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.
Jabu Goes to Joburg, A Chimurenga Fotonovela (2025)
Jabu Goes to Joburg, A Chimurenga Fotonovela originally released in 2016 as a supplement of a Chimurenga Chronic, returns to print as a standalone edition, ready to be rediscovered.
Written and directed by Achal Prabhala, with photography by Masimba Sasa and Dean Hutton, the publication, the story is an explosive thriller of lust and ambition, of guns, girls, and ballpoint pens, following Jabu on her journey to the big city, an adventure where love, friendship, trouble, courage, and humor intertwine, alongside with yoga and fighting lessons that propel Jabu toward her breakthrough.
“This is not the message-oriented fotonovelas and comics circulating the continent, then and now, with instructions on family planning, birth control and the like,” writes Euridice Kala one of the actors, in the afterword, “this is a story of emancipation, of intertwined destinies and unexpected alliances, all converging on unforeseeable ends.”
Produced by Pam Dlungwana, designed by Rakesh Khanna/Blaft Publications, with Euridice Kala, Tiyiselani Kubayi, Phindile Cindi, Suraj Yengde, Meghan Judge, Nicky Falkof, Pule, Francis Burger, Nana Zajiji, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Gilles Baro, Achal Prabhala, Dean Hutton, Skhumbuzo Mbixane, Sibusiso ‘The General’ Nxumalo, and Isabel Hofmeyr in the cast.
Size: 193mm x 270mm
Pages: 44pp (plus cover)
Printing: black & white and red, Munken Pure 90gsm with Risograph
Language: English
ISBN: 978-1-0370-9358-6