a bildungsroman, a playlist and a diary of Ari Sitas’ decade-long collaboration with the Insurrections Ensemble, the all ways-expanding troupe of sonic arkeologists and improvisors digging the AfroAsian seas for memories of the “deep song”.
A limited Chimurenganyana edition of Music Notebook is available in print at the Chimurenga Factory (157 Victoria Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town) or from our online store.
This entry in our Chimurenganyana series takes the form of a mixtape on the soundworld of the acclaimed Guadeloupean filmmaker Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020), decomposed, an-arranged and reproduced by Ntone Edjabe.
“Listening to Sambizanga allows us to hear the quality of the silences –- Maldoror uses dialogue like a deft trumpeter who plays notes to guide us from one silence to another. And throughout the film, these clearings are marked by song.”
“We pause at the House of Diop, here, to listen more closely to the interplay of cinema and music that Maldoror inaugurated with the Monangambée/Sambizanga diptych – a film that is music followed by another about music.”
“Maldoror’s portrait of Damas is the closest she gets to the mixtape as narrative form. She sprinkles his words on a set of thematically arranged music tracks which are bridged by the opinions of his better-known comrades, Cesaire and Senghor. Visually, the themes oscillate btwn the land and waterscapes of Guyane and the toxic buzz of Paris-Nègre. Plus, a cloud of mosquitoes here, a trail of ants there, all cut to the rhythm of Damas’ poetry. And of silences.”
Listen here for the audio accompaniment, which conveys what we cannot or refuse to write.
A limited Chimurenganyana edition of La Discotheque de Sarah Maldoror is available in print at the Chimurenga Factory (157 Victoria Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town) or from our online store.
This article and other work by Chimurenga are produced through the kind support of our readers. Please visit ourdonation pageto support our work.
“I know that even if angry hordes decided to descend on these neighbourhoods dominated by settlers with generational wealth—to tell them that they, too, should go back to where they came from—they would be shut down so rapidly, so ruthlessly, that it would leave us all breathless. There is no problem for foreigners like you. The hotel receptionist was more right than wrong, because proximity to whiteness offers protections. Unless what you need protection from is whiteness itself.”
Paula Akugizibwe’s essay draws its title from a deeply unsettling encounter with the South African police on the streets of Cape Town in early 2008 – a year etched in public memory by the images of Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave, a Mozambican national, burning in full view of the residents of Ramaphosa Park in the east of Johannesburg, and by the wide-spread violence directed at other Africans who live here. Akugizibwe’s dark skin marks her out as a person who in their eyes is ‘illegal’, undesirable; a body that can be violated without consequence.
The encounter with the police, and the insult hurled at her, provide the spark for Akugizibwe’s mediation on skin, violence, and the limits of citizenship in a country where black lives have long been brutally (mis)handled.
Cover photograph: Six Seconds by Alfredo Jaar
A limited Chimurenganyana edition of You Look Illegal is available in print at the Chimurenga Factory, or from our ouronline store
“I formed the Harare eye: not just the Harare of the African flats or the Harare of the hotel bars or the shebeens and the kachasu drinkers or the high-density areas. For me the only way to express this Harare is to experiment with all available literary styles and perhaps come to a successful combination. There is no particular Harare psyche or mentality.”
During April 1985 Dambudzo Marechera began work on a book on Harare, inspired in part by the HS Thompson’s gonzo opus on Las Vegas. Writing that shows how the city held him in precarious balance, homeless at home, a black insider on the outside of the outside. At some point he abandoned the project and the pieces lived in the archives, unloved.
The Fear and Loathing Out of Harare is a selection of these never-published essays, in collaboration with the Dambudzo Marechera Trust, with an afterword by writer Tinashe Mushakavanhu and a map-poster of Marechera’s Harare conceived by the Black Chalk & Co collective.
A limited Chimurenganyana edition of The Fear and Loathing Out of Harareis available in print at the Chimurenga Factory, or from our ouronline store
“Home is where the music is” is drawn from Keorapetse Kgositsile’s poem “For Hughie Masekela”, dedicated to the South African trumpeter, composer and bandleader. The poem ends with the lines, “This then is the rhythm / and the blues of it / Home is where the music is”. The poem was published in the 1974 collection, The Present Is A Dangerous Place To Live, however it was presented to Masekela earlier. Bra Hugh then recorded a double album titled Home Is Where The Music Is, with artwork by South African abstract expressionist Dumile Feni, released in 1972. The album features the song, “Blues for Huey”, which evokes the lamentation and longing of exile in Kgositsile’s poem, interweaving New York and Maseru, revealing continuities across the Atlantic.
As soundtrack to the writing, Uhuru assembled a sonic documentary, which can be listened to here:
In his seminal book, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism, Brent Hayes Edwards traces the multiple encounters between black intellectuals from both the Anglophone and the Francophone world in Paris, during the early twentieth century, revealing how black studies emerged through such boundary crossing: “black radicalism is an internationalization.”
Edwards suggests that diaspora is less a historical condition than a set of practices: the claims, correspondences, and collaborations through which black intellectuals pursue a variety of international alliances. His book takes account of the highly divergent ways of imagining race beyond the barriers of nation and language. In the 1930s and 40s, the Paris metropolitan situation allowed contacts and collaborations that would have been unthinkable in the colonial world, so dominated by that dichotomy, so overwhelmed by the special relation to an imperial mère-patrie. As Edwards suggests, these many moves “across boundaries” (from colony to metropole, from one colonial system to another) were the real threat to colonialism, which is a discourse articulated first of all as singular and inescapable.
The fascinating convergences in Edwards’s account go well beyond the famous encounter of Negritude figures, Césaire, Damas and Senghor, with “Harlem Renaissance” poetry. He traces the wealth of black transnational print culture between the world wars, exploring the connections and exchanges among New York–based publications (such as Opportunity, The Negro World, and The Crisis) and newspapers in Paris (such as Les Continents, La Voix des Nègres, and L’Etudiant noir).
Thus, it is in the fragmentary, immediate, daily moments of the newspaper article and the periodical essay that we find the kinds of convergences and encounters that lay bare lost intellectual histories of black Atlantic traditions and pan-African movements.
However, following the institution of republican universalism during the 5th Republic, primarily a plot by the French state to retain its former colonies, the circulatory blackness that Edwards describes seems to fade from view – though black people never went away (on the contrary), France’s dark-skinned peoples were no longer black, but French citizens of African or Caribbean origin. This was enforced through a policy of “return” for African migrants following independence in the 60s, coupled with the notorious Bumidom, through which France imported cheap labour from its overseas “departments” in the Caribbean during the same period. In the institutions African and Caribbean studies would continue to enrich the colonial library but postcolonial and black studies would only be tolerated as exotic American imports.
Using Edwards’ study as a starting point, and working on the ground in Paris, Chimurenga traced this history, from Negritude through the radicalism of the 1960s, and the independence movement across Africa and the Antilles that informed it, through the uprisings of 2005 across the French banlieues and contemporary social movements such as Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyion (Guadeloupe), Y’en a Marre (Senegal), Balai Citoyen (Burkina Faso) and more.
Our research engaged the black francophone archive, from works by key anti-colonial authors such as Césaire and Fanon, to numerous conferences (from the congresses of black writers and artists of 1956 and 1959, to the more recent “Bandung of the North” held in Paris); from early black feminist collectives such as La Coordination des Femmes Noires to contemporary groups like Cases Rebelles; journals of black expression from Mongo Beti’s Peuples Noirs, Peuples Africains and Edouard Glissant’s Acoma to Gesip Legitimus’s Black Hebdo; performance spaces such from Benjamin Jules-Rosette’s Theatre Noir to Alfred Panou’s La Clef; as well as texts on the black condition by authors such as Were Were Liking, Noel Ebony X, Awa Thiam, Leonora Miano, Yambo Ouologuem and more. As usual much of the research happened through music, particularly the output of the many collectives bringing together jazz musicians from Africa, the US and the Caribbean, in the years following the uprising of Mai 1968. We also explored the emergence of a black cinema in France.
To conduct this research, we worked collaboratively with Paris based thinkers, artists, musicians, activists, who through their work position blackness as a site of resistance, “a critique of western civilization” (Cedric Robinson), as well as an affirmation of the possibility and indeed existence of other worldliness, and an expression of community.
We drew on the multiple expressions of the black radical tradition as it continues to fluctuate and circulate in both the large body of knowledge that has long existed in the French-speaking world, albeit without institutional recognition, and in the lived expression of everyday blackness as it is performed and spoken today.
The Bibliotheque Chimurenga took the form of a two-year research in the collections of the Bpi and Kandinsky libraries, as well as key archives such as BnF and smaller, municipal libraries such as Saint-Denis; La Goute d’Or, Francoise Sagan, and more importantly, in the personal collections of the protagonists listed above. The research culminated in a library installation in the Bpi, along with a pop-up studio of the Pan African Space Station at Lavoir Moderne Parisien in Goute d’Or.
The installation not only pointed to the absences on the shelves of the Bpi and other organs of Centre Pompidou, but rather to make visible what is in fact there, or should be, through contrapuntal readings and a putting-in-relation of the material displayed in the public libraries with the knowledge embodied by the people who visit those libraries. While PASS, through its programming, further explored the notion of people as knowledge. A special French edition of the Chronic, titled “imagi-nation nwar” published the research and served as installation catalogue.
Georgia arrives in the middle of a song. She multiplies there to become singer, instrumentalist, poet, producer, her very presence is lyrical and elides fixed meaning and form. What orbits her work, at the risk of becoming jaded and delirious while circling her innate rhythm in a land that tries to contain its reach, is optimism. Her sound is often that of someone dejected by her own optimism, as if it betrays her reality or turns some purposed doom to triumph before it can strike. Do you ever check on your well adjusted, optimistic friends, the ones who always make you feel a little better just from being around them for a few hours? Those who give the most and make it seem effortless are often the most neglected. Their shadows become weapons of potential self-sabotage because no one notices that umbra looming beneath so much shine and defiance. Here we get to bask in such a shadow as if we have earned access to the part of the music that will never be on the market, that refuses the transactional, that confesses ahead of the beat, unmarks the beast, achieves true self-actualization.
(from the preface by Harmony Holiday)
Also featuring drawings by Yaoundé Olu.
A limited Chimurenganyana edition of Even When My Soup-Curlers Slur, I Still Keep the Take is available in print at the Chimurenga Factory, or from our our online store.
A web documentary, audio-video archive and online cartography, that chronicles continuities and breaks, samples and cuts that link four key moments of Pan-African encounter: Dakar ’66, Algiers ’69, Kinshasa ’74 and Lagos ’77.
Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) was viewed by many during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s as the dashing and eloquent heir to Malcolm X. His call for Black Power and his fiery speeches led to his ascension as the foremost symbol of black militancy. But the threat posed to white America by the triumvirate of Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X would be suppressed as the decade declined to a close. Indeed, X and King would meet death at the escort of gunmen, in ‘65 and ‘68, respectively, and in ‘69, Carmichael would board a plane bound for Guinea, never to return on a permanent basis.
But Kwame Ture lived on for another 30 years and he was as politically active as he had been in the ‘60s. At the time of his death, Ture had become perhaps the foremost Pan-Africanist of his day. He co-founded (with Kwame Nkrumah) and led the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, arguably the most significant Pan-African political party in its heyday, and he established himself as the leading black advocate for Palestinian rights. Why do we know so little about the last 30 years of his life?
A limited Chimurenganyana edition of Becoming Kwame Ture is available for purchase in print at the Chimurenga Factory, or from our online store.
In this mix, we decompose, an-arrange and reproduce the sound-world of FESTAC ’77 to address the planetary scale of event, alongside the personal and artistic encounters it made possible.
In pirating the head of Queen Idia to use it as a logo for Festac 77 , proposes another dissonant route that challenges the very idea of the work of art as unique object.
Early in 1977, thousands of artists, writers, musicians, activists and scholars from Africa and the black diaspora assembled in Lagos for FESTAC ’77, the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture.
Early in 1977, thousands of artists, writers, musicians, activists and scholars from Africa and the black diaspora assembled in Lagos for FESTAC ’77,,, To many, too many, FESTAC sounded like cacophony – we reproduced its music on the page, decomposed and an-arranged.
After New York in October 2019, and in the spirit of the trans-continentalism (aka Black World) of the event, we return to Dakar to celebrate the release of Chimurenga’s new publication on FESTAC ’77 – in collaboration with RAW Material Company.
Early in 1977, thousands of artists, writers, musicians, activists and scholars from Africa and the black diaspora assembled in Lagos for FESTAC ’77, the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. With a radically ambitious agenda underwritten by Nigeria’s newfound oil wealth, FESTAC ’77 would unfold as a complex, glorious and excessive culmination of a half-century of transatlantic and pan-Africanist cultural-political gatherings.
As told by Chimurenga, this is the first publication to address the planetary scale of FESTAC alongside the personal and artistic encounters it made possible. Featuring extensive unseen photographic and archival materials, interviews and new commissions, the book relays the stories, words and works of the festival’s extraordinary cast of characters.
With: Wole Soyinka, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Ahmed Sékou Touré, Archie Shepp, Miriam Makeba, Allioune Diop, Jeff Donaldson, Louis Farrakhan, Stevie Wonder, Abdias do Nascimento, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Mario de Andrade, Ted Joans, Nadi Qamar,Carlos Moore, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ama Ata Aidoo, Johnny Dyani,Werewere Liking, Marilyn Nance, Barkley Hendricks, Mildred Thompson, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Jayne Cortez, Atukwei Okai, Jonas Gwangwa, Theo Vincent, Lindsay Barrett, Gilberto de la Nuez, Sun Ra and many others.
And featuring new writing from: Akin Adesokan, SerubiriMoses, Harmony Holiday, Semeneh Ayalew, Hassan Musa, Emmanuel Iduma, Michael McMillan, Dominique Malaquais and Cedric Vincent, Molefe Pheto, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Hermano Penna, Alice Aterianus. .
The cast list of actors and character who make an appearance in the issue includes everyone from Ché Guevara and psychiatrist, political theorist and Frantz Fanon, to Rashidi Muzele, the assassin who pulled the trigger and many more.
Perfect, perfect, you have solved the problem for me, we have deconstructed the idea of National Theatre. We have taken the national and thrown it in the dust bin.
Shebeen as a school/ “Angazi, but I’m sure” April 3 – May 26 2017
“Angazi, but I’m sure” is a common South African phrase. In English it means: “I don’t know, but I am sure”. It is a deliberately self-contradictory phrase that is usually spoken in prelude to a reply – often, when one is asked for directions or facts. “Angazi, but I’m sure if you turn left you will get there”;“Angazi, but I’m sure they will start at 9pm”. The respondent is uncertain – of what they “know”. Or, perhaps, they are certain, but they do not know how to speak it. Or, they know, but do not know what they know. Sharing knowledge in this way requires mutual trust – it is speculation, in every sense of the word.
“Angazi, but I’m sure” is a break between our linguistic selves and a world, between knowledge and our ability to speak or map it – the knowledge that is elevated as finished product. The phrase suggests that arriving is as much about displacement as about place. More urgently, it affirms lived experience, improvisation and imagination as themselves forms of knowledge. It calls for a knowing through seeking and a constant transforming and renewing of our image of the world. Finally, it is an expression of community: “I know you will find the way”.
How do we learn to know what we know? How can we draw from disparate and often intersecting practices through which we stylise our conduct and daily life on the continent? How do we harness the inventiveness, the generative resilience and the agility with which we live?
This requires not only a new set of questions, but its own set of tools; new practices and methodologies that allow us to engage the lines of flight, of fragility, the precariousness, as well as joy and creativity and beauty that define the contemporary African moment.
Chimurenga has long considered the shebeen (illegal drinking tavern) as a college of music. Can we draw on the improvisational, pedagogical method of black musics, where learning is collapsed into performing, and teachers and learners share the stage? How do we embrace knowledge not as information but as a methodology – a way of learning that expresses the conditions of our lives, our very existence. Can we take seriously food as knowledge, music as research and pan-Africanism as a practice? What if maps were made by Africans for their own use, to understand and make visible their own realities and imaginaries? What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe?
These are some of the queries this session will investigate, via the forms and media we use – such as cartography, comics, library-making, music, food, broadcasting and publishing, and in collaboration with Yemisi Aribisala, Neo Muyanga, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Ibou Fall, Dominique Malaquais, Jihan el Tahri, Kodwo Eshun, Clapperton Mavhunga, Philippe Rekacewicz, Felwine Sarr, Lionel Manga, Victor Gama, Laila Soliman.
Presented as part of the exhibition Public Intimacy, Chimurenga Library offered a simple system that allowed visitors to connect various items in the stacks at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library in a way that generates different narratives, with a focus on the work of African American artists, writers, and performers who participated in pan-African festivals of the 1960s and 1970s.
The installation and research project included a panel discussion focusing on the legacy of FESTAC ’77, a cultural event that was held in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1977 and remains the largest pan-African arts festival that has ever taken place. Featured speakers included Andrew Apter of UCLA, and Akin Adesokan of the University of Indiana at Bloomington.
Born in 1998 out of a joint partnership between Studentwise, publishers of white youth targeted SL Magazine and black youth targeted Johannesburg radio station YFM, Y Magazine was conceived as the new voice of the South Africa’s recently liberated black urban youth.
Published under the pay-off “Y – because I want to know”, it aimed to tap into the same market that made YFM the biggest regional station at the time. This was the so-called Y Generation, a “freedom’s children” that got to celebrate the liberation their parents fought so hard for. As poet Lebo Mashile explained: “if we were 20 or 30 in the 70’s and 80’s we would have been using everything we had to fight Apartheid… but now we have the freedom and space to do what we want with our talent and we have the ability to really manifest our dreams…”
Under founder editors S’busiso ‘The General’ Nxumalo and Itumeleng Mahabane, Y quickly came to encapsulate this spirit. Like YFM its emphasis was on urban street culture with a strong focus on the sounds of post-apartheid black South Africa especially Kwaito. Written in spoken English and drops of Scamto, it was filled with diverse youth interests without ever narrowing them down to just entertainment. From the relationship between kwaito’s apolitical, “hedonistic and flighty preoccupations” and President Thabo Mbeki’s macroeconomic ideology, to the politics of fashion and the aesthetic of struggle, Y Magazine was as one reader put it, “as rounded as Lil Kim’s ass”.
This radical challenge to the binary opposition political-apolitical placed Y a step or two ahead of other mainstream magazines, black and white. This also meant that corporate advertisers remained at arm’s length. Inevitably the magazine gave over to market pressures and changes at the radio station. Both Nxumalo and Mahabane stepped down as editors. Since then Y has continued under no less than eight different editors but it has never recaptured the idealism or attitude of those first few issues.
“Forgive me if the facts are screwed, Y days were heady and chaotic. I think it was the late summer of 98 when it all started. In the precinct of Time Square, in Yeoville there was not much square and all the clocks had all stopped. That suited us fine, it was African time….“
Unir Cinéma: Revue du Cinéma Africain was the first periodical entirely devoted to African cinema to come out of Francophone Africa. First published in 1973 on a tight budget, this Senegalese magazine was typewritten and duplicated through offset printing. Despite its low production values, it established itself as an essential reference tool on cinema on the continent. Written by both Senegalese and French reviewers and published by the Catholic Information Center of the diocese of Saint Louis, it provided up to date filmographies of recent motion pictures as well as more detailed entries (including credits, filmmakers’ biographies, film summaries and critiques) of the most significant cinematographic works by African filmmakers.
Its detailed reports on film festivals throughout the world revealed the exposure and appreciation of African cinema on an international level, while its listings of places where African films have been or will be commercially exhibited attested to the scope of their circulation. Carefully prepared by-country dossiers revealed both the status of cinema in different regions and the efforts undertaken by local governments to promote the production and distribution of their films. While little effort was made to offer more in-depth critical insights into the thematics, aesthetics and ethics of African cinema, Unir Cinéma did furnish its readers with bibliographies of the latest articles on African cinema in international magazines and journals as well as the names of international periodicals with a serious interest in the critique of African films.
PEOPLE
Edited by Pere Jean Vast until 1996, later edited by Pere Joseph Lambrecht (1998-2000)
FAMILY TREE
Unir Cinéma was initially (from no. 1 to 35) a general periodical titled Unir (L’Echo de Saint-Louis). In 1973 it switched focus exclusively to film and continued as Unir Cinema: Revue Du Cinéma Africain.
First published in 1980 by Christopher van Wyk and Fhazel Johennesse, Wietie provided a literary platform for the prevailing philosophy of Black Consciousness. It gave voice to a new generation of South African writers who saw their work not only as a critique on oppressive systems, but – like Black Power – as a weapon of transformation. In keeping with this, the magazine employed a language that was both literary and defiant. Openly declaring its commitment to the ‘communication of revolutionary writing,’ while also providing a space to explore the realities of everyday life under apartheid, it published fiction, poetry and prose that challenged the both the political, cultural and racial status. Combining wit and humour with openly political writing, Wietie did not survive long under the Apartheid administration. After the first issue was picked up by the police in February 1980, the censors banned it, first on the grounds of obscenity (specifically, they objected to the use of the word ‘fuck’ in the short story ‘Aunt Molly and the Girls’), then on the grounds of sedition. After Wietie was forced to close down, Christopher van Wyk returned to Staffrider to become chief editor.
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Christopher van Wyk, Fhazel Johennesse, Omar Badsha, Peter Clarke, Bessie Head, Achmat Dangor, Peter Wilhem, Biddy Crewe
The guiding concept behind The Book of Tongues is the impossible. In it, founding editor-at-large Rustum Kozain undertakes a journey through illusion and disillusion, secret desire and the wilderness of the imagination that includes a detour into landscape, encounter, memory, and history – among other diversions. Part philosophical prank, part fantasy parable, part meta-textual myth and part wishful thinking, itís a personal quest that ultimately seeks to find the correct distance between the eyes and the book.
Photograph: Christine Fourie and Kwela Books
PEOPLE
Rustum Kozain
FAMILY TREE
H. P. Lovecraft’s The Necronomicon (1924)
Raymond Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliard (1961)
Utto Rudolph aka Yambo Ouologuem’s Mille et une bibles du sexe (1969)
Jorge Luis Borges’ The Book of Sand (1975)
Ishmael Reed’s Neo-Hoodoo Manifesto (1969)
Robert BolaÒo’s Literatura Nazi en America (Nazi Literature in the Americas) (1996)
James Sey’s “Compendium of Imaginary Wavelengths” (2004)
Borrowing its name and image from township slang for black youth who rode the overcrowded African sections of the racially segregated commuter trains by hanging onto the outside or sitting on the roofs, Staffrider had two main objectives: to provide publishing opportunities for community-based organizations and young writers, graphic artists and photographers; and to oppose officially sanctioned state and establishment culture.
Produced by the same Durban “moment” that saw Steve Biko begin the South African Students Association, Staffrider had a view of literature with a small “I”: it’s base was popular rather than elite and it sought to provide an autobiography of experience in its witness of daily black life in South Africa. The magazine’s nonracial policy and choice of English as a non-ethnic mode of communication attracted a cross-section of writers, artists and other contributors to the magazine. Debates around Staffrider‘s “self-editing” editorial policy were ongoing and the magazine eventually adopted quality control measures under the editorship of Chris van Wyk. But the magazine’s early flexibility ensured that the work of previously unpublished writers and artists appeared alongside that of many South African notables including Nadine Gordimer, Lionel Abrahams, Rose Zwi, and Mtutuzeli Matshoba.
Staffrider A Film by Khulile Nxumalo & Tracey Rose
“Here platform politics rhythmically play out the politics of the land; white against black, rich against poor, workers against bosses, people against machines. But the staffriders lived and died in that little space between train and platform, between roles.A split second of misreckoning and it’s all over. Here timing is a matter of life and death. “
” The resonance of such a simple idea is almost impossible to recapture now, but in the demented, divided space of apartheid it was bracing. All the other borders the magazine crossed between fiction and autobiography, written and spoken word, lyrical flight and social documentary rest on that first idealistic gesture. The magazine belongs to all who live in it.”
“Famed, Nobel laureates, wilful amnesiacs, first millionaires, years soweto’s only legit nightclub, the super-astral, the subterranean, original spot-runners, groaners & croakers, mass child-murderers, priests pimping for more than just Jesus, blades having dice & eyes vie for space in the dust between the intestines & the worms… boots squashing all… muddy beginnings, those… Call Me Not a Man, the searing bleeding cry of a book was titled… chopped & cut up bits first floated to surface in Staffrider.”
Empruntant son nom et son image de l’argot du township pour les jeunes qui voyageaient dans les sections africaines bondées des trains racialement ségrégués, se pendant aux portes ou s’asseyant sur les toits, les deux objectifs principaux de Staffriderétaient: de fournir des opportunités de publication aux organisations de communauté et aux jeunes écrivains, graphistes et photographes ; et d’officiellement opposer l’état sanctionné et la culture d’établissement.
Produit par le même ‘moment’ sur Durban qui vit Steve Biko commencer la South African Students Association, Staffrider avait un point de vue de la littérature avec un petit ‘l’: sa base était populaire plutôt qu’élitiste et cherchait à pourvoir une autobiographie d’expériences dans son témoignage de la vie de tous les jours des noirs en Afrique du Sud. La politique non raciale du magazine et le choix de l’anglais comme mode de communication non ethnique attira toutes sortes d’écrivains, d’artistes et autres contributeurs. Les débats autour de la politique éditoriale ‘d’édition par soi-même’é taient constants et le magazine finit par adopter des mesures de contrôle de qualitésous la direction de Chris van Wyk. Mais la flexibilité des débuts du magazine garantit que des écrivains ou artistes qui n’avaient jamais été publiés parurent aux côtés d’éminents Sud-Africains tels Nadine Gordimer, Lionel Abrahams, Rose Zwi, et Mtutuzeli Matshoba.
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Mothobi Mutloatse, Mike Kirkwood, Kay Hassan, Njabulo Ndebele, Achmat Dangor, Paul Weinberg, Mafika Gwala, George Hallet, Mzwakhe Nhlabatsi, Sam Nhlengetwa, Malopoets, Es’kia Mphahlele, Kelwyn Sole, Chris van Wyk, Andries Oliphant,Thami Mnyele, William Kentridge, Gerard Sekoto
Ten Years of Staffrider, Oliphant, A. and Vladislavic, I. (eds.), Raven Press: Johannesburg, 1988.
Oliphant, Andries. Staffrider Magazine and Popular History: The Opportunities and Challenges of Personal Testimony. Temple University Press: Johannesburg, 1991.
Gardiner, Michael. South African Literary Magazines, 1956-1978. Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art: Johannesburg, 2004.
“Rose Zwi in conversation with Mothobi Mutloatse,” Interview conducted 09-09-2006.
Gwala, Mafika. “Writing as a Cultural Weapon.” In Momentum, Margaret Daymond, Johan Jacobs, and Margaret Lenta (eds.). University of Natal Press: Pietermaritzburg, 1985. 37-53.
Manganyi, Chabani N. Looking Through the Keyhole. Ravan Press: Johannesburg, 1981
Spear: Canada’s Truth and Soul Magazine launched in Toronto in 1971 with distinctly middlebrow ambitions. Under the helm of publisher Dan Gooding, Jr. and editor J. Ashton Brathwaite, it aimed to become a Canadian version of Ebony, Jet, Tan, and Essence, the pretty, vacant African-American rags appealing to Black upward mobility and the iridescent accessorizing of Black Power as Black consumerism. However, budget constraints prevailed and Spear quickly became something of an anomaly, a self-published “little” magazine that ran centre folds, a popular magazine that tackled political issues and featured poetry, a celebrity tabloid that covered cultural events.
After Brathwaite went into self-imposed exile in Brooklyn, Brand was one of a number of editors including Ghana-born journalist Sam Donkoh, future Share publisher Arnold Auguste, and the Guyanese-Canadian polymath Arnold Itwaru, who manned the helm of Spear through to the 1980s. With the changes, the journal’s quality improved and Spear‘s pages came to embody something of the cultural paradoxes of Black Canadian middle-class being. Sometimes the juxtapositions were sublime. Spear occasionally found a sort of harmonic convergence of the parallel galaxies of Black political and aesthetic radicalism. In one issue, a profile of Jamaican diva Grace Jones ran next to an interview with Trini Trotskyite CLR James.
The moment wasn’t sustained. By the early 1980s, whatever radical edge Spear maintained was dulled. For the final few issues before it suspended publication in 1987, what was once Spear: Canada’s Truth And Soul was re-tagged as Spear: Canada’s Black Family Magazine. Brathwaite’s initial vision appeared fulfilled.
“Wow! Sister Lyn, you sure got a fine brown frame. Your hot pants look fine too, but with a figure like that who do you think will bother about whether your pants is hot or cold! Hmn!” Or “The Sister with the hotpants on is Vie Anderson, a receptionist aspiring to be a model. Quite a hot pair of pants! But that brown frame is definitely a much hotter item!”
J. Ashton Brathwaite, Odimumba Kwamdela, Danny F. Gooding, Jr., Dionne Brand, Sheldon Taylor, Arnold Itwaru, Femi Ojo-Ade, Gerson Williams, Sam Donkoh, Harold Hoyte, Dalton Clarke
FAMILY TREE
At the Crossroads
Black Images: A Critical Quarterly of Black Culture
Katherine Mckittrick, “Their Blood is There, and They Can’t Throw it Out: Honouring Black Canadian Geographies.” Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 7, (2002): 27-37.
Norman (Otis) Richmond, “Bathurst St. has always been part of Black life in T.O.,” Share (October 14th, 2009)
Theodore Jurgen Spahn and Janet Peterson Spahn, “SPEAR: Canadian Magazine of Truth and Soul,” From Radical Left to Extreme Right: A bibliography of current periodicals of protest, controversy, advocacy, or dissent, with dispassionate content-summaries to guide librarians and other educators (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1972), 1517-8
In 1974 Barbadian poet Kamau Braithwaite summarized the overlapping realities, the cross-cultural roots, diversity and integration of the Caribbean by declaring, “The unity is submarine.” This idea of a fluid submerged geography, a black Atlantic continuum comprised of flows, passages and displacements also encapsulates the spirit of Savacou Magazine.
Founded in 1970 by Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Andrew Salkey, and John La Rose, Savacou grew out of a Caribbean Arts Movement (1966) that was doubly concerned with Caribbean artistic production and with consolidating a broad alliance between all ‘Third World’ peoples. But Savacou was more than just an archipelago for new black voices; it sought to critically challenge Eurocentric norms through which the postcolonial nation-states in the Caribbean were being imagined and constructed. Central to this challenge was its development of a new critical vernacular, a practice of criticism that both gave form to, and spoke from within, a Caribbean cultural-political tradition.
Savacou took the first bold step in 1970, with its combined third and forth edition of New Writing. Featuring oral-based poetics, performance poetry and Creole verse, the issued exploded traditional divisions between words and music, literature and street culture, textuality and orality, exposing the colonizing presence of Standard literary formats and provoking major critical fracas in literary circles.
For the next decade Savacou continued to challenge topographical and typographical boundaries, working between continents and restoring the fluid motion of performance to the frozen-word-on-page. This culminated in its 1979 anthology New Poets from Jamaica which introduced dub poetry to the literary world and launched the careers of a new generation of poets including Bongo Jerry, Oku Onuora and Mikey Smith.
traduction française par Scarlett Antonio
En 1974, un poète de Barbados, Kamau Braithwaite, résuma les réalités chevauchantes, les origines des cultures croisées, la diversité et l’intégration des Antillais en déclarant, “l’unité est sous-marine”. L’image d’une géographie fluide submergée, d’un continuum d’Atlantique noire englobant les courants, les passages et déplacements est également renfermée dans l’esprit du magazine Savacou.
Fondé en 1970 par Edward Kamau Braithwaite, Andrew Salkey et John La Rose, Savacou gagna de l’importance sous l’influence du Mouvement des Arts Antillais (1966) qui était doublement concerné par la production artistique antillaise et par la consolidation d’une large alliance entre tous les peuples du “Troisième Monde”. Mais Savacou représentait beaucoup plus qu’un archipel pour les nouvelles vois noires; il recherchait à défier de manière critique les normes européennes è travers lesquelles les états-nations post coloniales avaient été imaginées et construites. Le point principal de ce défi fut le développement d’un nouveau langage vernaculaire critique, une pratique de la critique qui à la fois donnait forme à, et venait de l’intérieur, la tradition antillaise culturelle et politique.
Savacou fit une première démarche audacieuse en 1970 avec la fusion de sa troisième et quatrième édition du New Writing (Nouveaux Ecrits). Mettant en vedette poétique orale, poésie spectacle et verse créole, les divisions traditionnelles, éclatées, publiées entre les mots et la musique, la littérature et la culture de la rue, la texte et le parler, exposant la présence colonisée des formats littéraires Standard et provoquant un fracas critique important dans les milieux littéraires.
Au cours de la décennie suivante, Savacou continua à défier les limites topographiques et typographiques, travaillant entre les continents et restituant le mouvement fluide de l’interprétation du mot-gelé-sur-page. Ceci se termina par son anthologie de 1979 “Nouveaux Poètes de la Jamaïque” qui introduisit une poésie avec sons et effets au monde littéraire et lança les carrières d’une nouvelle génération de poètes incluant Bongo Jerry, Oku Onuora et Mickey Smith.
PEOPLE
Kenneth Ramchand, Andrew Salkey, Wilfred Cartey, Merle Hodge, Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Elizabeth Clarke, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Stuart Hall, Derek Walcott, George Lamming, Cedric George Lindo, C.L.R James, Monica Skeete, Ras Dizzy, Bongo Jerrey
La Rose, John (ed); Salkey, Andrew (ed), Savacou 9/10; Journal of the Caribbean Artists Movement. Writing Away From Home.
Walmsley, Anne: “A Sense of Community: Kamau Brathwaite and the Caribbean Artists Movement” in (pp. 101-16) Brown, Stewart (ed.), The Art of Kamau Brathwaite. Brigend: Seren, 1995. p. 275 (1995)
Kelly Baker Josephs. “Versions of X/Self: Kamau Brathwaite’s Caribbean Discourse.” Anthurium, 1.1 (Fall 2003).
June Bobb. Beating a Restless Drum: The Poetics of Kamau Brathwaite and Derek Walcott. New York: Africa World Press, 1997.
Stuart Brown. The Art of Kamau Brathwaite. Wales: Seren, 1996.
Loretta Collins. “From the ‘Crossroads of Space’ to the (dis)Koumforts of Home: Radio and the Poet as Transmuter of the Word in Kamau Brathwaite’s ‘Meridian’ and Ancestors.” Anthurium, 1.1 (Fall 2003)
Raphael Dalleo. “Another ‘Our America’: Rooting a Caribbean Aesthetic in the Work of José Martí, Kamau Brathwaite and Édouard Glissant.” Anthurium, 2.2 (Fall 2004).
Anna Reckin: “Tidalectic Lectures: Kamau Brathwaite’s Prose/Poetry as Sound-Space.” Anthurium, 1.1 (Fall 2003).
Kamau Brathwaite, Conversations with Nathaniel Mackey Savory, Elaine: “The Word Becomes Nam: Self and Community in the Poetry of Kamau Brathwaite, and Its Relation to Caribbean Culture and Postmodern Theory.” in (pp. 23-43) Hawley, John C. (ed.) , Writing the Nation: Self and Country in the Post-Colonial Imagination. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. xxvii, 217 pp. ( Amsterdam: Critical Studies 7 ). (1996)
Savory, Elaine. “Returning to Sycorax/Prospero’s Response: Kamau Brathwaite’s Word Journey.” Brown 208-230.
Thiong’o, Ngugi wa: “Kamau Brathwaite: The Voice of African Presence”, Genova, Pamela A. (ed. and introd.) , Twayne Companion to Contemporary World Literature: From the Editors of World Literature Today, New York, NY: Twayne; Thomson Gale, 2003
Dr. Marlene A. Hamilton, “Books and Reading in Jamaica.” UNESCO, 1984
Gordon Rohlehr, “Some Problems of Assessment: A Look at New Expressions in the Art of the Contemporary Caribbean” Caribbean Quarterly, 17:3/4 (1971: Sept/Dec) p. 92-113
Breiner, Laurence. “How to Behave on Paper: the Savacou Debate.” Journal of West Indian Literature. 6.1, 1993, p1-10.
Brathwaite, Edward Kamau, ed. Savacou 3&4: New Writing. Kingston: Mona, 1970.
Brathwaite, Edward Kamau. “Contradictory Omens: Cultural diversity and integration in the Caribbean,” Monograph 1; Mona, Kingston, Jamaica: Savacou, 1974, p64
Inspired by the growing, vibrant global community of pan African artists and propelled by the need to challenge reductive exotic and ethnographic approaches to African culture, Jean Loup Pivin and Simon Njami launched Revue Noire in 1991. Conceived as a printed manifestation of the arts at the time, it covered anything from art, architecture and photography, to cinema, literature, theatre, fashion, African cities, AIDS and even gastronomy. Design played a key role in forwarding its objectives. Revue Noire was glossy, fashion savvy and distinctly Parisian.Striking images were combined with largely informative texts that highlighted artistic responses to the international media and the touristic gaze; the production of discourses of cultural identity on the continent; the framing the African body; urban sites; and rapidly changing dynamic between African aesthetic values and Western influences.
As Simon Njami explained, “Dealing with Africa and all the preconceived ideas people have of the continent, we wanted from the very beginning to use the best paper, the best layout, full colour, and at a size that would do justice to the artists that we were introducing. We had to face a double challenge: at the time we started, contemporary African art barely existed. So we were introducing something to an audience that was not aware of what was going on. Therefore, we had to emphasize not only the contents but also the physical look of the magazine.”
From the beginning Revue Noire was aimed at the widest possible audience: “Art lovers,” “Africa lovers,” “general readers interested in other cultures” as well as “specialists.” Distributed internationally, it was bilingual (English/French), sometimes even trilingual. This language policy and its focus on specific regions – from Abidjan to London, Kinshasa to Paris – not only facilitated access to information on African artistic production but also forged new links between artist based on the continent and those working in the diaspora.
After 34 issues Revue Noire interrupted the printing of the journal in 2001 and refocused its attention on publishing books, curating exhibitions and posting occasional online content.
traduction française par Scarlett Antonio
Inspirés par la communauté mondiale, croissante et vibrante du creuset des artistes africains et poussés par le besoin de défier les approches réduites, exotiques et ethnographiques de la culture africaine, Jean Loup Pivin et Simon Njami ont lancé la Revue Noire en 1991. Conçue comme une manifestation imprimée des arts de l’époque, elle couvre tout de l’art, l’architecture et photographie, au cinéma, littérature, théâtre, mode, citées africaines, SIDA et même la gastronomie. La conception joua un rôle clé dans la manière de transmettre ses objectives. Revue Noire était une revue de luxe, avec un bon sens de la mode et distinctivement parisienne. Aux images frappantes se joignaient des textes pour la plupart informatifs qui soulignaient des réponses artistiques à la presse internationale et aux regards touristiques; la production des discours de l’identité culturelle sur le continent; la charpente du corps africain; les citées urbaines; et changeant rapidement la dynamique entre les valeurs esthétiques africaines et les influences occidentales.
Ainsi que l’expliquait Simon Njami, “En traitant de l’Afrique et de toutes les idées préconçues que les gens ont du continent, nous voulions depuis le tout commencement utiliser le meilleur papier, la meilleure mise en page, plein de couleurs et à la taille qui ferait justice aux artistes que nous présentions. Nous avons du faire face à un double défi: à l’époque où nous avons commencé, l’art contemporain africain existait à peine. Aussi nous présentions quelque chose à une audience qui n’était pas consciente de ce qui se passait. Nous avons du, par conséquent, accentuer non seulement le contenu mais aussi l’apparence physique du magazine.”
Depuis le début, la Revue Noire visait une audience la plus large possible: “des amoureux de l’Art”, “des amoureux de l’Afrique”, “des lecteurs en général intéressés aux autres cultures” ainsi que “des spécialistes.” Distribuée internationalement, elle était bilingue (anglaise/française), quelques fois même trilingue. Cette question du langage et son centre d’intérêts sur des régions spécifiques d’Abidjan à Londres, de Kinshasa à Paris non seulement facilitaient l’accés à l’information sur la production artistique africaine mais aussi forgeaient des liens nouveaux entre artistes centrés sur le continent et ceux travaillant dans le Diaspora.
Après 34 éditions la Revue Noire cessa l’impression du journal en 2001 et centralisa son attention sur la publication de livres, la conservation des expositions et émettant à l’occasion leur contentement en ligne.
PEOPLE
Jean Loup Pivin, Simon Njami, Ngone Fall, Yacouba Konate, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Sony Labou Tansi, Cheri Samba, Xuly Bet, Patrice Tchikaya, Akoyo Mensah, Alain Mabanckou, Sokari Douglas Camp, Jean Claude Fignole, Andre Magnin, Kossi Efoui, Oswald Boateng, Yvone Vera, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, Rui Tavares, Jean-Luc Raharimanana, Georges Adeagbo, Djibril Diop Mambety
The post-independence era in Ghana saw the rapid rise of a new generation of thinkers, writers and poets. Freed from colonial oppression and political determinism and inspired by the radical Pan Africanist thinking of philosopher, revolutionary and then Ghanaian Prime Minister, Kwame Nkrumah, they sought to explore the experiences of the African from a new intellectual framework. Founded in 1961 by The Writers Workshop, literary organ Okyeame was key in this development.
Taking its name from a traditional Ghanaian figure, the “spokesperson” or “linguist” responsible for channelling communication between a leader and his people, Okyeame sought to give voice to Nkrumah’s dream of a new African identity. Articles calling for a Ghanaian poetry whose content and form was based on oral tradition, drum poetry, and the dirge ran alongside traditional oral works translated by leading contemporary poets such as founding editor Kofi Awoonor, and texts were interspersed with icons and Adinkra symbols. But Okyeame, like its namesake, was not simply a mouthpiece. It was also an “interpreter” and an “ambassador in foreign courts.” It provided a platform for a new generation of writers to experiment with a versatile, hybrid Pan-African linguistics that combined African oral influences with African American literary devices; rural with urban imagery; phonetic innovations with lyricism and wordplay; and dirge rhythms with jazz free-play. As Awoonor recalls, “we were like the foot soldiers of Nkrumah in the cultural field.”
PEOPLE
Kwesi Brew, Atukwei Okai, , Efua Sutherkland, Geormbeeyi Adali-Mortt, Michael Francis Dei-Anang, Ayi Kwei Armah, Ama Ata Aidoo
FAMILY TREE
Phylon Magazine, US (1940)
Presence Africaine, France (1947)
Black Orpheus : A Journal of African and Afro-American Literature, Nigeria (1957)
Transition Magazine: An International Review, Uganda (1963)
Kwame Botwe-Asamoah. Kwame Nkrumah’s Politico-cultural Thought and Policies, Routledge, 2005
Gerald Moore. “Review of Okyeame, No. I (1961)” in Black Orpheus, No.10, 1988, p. 66
Atukwei Okai. “The World View Of The Psyche Of A Poet: A Tribute To Mr. Kwesi Brew”, Accra Daily Mail, October 22, 2007.
Ata Britwum. “New Trends in Burning Issues in African Literature”, University of Cape Coast English Department Work Papers Vol. 1. 1971.
Edwin Thumboo, “Kwesi Brew: the poetry of statement and situation,” African Literature Today, London, 4, 1970, p. 322-330
Solomon Iyasere. “Cultural Formalism and the Criticism of Modern African Literature”, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1976, p. 322-330
Richard Priebe. Ghanaian Literatures, Greenwood Press, University of Virginia,
Donatus Nwoga. “West Africa: Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone”, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 6, 1971, p 15-24
Albert S. Gerard. European-language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1986
Ben B. Halm. Theatre and Ideology, Associated University Presses, 1995, p 181
Christel N. Temple. Literary Pan-Africanism: History, Contexts, and Criticism, Carolina Academic Press, 2005
Kwesi Yankah. Speaking for the Chief: Okyeame and the Politics of Akan Royal Oratory, Indiana University Press, 1995
Moto was founded in 1959 in Zimbabwe’s Midlands town of Gweru as a weekly community newspaper by the Catholic church. From these modest beginnings, Moto fast became one of the most outspoken voices in the liberation war, providing scathing criticism of the colonial government and support for African nationalist parties. Banned by the British regime in 1974, it re-emerged in 1980, first as a newspaper and then as one of the first magazines to provide content in ChiShona, SiNdebele and English.
Moto faced a new set of challenges in the post-liberation era. Firstly, it needed to make the transition from the campaigning stance it adopted in the days of UDI, to a critical, independent voice in the era of majority rule. Under a mandate of being “the voice of the voiceless and defender of the downtrodden”, it switched its focus to issues generally marginalised by the state-controlled press, running socio-economic and human-interest stories, often set in rural communities. The magazine also had to negotiate the sometimes awkward relationship between its church base and its outspoken political stance. In this regard it regularly ran features on the formation of the African clergy, paying particular attention to the elevation of Africans to the hierarchy and the ranks of the canonized. Despite ongoing economic difficulties and opposition from the Mugabe government, who made several attempts to shut down the publication, Moto‘s readership continues to grow, amongst intellectuals, professionals and students, as well as rural readers.
traduction française par Scarlett Antonio
Moto a été fondé en 1959 par l’église catholique dans la ville de Gweru dans les régions centrales du Zimbabwe comme un journal hebdomadaire local. De ses débuts modestes, Moto est vite devenu une des voix les plus franches dans la guerre de libération, procurant une critique acerbe du gouvernement colonial et un soutien pour les parties nationalistes africains. Interdit par le régime britannique en 1974, il refit surface en 1980, en premier comme un journal et ensuite comme un des premiers magazines à offrir un contenu en ChiShona, SiNdebele et en anglais.
Moto affronta une nouvelle série de défis durant la période post-libération. Premièrement, il avait besoin de faire la transition de la position de campagne qu’il adopta dans les jours de l’UDI à une voix critique, indépendante pendant la période du gouvernement majoritaire. Sous un mandat en tant “la voix des sans-voix et le défendeur des opprimés”, il détourna son attention sur les sujets généralement marginalisés par la presse contrôlée par l’état, présentant des faits socio-économiques et à intérêts humanitaires, survenant souvent dans les communautés rurales. Le magazine devait également négocier les relations parfois délicates entre sa fondation chrétienne et sa position politique clairement exprimée. A cet égard, il publiait régulièrement des articles sur la formation du clergé africain, payant une attention particulière sur la promotion des africains à la hiérarchie et aux rangs des canonisés. En dépit des difficultés économiques continues et l’opposition du gouvernement Mugabe, qui tenta de nombreuses fois d’arrêter la publication, le nombre d’abonnés au Moto continue de croître parmi les intellectuels, les professionnels et étudiants, ainsi que parmi les lecteurs du secteur rural.
PEOPLE
Bishop Haene established Moto magazine in Gwelo in conjunction with the Catholic African Association. It was edited by Paul Chidyausik in the late 60s and 70s, Onesimo Makani Kabwezaand saw Moto through Independence becoming one of the first Zimbabwean journalists to break the “culture of silence” around Zimbabwean government under Robert Mugabe. Tangai Wisdom Chipangura is the current editor-in-chief.
FAMILY TREE
Moto and the populist and politically-minded Parade were the only magazines at independence that targeted a “black readership”. Like Moto, Parade continued after Independence first taking on a tabloid format then moving to hard-hitting investigative news. In 1991, socially-mined popular magazine Horizon, established by former Parade editor, Andy Moyse, joined the ranks of Moto and Parade.
First published in 2007 Molotov Cocktail initially appeared to be a contradictory mix, on one side there was its incendiary title, cover art of a hand poised to throw a lit petrol bomb, and the provocative subtitle , Dismantling the Master’s House Brick by Brick. Then this in the first editorial: “Molotov Cocktai broadly backs the principles and policies of the African National Congress. We believe that discussing the ANC with insight and generosity will be more interesting and productive than condemning the party out of ignorance.” A revolutionary magazine aimed at defending “the powers that be” with word bombs?
Partially, yes. Edited by James Sanders (initially with the help of Ronald Suresh Roberts and later alone) Molotov Cocktail captures the ambiguities of contemporary post apartheid South Africa, where despite the change of political power the majority of the media is still owned by a small white minority. As the editorial in the second issue explains, “In South Africa, many newspapers and magazines adopt a pose of neutrality that is essentially oppositional. Some of this derives from the ‘anti-apartheid’ history of the mining press but it is really a cover for a political agenda that attempts to impose an illiberal narrative onto news and politics. The print media has not transformed quickly enough and we hope to speed it along.”
With that in mind Molotov Cocktail took a deliberately intellectual approach, defining itself as, “a platform where South African intellectuals will debate issues and engage in serious discussions about the direction that our country should take.” It has featured everything from archival documents including long-lost SACP biographies and back issues of the SADF’s Paratus, to new writing on cultural schizophrenia, oil, opposition, Zimbabwe, ‘apartheid’ in Israel, meeting a Nazi in SA, polo in Plett, Post-Polokwane: the new ANC, banking, crime and succession.
It also includes news, controversial profiles, satire, political gossip, book and film reviews, detailed media analysis and some literary critique. Graphics often take the form of illustrations, posters, political cartoons, power organograms and “how to” guides, including of course, “How to make a Molotov Cocktail“.
Significantly, the magazine silenced critics who saw it as Pro-Mbeki mouthpiece by maintaining its editorial stance despite Mbeki’s electoral defeat at the ANC conference in 2007.
To date the magazine has brought out 5 issues and established itself as a one of the few independent print voices, offering alternative news, views, critique and satire that challenge the mainstream media.
PEOPLE
James Sanders, Ronald Suresh Roberts, Adam Rumball, Zanele Mashinini, Yasmin Sooka, Sindiso Mnisi, Izzy Grove, Eeben Barlow, Lancelot du Preez, Richard Gott, Peter Hallward, Piers Pigou, Eusebius McKaiser, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Lester Sands, Adam Rumball, Nicholas Tee, Dan Mare, Jonathan Bloche, Phillip Dexter and Thato Mofokeng.
FAMILY TREE
Nose Week 1993
The Media magazine
RE/SOURCES
Molotov Cocktail
Paul Kirk, Roberts primes a bomb, The Citizen, January, 2007
In the 1990s the self-declared “bedeaste and high priest of painting mystico-African religio-secret,” Mfumu’Eto (Mfumu’Eto Nkou-Ntoula) established a one-man guerrilla publishing empire on the streets of Kinshasa. His arsenal of little comic books, written in Lingala, Thiluba and French, made on low-quality paper, self-produced using stencils and photocopying machines and distributed informally in the market place, quickly gained notoriety for their virulent attacks against the political powers-that-be. Along with other low-cost and locally distributed magazines such as Fula Ngenge, Mfumu’Eto’s comics inaugurated the era of author as producer DRC’s literary world. Like other comics produced in Kinshasa at the time they were heavily influenced by urban culture, and smeared with local indiscretions known as “kinoiseries”. Mfumu’Eto however also drew inspiration from local traditions, combining black magic and religion, pulp fiction and politics, irony and attitude in a wild display of interdisciplinary bravado that directly contested dominant colonial systems of knowledge.
His most famous series includes the politically propulsive A Nguma Meli Muasi Ya Na Kati Kinshasa, first published in 1990 and finally banned by the authorities and his devilish Satan Mobutu series which re-imaged former dictator Mobutu as a contemporary Beelzebub. Mfumu’Eto work was recently exhibited in Europe and the US, following the international success of popular painters such as Cheri Samba and the growing interest in African comics.
traduction française par Scarlett Antonio
Dans les années 1990, Mfumut’Eto (Mfumu’Eto Nkou-Ntoula), qui s’est déclaré être le bedeau et le grand prêtre de la peinture du secret mystique- religion africaine, à établi dans les rues de Kinshasa un empire de l’édition géré par un seul guérillero. Son arsenal de petits livres comiques, écrits en Lingala, Thiluba et Français, édités avec un papier de pauvre qualité, manufacturés de ses propres moyens en utilisant des stylos et des photocopieurs et distribués sans cérémonie sur la place du marché, ont rapidement gagné de la notoriét pour leurs attaques virulentes contre les pouvoirs politiques. En parallèle avec les autres magazines distribués localement à prix bas tel que Fula Ngenge, les comiques de Mfumu’Eto inauguraient l’ère de l’auteur en tant que producteur du monde littéraire de la RDC. Comme d’autres comiques produits à Kinshasa à cette époque, ils étaient influencés de manière importante par la culture urbaine et portaient atteinte aux indiscrétions locales surnommées “kinoiseries”. Cependant Mfumu’Eto tira également son inspiration des traditions locales, mélangeant la magie noire et religion, fiction à sensations et politique, ironie et une attitude de déploiement dépassée de bravade interdisciplinaire qui contestait directement les systèmes coloniaux dominants de la connaissance.
Ses séries les plus célèbres incluent le propulseur politiquement A Nguma Meli Muasi Ya Na Kati Kinshasa, publié la première fois en 1990 et interdit par les autorités et ses séries maudites Satan Mobutu qui remettait en images l’ancien dictateur Mobutu comme un Beelzebub contemporain. Le travail de Mfumu’Eto a été récemment exposé en Europe et dans les états américains, à la suite du succès international des peintres populaires tel que Cheri Samba et l’intérêt croissant dans les comiques africains.
“Household troubles and national grief, whether rooted in sorcery invasions, sexual rivalries, or human animosities, combine with wondrous flashes of celebrity and power. Through all of it the self-proclaimed Emperor and Majesty chronicles life in Kinshasa: past, present and future. “
“L’artiste solitaire des rues de Kinshasa”, Africinfo.
Lumbala, Hilaire Mbiye. “An inventory of the comic strip in Africa,” Africultures.
Hunt, Nancy Rose. “Tintin and the Interruptions of Congolese Comics”, Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, Paul Stuart Landau, Deborah D. Kaspin (eds), University of California Press, 2002. p p90.
Mfumu’eto. “Nguma ameliu Musai na Kati ya Kinshasa.” Menseul de Bandes dessinees 1, no.1 (April 1990) Kinshasa Editions Mpangala Original and Offest MGS.
As its name suggests, The Other Africa aims to provide a different view of the continent. Founded by acclaimed journalist Jean-Baptiste Placca this Paris based, pan-African monthly was started in 1997 in response to the clichéd, reductive and often pathological depiction of Africa in the Western media. In contrast The Other Africa sought to force the diversity of opinion, the multiple realities, unique terminology and complexities of daily life across a vast continent of over fifty nations. “Beside the Africa of all the calamities that we know (dictatorships, disease, AIDS, corruption, civil wars and everything else), there is also Africa that is serious, which makes constructive things.”
The Other Africa was thus characterized by rigorous investigation, in-depth analysis, detailed coverage and on-the-ground reporting. The journal is also a tool for teaching and writing for African journalists as “agents of development”.
The Other Africa was based in Paris but it was distributed widely both in Europe and Africa, taking advantage of the French communication and transport infrastructure provided by the global network of journalists, analysts and photographers. This is difficult to sustain and financial perspectives forced the Other Africa’s closure after only three years. In 2001 Placca resurrected the newspaper as a weekly, but despite a clearer
traduction française par Scarlett Antonio
Publi au Maroc en 1966, Lamalif a pris son nom des deux lettres de l’alphabet arabe qui forment le mot “la”, signifiant “non”. Ce jeu de mots malin résumait l’objectif du magazine. Lancé après la défaite de l’opposition marocaine (Union socialiste des Forces Populaires) par la monarchie, Lamalif était une forme de défit. “Le but dans cette tragique situation n’était pas de perdre espoir, de construire une alternative,” expliquaient les fondateurs, Zakia Daoud et Mohamed Loghlam.
Pendant ces 22 ans d’existence, Lamalif était caractérisé par sa rigueur intellectuelle et sa position politique radicale. Reportant sur les problèmes sociaux, culturels et économiques, d’un point de vue politique, il s’est affermi comme “un espace pour la réflexion et une force de défit considérable.”
Ses débats idéologiques parmi les journalistes, économistes, académiciens, politiciens et révolutionnaires devinrent des références intellectuelles mondiales et ont prouvé être fructueux dans le développement de nombreux écrivains et meilleurs penseurs marocains. Son intérêt sur les arts et la culture était également influents. Les reportages de Lamalif mettaient fréquemment en vedette le travail fait par des artistes et ses articles sur les films ont contribué à l’essor du cinéma marocain dans les années 1970.
Lamalif n’a néanmoins jamais été exclusif et s’est vite établi une place parmi un grand nombre de lecteurs différents. Ironiquement, ce fut ce succès qui mena les publications à leur ultime fin. Sa popularité et sa position de franc-parler attira la colère des autorités et il n’a pas fallu attendre longtemps avant que Daoud soit “considéré comme l’Ennemi Publique.” Après des années de menaces, de censures et saisies, Lamalif fut forcé de fermer définitivement en 1988.
PEOPLE
Jean Gourmelin, Abdellah Laraoui, Paul Pascon, Abdelkebir Khatibi, Abdallah Laroui, Fathallah Oualalou Oualalou, Abdelaali Benamour, Habib El Malki, Khalid Alioua, Bruno Etienne, Mohammed Jibril, Mohammed Tozy, Aboubakr Jamai, Salim Jay, Najib Boudraa
FAMILY TREE
Almaghrib(1937)
Jeune Afrique (1960)
Al Mouharrir(1962)
Addoustour(1963)
Souffles (1966)
Anoual
TelQuel (2001), which founder Ahmed Reda Benchemsi initially wanted to call Lamalifin tribute.
“This magazine is just to say we’re out there and we don’t buy your shit. It’s freedom of expression and the means by which a long-suffering artist becomes an entrepreneur, taking destiny into his own hands and out of the devious honkies who so love control,” wrote self-proclaimed culture terrorist Elliot Josephs aka Zebulon Dread in the editorial of the first issue of Hei Voetsek! (loosely translated: Hey! Get lost!). A diatribe-of-a-publication, the magazine burst upon the Cape Town writing and peddling scenes in 1997, at a time when the South African cultural journals happily basked under the rainbow. Written, designed, drawn, photoshopped and photocopied by Dread himself, Hei Voetsek! dissected South African politics, culture, society and sex. No one was safe from Dread’s virulent political tirades. Using Cape Flats taal, a street-smart mixture of English, Afrikaans and slang, Dread railed against everyone from corrupt politicians and conservative Afrikaaners and “darkies with a chip on their shoulders”.
After the publishing establishment, scared off by his politically incorrect satire, refused Hei Voetsek!, Dread turned to small independent black printers. Next he took to the streets, becoming his own walking and ranting marketing and distribution machine, hard-selling the magazine to oft unwilling victims at book fairs, street corners and arts festivals countrywide.
Dread went on to add two new magazines to his empire: Poes! and Piel!, which parodied the sexist magazine industry. He also published numerous satirical books. Finally in 2002, disillusioned with the lack of transformation in South Africa, Dread committed ritual suicide. As Elliot Josephs explained: “I am going to give up the ghost of my alter-ego, Zebulon Dread, and depart for India in order to find the happiness that the liberation struggle failed to deliver.” On dark stormy Cape Town nights, the dreadlocked visage of the “Last of the Great, Great Hotnots” can still be found haunting the city’s Green Market Square with the cry: “Sies! Vark! Voetsek!” (Sis! Pig! Get lost!)
“I lived in two worlds. I read. I read profusely. I was reading Dostoyevsky, I was reading Sartre. I read Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf in 1977 and it had such a big impact on me, I had to go and see the school psychiatrist after that – because I could understand that Steppenwolf, that outsider, was me. I was the madman living inside the insanity of humanity.”
“We took our collective birth in South Africa where, under the aegis of being black, we suffered at the hands of so-called white people. Which means that many souls, together, took their birth to endure karmic punishment – which they’ve not understood.”
THE BLACK GURU – Gael Reagon meets the spirit formerly known as Zebulon Dread.
traduction française par Scarlett Antonio
“Ce magazine est juste pour dire que nous sommes là et nous n’avalons pas votre merde. C’est la liberté d’expression et les moyens par lesquels un artiste qui souffre depuis longtemps devient un entrepreneur, prenant sa destinée entre ses propres mains et hors des tortueuses oies qui aiment tant contrôler,” a écrit celui qui se proclame le terroriste culturel, Elliot Joseph saka Zebulon Dread dans l’éditorial de la première édition d’Hei Voetsek! (traduit vaguement par: eh! Fiche-moi le camp!). Une diatribe de la publication, le magazine s’éclate sur les scènes écrites et colportées du Cap en 1997, à l’époque où les journaux culturels Sud-Africains se dorent joyeusement sous l’arc-en-ciel. Ecrit, planifié, dessiné, photographié et photocopié par Dread lui-même, Hei Voetsek! dissèque la politique, la culture, la société et le sexe sud-africains. Personne n’était épargné sous les tirades politiques et virulentes de Dread. Utilisant le langage du ‘Cape Flats'(*), un mélange d’anglais, d’afrikaans et d’argot, Dread se répand en injures contre tout le monde, des politiciens corrompus et des afrikanders conservateurs aux “noirs qui sont aigris”.
Une fois que la maison d’édition refusa Hei Voetsek!, apeuré par ses satires politiquement incorrectes, Dread se tourna vers les petits imprimeurs noirs indépendants. Ensuite, il se mit dans les rues, faisant lui-même sa propre commercialisation ambulante et oratoire et devenant lui-même sa propre machine de distribution, faisant une promotion de vente agressive du magazine aux victimes souvent contre leurs grés aux ventes de livres, dans les coins de rues et les festivals d’arts dans tout le pays.
Dread alla ajouter deux nouvelles revues à son empire: Poels! et Piels!, qui parodiaient l’industrie sexiste des magazines. Il publia également de nombreux livres satiriques. Finalement en 2002, désillusionné par le manque de transformation en Afrique du Sud, Dread commis un suicide rituel. Ainsi que l’expliquait Elliot Josephs: “Je vais abandonner le fantôme de mon pseudonyme, Zebulon Dread, et partir en Inde afin de trouver le bonheur que la lutte pour la liberté n’a pas apporté.” Dans les nuits noires et orageuses du Cap, le visage redouté et enfermé du “Dernier des Grands, Grands Hotnots” peut encore être trouvé entrain d’hanter la Place du Marché Vert de la ville criant: “Sies! Vark! Voetsek!” (Aïe! Cochon! Fiche-moi le camp!). (*) nom d’une banlieue/ quartier au Cap.
For the last three decades, Nathaniel Mackey, an African-American writer on the subject of “both sides of the hyphen”, has navigated a diversity of forms and subjects. He has published poetry, fiction, essays and lectured extensively. Mackey is also the founding editor of the Hambone Literary Journal. Yet despite the diversity of its output, Mackey’s work is almost always about the possibility of “discrepant engagement” between cultures. The phrase serves both a title and an apt description of Hambone.
The magazine’s first issue was published in the spring of 1974 as a group effort by the Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford University. It was dormant until 1982, when Mackey revived it as clearly different journal. With Mackey as sole editor and publisher of the Hamburger, “The main meeting place for Third World, American minority and white avant-gardists.” According to MacKey the cultivation and pursuit of networks of associations and communities of interest, inclination and affinity is a central reason for starting the magazine. “Okay, here’s my map … and we’re going to call it Hambone.”
Mackey’s Hambone covers a large region. In it he has a rich cross-cultural trickster poetics, traversing the African American vernacular and Euro-American “open form” poetics, slipping across literary boundaries and wire-cutting his way through gender constraints. Since 1982 Hambone has published everything from interviews to poetry and fiction. It also publishes reviews, essays and debates on African American culture, including a controversial conversation on the subject of black literature with Ismael Reed that Amiri Baraka later described as “straight-out agentry, and in certain circumstances could easily get these dudes iced.”
In addition to his work writing and editing, Nathaniel Mackey worked as radio disc jockey beginning as an undergraduate at Princeton’s WPRB and including nearly 30 years at Santa Cruz’s KUSP. For him the experience working on radio is inextricably linked to his writing: “I’ve long felt similarities between the processes of selection, sequencing, juxtaposition, pacing, transition, etc. that putting a radio program together entails and those involved in writing prose, writing poetry, and editing my journal, Hambone.” Further, Nate has described, from the beginning of his writing, “a pattern in which music would repeatedly impact, appear in, and be referred to in my writing, whether poetry or prose.” Listen to Nates Bass Catheral Mix below.
A Bass Cathedral Discography and Mix
traduction française par Scarlett Antonio
Pendant les trois dernières décennies, Nathaniel Mackey, un écrivain africain-américain résolu d’explorer “les deux côtés du trait d’union”, a dirigé une diversité de formes et sujets. Il a publié de la poésie, de la fiction, des essais et a considérablement donné des conférences. Mackey est aussi l’éditeur fondateur du journal littéraire Hambone. Néanmoins en dépit de la diversité de sa production, le travail de Mackey a presque toujours rassemblé une seule idée ce qu’il nomme la possibilité de “l’engagement contradictoire” entre les cultures. La phrase sert à la fois de titre pour son livre d’essais et pour la description appropriée d’Hambone.
La première édition du magazine àa été publiée au printemps de 1974 comme un effort de groupe par le Comité des Arts Performants Noirs à l’université de Stanford. Il a été dormant jusqu’en 1982, lorsque Mackey le fit revivre comme un journal considérablement différent. Avec Mackey comme rédacteur et éditeur Hambone devint connu comme “le point de rendez-vous pour le Troisiजme Monde, la minorité Américaine et les avant-gardistes blancs.” Selon Mackey la culture et poursuite des réseaux d’association et l’intérêt des communes, l’inclination et l’affinité furent sa raison principale pour commencer le magazine. “Mon idée était de mettre simplement mon sens de la communauté des écrivains et artistes sur un genre de carte Ok, voilà ma carte… et nous allons l’appeler Hambone.
The Hambone of Mackey covers a large area. In it he represents a man of rich poetry and crossed cultures, crossing the world of African American vernacular poetry and “open form” Eureo-American, sliding across the literary limits and shearing his way through the constraints of kind. Since 1982, Hambone has published everything from interviews to poetry and fiction. He also publishes reviews, essays and debates on African American culture, including controversial conversations about the function of black literature with Ismael Reed that Ami Baraka later describes as “pure chemistry and which in certain circumstances , could easily freeze his guys.”
PEOPLE
Sun Ra, Robert Duncan, Beverly Dahlen, Jay Wright, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Carence Major, Wilson Harris, Jodi Braxton, Michael Harper, David Henderson, bell hooks, Ishmael Reed
FAMILY TREE
Free Lance (1955)
Negro Digest/ Black World (1961)
Obsidian/Obsidian II (1975)
Black American Literature Forum (1976)
Callaloo (1976)
First World (1977)
Y’Bird (1977)
Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women (1984)
Catalyst (1986)
Shooting Star Review (1986)
Konch (1990)
RE/SOURCES
Nathaniel Mackey. Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-culturality, and Experimental Writing, Cambridge University Press, 1993
“Nathaniel Mackey Interview by Christopher Funkhouser,” Poetry Flash: A Poetry Review and Literary Calendar for the West, 224 (1991)
Nathaniel Mackey, “Editing Hambone”, Callaloo Volume 23, Number 2, Spring 2000, pp. 665-668
Ronald Maberry Johnson, Abby Arthur Johnson, Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of Afro-American Magazines in the Twentieth Century, University of Massachusetts Press, 1979
Glendora Review was conceived in an atmosphere of intellectual crisis following the brain drain from Nigeria during the Abacha regime. Its founder, Olakunle Tejuoso, whose family owns the Lagos alternative bookstore after which the journal is named, wanted to create a forum where people could access the work being done by Nigerian intellectuals who had fled the country, and a bridge for artistic theories and activities being propagated by African intellectuals in the West and their contemporaries at home.
Constantly engaging and interrogating the idea of Africa as a contested and dynamic invention, Glendora provided a platform for intellectual discourse on literary, visual, and performance cultures that is sensitive to the mutations and complexities of cultural work on Africa in a global age. A strong aesthetic sense coupled with an editorial style that, while rigorous, managed to avoid being too intellectual or esoteric, attracted a wide-ranging readership in Nigerian and abroad.
Although initially focused on Nigeria’s arts and cultures, Glendora grew into a pan African journal with regular features and interviews of icons such as Ngugi wa Thiongo, Mbongeni Ngema, Sembene Ousmane or Sun Ra, and critical texts on African literature. The journal also included a books supplement.
The last issue of Glendora appeared in 2004 and its publishers have focused since on the publication of books, namely the excellent tome of the West African megapolis, Lagos: A City At Work.
traduction française par Scarlett Antonio
Glendora Review a été conçu dans une atmosphère de crise intellectuelle à la suite du fossé cérébral venant du Nigéria pendant le régime Abacha. Son fondeur, Olakunle Tejuoso, dont la famille possède l’alternative du magasin de livres au Lagos après lequel il prend son nom, voulait créer un forum où les gens pouvaient avoir accès au travail fait par les intellectuels nigériens qui ont fui le pays et créer un pont pour les théories et activités artistiques étant propagées par les intellectuels africains en Occident et leurs contemporains dans le pays.
Constamment engageant et interrogeant l’idée de l’Afrique en tant qu’une invention contestée et dynamique, Glendora fournissait une plateforme pour les débats intellectuels sur la littérature, le visuel et la performance des cultures qui est sensible aux mutations et aux complexités du travail culturel sur l ‘Afrique dans une période globale. Un sens de l’esthétique puissant couplé avec un style de rédaction qui, bien que rigoureux a réussi à éviter d’être trop intellectuel ou ésotérique, a attiré une grande étendue de lecteurs au Nigéria et à l’étranger.
Bien que concentré initialement sur les cultures et arts du Nigéria, Glendora a grandi pour devenir un journal de la [pan] africaine avec des chroniques régulières et interview d’icônes tels que Ngugi wa Thiongo, Mbongeni Ngema, Sembene Ousmane ou Sun Ra et des textes critiques sur la littérature Africaine. Le journal a aussi inclus un supplément de livres. La dernière édition de Glendora apparut en 2004 et ses éditeurs se sont depuis concentrés sur la publication de livres, notamment l’excellent tome de la megapolis Africaine occidentale, Lagos : Une Ville Au Travail
PEOPLE
Dapo Adeniyi, Akin Adesokan, Michael Veal, Okwui Enwezor, Sola Olorunyomi, Greg Tate, Sefi Ransome-Kuti (Sefi Atta), John Collins, Ololade Bamidele, Chika Okeke, Odia Ofeimun, David Aradeon, Giarokwu Lemi, Dele Jegede, Depth of Field Collective
Founded by African filmmakers in Burkina Faso in 1992, during a period of intense worldwide interest and commentary on African T.V. and film, the bilingual journal Ecrans d’Afrique: Revue Internationale de Cinema Television et Video (also known as African Screen) explored all aspects of African film production. It, along with its many contemporaries, sought to ameliorate an intellectual climate which suffered from a dearth of commentary on African film. A corollary of the journal’s efforts was to improve worldwide exposure and access to African films – it was linked to the Festival Panafricain du Cinema de Ouagadougou (FESPACO), the continent’s leading film festival, from its inception. Ecrans d’Afrique has also been lauded for its wide gaze covering the whole of the African diaspora and for its excellent coverage of Caribbean film developments.
Fondé par des producteurs de films africains à Bukina Faso en 1992, pendant une période d’intense intérêt et commentaire mondial sur la TV et le film africains, le journal bilingue Ecrans d’Afrique: Revue Internationale de Cinéma Télévision et Vidéo (Cinema Television and Video International review) (aussi connu sous le nom d’African Screen) a exploré tous les aspects de la production du film africain. En parallèle avec ses nombreux contemporains, il a recherché à améliorer un climat intellectuel qui a souffert de la pauvreté du commentaire sur le film africain. Un corollaire des efforts du journal a été d’améliorer l’exposition internationale et l’accès aux films africains il a été lié au Festival Panafricain du Cinéma de Ouagadougou (FESPACO), le principal festival du film du continent, depuis son commencement. Ecrans d’Afrique a aussi été louangé pour son grand regard couvrant toute la Diaspora africaine et pour son excellent reportage du développement du film antillais.
PEOPLE
Clement Tapsoba, Alessandra Speciale, Francoise Pfaff, Mbye B. Cham, Baba Diop, William Tanifeani, Therese-Marie Deffontaines, Jean Servais Bakyono, Frank Ukadike, Beti Ellerson
FAMILY TREE
La Feuille (1990)
Le Film africain (1991)
Regard (1992)
Black Film Bulletin (1993)
RE/SOURCES
Ecrans d’Afrique on Wikipedia
FESPACO (Festival Panafricain du Cinema de Ouagadougou)
“Nous sommes tous responsables,” Abdoulaye Dao
Research in African Literatures special issue on African film, Fall 1995, 26.3.
Iris special issue on African film, Spring 1995,18.
Films d’Afrique, edited by Michel Larouche.
Sub- Saharan African Films and Filmmakers: An Annotated Bibliography (London: Hans Zell Publishers, 1988)
Sub-Saharan African Films and Filmmakers 1987-1992: An Annotated Bibliography(London: Hans Zell Publishers, 1994)
“The Challenges of African Film Bibliography: Content and Audience,” African Research and Documentation, 72 (1996), 1-8.
Cinemas of the Black Diaspora, Michael T. Martin
African Cinema: Politics and Culture, Manthia Diawara
Black and Third Cinema: Film and Television Bibliography, Vieler-Porter
Critical Perspectives on Black Independent Cinema, Cham and Andrade-Watkins
Schmidt, Nancy J. “Special Issues of Periodicals on African Film.” African Studies Review, Vol. 40, No. 1, (Apr., 1997), pp. 113-119
Launched in 1994 by publisher Ravi Dayal, Civil Lines quickly became the home of vital new Indian writing in the English language. Initially inspired by British magazine GRANTA, its focus on high quality unpublished fiction, personal history, reportage and inquiring journalism instantly appealed to what its founding editors describe as a new generation of “intelligent literate urban Indians” who valued high quality English writing and bought fiction and non-fiction for the pleasure of reading.
Significantly the magazine sought to challenge the traditional literary model by refusing to publish to a set schedule. Instead it prioritized quality, with issues appearing only when the editors felt they had garner enough fine, unpublished writing connected with India to warrant an issue. The result has been five issues to date, all defined by their consistency, surprise, eclecticism, intelligence and originality. Largely edited by practicing writers (Rukun Advani, Ivan Hutnik, Mukul Kesavan and later Kai Friese) rather than academics and with no defined literary manifesto determining the content, Civil Lines is ultimately a testimony to power of the story to describe, illuminate and make real.
“The first thing that was ground-breaking about a journal like Civil Lines in India, then, was precisely this: it revealed exactly where it was coming from, its hybridity, limitations and possibilities, without shame, without deception, without fronting, without pretensions to subalternity, without abandoning politics.”
“Civil Lines advertises itself as New Writing from India. This is misleading (as most advertisements are) because in its short life Civil Lines has been host to old writing newly translated, writing by not-Indian writers, writing by Indians Elsewhere and so on….”
Alter, Stephen. “A Few Thoughts on Indian Fiction, 1947-1997”, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 18, Post-Colonial Discourse in South Asia/ Khitab Ma Ba’d al-Kuluniyaliyah fi Junub Asya, 1998, p 14-28
Malik, Bela. “The unfinished revolution”, Kathmandu, April 14, 2002
Founded in 1999, Amkenah magazine is published by writer Alaa Khaled and photographer Salwa Rashad in Alexandria, Egypt.
Amkenah (“Places”) is concerned with “the poetics of place”: the people who live in, work at, and pass through places. A direct response to elitism, parochialism and conservatism in the literally scene in Egypt, as well as its Cairo’s centralism, it was born out of a search for a literary form that was more open and accessible. As such, it aims to re-forge a direct link between literature, art and culture on the one hand and life as it is lived more broadly on the other.
Through essays, interviews, photographs and archival extracts which feature different places, the editors to aim make visible that the life of people living in a certain place is the basic dimension of contemporary reality. Amkenah looks at culture, literature and place primarily from the viewpoint of transformation. It seeks to trace the points of transformation in a particular place at a particular time. This allows place and art and literature to be seen as fluid, changing elements. In this way, it hopes to escape the game of exclusion and inclusion played by a global culture bent on obliterating the particular. Place becomes a container of change and dispute; a reference point that can’t be easily obliterated, or superseded by meta-narrative or cultural theory.
In keeping with its commitment to lived experience it publishes primarily nonfiction written from a subjective point of view that challenges formal, academic styles with inventiveness, colloquialism and humanity. Texts by experienced writers, poets, scholars and journalists are published alongside new voices and supplemented with art and photography.
Openly defiant of the conservative “independent scene” and the nepotism-ridden state-affiliated press, the magazine was initially self-funded by its editors and while it currently publishes intermittently, it’s completely financially self-sufficient.
Published by Drum in Nigeria and later also Kenya and Ghana in the early 60s, African Film was just one of the many photo comics or “look books” that flooded English-speaking West Africa in the early post colonial era. Catering to the new urban youth, the series featured the mythical persona of Lance Spearman, a.k.a. “The Spear,” a black James Bond-like crime fighter as the central character.
In contrast to the racist stereotype of the uncivilised, uneducated, spear-carrying cannibal, or the eroticised “noble savage” that characterised the depictions of Africans in most Western comic books from the time, Spearman was sharp, stylish and sophisticated. Combining re-appropriated Western references with a distinctly African cultural identity, he reflected a newly defined black Atlantic modernity. Here was a comic book hero that presented a potential critique of colonialism, as well as a significant variation in how the genre classically figured normality and otherness.
While the series was criticised for its sometimes stereotyped portrayals of blackness and masculinity, it none the less had a lasting influence in fostering postcolonial pride and identity. Its combination of extreme (often cartoon-like) violence, with pastiches of early Hollywood melodramas, dashes of romance and glamour – via the street and touches of black nationalism preceded the Blaxploitation explosion in American cinemas in the 70s and its use of inventive DIY tactics to overcome budget constraints (Spearman’s trademark Corvette Stingray was often a picture of a dinky-toy) had a lasting influence on the Nollywood industry.
Into this culturally colonized milieu came a new comic published by Drum Publications called African Film featuring Lance Spearman, a raffish and nattily-dressed black super cop with an ever-present Panama hat. And we all instantly fell deeply in love with him. No one forced Spearman on us. For the first time, we had a comic hero who was actually black like us.
Spearman… Lance Spearman – the name synonymous with the intrepid hero of the photo-comic staple, African Film, started by the publisher of South Africa’s Drum Magazine, produced by fledgling writers and read voraciously by 1970s Nigerian schoolboys, including Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, who dreamed of wars and victories other than those around them.
Edité par Drum au Nigéria et également plus tard au Kenya et Ghana dans les années 60, African Film était juste une des nombreuses bandes dessinées photo ou “livres à regarder” qui a envahi l’ouest de l’Afrique anglophone durant le début de la période postcoloniale. S’adressant à la nouvelle jeunesse urbaine, les séries avaient pour vedette le personnage mythique de Lance Spearman, a.k.a. “The Spear” (La Lance), un lutteur noir contre les crimes ressemblant à James Bond, comme caractère principal.
En contraste avec le stéréotype raciste du cannibale porteur de lance barbare et non instruit, ou le “noble sauvage” érotiques qui caractérisaient les représentations des africains dans la plupart des livres comiques occidentaux du temps, Spearman était tranchant, élégant et sophistiqué. Allié aux références occidentales de nouveau appropriées avec l’identité culturelle distinctement africaine, il reflétait une modernité atlantique noire nouvellement définie. C’était là un héro de livre comique qui présentait une critique potentielle du colonialisme ainsi qu’une variation considérable dans la manière avec laquelle le tableau de genre illustrait classiquement la normalité et l’ensemble des autres.
Tandis que les séries étaient critiquées pour ses portraits parfois stéréotypes de la couleur noire et de la masculinité, il a eu cependant une influence de longue durée dans la manière d’encourager l’identité et la fierté postcoloniales. Son mélange d’extrême violence (souvent comme des dessins animés), avec des pastiches d’anciens mélodrames Hollywoodiens, des moments de romance et de séductions à travers la rue et les touches de nationalisme noir, précédait l’explosion du ‘Blaxploitation’ (exploitation des noirs) dans les cinémas américains des années 70 et son utilisation de tactiques inventives faites maison pour surmonter les contraintes de budget (la marque déposée de Spearman Corvette Stingray était souvent l’image d’un jouet mignon) ont eu une influence de longue durée sur l’industrie Nollywood.
FAMILY TREE
Boom featuring Fearless Fang
The Stranger
Sadness & Joy
RE/SOURCES
Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike. Black African Cinema, University of California Press, 1994.
On January 16, 2001, in the middle of the day, shots are heard in the Palais de Marbre,the residence of President Laurent-Désiré Kabila. The road bordering the presidential residence, usually closed from 6pm by a simple guarded barrier is blocked by tanks.
At the Ngaliema hospital in Kinshasa, a helicopter lands and a body wrapped in a bloody sheet is off loaded. Non-essential medical personnel and patients are evacuated and the hospital clinic is surrounded by elite troops. No one enters or leaves. RFI (Radio France Internationale) reports on a serious incident at the presidential palace in Kinshasa.
Rumor, the main source of information in the Congolese capital, is set in motion…
18 years after the assassination of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, rumours still proliferate. Suspects include: the Rwandan government; the French; Lebanese diamond dealers; the CIA; Robert Mugabe; Angolan security forces; the apartheid-era Defence Force; political rivals and rebel groups; Kabila’s own kadogos (child soldiers); family members and even musicians.
The geopolitics of those implicated tells its own story; the event came in the middle of the so-called African World War, a conflict that involved multiple regional players, including, most prominently, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.
So, who killed Kabila? The new issue of the Chronic presents this query as the starting point for an in-depth investigation into power, territory and the creative imagination by writers from the Congo and other countries involved in the conflict.
The issue is the result of a three-year research project that included a 5-day intervention and installation at La Colonie (Paris), from December 13 – 17, 2017, which featured a live radio station and a research library, a conceptual inventory of the archive of this murder – all documented in a research catalogue.
As this research revealed, who killed Kabila is no mystery. It is not A or B or C. But rather A and B and C. All options are both true and necessary – it’s the coming together of all these individuals, groups and circumstances, on one day, within the proliferating course of the history, that does it.
Telling this story then, isn’t merely a matter of presenting multiple perspectives but rather of finding a medium able to capture the radical singularity of the event in its totality, including each singular, sometimes fantastical, historical fact, rumour or suspicion. We’ve heard plenty about the danger of the single story – in this issue we explore its power. We take inspiration from the Congolese musical imagination, its capacity for innovation and its potential to allow us to think “with the bodily senses, to write with the musicality of one’s own flesh.”
However, this editorial project doesn’t merely put music in context, it proposes music as the context, the paradigm for the writing. The single story we write borrows from the sebene – the upbeat, mostly instrumental part of Congolese rumba famously established by Franco (Luambo Makiadi), which consists in the lead guitarist playing short looping phrases with variations, supported or guided by the shouts of the atalaku (animateur) and driving, snare-based drumming.
“Franco, c’est l’inventeur du sebene. Parce que… et à coté il y avait Nico Kasanda, le docteur Nico, qui lui avait plus de technique de guitare mais qui jouait très mélodique, et Luambo c’était le mec qui est vraiment le mec du quartier avec sa connaissance intuitive de la guitare il a inventé cet manière de faire des sorte de boucle rythmique. Sa manière de jouer c’est un boucle rythmique. Le même phrase rythmique qui revient tout le temps. Et c’est ça le sebene congolais. Et jusqu’à aujourd’hui nous fonctionnons par sebene. Même moi même.“
Interview on France Inter : « Le labo de Ray Lema du 16 mars 2014 »
Ray Lema shares more stories and sounds from his life in music with Bintou Simporé onboard the Pan African Space Station. Recorded for PASS in Paris at the Fondation Cartier exhibition Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko. For more visit http://panafricanspacestation.org.za
Similarly, to follow Ousmane Sembene’s method of using multi-location and polyphony as decolonial narrative tools, we invited writers from the countries directly involved and implicated in the events surrounding Kabila’s death (DR Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Angola, and a de-territorialised entity called AFDL) to write one story: the assassination of Kabila.
Working fluidly between fact and fiction, and featuring multiple forms of writing, the contributors – Yvonne Owuor, Antoine Vumilia Muhindo, Parselelo Kantai, Jihan El-Tahri, Daniel K. Kalinaki, Kivu Ruhorahoza, Percy Zvomuya and Sinzo Aanza – use the event-scene of the shooting is their starting point tocollectively tell the single story with its multiplication of plots and subplots that challenge history as a linear march, and tell not the sum but the derangement of its parts.
The issue thus performs an imaginative remapping that better accounts for the complex spatial, temporal, political, economic and cultural relations at play, as well the internal and external actors, organized into networks and nuclei – not only human actors but objects; music; images; texts, ghosts etc – and how these actors come together in time, space, relationships.
This edition of the Chimurenga Chronic is conceived as a sebene of the Congolese rumba – enjoy the dance!
The Chronic is a quarterly pan African gazette, published by Chimurenga.
This edition is part of a larger research project of the Chimurenga Library. It is produced with support from Heinrich Boll Foundation (Cape Town), and in collaboration with La Colonie (Paris), Cosmopolis Bienial/ Centre Pompidou (Paris), Marabouparken Konsthall (Stockholm) and Kalmar Konstmuseum.
For more information or to order your print or digital copy visit www.chimurengachronic.co.za and/or contact Chimurenga on +27(0)21 4224168 or info@chimurenga.co.za.
Chimurenga returned to Paris for a 5-day intervention and installation at La Colonie. From December 13 – 17, 2017, we installed a live radio station and a research library, and hosted talks, screenings and performances that asked ‘Who Killed Kabila?’, as the starting point for an in-depth investigation into power, territory and the creative imagination.
The equation was simple: the length of a Congolese president’s reign is proportional to his/her willingness to honour the principle that the resources of the Congo belong to others. Mzee Kabila failed.
Who killed Kabila is no mystery either. It is not A or B or C. But rather A and B and C. All options are both true and necessary – it’s the coming together of all these individuals, groups and circumstances, on one day, within the proliferating course of the history, that does it.
So telling this story isn’t merely be a matter of presenting multiple perspectives but rather of finding a medium able to capture the radical singularity of the event in its totality, including each singular, sometimes fantastical, historical fact, rumour or suspicion.
We’ve heard plenty about the danger of the single story – we want to explore its power. We take inspiration from the Congolese musical imagination, its capacity for innovation and its potential to allow us to think “with the bodily senses, to write with the musicality of one’s own flesh” (Mbembe).
At La Colonie, Chimurenga installed a library that included books, films, and visual material mapping extensive research that investigates history and changing formations of rule and accumulation, space and territory, allegiance, citizenship, and sovereignty, and the African imagination in music and writing.
Each day, the Pan Africa Space Station, broadcast live with a programme of interviews, discussions and performances by collaborators from around the world including musicians, DJs, journalists, writers, political theorists, thinkers and filmmakers. After the event, the sounds and images generated in this process will contribute towards a special edition of our Pan African broadsheet, the Chronic.
Participants included Dominique Malaquais, Parselelo Kantai, Philou Lozoulou, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Barly Baruti, Victor Gama, Lulendo Mvulu, Déo Namujimbo, Luigi Elongui, Maurice Poto, Mengi Massamba, Hugo Mendez, Jihan El-Tahri, Bintou Simpore, Martin Meissonnier, Paulo Inglês, Franck Biyong, Ray Lema, Brice Ahounou, Nadine Fidji, Spilulu, Arnaud Zaitjman, Julie Peghini, Sinzo Aanza, Koba Lubaki, Percy Zvomuya, Boddhi Satva, Abdourahman Waberi, Antoine Vumilia Muhindo, Sam Tshintu & Academia, Trésor Kibangula, Bullit, Kovo NSondé, Rokia Bamba-Mennessier, Emmanuel Nashi, Franck Leibovici, Julien Seroussi, Daniel Kalinaki, Pascale Obolo, Kivu Ruhorahoza, Jacques Goba, Mo Laudi, Michelange Quay.
From December 13 – 17, 2017, Chimurenga installed a library of books, films, and visual material mapping extensive research that ask “Who Killed Kabila“, as the starting point for an in-depth investigation into power, territory and the creative imagination. This book catalogues all the research material produced and collected for this installation.
The equation is simple: the length of a Congolese president’s reign is proportional to his/her willingness to honour the principle that the resources of the Congo belong to others. Mzee Kabila failed.
Who killed Kabila is no mystery either. It is not A or B or C. But rather A and B and C. All options are both true and necessary – it’s the coming together of all these individuals, groups and circumstances, on one day, within the proliferating course of the history, that does it.
So telling this story isn’t merely be a matter of presenting multiple perspectives but rather of finding a medium able to capture the radical singularity of the event in its totality, including each singular, sometimes fantastical, historical fact, rumour or suspicion.
We’ve heard plenty about the danger of the single story – we want to explore its power. We take inspiration from the Congolese musical imagination, its capacity for innovation and its potential to allow us to think “with the bodily senses, to write with the musicality of one’s own flesh” (Mbembe).
The catalogue is now available for sale in the Chimurenga shop.
From 4 October – 26 November 2017, the Pan African Space Station (PASS)
broadcast LIVE from Museo Tamayo, Mexico City. For 8 weeks, the PASS
studio functioned as “ecole du soir” (evening school) – a meeting place,
a classroom, and laboratory where different worlds converged. The radio
programming explored the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana,
contemporary South Atlantic exchanges and Afro-Mexican cultures – a
public research platform toward a forthcoming edition of the Chimurenga
Chronic on these themes.
From 11 -15 December 2016, the Pan African Space Station (PASS) landed in Amsterdam, transmitting live from the OBA Central Library. The PASS live studio featured a 5-day programme as an experiment in speaking, listening, playing, partying and community; as a performance and exhibition space; a research platform and living archive. Programmed and performed by Chimurenga, PASS in Amsterdam featured collaborations with artists, filmmakers, writers, musicians and rebels whose practices draw from and respond to a variety of contexts; to prompt us, through performance, conversation and other forms, to imagine how worlds connect.
We thank all involved for improvising and collaborating with us to make this landing happen. Collaborators include ‘Black Stereo’ (Jimmy Rage and Bamba Al Mansour), Chandra Frank,Faustin Linyekula and Jose Pereelanga paying tribute to Franco, Amal Alhaag and Maria Guggenbichler reminding you to ‘Count Your Blessings’, ‘Protest Pop’ with Neo Muyanga, Em’kal Eyongapka, Kodwo Eshun further entangling our imaginations, Aurelie Lierman and many many more.
To revisit moments from this landing, please visit our Mixcloud. Here’s more about those who contributed to PASS in Amsterdam:
Adeola Enigbokan is an artist and urban theorist based in Amsterdam.
Amal Alhaag and Maria Guggenbichler run DJ workshops for women as part of Side Room, a nomadic meeting room for intersectional feminist and anti-colonial practices.
Chandra Frank is a writer and curator living in Amsterdam. She works on black feminist genealogies and the politics of pleasure and resistance.
Charl Landvreugd is a Rotterdam-based visual and performance artist and curator.
Em’kal Eyongakpa is based in South West Cameroon and Amsterdam. He works at itinerant with video, photography, sculpture, sound, text and performance.
Faut Haut is an avant-pop band based in Amsterdam.
Faustin Linyekula is a dancer, choreographer and founder of Studios Kabako in Kisangani.
Femi Dawkins (a.k.a. Jimmy Rage) is a visual artist, poet and musician who lives in Amsterdam.
Frank Biyong is a musician, composer and producer who lives in Yaounde and Paris. He founded and leads the groups Massak and Afroelectric Orchestra.
Hodan Warsame, Tirza Balk and Kahya Engler are activists based in Amsterdam who produce radio shows, as well as host talks and workshops as part of Redmond Amsterdam.
INSAYNO (In Nasty Situations All You Need: Optimism) is a rapper and spoken-word artist based in Amsterdam.
Jeannine Valeriano is a singer, writer and spoken-word artist based in Amsterdam.
Jorgen Unom JG is a singer and poet living in Amsterdam.
DJ Jumanne aka J4 is the founder of Africanhiphop.com, the oldest website dedicated to hip hop cultures on the continent.
Can a past that the present has not yet caught up with be summoned to haunt the present as an alternative?
In April and May 2016, Chimurenga’s installation ChimurengaLibrary and pop-up radio station Pan African Space Station infiltrated the Kallio Library in Helsinki.
The intervention was a continuation of Chimurenga’s ongoing exploration into the utopian moment shortly after African independences, when a series of Pan African festivals staged in Dakar, Algiers, Lagos and Kinshasa functioned as laboratories for the development of new, continent-wide politics and cultures. FESTAC 77 (Lagos 1977) and its predecessors, The First World Festival of Negro Arts (Dakar 1966), the First Pan-African Festival (Algiers 1969) and Zaire 74 (Kinshasa 1974) presented a shared vision of an Africa yet to come.
This Africa was as much a geographic reality as it was a construct, a continent whose boundaries shift according to the prevailing configurations of global racial identities and power. Building on their previous research platforms staged in Cape Town, Lagos, San Francisco, Sharjah, Paris, London and New York (among others), Chimurenga will remap these Pan-Africanist imaginations and cultural visions in Helsinki. What is important here is not the reiteration of the actual past, but the persistence of what never actually happened, but might have.
The project was part of the Remembering Silences season curated by Ahmed Al-Nawas.
To listen to recordings from PASS in Helsinki, visit our Mixcloud.
From 11 to 15 November 2015, the Chimurenga Library hosted PASS with a live broadcasting programme of music, interviews, and events with Chimurenga collaborators in New York, including musicians, journalists, writers, curators, and filmmakers. The live broadcast studio functioned amidst an installation that brought together pop-up stores that experiment with trade, informal economies, aesthetics and body language, music and spoken word, mobility and infrastructure.
Working with collaborators such as Brooklyn-based African Record Centre and Yoruba Book Center (established 1971); artist and educator Nontsikelelo Mutiti, setup an African hair braiding salon; and poet, choreographer, and Afrosonics archivist Harmony Holiday, ideas, thinking, and debate moved fluidly between events, transactions, broadcasts, conversations, music and records, publications, archive material, services, and objects.
A text and image reflection on the “Rumble in the Jungle”, the Muhammad Ali / George Foreman boxing match held in Kinshasa in 1974. Norman Mailer started The Fight, Dominique Malaquais punched back. Artwork by Kakudji.
Yambo Ouologuem, the Malian author of Le devoir de violence and other
literary works, has been shrouded in mystery since he disappeared from
the West, effectively turning his back on literature. Christopher Wise goes in search.
On a winter’s day in 1974, a group of musicians led by Abdullah Ibrahim entered a recording studio in the heart of Cape Town, and emerged, hours later, having changed South African music, forever. John Edwin Mason pens notes on the making of the icon and the anthem.
A word-sound investigation of unjustly neglected African-American composer Julius Eastman‘s caged negratas. Photographs by Chris Rusiniak and Donald Burkhardt.
Odia Ofeimun is one of Nigeria’s foremost poets and political activists, and the author of the acclaimed collection The Poet Lied.
Ofeimun was at one time the personal secretary of the Nigerian
politician, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He was also a member of the radical
collective of The News, a weekly newspaper, which contributed to the downfall of Nigeria’s last dictatorship.
Achille Mbembe is
a research professor in history and politics at the University of the
Witwatersrand and a senior researcher at WISER (Wits Institute for
Social and Economic Research). He is the winner of the 2006 Bill
Venter/Altron Award for his book On the Postcolony (University of California Press, 2001).
Lenwo Jean Abou Bakar Depara,
known as Depara (1928-1997), was one of the leading documentarirts of
Kinshasa’s post-independence social scene, and the official photographer
to the Zairian singer Franco.
Njabulo Ndebele is a writer and an academic. He is the author of The Cry of Winnie Mandela, Fools and Other Stories and Rediscovery of the Ordinary, a collection of essays.
Steve Gordon is a photographer and music producer based in Cape Town. He is the co-founder of Making Music Productions.
Just a few, to give you a taste. Don’t fret because you haven’t heard their records before. Say the names slowly, as you would recite a poem. Let the consonants roll languidly off your tongue and stretch your lips to pronounce each vowel, and you will already hear distant strains of music.
There are also photographs. Photographs by Basil Breaky, who documented the scene in Johannesburg and Cape Town just before its hottest players made their ways to Europe, leaving the cities to grow dark and silent. One picture: Abdullah Ibrahim, head bent over the keyboard of his piano, his arm stretched over into its gut, plucking its strings. Arched over, listening to some deeper music from the piano’s heart.”
Julian Jonker is a writer and cultural producer living in Cape Town. He is also a member of the Fong Kong Bantu Sound System, a DJ collective, and performs appropriationist sound as liberation chabalala. Basil Breakey is a photographer based in Cape Town. He is the author of the acclaimed Beyond The Blues – Township Jazz in the 60s and 70s.
