Zanele Muholi: I Am Just Doing My Job

When multimillionaire businessmen like Kenny Kunene spend hundreds of thousands of rands on lavish birthday parties, where sushi is served from the half-naked torsos of compliant (and hopefully well-paid) models, they would probably expect criticism, and this is just what South African artist, Zanele Muholi (pictured lying on the table) has done.  The self portrait shows Muholi laid out on a table, representing one of the models at the party, while two women eat boerewors and offal off her naked torso. It is titled "I am just doing my job,"  after the response given by one of the models (and sushi servers) when asked what she thought about the whole event. In a macabre twist, the meat is placed on Muholi's body in such a way that it seems the women are eating her internal organs. 

This exhibition will be shown at the Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, S.A. as from Thursday 3 December 2010.

jacked from mg.co.za

foto credit: Robert Hamblin

Who Put the Crack in Angela's Pipe?

Angela Merkel, Potsdam, Germany

"At the start of the 60s we invited the guest-workers to Germany. We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn't stay, that one day they'd go home. That isn't what happened. And of course the tendency was to say: let's be 'multikulti' and live next to each other and enjoy being together, [but] this concept has failed, failed utterly....For several years more people have been leaving our country than entering it...wherever it is possible, we must lower the entry hurdles for those who bring the country forward....Germany should … get tougher on those who refuse to integrate before opening itself up to further immigration."
- Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel

Response: They who, Angela? The Arabs, Turks, Asians, Africans? Who? The Jews, the Muslims, the Sikhs, the Scientologists? Who?


Multiculturalism is a failed project but not for the reasons Merkel points out, she's playing to the gallery because there's a lot of discontent within the party and conservative Germans over immigration. Multiculturalism's like this trendy thing Europe thought they'd name integration as a way of appearing progressive so the EU pressed full steam ahead with policy, but multiculturalism is impossible without first exorcising history's demons and poverty - Merkel needs a reality check. Multiculturalism failed because Germany didn't make it work. Granted it's not an overnight job as the Germans themselves took long enough to get along, but Merkel's not exactly been pro-multikulti or pro-immigration in her policy and strategically distanced herself on these issues so whose collective failure is she talking about? The Financial Times estimates say there's a skills shortage of about 400000 jobs in Germany and but they suggest that this gap can be filled by employed skilled migrants but visa restrictions prevent non-Germans from having certain jobs - so how do people work? Declaring multikulti has failed when you haven't even tried is a bad political tactic, it's evident that resorting to populist rhetoric is def-o a sign of desperate times, I guess the Baden-Wuttemberg 2011election is not looking too great then, Angie?

IMO multiculturalism's more of a Eurocentric cultural project that legitimises the consumption of 'the exotic other' by celebrating diverse cuisines, music and languages, but it doesn't engage people. Governments purposely build ghettos by ethnicity then in a schizophrenic twist embark on projects to de-radicalise 'the other' and pour money into fostering social cohesion to keep things calm...some work, some fail, but at the heart of it: it's the economy, stupid. 
Integration supposed to be the aim of multiculturalism but it's really just mainstreaming everyone into the dominant way of life, a kind of inclusive exclusion - thou shalt not wear a hijab or burkha, but thou shalt speak one standard French and remain in your poor, segregated ghettos. When the ship goes down, blame it on the poor and the migrants, same ol' same ol' and there's much more of this kind of populist talk to come the tougher things get.

pics jacked from The Guardian, Langerhall.com and Zazzle.com.

Zef Side

Evil Boy is the latest track from Die Antwoord, a South African band of three friends (Yo-landi, Ninja and Waddy Jones (aka Max Normal)) creating their own brand of zef beats. iLike this group, questions of authenticity aside (see www.africasacountry.com for a good, long discussion on this) but this video just sucks to the nth degree. Evil Boy sounds so much better when heard rather than seen, the excessive freakishness takes away from the valuable criticism the song had of circumcision, bling culture and sexual prudishness. Too much masculine penis envy and obsession with racial undertones agwan there, it's not even artistically gaudy, it doesn't work for me. 


As a general comment about Die Antwoord's music and videos, there is something to be said of their excesses as performances of race, gender, class, power and identity in post-Mandela, post-apartheid South Africa and they seem to be aware of what they are doing if you watch the second short video and the beginning of Enter the Ninja when Ninja says all identities are mixed up in him. But just how much are things mixed up in him that Die Antwoord's gangster attitude, imitation prison number tattoos and alleged gang connections can pass off as 'authentic' or is Ninja the mash-up the trajectory of whitesploitation consuming and producing itself in more radical and satirical ways over and over? Radical yes, but satirical - of what exactly? Die Antwoord are the edgy pop hip-hip embodiment of White working class angst fused with a 'discovered 'inner' Coloured' to use Rustum Kozain's phrase. Given this interesting fusion of working class identities, to what extent are they performing critique in their music and to what extent are they themselves the joke when they're speaking... BS?....Life is zef, china.


Their album drops 12 October and is available on iTunes.



STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE'S PIEL from Die Antwoord on Vimeo.

Images & Thoughts on Nigeria at 50

Felasophy

jacked from punch-records.co.uk

"I'm tired," 

the 48-year-old musician and son of the late Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti says, his eyes drooping after just emerging from one of Lagos's epic traffic jams, a constant source of frustration in this teeming city.... No electricity, no good health care ... people are dying in hospital, bad roads, corruption beyond your imagination," he said. "Let's say it's a sad birthday....When my father was fighting, I was 13. I am 48 ... same story and nothing has really changed for the better," he said. "We have survived these terrible times. "A vibrant generation is coming ... who hopefully will not take nonsense from corrupt leaders and who will be very strong and fight for a better Africa" 

- Femi Kuti on Nigeria's 50th Birthday

jacked from the Mail &;Guardian, S.A.

Foto Credit: Pius Utomi Ekpei AFP/Getty

Mend said: 

"Several explosive devices have been successfully planted in and around the venue by our operatives working inside the government security services....There is nothing worth celebrating after 50 years of failure. For 50 years, the people of the Niger Delta have had their land and resources stolen from them. The constitution before independence which offered resource control was mutilated by illegal military governments and this injustice is yet to be addressed."

jacked from PM News, Nigeria

"Today, we need to celebrate the remarkable resilience of the Nigerian spirit. We need to appreciate, that even though the road has been bumpy; we have trudged on, in hope. We may not have overcome our challenges, but neither have our challenges overcome us. Whenever we are completely written off, we always bounce back from the edge to renew our national bond for the benefit of our progress. That is the Nigerian spirit. This is what has kept us together as a country even when other countries with far less challenges have fallen apart."

                                                 speech delivered at 50th Celebration.

- President Goodluck Jonathan 

 Lucy Azubuike

The Mask Hides Nothing

jacked from creativeafricanetwork.com

"...if we are to achieve any meaningful change then we should start by studying and documenting the actions of  these pioneering and contemporary women and realise that within us we have an enormous amount of knowledge and the power to bring about change.  It is women who successfully challenged the colonial authorities and traditional rulers.  It is women who have been at the forefront of the non-violent struggle for justice in the Niger Delta though this has largely been ignored. It is feminists like Amina Mama, Lucy Azubuike and Chimamanda Adichie who are placing women at the center in their writing and artistic work.This is not to elevate women to a superior place in our societies but to recognize that it is in the interest of men and everyone irrespective of their gender, status, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference to engage with feminism so as to create an environment where radical transformation can take place."

- Sokari, Black Looks.org on Nigerian Women & Independence

Recommended Reading: http://www.blacklooks.org/2010/09/women-and-the-nation/

China: The New Colonials

fisttap Seeps

This is a short documentary on the tensions between Chinese immigrants and the locals in Dakar, Senegal, from Al-Jazeera. It's worth reading the commentary below as well: 

link: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/witness/2010/09/20109784210335575.html

Response: This programme explores the social friction between the local people and the newly-arrived economic migrants who in my opinion represent the new colonialists - as much as they may bring economic and infrastructural development to Senegal and Africa as a whole, the attitudes towards Africans reflected in this film make me dislike Chinese presence. Yea, I do agree to some extent with Deborah Brautigam's (sorry I can't link Google, The Dragon's Gift) position on the benefits of China-Africa relations, but the Chinese are hustlers and Africans are the hustled. I've read a lot on what China has done in the Congo, Zambia and Tanzania and across the boards it's the same story: the Chinese are exploiters who don't want to integrate, flood the markets with cheap goods and they think poorly of Africans - some 'em even racist like the guy and his friends in the film. Yea I'm generalising but that's not my aim here, it's more to pose a question. Given that the Chinese are the new colonials, how are Africans going to turn around this situation to make it a win-win? If trade with the West means a two-faced exchange, like engaging in agricultural trade but getting ripped off in unfair trade tariffs and being handed aid policies like children and trade with the East means having development but also being a dumping ground for cheap goods killing local production; how do Africans change this up to become meaningful players in the global economy? It's pissing off that people continually come and benefit from us and we're still impoverished, it's pissing off that people can think so poorly of us they can dump poison in our backyards and sell us reject good, but the mother of it all is that our own leaders are so friggin' shortsighted they only see opportunities for instant personal wealth  that they will pimp themselves and the nation out to whoever's willing to pay upfront. It's rubbish really, just rubbish that the Chinese can come a set-up shop in Dakar and trash-talk Africans all they like, no different to White colonials that African nationalists fought a few decades ago. What was it all for? Fanon, Biko, Cabral and Che, what for?

Whenever I see things like this, Bob Marley's Pimper's Paradise is the tune that best describes present-day Africa.

Wanna Start A Riot? Bread's The Thing, Bread Always Does It

Scenes from the recent two-day bread riots in Maputo, Mozambique which ended this morning. Following a 30% hike in bread prices people took the streets in protest, blocked the roads and looted shops. At present it is unknown who organised the riots, through mass texts and emails encouraging people to riot. Above are some scenes from the riots:

1.  A young demonstrator helps to setup a fire barricade to block out the police.

2. A demonstrator throwing a tyre onto the fire barricade.

3. Calm restored in Maputo, today and people are queueing for food, however, there are still reports of violence in the outlying areas of Benfica and Hulene.

4. Police patrolling the city.

New Bread Price: US $0.20

Average Lowest Salary / Month: US $37

Body Count: 10

Injured: 288

Acts of Unjust Violence by the State: Countless

(police ran out of rubber bullets and started using live rounds,

thus killed 10 people, among them a 12 year old boy...SMH)

All pictures from BBC Africa, Reuters.