Category: Racism

Black and White

Black and White

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Flip it, white man. What if you were, well you know, the other… color. They sang in London, but they were from Africa.

The difference between black and white, between slaves and slave masters, is the ultimate difference between race, although I agree with many that it isn’t that much different than between Kikuyus and Zulus. But it is the ultimate. You can’t go further down the spectrum.

My take of the many excellent bands and singers in South Africa is with this constantly embedded theme of difference, separation, oppression. From most of the rest of the world, it’s flipped. But today, in South Africa, it’s arguably the white who feels oppressed.

Last month in London the annual concert brought together contemporary music from South Africa to the white disaspora outside.

South Africa’s White Diaspora is one of the most interesting floating cultures in the world. Formed mostly by the 1800 people monthly that fled the country in the 1980s, it’s created huge footprints in Australia, Canada, the U.S. and England.

While some have returned, most have not, but unlike immigrants and refugees from other parts of the world, white South Africans find it difficult to integrate into other western societies.

I’ve often met, for instance, the children of those who immigrated speak with a South African accent even though they’ve grown up outside.

The tribalism of white South Africans is as strong as any black tribe on the continent.

Let the music tell the story:

Whose Creation of the World?

Whose Creation of the World?

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

A Congolese ballet currently moving through Europe’s summer festivals strikes a remarkable difference between American and European compassion to Africa. Maybe compassion per se.

Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula is currently restaging a near century’s old ballet called “The Creation of the World” that was first produced in France between the world wars. At that time it was widely called “The First Negro Ballet” since its depiction of emerging humankind was black, and as such, included pioneering black performers at a time when blacks worldwide were pretty much confined to trumpets and drums.

It became impossible then, and remains impossible now, to view this ballet as anything more than white people’s fantasies about black people’s existence. Racism in its most theoretical forms.

The ballet’s storyline is basically biblical, but the world that emerges is not flowering with white lovers under a perfectly formed apple tree. Instead, mankind births into something rather depressingly horrible: skin without bodies, torsos without hearts, and babies in abject suffering. Essentially, mankind without a soul.

And in the Bible’s remarkable way of accepting suffering as simple destiny, it prevents the viewer from leaping to any remedy. There is no hope things will get better in the ballet. The story ends in misery.

Linyekula’s thundering question is “How could they not see the suffering?” The English translation was made by Radio Netherlands after Wednesday’s performance in Amsterdam, and it’s right on.

More exactly Linyekula means why did they not react to the misery during the colonial age, and now, why are non-Africans not assisting Africa more than they are?

The question begs the question about compassion. And it’s logical that those who are responding most compassionately (Europeans) will also be challenged more often (than Americans who are doing less) that they are still not doing enough. That’s what Linyekula is trying to do: tug on the European’s guilt, egg them on to even greater compassion.

“The Creation of the World” wouldn’t succeed in America, today. Like anything troubling, there is a threshold of assumed responsibility, and I believe Europeans have a greater tolerance for heavy lifting in Africa than Americans. A greater compassion.

It would take me a book to dissect the cultural facts of current European antipathy to immigration vis-a-vis its greater compassion to mankind as a whole than American’s. But I do believe that:

Americans are fast losing their compassion, compassion for almost anything but themselves. Whether Europeans in contrast are growing more compassionate and tolerant is hard to measure on its own, but in contrast to America they most certainly are, despite the wave of anti-immigration sentiment polluting Europe, today.

The ready measures of this regarding Africa specifically are foreign aid and private investment, government engagement (military or otherwise) and free trade agreements. In all these areas, Europe is racing past America despite Obama’s attempts to stay even.

Europe is in a much worse economic situation than America. Why, then, is Europe reaching out to Africa more than America? The first reason is because of America’s current obstructionist Congress. But there are deeper reasons as well.

Europe is closer to Africa than America, so trade and investment is easier. It has more immigrants from Africa and it has a more pressing problem of refugees from Africa than America. But there’s an even more important reason in my view: there’s more guilt.

Few societies in the world used and profited from slavery as much as America, and we all know where they came from. But that’s perhaps too long ago for any residual guilt to move us in any contemporary fashion to greater compassion. The colonial period in Africa which emerged as slavery was being ended was dominated by European powers and lasted for a very long time. It’s not “so old.”

That was a mostly wretched period in world history. Parliaments in Portugal, Belgium and France have all apologized and paid reparations for their society’s unjust colonial involvements. The Catholic notion of repairing past wrongs by dropping a penny in the church’s collection box is a very European notion.

(And, by the way, it often works and has a much greater impact than lovely speeches about morality and compassion.)

To be fair, though, the production is not being swallowed whole in Europe. Linyekula actually extended the ending of the original production exaggerating the “misery.”

A respected French arts critic, Marie-Valentine Chaudon, asks “Does Linyekula go too far” implying European disinterest with the African suffering she accepts was in large part caused by the colonial period.

Perhaps. But what saddens me is that “maybe too far” in the European mind is outright “extra-terrestrial” in America’s, today. And while I’m no dance critic, I think the art Linyekula clearly has turned for political and social purpose is extremely valuable.

And I sorely wish we in America could achieve the same level of self-inspection with regards to racism, with regards to our lack of compassion.

Mama Africa

Mama Africa

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

By Conor Godfrey

Over the past week I’ve made it out to Silver Spring, MD, for a few great African films.

Opening night of the festival featured “Mama Africa” – a cinematic eulogy to the late great South African mega star Miriam Makeba. Find the English language trailer here.

If you don’t dance in your seat I would probably just give up the ghost.

As noted in this Reuters’ review, the worst thing one can say about the film is that it would have been even better had she been alive to comment on her own life.

Miriam was involved with the making of the film up until her death in 2008.

The rest is put together with help from archival footage and interviews with a dozen former band-members, friends and relatives.

Makeba with Nelson Mandela

In Miriam’s case, this includes many of modern Africa’s founding fathers like Sekou Toure and Julius Nyerere, famous Black panthers like Stokely Carmichael, and world-class musicians from all over the world.

Renown South African Trumpeter Hugh Masekala (Also Miriam’s first husband and lifelong friend) fills in a lot of her early history. (Find an upbeat anti-apartheid track from Hugh here.)

She was born into crushing apartheid township poverty in the 30s, and even spent six months of her first year in jail with her mother who had been sentenced for selling homemade beer.

Her rise was meteoric once discovered.

After being caught in the film “Come Back, Africa”, filmed secretly and smuggled out of South Africa by Lionel Rogosin, she was discovered by Mr. Harry Belafonte.

Belafonte went on to introduce her to the greats of the American music scene. She would eventually sing at JFKs birthday, and record with stars like Nina Simone, Desi Gillespie, Paul Simon, and tons of international stars.

She held seven passports and 10 citizenships at the time of her death.

Before the film, I really only knew her mega hits, like “Pata Pata.”

(Or find the song live in concert here.)

During the film, she actually says she wishes that some other song, with more meaning, had become her defining hit.

I suppose there is some irony in the vocal anti-apartheid singer who’s smash hit was, in her words, “a nonsense dance song.”

But there were plenty of more substantive hits as well.

Director Mika Kaurismäki featured songs like the Khosa wedding song “Qongqothwane”, known as the “The Click Song” by English speaking South Africans.

She introduced the song in the movie by saying that “the colonizers have to call it “The Click Song” because they have trouble pronouncing “Qongqothwane” with the right clicks.

One of my favorite pieces of concert footage was “Oxgam.” This particular piece shows her potent smile to good effect.

After all, she essentially had her pick (more like pickS) of husbands wherever she went.

Find the more emotional, slower Makeba in “Khawuleza.”

I also had the pleasure of seeing my old haunts in the Fouta Jallon region of Guinea when the film explored Makeba and her husband Stokley Carmichael‘s exile in Guinea.

After the two wed, all of Makeba’s U.S. dates and deals were cancelled in protest of Stokley’s activism.

At that point, a number of African countries, including Guinea, vied for Africa’s peripatetic daughter to come live with them as she still could not go home to South Africa.

In general, the film was a beautiful tribute to a pan-African hero, a tireless activist for justice in South Africa, and one hell of a voice.

Good luck finding it though – stay tuned here.

Sorry Mr. Kristof – I Don’t Buy It

Sorry Mr. Kristof – I Don’t Buy It

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By Conor Godfrey
[Song of the day: This blog is on empathy; more specifically, what elicits it and what doesn’t. Have a listen to this Tiken Jah Fakoly remake of a song you will likely recognize – his version is called “African in Paris.”) For the life of me I cannot find an English translation online, so watch the video unless you speak French (except this rather awful one).]

I have a confession to make. I really, really do not like Nick Kristof’s reporting on Africa.

A few years ago I wrote a piece ridiculing the still common tropes that weasel their way into Western writing about African issues.

This includes stories with one dimensional human characters and three dimensional animals, or articles with such relentlessly negative points of view that all positives are expressed as little points of light in a tunnel of darkness.

Nick Kristof is the unapologetic champion of this type of writing.

The documentary “Reporter” follows Kristof around Africa as he reports on various crises.

Kristof literally (no exaggeration here) walks up to someone in a Congolese village and asks if there is “anyone very sick, maybe someone who lost children…that he could speak to.”

Talk about a selection bias! This drove me nuts.

Imagine if I walked into downtown Anywhere, USA and only spoke with mothers of teenagers that had recently been gunned down in gang violence.

To make matters worse, this mythical me is the most famous journalist reporting on Anywhere, USA, and therefore my thoughts on the health of this city reach policy makers, possible investors, ordinary Americans, and other journalists who then invite me on their syndicated television shows to talk about my horrid and emotional trip to Anywhere.

Professional Africa hands –African and Euro— have been criticizing Kristof for the paternalistic tone of his writing for years.

To his credit, Kristof publicizes their critiques on his blog and attempts (unsuccessfully I think) to address them head on. Read this entry for a recent iteration of the argument.

It goes like this…critics claim that victims in Kristof’s writing are always black and helpless, while the protagonists are often American or European, and “doing” something about the problem.

Kristof responds that he uses that construction to elicit empathy from Western readers who are apt to turn the page if there are no “bridge characters” (Kristof-speak for white people) in this article.

He takes this even farther in his famous op-ed piece Save the Darfur Puppy, (which I actually though was quite clever as a one-off piece – too bad this is his go-to trick).

Apparently, psychological research supports the idea that “bridge characters” and both literal and metaphorical “Darfur Puppies” can build empathy with audiences unfamiliar with the topic of a given article or report.

But I don’t think this type of empathy matters.

That feeling a reader gets after reading a Kristof story about malnutrition in Niger is actually entrenched indifference and superiority masquerading as human connection.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that most Kristof articles painted an accurate picture of life in many African communities (which they do not).

How could middle class America in any way relate/empathize with a severely malnourished mother, or a torture victim, if all these people are to the reader is someone who is malnourished, or someone that has been tortured?

We need to hear about real, complete people, not one dimensional victims.

The brutal truth is that when I read about torture in Syria I feel very little beyond the revulsion conjured up by images of torture.

However, when I read about the excitement of Libyan ex-patriots returning to Libya after decades in exile, or how a young Guinean entrepreneur built a web services firm with nothing, or the difficulty of changing old traditions, even when those traditions are as harmful as genital mutilation, I feel connected to the participants in those stories.

I have felt pride in my community, I have felt the thrill of success in a difficult project, and I understand how hard it is to break ingrained habits.

This is empathy…what Kristof makes you feel is not.

“Shoot the Boer” is Hate Speech–Period

“Shoot the Boer” is Hate Speech–Period

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

By Conor Godfrey on April 22, 2011

Julius Malema

Julius Malema took the stand for the last time in Johannesburg today.

It has been the most colorful of trials.

Most days it seemed more like a star-studded South African concert than a trial, as cabinet members, poets, and even the controversial Winnie Mandela have all paraded through the halls of justice.

Winnie Mandela

At issue is ANC Youth League President Julius Malema’s refusal to stop singing “Dubul’ Ibhun” (isiZulu for “Kill the Boer”…depending on whom you ask, the name could also be “Ayesab’ Amagwala or “Cowards are Scared”).

Here are the first couple lines:
“yasab’ amagwala (the cowards are scared)
dubula dubula (shoot shoot)
ayeah
dubula dubula (shoot shoot )
ayasab ‘a magwala (the cowards are scared)
dubula dubula” (shoot shoot)

An Afrikaner interest group had the audacity to suggest that Malema’s repetition of “Shoot the Boer,” or “One Settler, One Bullet” constituted hate speech, or an incitement to violence.

How could they possibly have got that impression?

If a bunch of former Black Panthers staged a rally in Time Square and began singing—“One Bullet for Every WASP!,” or “Shoot the White Capitalists!,”–how would people react here in the US?

I imagine not to well. But maybe that is not the right analogy.

Malema and his star-studded defenders argue that the song is a part of history, a testament to the struggle if you will.

They claim that the lyrics are proverbial—aimed at the system of oppression as opposed to individual South Africans of European descent.

This argument is too pedantic for South African realities.

Racial violence is not a long forgotten moment in history.

It happened yesterday, and the day before, and on a massive scale, just two decades back.

In France, the national anthem (La Marseillaise) is a violent, bloody affair:

To arms, citizens! Form your battalions, let’s march, let’s march! Let impure blood Water our furrows!

But people are not arming themselves after hearing it sung at a football match and then going in search of the nearest wealthy people.

It also turns out that “Shoot the Boer” was not even an integral part of the struggle.

Some members of the Pan African Congress (PAC) sang the song in the 90’s, but it was never one of the rousing struggle anthems that Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation- armed wing of the ANC) heavy-weights like Ronnie Kasrils, Baleka Mbete and Pallo Jordan helped compile into a definitive album of struggle songs.

See here for a list of the 25 songs on this Album.

Malema is loose cannon and his mere presence ratchets up racial tension: if the court rules that the speech is protected by South Africa’s wonderfully liberal constitution, than the ANC should clean its own house.

The ANC is a big tent, with room for almost everyone—but not racists.