Three Muslims & A Rabbi

Three Muslim pilgrims run for cover as heavy rain streams down a road in Mecca.
Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images

Mumbai, India: Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz climbs a flight of stairs during a visit to Nariman House which was the site of one of the terrorist attacks on the city a year ago.
Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters

The Black Pack

These are some of the Fiercest Minds on the internet who get down at DV.Net

(CopyRight Denmark Vesey; the Blackest Man on the Internet)

Obama Honours WOZA: Women Who Stand Up For Change

WOZA: Women Of Zimbabwe Arise is a women's activist group that leads peaceful demonstrations for regime change in Zimbabwe. Countless times they have been harassed, jailed and their demonstrations disbanded by the police. I've seen these women in the streets on Valentine's Day dressed in red and white giving out red roses to people encouraging them to build a nation of love not brutality. For anyone who thinks that this poses a threat that warrants them being jailed, they are sorely mistaken. I've seen them in court, their case being dismissed as the charges were said to be superflous and rightly so. The way in which these women have been rounded up and thrown into jail speaks volumes about the level of intolerance the Zim govt has for any voice of dissent regardless of the non-violent, non-partisan nature of a movement.

Needless to say the women honored in this video, Magodonga Mahlangu and Jenni Williams (who represents WOZA) deserve this award as token recognition for their tireless efforts to stand up and speak out.

Makorokoto, Tinotenda vanaMai veNyika, Amhlope boMama Siyabonga,
Congratulations and we thank you, Mothers of the Nation.

Thanksgiving Gives Thanks For What Exactly?

Is this not to whom thanks and apologies must be given in the American imaginary's conception of a nation?

From New Cross, With Love

The 2nd noisiest pub/club that kept me awake on weekends when I lived in New Cross, London, UK


Saliva churns in my stomach at the thought of today’s excursion to the School of African Studies in Russell Square. I have to return, yet again. But instead of the complicated and congested route color coded by the London Tube Map, I will take the bus. I imagine with dread, haggling, as I have before, with the random bus inspector who insists my ticket has expired, yet we both know that in bad traffic, it takes over an hour from New Cross to Holborn Station.

This thought makes me hesitant of other things too, perhaps I should not penetrate the city, and in turn, the city will not penetrate me. I will stand on its edges discovering more of me in its great libraries, but my tongue will never yield to Brit intonations forgetting my own, as though it were a rite of initiation into the 'English way of life'. The Shona stays in my tongue, reverberates in my ears shielded with double-glazing from losing its rhythm. My ears never stopped hearing its showered inflections of zvi’s and r’s wrapped and rolled in memories of home. Missing l’s in its linguistic frame, missing hot morning porridge with lemon and peanut butter slurped with my father on tall stools around the kitchen counter, I scratch off the code from the card and call my mother.


Mosi-O-A-Tunya/The Smoke That Thunders

This piece is an extract from a longer work in progress: copyright konwomyn 2009

'Raisin' Illusions or 'Raisin' Revolution?

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

- Harlem, by Langston Hughes 1951

None but ourselves can free us...

I Just Had to Post This...

Picture by Oleg Popov from Reuters in The Guardian UK

Even though I'm vegan and all, I just had to post this, because this is Afghanistan's ONLY known pig. Khanzir lives in Kabul, Afghanistan at the Kabul Zoo and the masked zookeepers are watching it eat. I was fascinated by that they only have one known pig in the whole country. Imagine that! Or even better, a world where people did not have to commercially rear animals for food and for profit, killing Mother Earth...Imagine.

I Have No New Poems by Iskandar Langalibalele and KonWomyn

The Great Warrior: Iskandar Langalibalele


This is a poem co-written by one of my good brothers and I. He has passed on to the next life, but one night he updated his status to say he had no new poems in him and then it turned into a conversation with another friend DK about our colonial history. So I played around with his comments and made them into a poem - the first verse are all his words, I just edited out a few things to illustrate that he had the gift of rhyme naturally. Unfortunately he passed on and at the time of his passing I decided to add my voice to his poem, and this is it below:

By the great, ever-present Iskandar Langlibalele and KonWomyn

I have no new poems in me,
they stole those longhorns from Uganda and Southern Africa
and raised them in Texas!
I have no new poems in me,
no words to bury the fallen
no tongues to utter foreign forms,
No;
The prophet Kakara-ka-Kashagama was right
I have no new poems in me
only revolution,
only prayers,
We will defeat the conquerors and restore our Motherland to unity and peace.

Fambai Zvakanka/Journey Well Brother Langa
I have no new poems in me,
only tears.
I have no new poems in me,
only memories of you;
a Lion roaring of revolution
and now you walk among the pride of past Lions
as a Dread Warrior Sun.

Fisttap
Samora Machel
Kwame Nkrumah
Patrice Lumumba
Julius Nyerere
Malcolm X
Amilcar Cabral
Chris Hani
Steve Biko
Fela Kuti,
when you see them
and tell them
you have no new poems,
no verses and no rhymes,
only revolutions.

beat the drums
of the past
to sound the future.
beat the drums
and ignite in us your
rhythm of revolution
to play in duet with the rhythm of our own,
and let's drum sky high,
hard and fast
united as One,

UHURU,UHURU,UHURU,
for we have no new poems in us
no rhyme for seasons
until Mama Afrika's Children are free.
Tatenda
Siyabonga
Asante sana
for the Sun/Langa*.

A'she, A'she, A'she.

*Langa means the Sun in several Nguni Languages.