Johnny Dyani offers a method to the Skanga (black music family) in this extended conversation with Aryan Kaganof. Photographs by George Hallett.
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Melodious Thunk
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.
CHIMURENGA@20: AZANIA SALUTES TOSH
By Chimurenga on 27 July 2022 in Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the death of Bantu Steve Biko, a stunned and outraged Azania heard that the Vampire had martyred Peter Tosh.
CHIMURENGA@20: ONCE THERE WERE HUMANS
By Chimurenga on 18 July 2022 in Arts & Pedagogy, Books & Oration, Chimurenga Magazine, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
In the hills above Kingston, Jamaica Annie Paul unpacks some baggage in a rare interview with Peter Abrahams, the South African-born writer and ardent Pan-Africanist.
CHIMURENGA@20: STICKFIGHTING DAYS
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 conversation with Omoseye Bolaji
By Chimurenga on 7 June 2022 in Arts & Pedagogy, Books & Oration, Cash & Commerce, Chimurenga Magazine, Media & Propaganda
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.
CHIMURENGA@20: WHEN YOU KILL US, WE RULE!
By Chimurenga on 7 June 2022 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
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.”
CHIMURENGA@20: THE WARM-UP
By Chimurenga on 19 April 2022 in Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
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.
CHIMURENGA@20: A Silent Way – Routes of South African Jazz, 1946-1978
By Chimurenga on 22 March 2022 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda, Music
Where to begin? Which silences? There are many.
CHIMURENGA@20: Talkin’ ‘bout Survival – The Repatriation of Reggae
By Chimurenga on 3 March 2022 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Media & Propaganda, Music, Systems of Governance
Where Apartheid and broadcasters divided South Africans culturally, here comes bongo natty dread to motivate U-N-I-T-Y.
MEDITATIONS ON JIMI HENDRIX
By Chimurenga on 9 December 2021 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies
by Greg Tate
All roads lead to Jimi Hendrix.
Koltan Kills Kids
By Chimurenga on 19 October 2021 in Cash & Commerce, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
By Tsuba Ka 23 (Dominique Malaquais, Mowoso, Kongo Astronauts)
Out of Sight
By Chimurenga on 19 October 2021 in Arts & Pedagogy, Books & Oration, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies
A short story by Yambo Ouologuem adapted from the French by Dominique Malaquais and Ntone Edjabe.
That Thing We Dreamed
By Chimurenga on 18 October 2021 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
By Dominique Malaquais
Rumblin’
By Chimurenga on 18 October 2021 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Gaming, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
By Dominique Malaquais
JOKER’S WILD (SLIGHT RETURN)
By Chimurenga on 18 October 2021 in Arts & Pedagogy, Books & Oration, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies
By Dominique Malaquais
ON THE BRIDGE
By Koffi Kwahulé (translated by Dominique Malaquais)
FRANTZ – A STORY OF BONES
By Chimurenga on 18 October 2021 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
By Dominique Malaquais
SEXING AFRICA, AGAIN – POP AS POLITICS: WATCH IT TONIGHT ON HBO
By Chimurenga on 18 October 2021 in Arts & Pedagogy, Cash & Commerce, Chimurenga Magazine, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
By Dominique Malaquais
Blood Money – A Douala Chronicle
By Chimurenga on 18 October 2021 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
By Dominique Malaquais
LINDELA (The Winnie Suite)
By Dominique Malaquais
The Franc-maçonnerie Suite
by Henri Kala-Lobe and Dominique Malaquais
PAINT THE WHITE HOUSE BLACK – A CALL TO ARMS
By Chimurenga on 18 October 2021 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
By Dominique Malaquais
Franc-maçonnerie Suite
Uncle Tom or DOM-TOM?
The poetics of Futbol
The Touch It would have to be a bird, stilled on a […]
POVERTY IS OLDER THAN OPULENCE
By Chimurenga on 12 January 2021 in Chimurenga Magazine, Gaming, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda
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.
CHIMURENGA@20: THE BARD OF BLOEMFONTEIN
Achal Prabhala goes to the heart of the Free State literary renaissance with the “deliberately mysterious and prodigiously talented” Omoseye Bolaji.
THIRD CLASS CITY
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.
Ibadan, Soutin and the Puzzle of Bower’s Tower
By Chimurenga on 15 September 2020 in Cash & Commerce, Chimurenga Magazine, Gaming, Systems of Governance
The jingle would survive the event, as the poetry of a battle-cry outlives a war, but that eventuality belonged in the future.
Chimurenga 16 – The Chimurenga Chronicle (October 2011)
A once-off edition of a speculative, future-forward newspaper that travels back in time to re-imagine the present.
Chimurenga 12/13 – Dr Satan’s Echo Chamber (Double-Issue March 2008)
A double-take on sci-fi and speculative writing from the African world, collectively titled “Dr. Satan’s Echo Chamber” after a dub mix by King Tubby.
Chimurenga 15 – The Curriculum Is Everything (June 2010)
Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it.
Chimurenga 14 – Everyone Has Their Indian (April 2009)
This issue features words and images on the Third World project and links, real and imagined, between Africa and South Asia.
Chimurenga 9 – Conversations in Luanda, and Other Graphic Stories (June 2006)
For this one we trawled the globe for ink artists/wordists to give us their perspectives on love, life and the multiverse.
Chimurenga 10 – Futbol, Politricks and Ostentatious Cripples (December 2006)
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.
Chimurenga 11 – Conversations with Poets Who Refuse to Speak (July 2007)
This issue is about silence, disappearing oneself as act. Though it’s often one of abdication, could it be defiance, resistance even?
Chimurenga 5 – Head/Body(&Tools)/Corpses (April 2004)
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,
Chimurenga 6 – Orphans of Fanon (October 2004)
A series of conversations, real and imagined, on the “pitfalls of national consciousness” by Mustapha Benfodil, Achille Mbembe, Charles Mudede,
Chimurenga 7 – Kaapstad! (and Jozi, the night Moses died) (July 2005)
A collection of musings – in words, images and sounds – from beneath the processed skin of Cape Town, by Gabeba Baderoon, Sandile Dikeni, Julian Jonker,
Chimurenga 8 – We’re All Nigerian! (December 2005)
An exploration of a love-hate, admiration-envy, awe-disappointment relationship with “Nigerianess”; Features the “last interview”
Chimurenga 2 – Dis-Covering Home [run nigga run] (July 2002)
Home, lost and found. Takes by Mahmood Mamdani, Julian Jonker, Henk Rossouw, Binyavanga Wainaina, Gaston Zossou, Haile Gerima,
Chimurenga 3 – Biko in Parliament (November 2002)
“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 […]
Chimurenga 4 – Black Gays & Mugabes (May 2003)
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,
De l’art de vivre l’art
By Dominique Malaquais
The Trajectory of a Street Photographer
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
HOW THE WEST WAS LOST
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…
Colossal KOUROUMA
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.
Who invented truth
By Chimurenga on 27 May 2019 in Arts & Pedagogy, Books & Oration, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Gaming, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda
Tired of truth, I am. And metanarratives and more truth and post colonies.
A Day in the Life of Idi Amin
The hot dry breeze is lazy. It glides languorously collecting odd bits of paper, they tease the ground, threaten to take flight, tease the ground.
DISCOVERING HOME
By Chimurenga on 26 May 2019 in Arts & Pedagogy, Books & Oration, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies
by Binyavanga Wainaina(Winner of The Caine Prize 2002) Cape Town – June, […]
The Most Authentic Real Black Africanest Togo Soccer team Story
by Binyavanga Wainaina (photographs by Philippe Niorthe) I meet Alex at breakfast […]
An excerpt from ‘Hell Is In Bed With Mrs Preprah’
Binyavanga Wainaina charts the aesthetics of black hair, beership and Rumba, via the Atlantic passage.
Writing Nervous By Brian Chikwava
One can argue that great literary works are rarely about good sentences […]
Myriem
an excerpt from Myriem by Boris Boubacar Diop … Fire embassies, it […]
Zinedine Zidane and and the event of the secret
By Chimurenga on 23 January 2018 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Gaming, Systems of Governance
Grant Farred produces a Derridean reading of Zidane’s world-stopping head butt.
Dear Dr. Schwab, Queen of Jordan
By Chronic on 18 November 2015 in Arts & Pedagogy, Books & Oration, Cash & Commerce, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda
Binyavanga Wainaina responds to an invitation to participate in Young Global Leaders 2007
Variations on the Beautiful in the Congolese World of Sounds
By Chronic on 3 September 2015 in Arts & Pedagogy, Chimurenga Magazine, Healing & bodies, Media & Propaganda
by Achille Mbembe; translated by Dominique Malaquais
Bajove Dokotela
By Chronic on 14 April 2013 in Arts & Pedagogy, Books & Oration, Chimurenga Magazine, Faith & Ideology, Healing & bodies
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.
The New Normal
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.
Juba ‘I will make my life here’
By Chronic on 13 February 2013 in Cash & Commerce, Chimurenga Magazine, Media & Propaganda, Systems of Governance
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.
It Begins with a Place
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.
Asia in My Life
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.
The Spark of Life: Where Novels Come From
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.
Ten Pieces of Advice for the Writing Life
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?”
Sortir de la grande nuit. Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée
« 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 ».
Fifty Years Of African Decolonisation
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
Mafika Gwala speaks to Andrea Meeson about not living in the shadows.
“I have been always where I am today. Why do they speak of me as if I am emerging from the dark?” Mafika Gwala speaks to Andrea Meeson about not living in the shadows.
The Aesthetics Of Vulgarity
(With Thanks To Achille Mbembe)
Chimurenga 1 – Music is the Weapon (April 2002)
“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions