Thursday, 09 November 2023
from 6pm.
Chimurenga Factory
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HOPHUIS: A SITE OF DANCE AND SOLIDARITY
Guilt Trips
Kai Friese interrogates the colonial fantasy that lives on in the sententious philanthropy of ethical tourism.
LAUNCHING MINE MINE MINE
Chimurenga Factory
Thu, 12 Oct 2023 from 6pm
CHIMURENGANYANA: MUSIC NOTEBOOK OUT NOW!
MUSIC NOTEBOOK by Ari Sitas
CLASS STRUGGLE IN MUSIC
Chimurenga Factory – 157 Victoria Rd, Woodstock
Thursday, 17 August 2023 from 6pm
LATEST IN STORE: CHANTS, DREAMS AND OTHER GRAMMARS OF LOVE
a gedenkschrift for Harry Garuba
REVIEW: AND THE BOOKS LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Harry Garuba reviews reissues of Amos Tutuola’s writings
CHIMURENGANYANA: LA DISCOTHEQUE DE SARAH MALDOROR
This entry in our Chimurenganyana series takes the form of a mixtape […]
La Discothèque de Sarah Maldoror (tracklisting)
decomposed, an-arranged, and reproduced by Ntone Edjabe
FIELD RECORDINGS WITH SHABAKA HUTCHINGS
FIELD RECORDINGS
WED, 22 FEB 2023 from 6PM
GROUNATION – a tribute to the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari
“Grounation Day” marks the landing of Emperor Selassie I in Jamaica on April 21, 1966.
Chimurenga presents GROUNATION
a tribute to the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari
LIBERATION RADIO: TUMI MOGOROSI’S GROUP THEORY:BLACK MUSIC
The latest episode in the Stories About Music in Africa series
MYSTIC REVELATION OF RASTAFARI
We shall open this new cycle of programming with a month-long tribute to the almighty Mystic Revelation of Rastafari.
THE WRITINGS OF BINYAVANGA WAINAINA
Launching a new collection of writings by the late, great Binyavanga Wainaina
LIBERATION RADIO
an ongoing query on knowledge production via African sound worlds, and long-term research on broadcasting and cultural initiatives by liberation movements across the continent
I’M NOT WHO YOU THINK I’M NOT
Serubiri Moses reflects on Binyavanga Wainaina’s refusal to fit neatly into neat identities.
I am a homosexual, Mum
A lost chapter from One Day I Will Write About This Place
MALCOLM JIYANE’S TREE-O
Live at Chimurenga Factory – Fri, 28 October 2022
TUMI MOGOROSI’S GROUP THEORY:BLACK MUSIC
Live at Chimurenga Factory – Sat, 22 Oct 2022
The Music Mind of Greg Tate: Sonic Syllabus for a Patternmaster
A 5-hour music selection in memory of Greg Tate on his arrival day, October 14 – live on the Pan African Space Station from 6pm SA time
CHIMURENGA@20: MURIMI MUNHU
Panashe Chigumadzi travels to the rural Zimbabwe of her ancestors, onto land stolen and cash-cropped by a privileged minority under racist white rule.
LIBERATION RADIO
We’re proud to present a new edition of “Liberation Radio”
CHIMURENGA@20: AZANIA SALUTES TOSH
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.
SOUNDGARDEN
a live reading for Bessie Head’s 85th
13 July 2022 from 6pm
MASELLO MOTANA’S VOCAL MUSEUM
Live at the Chimurenga Factory
IN MEMORIAM: OMOSEYE BOLAJI (1964-2022)
We remember Nigerian-born writer, Omoseye Bolaji (1964-2022), and his immense contribution to the growth of African literature in South Africa, and particularly in the Free State, where he lived.
CHIMURENGA@20: WHEN YOU KILL US, WE RULE!
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.”
LIBERATION RADIO: PEOPLE WHO THINK TOGETHER, DANCE TOGETHER #7
Conversations with Christian Nyampeta, featuring Hannah Black, Sasha Bonét, Natacha Nsabimana, Olu Oguibe and Emmanuel Olunkwa.
Live on PASS – 24-26 May 2022 – from 6pm
CHIMURENGA@20: THE WARM-UP
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.
iPhupho L’ka Biko – live at the Chimurenga Factory
Thursday, 31 March 2022
7pm
Liberation Radio: Cape Town – 15-18 March 2022
Live on PASS: 15th-18th March 2022, 3-6pm
The Africans, A Radio Play in Three Acts
Worldwide premiere live on PASS – 09-11 February 2022
MEDITATIONS ON JIMI HENDRIX
by Greg Tate
All roads lead to Jimi Hendrix.
Pieces of Dominique
The writings, translations and ideas of our dearly departed friend, comrade and co-conspirator Dominique Malaquais (1964-2021), in Chimurenga
Koltan Kills Kids
By Tsuba Ka 23 (Dominique Malaquais, Mowoso, Kongo Astronauts)
Out of Sight
A short story by Yambo Ouologuem adapted from the French by Dominique Malaquais and Ntone Edjabe.
Rumblin’
By Dominique Malaquais
JOKER’S WILD (SLIGHT RETURN)
By Dominique Malaquais
READING FRED HO
Gwen Ansell and Salim Washington celebrate the revolutionary life, language and hard-ass leadership of an unconventional saxophonist, composer and generous collaborator.
WHO WILL SAVE THE SAVIOURS?
A close gaze at the collective apathy that killed Dr. Sebi
From Seven Modes for Hood Science
The black spirit is universally sick with dissimulation and at the same time triumphant in its incessantly performed healing, having turned suffering into a kind of spectacular wellness
“Angazi, but I’m sure”: A Raw Académie Session
RAW Material Company is a Dakar-based centre for art, knowledge and society; […]
PANAFEST, hosted by Chimurenga
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.
On the Digital Application of Ancestral Work
African spirituality as practiced digitally was amplified by COVID-19.
QAMATA PULA, an ancestral invocation
iPhupho L’ka Biko and Pan African Space Station present QAMATA PULA, an ancestral invocation collapsing past, present and future, over three days at the Chimurenga Factory
Where Terror Lies
The rhetoric of ‘radical’ and ‘fundamentalist’ Islam, of ‘global jihad’ and ‘terror’ is, ironically, historical and recoverable from the irrational.
Nigeria’s Superstar Men Of God
Who needs the God of the bible with his promises of trials and tribulations, crosses and paths of repentance? Yemisi Aribisala listens to the sermons, counts the money, watches the high-flying life of Nigeria’s mega-preachers and wonders.
Nigeria’s Superstar Men Of God
Who needs the God of the bible with his promises of trials and tribulations, crosses and paths of repentance? Yemisi Aribisala listens to the sermons, counts the money, watches the high-flying life of Nigeria’s mega-preachers and wonders.
TRACKS
MADEYOULOOK collective met with photographer Santu Mofokeng to establish the point of crossroads, where things are in motion and where things remain still
Yellow Fever, Nko?
Skin bleaching is often described as a manifestation of ‘colo-mentality’. However, argues Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, mimesis here is both an affirmation and a contestation of power.
RIP PAPA GEORGE
Exile demands contemplation because it is unavoidably real for those who experience […]
They Won’t Go When I Go
A Manifesto/ Meditation on State of Black Archives in America and throughout the Diaspora by Harmony Holiday
Monumental Failures
By Dominique Malaquais
SALUT GLISSANT
“Nothing is true, everything is alive.”
Moses März, imagines a conversation between Edoaurd Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau about the Philosophy of Relation.
IN MEMORIAM: Binyavanga Wainaina (1971 – 2019)
A friend, a Chimurenga founding father, an award winning writer, author, journalist, chef, lover, a literary revolutionary and an inspiration. We pay tribute.
HIKIMA – a letter from Zaria
She eyed me. A thing wet around her eyes, like water from the evening rain. Lateef, she said, an incurable emphasis on both syllables: Lah-teef.
IN THE DEN OF THE ALCHEMIST
Which “they”? Which “one”? What “secrets” are you talking about? Oh! Come on! Cinema taught us long ago that there is always a secret in a laboratory and that evil-minded people are planning to get hold of it.
The Pharaoh’s New Clothes
Its location, vocation, and publication intended to speak to a politicised Third World imaginary.
Who Killed Kabila
On January 16, 2001, in the middle of the day, shots are […]
Who invented truth
Tired of truth, I am. And metanarratives and more truth and post colonies.
Where Is This Place
Keguro Macharia asks how might one describe where One Day I Will Write About This Place lives as it travels?
DISCOVERING HOME
by Binyavanga Wainaina(Winner of The Caine Prize 2002) Cape Town – June, […]
Nothing was impossible for a writer like him
Billy Kahora on Binyavanga Wainaina’s Work
How To Be A Dictator
Binyavanga Wainaina presents 16 Rules for Big Man aspirations
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.
Pass Me the Microphone: Phoebe Boswell
Stories and sounds from the Swahili coast… sampling Binyavanga Wainaina’s How to Write about Africa.
WHAT AFRICAN WRITERS CAN LEARN FROM CHEIKH ANTA DIOP
In a testament to Cheikh Anta Diop, Boubacar Boris Diop raises radical views on creative writing, a challenge to what he laments as our literary Sahara.
The Tyelera Moment
by Thabo Jijana On December 13, 2016, in Salem Party Club v […]
TO REFUSE THAT WHICH HAS BEEN REFUSED TO YOU
Fred Moten and Saidiya Hartman sit down to talk about the temporal […]
OF TOTEMS, HISTORY AND POLITICS
In Shona cosmology, people are understood to be more than the sum […]
The Invention of Zimbabwe – New edition of Chimurenga’s Chronic available now!
14 November 2017. News breaks of a coup d’état underway in Zimbabwe. […]
THINKING TOO MUCH
Silence and dark humour seem like the most authentic way for people […]
SUNGURA STORIES
Ranga Mberi travels back in musical time to the 1980s and 1990s, […]
NONE BUT OURSELVES
The history of reggae in Zimbabwe echoes far beyond Bob Marley’s historic […]
THE WAY I SEE IT – National Heroes Acre I
Bongani Kona Who or what haunts you? Do recurrences draw you back […]
KÀDDU- THE ECHO OF DISSONANT DISCOURSE
Ibrahima Wane Translated by David Leye When it was published by Présence […]
‘GO TO THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE!’ MURIDISM IN THE LIFE OF CHEIKH ANTA DIOP
While French colonialism was at its zenith, the first quarter of the […]
CHEIKH ANTA DIOP – AN AWAKENING
Ayesha Harruna Attah recounts a voyage of discovery that begins from a […]
BAHUJANAFRIQUE – A PLAUSIBLE FUTURE
Sumesh Sharma traces the circuitous roots of Afro-Asiatic history, from the world’s […]
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHIMURENGA AS A COMMUNAL LABORATORY
by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga Since the 1970s, Zimbabweans have used the term […]
Poverty is Older than Opulence
Maverick Serbian filmmaker, Emir Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies; Underground), talks with […]
Zinedine Zidane and and the event of the secret
Grant Farred produces a Derridean reading of Zidane’s world-stopping head butt.
Down the footpath
Emmanuel Iduma in conversation with photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi On a number of […]
Home is where the music is
Hugh Masekela (talking to Mothobi Mutloatse) I remember we use to live […]
Some African Cultural Concepts By Steve Biko
This is a paper given by Steve at a conference called […]
STORIES ABOUT MUSIC IN AFRICA – Ingoma Yomzabalazo with Iphupho Lka Biko
Recorded live at Chimurenga HQ, Cape Town, in February 2017
Fufu Pot: A Truth Hard to Swallow
In search of another interesting meal from the myriad on offer in […]
Marikana
On 16 August 2012, the South African Police Service opened fire on […]
Avions De Nuit
By Pumle April In the Cameroonian imaginary “Avions de nuit” (night planes) […]
The Muezzin and I
By Rustum Kozain Adamu One night at a local hangout in my […]
God Has Written a Miracle Into My Body
By Wendell Hassan Marsh “Do you believe that Islam is the truth?” a […]
The Upper Room
By Florence Madenga 4pm: Opening Prayer We are waiting for Apostle Debbie […]
The Memory of Victory
Ingrained in the DNA of every male growing up in Senegal is the tradition of Laamb, the Wolof designation for the sport – and by extension the business – of wrestling.
CHIMURENGA@20: SISTER OUTSIDER
Yemisi Aribisala rails against the new fundamentalism cresting the wave of global feminism sweeping Nigeria. She challenges the gender imperialism implicit in its aspiration to uniform ideas of celebrity, power, erudition and beauty.
How to Approach Heaven
The struggle for freedom is a reckless, foolish and sacrosanct adventure – […]
Dear Dr. Schwab, Queen of Jordan
Binyavanga Wainaina responds to an invitation to participate in Young Global Leaders 2007
Creating Theatre: A George Hallett Photo Essay
“Exile demands contemplation because it is unavoidably real for those who experience […]
The Curry Chronicles, Part 1
Rustum Kozain dishes up some definitives on the many incarnations of curry […]
A Political Economy of Noise
Kangsen Feka Wakai traces the uncharacteristic journey through a “noisy era” of […]
My Life as a Seventh Day Adventist
By Paula Akugizibwe Jesus waits in the swimming pool. The tenth commandment […]
Quiet No more
Paul Goldsmith traces the sonics of Islam in Kenya and questions if […]
The African Affairs Bureau
By Helmi Sharawy I have pointed out in the past that the three […]
El-Salahi – The Wise Enemy
By Hassan Musa I want to introduce Ibrahim El-Salahi here as “our […]
Islam between Françafrique and Afrabia
Needless to say, Françafrique was not the only constellation of capital and culture on offer at the time of African political independence.
Nasser and the African Revolution
Politically and socially Egypt is said to occupy three spaces as mentioned […]
1966
By Michael Vasquez After World War II, the idea was that there […]
Qibla
Qibla leader Imam Achmad Cassiem in conversation with Khalid Shamis. “When the […]
Writing the City in a Different Script
The Arabic-Afrikaans Tradition of the Cape By Saarah Jappie A hundred years […]
Jihad as a Form of Struggle in the Resistance to Apartheid in South Africa
By Na’eem Jeenah Although Muslims form about 2 per cent of the South […]
CHIMURENGA@20: SECULAR STORIES
Authenticity counts for something; the confidence that authenticity bestows counts for even more.
CHIMURENGA@20: WAITING FOR WAME
I am hungry. Tempted. In pain. I reach for the pack. Pop out another capsule. One minute. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. The pain has reduced to a dull throbbing. I am floating.
Mapping The Last King of Africa
This map features alongside a text by Olivier Vallée in the new […]
In a Time of Boko Haram
by Elnathan John. I. DRESSES Beneath the oil-stained, flattened pillow that Mansir sits […]
Re-Membering the Name of God
Wendell Hassan Marsh maps the trajectories of Islam as it evolved in […]
Secret Countries
This map features in the new Chronic, an edition in which […]
Soft Power Desire Machines and the Production of Africa Rising
Alongside texts by Jesse Weaver Shipley, Moses März and Oribhabor […]
Creative Industries as Underdevelopment
Are the creative industries turning the tide against urban development in the […]
All That is Solid Melts into PR
Mark Fisher speaks to Bongani Kona about the social, economic and cultural totality of late capitalism, the pervasive cynicism in which we seem to be mired, the omnipresence of PR and the possibility of countering it all by re-igniting a belief in the public good.
Operation Protective Edge
by Paul Wessels. The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of […]
Undoing the Spell
by Ben Verghese. Many of the dominant narratives of the partition focus on […]
The Undeveloped Intellectual in Zombie-land
by Ibrahim Farghali. This is Rakha’s second novel after his début, The Book […]
Breaking the Rules Beautifully
by Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire. “Breaking the rules attracts implications, Jennifer.” I overhear British […]
And the Books Lived Happily Ever After
by Harry Garuba. If Amos Tutuola had not lived, and written stories in […]
Which Africa Are We Talking About?
In the era of rapid globalisation the exemplary novelists seem to be […]
New Oil Old Lamps
The old Arab adage that “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads” […]
Shifting Gulfward
The apparent demise of the millennia-old Arab cultural centres and the rapid […]
After Oil Water
This features in the new Chronic, an edition in which we […]
African War Machines
This map features in the new Chronic, an edition in which […]
Yambo Ouloguem: Postcolonial Writer, Anti-Wahhabist Militant
Christopher Wise recalls conversations and texts of the Malian author, whose deep […]
How to write about Africa
by Boniface Mongo-Mboussa Serpent à Plumes’ republication of Yambo Ouologuem’s Le Devoir de violence […]
In Suburbia
Suburban South Africa is glowing. The sun is up, the trees are […]
Preliminary Notes for a Mediterranean Manifesto
Connecting ancience and modern roots/routes Rasheed Araeen redraws the boundaries and limits of identity. […]
What Follows? The State of Black Collectivity in the Year of the Sheep
Continuing to sing a vital and urgent message of black collectivity, Harmony Holiday writes from […]
The African Renaissance Hoer-o-scope for Politicians
by Zebulon Dread ARIES Your best bet at survival is not a […]
‘Let’s face it: we’re in over our heads. We need the white folks to come back.’
Renegade Cameroonian filmmaker and theorist Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama pulls no punches about his disaffection […]
Une Hommage à Goddy Leye
With his imagination, sharp wit and all-round uncontournable wholesome beautyness, Goddy Leye has […]
Black Skin, White Ass
Hydroquinine, bleach, lime juice: take your pick. Each of them will lighten […]
Buru Buru
Billy Kahora reflects on the state of the ‘estate’ of his Nairobi […]
Out of sight and out of mind in High Care
Mike Abrahams recently spent seven weeks as an involuntary patient at Valkenberg […]
Palestine Journey
In February 2005, Ishtiyaq Shukri’s novel The Silent Minaret, won the first European […]
Searching for Augusto Zita
From the Namib desert to an interrogation room on US soil, Victor Gama tracks Augusto […]
Visioncarnation
by Orijit Sen Orijit Sen is […]
Masquerade
Michael Jackson alive in Nigeria Featuring the maverick Ejiogbe Twins Photographed by […]
The cosmic lives and afterlives of Zebulon Dread
byAchal Prabhala Part 1: Elliot Josephs Elliot Josephs was born in 1958 […]
11 YRS OF DEMONCRAZY!!!
11 YRS OF DEMONCRAZY!!! O nee Got.!! Got!!! Got!! ! I can’t […]
Obi’s Nightmare
by Jamón y Queso translated by David Shook […]
It’s only a matter of acceleration now
This is how the earth is arranged, or this is how the kora arranged and made the universe, and songs of numbers and words made souls…. Are you ready to interview Youssou N’Dour?
When You Kill Us, We Rule
Audre Lorde‘s poem, “The Black Unicorn”, is woven into rhetorical charcoal drawings by […]
Obstacles
by Anna Kostreva You know those days when it’s so hard […]
Will the Centre Hold?
In South Africa’s platinum belt, life and politics are as hard-scrabble as […]
Happy Valentine’s Day
Exactly twenty five years ago today, Salman Rushdie received an unusual Valentine: a […]
‘Nation Is A Skin Stretched Over The Bones Of The State’
Jon Soske struggles to pin down Hamid Parsani, the elusive, mercurial Iranian archaeologist, […]
A Letter from Laura Bush
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 05:43:12 -0700 (PDT) From: “Laura Bush” <laurabush@hotmail.com> […]
A Letter from Home
by E. C. Osondu My Dear Son, Why have you not been […]
Homeless in the Afterlife
Death in the diaspora remains a difficult part of the immigrant experience. […]
I Travel with the Dead
Sudirman Adi Makmur spends an inordinate amount of time alone or in the […]
Americanah and other definitions of supple citizenships
Yemisi Aribisala reads the new novel by Nigeria’s ‘woman of letters’ and encounters […]
How to be a Nigerian
Peter Enahoro a.k.a. Peter Pan’s How To Be A Nigerian was first […]
George Osodi
George Osodi is a photographer from “the oil-rich Niger Delta region”. His images […]
Che
First published in 1968 in Buenos Aires, the biography of Ernesto “Che” […]
Rest In Peace Chiwoniso Maraire
Zimbabwean musician Chiwoniso Maraire, died on July 24, 2013, at age 37. […]
Dead Cow Spreads Fear and Rumour in Lagos Suburb
Jide Adebayo Begun reports from Lagos. On 9 May the residents of […]
I Smoked A Spliff With Jesus Christ
I smoked a spliff with Jesus Christ last night. Then leaned over […]
The Road To Wellville
The Institute of Naturopathy and Yogic Sciences occupies some seventy acres of […]
Relaxing
Okello Sam, a dance and theatre artist (amongst other things), examines the […]
Bajove Dokotela
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.
When history is suspended
(In memory of Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave) by Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa I […]
Salut Deleuze!
Culled from a comic book tribute to, and intellectual biography of, Gilles Deleuze […]
Dr Satan’s Echo Chamber
Reggae, technology and the diaspora… Louis Chude-Sokei documents the transatlantic (un)making of […]
Our cyborg past: Medieval artificial memory as mindware upgrade
By Ruth Evans The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark has […]
Voudou Priestess Madame Evonne Auguste
Voudou Priestess Madame Evonne Auguste spoke to Sokari Ekine last August, in […]
Elvis on the move
Milton Papamoscito An unfamiliar congregation – in ‘a riot of electric red […]