Everyone in the neighbourhood knew him. Walking to the shops, kids called out, Hey, Monk, howya doin? Where ya bin, Monk? and he mumbled something back, stopping to shake hands or just sway back and forth on the sidewalk.
Everyone knows I’m a two-stick man. But, I’m not ready to go up against Markham again just yet. Or any of the other top stickfighters. I’ve been trying some new moves. I feel close to a breakthrough in terms of technique. But it’s not quite there
In the Free State, the most important and pivotal figure in local black literature has been OMOSEYE BOLAJI. Pule Lechesa spoke with him about his awards, general grassroots writing in the Free State, and Black Writing in general.
In 1996, Keziah Jones visited Kalakuta Republic every day for a week to interview Fela Anikulapo Kuti. On the fifth day, after waiting six hours, Keziah got to speak with Fela, who he remarked kept you in “constant and direct eye contact” and spoke “in short bursts of baritone.”
The xenophobic violence that swept through many communities in South Africa in 2008 was not a sudden phenomenon. Victims and an alleged instigator date the origins of this wave to a township in Pretoria, writes Kwanele Sosibo.
Diego Maradona is the man who exploded the shame of the entire world in June 1986, in an historic dribble during a match between Argentina and England.
South Africa thinks that India owes it one for putting Gandhi through revolution school; India thinks South Africa owes it for sending him over to show the natives how it’s done.
An issue inspired by the life and work of Bessie Head. Including previously unpublished works by Head, and featuring new writing and art by Jean Claude Fignole,
A collection of musings – in words, images and sounds – from beneath the processed skin of Cape Town, by Gabeba Baderoon, Sandile Dikeni, Julian Jonker,
We scope the stadia, markets, ngandas and banlieues to spotlight narratives of love, hate and the wide and deep spectrum of emotions and affiliations that the game of football generates.
“Mandela was not the only head of state taken in by Koagne. Le king kept snapshots of himself with many a man of power, among them Mobutu Sese Seko and Denis Sassou Nguesso […]
On desire and its discontents. Featuring a new adaptation of Yambo Ouologuem erotica, and new works by Kopano Ratele, Kalamu ya Salaam, Gael Reagon, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Zackie Achmat,
My quest for an explanation for this omission in my history education made me appreciate the magnitude of the crime… for the struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. – Santu Mofokeng
If one thinks about it the whole thing goes back to amaQheya; the cultural proletariat… a proletariat with a cultural history that has taught it to be careful of an African existence…
What could have happened in his head to take literally this type of injunction quite common in lands of Africa? A sense of the word given? The desire to take seriously the hopes of children who usually have little voice? Mystery.
Chimurenga Magazine launched its new issue, the Chimurenga Chronic, a speculative newspaper set in May 2008, with a Chronic Library exhibition and a live music event in Johannesburg from 19-26 October 2011.
Under the direction of composer/trumpeter Marcus Wyatt, some of Johannesburg’s leading jazz musicians explored Chimurenga Chronic themes such as history, exile and memory in their tribute to the freedom and prolific musical imagination of South African jazz legends, the Blue Notes, on Friday, 21 October 2011. Chimurenga editor Ntone Edjabe and DJs Nok and Soul Diablo were on the decks, selecting gems from the Blue Notes’ and Brotherhood of Breath’s discography and more.
Check out the video from the event featuring The Blue Notes Tribute Orkestra.
Published in Morocco in 1966, Lamalif took its title from two Arabic letters that form the word “la”, meaning “no”. This sly wordplay encapsulated the magazine’s objective. Launched after the defeat of the Moroccan opposition (Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires) by the monarchy, Lamalif was a form of challenge. “The goal in this tragic situation was not to lose hope, to build an alternative,” explained the founders, Zakia Daoud and Mohamed Loghlam.
Throughout its 22 years existence, Lamalif was characterised by its intellectual rigour and radical political stance. Covering social, cultural and economical issues, all from a political perspective it established itself as “a space for reflection and a force of significant challenge.” Its ideological debates amongst journalists, economists, academics, politicians and revolutionaries became global intellectual references and proved seminal in the development of many of Mocrocco’s best thinkers and writers. Its focus on arts and culture was equally influential. Lamalif‘s covers frequently featured work by artists and its writings on film contributed to the rise of Moroccan cinema in the 1970s.
Lamalif was however never exclusionary and it soon established a wide and diverse readership. Ironically it was this success that led to the publications ultimate demise. Its popularity and outspoken stance soon attracted the ire of the authorities and it didn’t take long before Daoud was “regarded as Public Enemy.” After years of threats, censorship and seizures, Lamalif was finally forced to shut down in 1988.
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.
Let the good Dr [Philip Tabane] inject you in three ways; music, words, video. Records for Bajove Dokotela mix selected and blended by Ntone Edjabe, quotes from Sello Edwin Galane’s thesis.
Oscar Pistorius first gained international fame amid a raging debate over whether prosthetic blades would give him unfair advantage against able-bodied athletes. Today, the track star finds himself in the middle of a more serious controversy: whether he intentionally shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Both cases raise serious questions regarding humanity. Gabriella Håkansson* embarks on the slippery-slop of what defines the human.
The metronomes of ancient history, the legacy of war, the wavering prosperity of peace, impending independence and inter-ethnic tensions beat the rhythms of Juba – the new capital of Southern Sudan. Billy Kahora reports.
t would be a very idiosyncratic Harlem! Years ago when I was a teenager I did a course where they had us make maps of places, highlighting what drops out just based on personal experience of a place. I think of this book very much like that – a personal map of the places I went or that caught my eye.
I have always felt the need for Africa, Asia and South America to learn from each other. This south-to-south intellectual and literary exchange was at the center of the Nairobi Literature debate in the early sixties, and is the centerpiece of my recent theoretical explorations, in Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing.
wani? Manuscript Project, Kwani Trust’s new literary prize for African writing. Including contributions from Aminatta Forna, Leila Aboulela, Ellen Banda-Aaku and Helon Habila, the articles offer advice and inspiration for developing your novel manuscript over the next 2 months. In this, the first article in the series Aminatta Forna explores where the ideas for novels.
Read to become a better writer. This sounds like “eat to become stronger” and in a way reading is the food of the creative process. Read for all the reasons a reader reads but also read for inspiration, read to be influenced, read in order to pick up tricks and techniques, read in order to answer the questions, “How on earth did the author pull this off? How on earth did he/she get away with this?”
The Chronic is a one-time only edition of Chimurenga which takes the form of a speculative newspaper. Back-dated to the 18-24 May 2008 – the first week of the xenophobic violence across South Africa three years ago, the Chimurenga Chronicle is an opportunity to provide the depth of reporting and analysis that should have appeared during this period. The newspaper also looks outward – covering events, scenes and situations from around the world during this period. And it launched today!
It was Sun Ra who said it a long time ago: “Equation wise, the first thing to do is consider internal linktime as officially ended… we’ll work on the other side of time… we’ll bring them here through either isotope, internal linkteleportation, transmolecularzation… ” . The time was 1974 and Space was The Place. A prolific jazz composer, bandleader, philosopher, afronaut and historian, Ra was ahead of his time.
Almost four decades later, it is increasing clear that time, once thought continuous, is actually marked by radical disjunctions and overlapping time-spaces. What’s more, the tools we have at our disposal, particularly in the area of knowledge production, do not help us much to grasp that which is emerging.
What we need now is a Time Machine! A device that will allow us to work “on the other side of time”, to discover possibilities for new ways thinking through the “having been and yet to come.”
The Chimurenga Chronicle such a machine, a once-off edition of a speculative, future-forward newspaper that travels back in time to re-imagine the present. Both a bold art project and a hugely ambitious publishing venture, the Chimurenga Chronicle comprises of a 96-page multi-section broadsheet, the stand-alone 56 page Chronic Life Magazine and a self-contained 96 page Chronic Book Review Magazine.
By imagining the newspaper as a low-tech time travel machine, our aim is not only to reanimate history, to ask what could have been done – but also to provide a space from which to re-engage the present and re-dream the future.
The print edition includes a 128-page multi-section broadsheet, packaged with 40 page Chronic Life Magazine and the 96 page Chronic Book Review Magazine.
An intervention into the newspaper as a vehicle of knowledge production and dissemination, it seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream representations of history, on the one hand filling the gap in the historical coverage of this event, whilst at the same time reopening it. The objective is not to revisit the past to bring about closure, but rather to provoke and challenge our perception
Featuring contributions from Mike Abrahams, Olumide Abimbola, Toyin Akinosho, Paula Akugizibwe, Sello Alcock, Max Annas, Gabriela Carrilho Aragao, Ayi Kwei Armah, Sophia Azeb, Robert Berold, Marlon Bishop, Louis Chude-Sokei, Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, Imraan Coovadia, Goran Dahlberg, Kwame Dawes, Jacob Dlamini, Manu Herbstein, Sean Jacobs, Neelika Jayawardene, Billy Kahora, Parsalelo Kantai, Bill Kouèlany, Jackie Lebo, Miles Marshall Lewis, Percy Mabandu, Munyaradzi Makoni, Dominique Malaquais, Lionel Manga and many more
« Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée ». Tel est le titre du dernier livre d’Achille Mbembe qui paraît aux Éditions La Découverte à Paris le 14 octobre. J’ai eu le privilège de lire de manière attentive cet ouvrage riche et très documenté écrit en mémoire de Frantz Fanon et Jean-Marc Éla, deux « penseurs du devenir illimité ».
In the half-century to come, one aspect of the role of intellectuals, cultural practitioners and African civil society will be to help in articulating a concept of democracy that takes the current struggles as a point of departure, and in addition to ‘internationalise’ the question of African democratisation
What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe? The latest issue of Chimurenga provides alternatives to prevailing educational pedagogy. Through fiction, essays, interviews, poetry, photography and art, contributors examine and redefine rigid notions of essential knowledge.
Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it. All entries are regrouped under subjects such as body parts, language, grace, worship and news (from the other side), numbers, parents, police and many more. Through a classification system that is both linear and thematic, the textbook offers multiple entry points into a curriculum that focuses on the un-teachable and values un-learning as much as it’s opposite.
Inside: Amiri Baraka waxes poetic on the theoretics of Be-Bop; Coco Fusco flips the CIA’s teaching manual for female torturers; Karen Press and Steve Coleman instruct in folk-dancing; Dambudzo Marechera proposes a “guide to the earth”; Dominique Malaquais designs the museum we won’t build; through self-portraits Phillip Tabane and Johnny Dyani offer method to the Skanga (black music family); and Winston Mankunku refuses to teach.
Other contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Akin Adesokan, Isoje Chou, Sean O’Toole, Pradid Krishen, E.C. Osundu, Salim Washington, Sefi Atta, Ed Pavlic, Neo Muyanga, Henri-Michel Yere, Medu Arts Ensemble, Aryan Kaganof, Khulile Nxumalo and Walter Mosley amongst others. Cover by Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani.
This issue features words and images on the Third World project and links, real and imagined, between Africa and South Asia.
Chimurenga 14, “Everyone Has Their Indian”, seeks to unpack the relation between Africa and South Asia. Born out of the ongoing conversation between divergent temporal registers, between different territories and bodies of thought, it can be seen both as a map of the actual lines that criss-cross the Mediterranean and Indian oceans and a log of possible journeys into a real and imagined territory called the “Third World”. Theory runs adjacent to fiction, and photo essays share the space as hand-drawn maps, post cards and fragments of itineraries. The contributions cover a wide variety of themes, ranging from security, sovereignty and sex, to mobility and music, issues of access, control and censorship, power and identity.
For example, Vivek Narayanan offers a poetic ode to Historical Anthropology, while Manu Herbstein and Achal Prabhala use a free flow of images, memories and realities to map hidden connections. Amitav Ghosh confesses of “xenophilia” and J.S. Saxena’s “Coffee-Brown Boy” asks “If that black cat can be White, why can’t I?” Artworks by Rigo 23, Kakudji, Rasheed Aareen and Ernest Mancoba redraw the boundaries and limits of identity and Philippe Rekacewicz’s itineraries retraces the African connection as a question and not a destination.
Other contributors include Mahmood Mamdani, M. Neelika Jayawardane, Martin Kimani, Shailja Patel, Rustum Kozain, Akin Adesokan , Girija Tropp, Neo Muyanga, Binyavanga Wainaina, Pravasan Pillay , Andile Mngxitama , Naeem Mohaiemen , Tsuba Ka 23, Aleksandra Mir, The Speculative Archive and many more.
Chimurenga 12, an all-faxion issue on black technologies no longer secret. Featuring words and images by Allan “Botsotso” Kolsky, Koffi Kwahule, Joao Barreiros, Olufemi Terry, Doreen Baigaina, Stacy Hardy, Akin Adesokan, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, JG Ballard, Emmanuel Dongala, Blank du Blanc, Jean Malaquais, Liesl Jobson, Peter Kalu, Dominique Malaquais, Basim Magdy, Jean Lamore, Femi ‘Rage’ Dawkins, James Sey, Minette Vari, Teju Cole and Rana Dasgupta.
Chimurenga 13 : Documenting the (un)making of: The Echo Chamber (Louis Chude-Sokei; Victor Gama); Mannenberg (John Edwin Mason; Abdullah Ibrahim); Last Angels (John Akomfrah;Edward George and BAFC); Bleeders 1 (Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama); Bleeders 2 (Lionel Manga), SAPE (Baudouin Mouanda); a painting (Pume Bylex); Julumbu (Abu Bakarr Mansaray); Palestinian Walls (Eyal Weizman); Beaubourg (Luca Frei) and Slackers like Nkrumah and Sartre (Shirana Shahbazi, Tirdad Zolghadr and Faouzi Rouissi).
Featuring a heady mix of words and images that give voice to silence. So much has been said about speech: speaking up, speaking for oneself, not being allowed to speak, speaking for the other who’d rather speak for self, but very little is said about the virtue of silence. So much said about making oneself visible, but little said about mining the rich depths of absence. This issue is about silence, disappearing oneself as act. Though it’s often one of abdication, could it be defiance, resistance even? – a challenging idea, in a culture where struggle about seeking exposure, giving voice, making visible and all that stuff…
Inside you’ll find everything from Iranian scholar Asef Bayat writing on the quiet encroachment of the ordinary, to an unsolicited rant from Cape Town-based writer Gael Reagon, serious Melodifius thunkish funk from acclaimed British writer Geoff Dyer, sharp travel discourse from South African poet, journalist, radio producer and activist Sandile Dikeni and American criminal and author, Jack Henri Abbott’s words about life in the hole.
Also: Christopher Wise’s search for African literary provocateur Yambo Ouologeum; Liesl Jobson on bad breasts; Anthony Joseph on the African origins of UFO; Ché via Jay Cantor on el comandante’s punitive silence; Achille Mbembe on the death of Um Nyobe; Suren Pillay on making pictures; Nwando Mbanugo to the little red hat of power; Eric Darton on what to say when its time to speak; Stacy Hardy on Julius Eastman’s caged negratas; Conceição Evaristo on strange fruits; Neelika Jayawardane on Gitmo and Ed Pavlic on unannounced winners.
Images include Ralph Lemon‘s spaceship drawings, Mario Benjamin‘s unnamed ghosts, Matthew Goniwe minutes before he was gunned down, the Black Ark, drawings from the Ramallah Underground, and ‘Declensions in Blue’, an essay on what silence looks like featuring images by David Hammons, Gordon Parks, Herve Youmbi and Moustapha Dime. The cover is ‘Sarkozy, Fanon and the jazz baroness’, a remix of the cover art of Monk’s Underground.
This issue of Chimurenga is about football. And politics. But no, we are not talking about soccer as a capitalist apparatus, or as a substitute for war, or about South Africa’s ability to successfully host the 2010 World Cup, or about Fifa’s global developmentalist rhetoric – the writing and art actively side-step football clichés and branded discourses.
We chose instead to scope the stadia, markets, ngandas and banlieues to spotlight narratives of love, hate and the wide and deep spectrum of emotions and affiliations that the game generates. Because, after all, if you want to pitch it hardcore political, the playing field is the only area that Fifa does not and can not fully control – everything else is board-room approved.
But. Power, board-roomed or otherwise, must be confronted. Hence the issue is framed by two perspectives from Latin America, sure to inject some criticality in 2010 euphoria: the reader will enter the Argentinean fish-tank (where militants disappeared for death or brainwashing) during the 1978 World Cup, for an ethical exploration with activist Graciela Daleo, and emerge for a deep breath with Gustavo Esteva, who extracts the essence of the Zapatista movement as a radicalisation of democracy.
Between these you will find Of Fabric and Football – a travelogue in 5 parts that delivers idiosyncratic and powerful points of view on the ‘beautiful game’.
Binyavanga Wainaina, with an acerbic tongue and an ironic eye, captures the chaos and transactions, the passions and textures of Togo, Ghana, and the Entire Continent Everywhere during the 2006 World Cup. Knox Robinson (The African Game) writes of the relationship between player and space; Diouf and Leopold Sedar Senghor stadium in Dakar; Eto’o and Yaounde’s drinking spots; Drogba and Houphouet Boigny airport in Abidjan. Simon Kuper (Football against the Enemy) conducts an off-centre interview with bush war veteran, Liverpool great and droll football manager Bruce Grobbelaar (and other Whitemen who run football in Kaapstad). Peter James Hudson time-travels to 16thC Spain and its infamous Catholic-inspired inquisition. Novelist Patrice Nganang establishes, in Camfranglais, football violence (and the rivalry between the country’s top teams Canon and Union) as a metaphor to explore political violence in Cameroon in the early 90s.
In a stand-alone piece Peter Alegi (Laduma! Soccer, Politics and Society in SA), investigates the 2001 Ellis Park football disaster in Johannesburg, concluding with a meticulous indictment of the soccer bosses’ and the government’s roles before, during and after the tragedy.
Poetry finds its expression in two poems by Adriano Sousa (against futebol coaches who should be bullfighters) and a poem by Molara Wood (for Marc-Vivien Foe). Filmmaker Lindiwe Nkutha gives a nuanced short story of hate in the dusty locale of a South African township while Julia Napier evokes the bodylove for the game in her short story about a female footballer.
There is a Tricolour Triptych – head, body and corpses.
Firstly, Grant Farred produces a Derridean reading of Zidane’s world-stopping head butt. Secondly, a conversation between Achille Mbembe and Zidane’s teammate Lilian Thuram in the aftermath of the famous coup de boule. Thirdly, in a story of bones, Dominique Malaquais relocates the remains of Frantz Fanon.
There’re two pieces on football and cinema (sort-of): First, maverick Serbian filmmaker, Emir Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies; Underground), in a conversation with Diego Maradona, the best player EVER and the subject of Kusturica’s documentary-in-progress, about Bush Jr, Castro, John Paul II and the poor of Argentina. And Philippe Parreno, co-maker of the acclaimed Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, talks with Cyril Neyrat about the conceptual, political and technical motivations and processes in the making of the film.
The art and photography are delivered by Buyaphi Mdledle, Gerd Rohling, Andrew Dosunmu, Phillipe Niorthe, Joseph Francis Sumegne, Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah, Kate Simon, Nicola Schwartz, Joel-Peter Witkin and the Cuban Ministry of Information.
The cover is “Table Head (Evora, Portugal)” by Nicola Schwartz
For this one we trawled the globe for pen and ink artists/wordists to give us their perspectives on love, life and the multiverse. What you get is an issue of Chimurenga Comics with a thematic coherence in its insistence on art as interrogator and creator.
Chimurenga 9 is bracketed by treatises on
truth and Thelonious Monk. And in between, you have graphic takes on
miscegenation, philosophy, re-incarnation, polygamy, infinity…
Sandra Brewster’s cover depicts a playground crucifixion scene that in its simplicity of composition and uniformity of characters (faces as telephone directories) denotes the horror of human action that assumes neither responsibility, nor guilt. The first of many takes on GODness to follow.
Cape Town’s Graeme Arendse aka Ramgee delivers a stark distillation of the semiotics of the SA Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty hearings into the murder of BC vocaliser and visionary, Steve Biko: how a discourse of deceit flows seamlessly into a visage of amorality. Ramgee also collaborates with novelist Jose Eduardo Agualusa and filmmaker Karen Boswall on a graphic travelogue (Luanda to Maputo, via Cape Town) based on a narrative for the film “My Father’s Wives”, in development by Agualusa and Boswall.
A first for English readers, an excerpt from a biography on Ernesto Che Guevara, shows the scene of his death in 1967 at the hands of Bolivian soldiers and American intelligence and paramilitary agencies. First published in Buenos Aires in 1968, this early graphic book (dense strokes, extremities of light and shadow) sold 60 000 in its first week. In the 70s, it became as dangerous as the man himself. Copies were burned or buried alive. The book’s scriptwriter, Hector Oesterheld and his 3 daughters were murdered by the military junta. The artists, Alberto Breccia and his son, Enrique, were also put on the junta’s hitlist.
The black unicorn was mistaken / For a shadow or symbol / And taken through a cold country / Where my mist painted mockeries / Of my fury / It is not on her lap / Where the horn rests / But deep in her moonpit growing / The black unicorn is restless / The black unicorn is unrelenting / The black unicorn is not / Free These words taken from Audre Lorde’s poem, The Black Unicorn, are woven into rhetorical charcoal drawings by Sandra Brewster, inspired by the conversation between Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Keziah Jones (printed in Chimurenga 8).
Jean-Michel Basquiat, another warrior in the art battle between words and pictures, is remembered through a verse from his rap comic, “Pegasus”. Says hip hop aristocrat, Fab 5 Freddy: “If you read this canvas out loud to yourself, the repetition, the rhythm, you can hear Jean-Michel thinking. You can see that this is a poetic, rhythmic type of blending of word with image.”
Martin Tom Dieck (art) and Jens Blazer (words) propel a surreal trip into philosophy, staging an afterlife conversation between deconstructionist Gilles Deleuze, arch semiotician Roland Barthes, big dada of psychoanalysis Jacques Lacan and the dude who brought us discourse, Michel Foucault. In French, nogal.
In “Miscegenation of Life,” based on the 1959 Hollywood film “An Imitation of Life” (on interracial love), Lance Tooks takes his biting parody into the heart of whiteness, satirizing the western preoccupation with racial purity. Tooks provocatively samples his polarized images of black and white stereotypes from the works of acclaimed cartoonists (Crumb, Eisner, Lauzier and others) and reconstitutes them to draw his own critical conclusions. In his 2nd piece in this issue, “The Student (Or Nude Descending a Staircase…Head First)”, Tooks aka Junior Samples provides a derisory and hyperbolic look at the machinations and bargains in the art world.
With the exception of the subtle menacing colour shading of “Godhead” by Ho Che Anderson, all the artwork is B&W. “Godhead” is drawn from Anderson’s novel-in-progress by the same title, a class struggle drama and theological discussion wrapped in the skin of an action adventure story. “God is Dead So Smile” by Nikhil Singh, is a dystopic rendition of a machine megalomaniac society where neither morality nor spiritualism has a place. And there’s Stripshow co-founder and editor Nicolene Louw, who traces a delicate circle of the relationship between three generations of females in “Ladies”; Orijit Sen, with an oblique look at theories of the afterlife in “Visioncarnation”; “Difficulties,” an Afrodelik piece by Mac Mcgill; Yvan Alagbe and Olivier Dramanti imagine a conversation between Behanzin (last ruler of Dahomey) and King Sebastian (Portugual), both in exile; Jeroen Jansen illustrating Rwandan proverbs in an animalistic and orgiastic style, in “Buhoro Buhoro Ni Rwo Rugendo” (Slowly, slowly: that’s the right course), while Andrzej Nowicki is in “Haiti”; and finally, “Small Hands”, Danijel Zezelj’s haunting tribute to Thelonious Monk.
Thing about this publication is that it places on the agenda what we really know, but hardly ever utter, that taboo. In this case, that of being Nigerian and its place and function in contemporary society. So, ja, yaa’ll will read about the woman who smuggles drugs in her viscera via trans-continental flights; her motivation and lodestone the disabled very horny young male she has produced. And yes, there’s a parodic 419 email from Dubya’s wife, Laura. The Ogoni 9, encapsulated in the name of poet and anti-global oil warfare activist Ken Saro Wiwa, receive an obituary in the form of a tale about their last minutes on earth before the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha hangs them. Yes, there’s the story of an educated woman who goes job hunting in Lagos, gets her butt mauled by the males who will pay her wages and takes the job. Street photographer in Akinbode Akinbinyi resurrects the power and beauty involved with artists from the hood who choose to represent our own. Olu Oguibe, with great bitterness and historical precision lays down the history of Biafra, that West African genocide that is iconic of the ethnic madness that Frantz Fanon calls the “oppression of the oppressed” – that condition where we kill and maim in the name of an imposed progress. Ishtiyaq Shukri writes of walls, visible and not, from here to Palestine. All of this wrapped and motivated by Wole Soyinka, that inimitable voice from the wilderness of the west of Africa, who, on Nigerianess, mos sings in pidgin: “E push me so, I push am back/ Na’im and me go live till I die.” And, of course, OF COURSE, this issue is about the Chief Priest, Fela Kuti: King of Afrobeat and people art, and the art of being people. Anikulapo. An amazing interview with him – his last – conducted by musician Keziah Jones. Plus great visuals; plus poetry; plus more.
A collection of musings – in words, images and sounds – from beneath the processed skin of Cape Town, by Gabeba Baderoon, Sandile Dikeni, Julian Jonker, Jeremy Cronin, Suren Pillay, Rustum Kozain, Judy Kibinge, Abdulkadir Said, Zoe Wicomb, Desiree Lewis and many others.
A series of conversations, real and imagined, on the “pitfalls of national consciousness” by Mustapha Benfodil, Achille Mbembe, Charles Mudede, Fong Kong Bantu Soundsystem, Robert Fraser, Branwen Okpako, Leila Sebbar, Binyavanga Wainaina, Laurie Gunst, Olu Oguibe and many others
An issue inspired by the life and work of Bessie Head. Including previously unpublished works by Head, and featuring new writing and art by Jean
Claude Fignole, Charles Mudede, Greg Tate, Olu Oguibe, Chimamanda
Adichie, Sandile Dikeni, Khulile Nxumalo, Tanure Ojaide, Pumla Dineo
Gqola, Muthoni Garland, Pravasan Pillay and others.
On desire and its discontents. Featuring a new adaptation of Yambo Ouologuem erotica, and new works by Kopano Ratele, Kalamu ya Salaam, Gael Reagon, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Zackie Achmat, Toure, Muthoni Garland, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Kgafela oa Magogodi, Mukoma wa Ngugi and others.
“Mandela was not the only head of state taken in by Koagne. Le king kept snapshots of himself with many a man of power, among them Mobutu Sese Seko and Denis Sassou Nguesso […] He took Mobutu for 15 million dollars. Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso lost 40 million to him. Sassou, Etienne Eyadéma of Togo, several high officials of Gabon, Tanzania and Kenya, a member of the Spanish government and an ex-operative of the Israeli Mossad were bamboozled as well.” – Dominique Malaquais (Blood Money: A Douala Chronicle).
Bantu Serenade by Ntone Edjabe (featuring Nah-ee-lah) (read excerpt)
Santu Mofokeng: Trajectory of a street photographer (part1) (read excerpt)
Binyavanga Wainaina: Hell In Bed With Mrs Peprah (read excerpt)
Dominique Malaquais: Lindela (the winnie suite) (read excerpt)
“Three generations of white South African men were bound together at that table. Vermuelen was the first generation. He defined Africa, made it safe for Basson to defile. I was the last generation, the last to grow up in segregated neighborhoods. Between us was the silent photograph of Wouter Basson. Like a distant father, Basson was absent at the dining table.” – Henk Rossouw (Hole in the White ‘Hood). Also Mahmood Mamdani on Bantu Education at UCT, Gael Reagon on sisterhood, Binyavanga Wainaina on dis-covering Kenya, Gaston Zossou on African intellectuals and more…
“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions are now manifest has constructed the arena of politics on ground overshadowed by centuries of metropolitan capitalist development, thereby denying them recognition as legitimate politics. Blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated, the class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that blacks are predominantly proletarian, thought this is true…”- (Frank Talk Staff Writers in ‘Azania Salutes Tosh’ – circa 1981)
