"Soweto Blues" (Hugh Masekela & Miriam Makeba)

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Curse of the Coal Train

Monday, February 8th, 2010 by Andy Davis

“The coal train is a motherfucker,” says Hugh Masekela in Songs of Migration, in his build up to performing the classic song “Stimela”.
“There are no happy songs about trains in Africa.” The train is a symbol of dislocation, forced removals, the leaving of loved ones, insecurity and upheaval. And then he begins to blow that flugelhorn . “Stimela” is a monument of a protest song. A triumph. It’s an artwork so large and encompassing that it hardly fits into the confines of its definition as a song, overflowing at the edges. As an artwork, it transcends. It’s a touchstone, a piece of magic that cuts straight to the most cogent concerns of our country, simply and succinctly. It conjures so much concentrated emotion into those 6 minutes that when Hugh screams that choo-choo whistle, he vents the emotions and frustrations of everyone. He taps straight into that rich vein. The collective consciousness. It’s a shriek that cuts deep in the soul. You have to be made of stone to not be moved.

So it’s little wonder that using “Stimela” as the impetus Hugh Masekela, along with writer and director James Ngcobo and the esteemed vocal talent of Sibongile Khumalo, have created an entire play around the theme of migration. It’s really a series of curated songs by the likes of Mackay Davashe, Joseph Shabalala, Victor Ndlazilwane, Gibson Kente, Hugh Masekela, Dorothy Masuka and Miriam Makeba, among many others, that were inspired by the great trek from the village to the city, from traditional, communal and ancestral lands to the townships and hostels of the cities. As Hugh puts it, “Migration is always the result of social and political upheaval, poverty, war and colonialism.” As people moved to the cities they brought with them their culture, their mannerisms and their longing for a better life. It’s fertile ground for political theatre, as relevant today as it ever was.

The whole show operates like an extravagant jazz gig, with the band taking centre stage and all the players singing and acting around them. True to form, it’s a well assembled troupe, the band ably led by Ezbie Moilwa on the keyboards with Tshepo Mngoma on violin and vocals, Fana Zulu on bass, Ntokoso Zungu on guitar and Godfrey Mngcina on percussion. The acting choir (as in a choir that acts) made up of Kuki Mncube, Bonginkosi Zulu, Happy Motha, Gugu Shezi, Linda Thobela, Thumbeza Hlope and Nomdumiso Zondeki were all exceptional.

From the outset Bra Hugh takes to the stage with an extended jive that belies his status as madala. The guy’s almost 71 years old and he can still boogie and bend down low like a jags teenager. It’s a treat to see him on a stage as intimate as the Market Theatre. The Market Theatre, like Hugh, has seen its fair share of controversy and struggle, from fiery plays of revolution and the vibrant struggle culture of the anti-apartheid movement, the boycotts and censorship through the post-apartheid demise of Joburg’s CBD and it’s subsequent Newtown revival, the theatre has stood by stoically. And it’s a real pleasure to watch the struggle veteran blow his horn, and let Sibongile’s voice pick at your heart strings, in this venerable space.

Although a bit long in parts, and maybe deserving of an interval to break up the show, the nicest thing about Songs of Migration is that it never feels the necessity to translate anything. The majority of the action takes place in isiZulu, isXhosa, Pedi, Tswana and tsotsi taal mixed up with bits of English and Afrikaans. It doesn’t pander to a Northern Suburbs audience, it’s like you can almost hear Hugh admonishing the crowd, “if you don’t speak Zulu or any other African language, fuck you, what’s your problem, you’ve been here long enough to learn something, at least.”

And although the music is largely Southern African in origin, there’s a stirring rendition of a Yiddish folk song about forced migration and even a re-imagining of “Sarie Marais”, but with Zulu vocal harmonies. Renditions of “Hamba Nontsokolo” and the Masekela hit about being caught out late without a pass in apartheid suburban Johannesburg, “Mama Ndoro”. There’s an incredible take on Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s “Nomathemba” that’ll leave you with your bottom jaw on the dirty floor. The music then swings through the cotton fields of the Mississippi and the old gospel of the American South, via Lagos Nigeria with Fela Kuti’s “Languta” before returning to Mzanzi for the finale.

After the show, Bra Hugh and Lady Khumalo, swanned around the adjacent restaurant of Gramadoelas, amicable and stately, a couple of fans bugged them for photographs while the rest of the patrons basked in their glow, ate malva pudding and drank beer.
“This is just the beginning of a series of plays.” Said Hugh. “Each one focussing on a specific theme or issue in the music.”

Songs Of Migration plays at the Market Theatre until 21 February 2010

Stimela
There is a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi
there is a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe,
There is a train that comes from Angola and Mozambique,
From Lesotho, from Botswana, from Zwaziland,
From all the hinterland of Southern and Central Africa.
This train carries young and old, African men
Who are conscripted to come and work on contract
In the golden mineral mines of Johannesburg
And its surrounding metropolis, sixteen hours or more a day
For almost no pay.
Deep, deep, deep down in the belly of the earth
When they are digging and drilling that shiny mighty evasive stone,
Or when they dish that mish mesh mush food
into their iron plates with the iron shovel.
Or when they sit in their stinking, funky, filthy,
Flea-ridden barracks and hostels.
They think about the loved ones they may never see again. Because they might have already been forcibly removed
From where they last left them
Or wantonly murdered in the dead of night
By roving and marauding gangs of no particular origin,
We are told. They think about their lands, their herds
That were taken away from them
With a gun, bomb, teargas and the cannon.
And when they hear that Choo-Choo train
They always curse, curse the coal train,
The coal train that brought them to Johannesburg.

 

PSA of the Day

•

Thu Jul22

PSA of the Day: For their latest anti-domestic-violence campaign, the non-governmental organization People Opposing Women Abuse set up a disturbing bystander effect experiment in a townhouse complex in Johannesburg.

Be prepared to dislike humanity quite a bit.

Philip Levine Prize

Guidelines

 
Deadline: September 30, 2010. In addition to book publication by Anhinga Press, the winner will receive a $2000 honorarium.

Final Judge: TBA
1. Manuscript should be original poetry, not previously published in book form, and should be 48-80 pages.

2. Include two manuscript title pages: one with name and contact information and one with the name of the manuscript ONLY.  Manuscripts will be screened and judged anonymously.

3. All poets are eligible except: faculty, current students and  graduates of the MFA Program at California State University, Fresno and close friends, family, or recent students of the judge.

4. The entry fee is $25. Checks should be made out to "CSU Fresno Levine Prize."

5. Please bind your manuscript with a binder clip only and mail by 9/30/10 (postmark deadline), to:
Philip Levine Prize in Poetry
Department of English, Mail Stop PB98
5245 North Backer Avenue,
California State University, Fresno,
Fresno, CA  93740

More info: email connieh@csufresno.edu

 

Novel:  Length is open but the novel must be unpublished. Publication rights revert to winner. Entry fee: $30.00 per entry (U.S.$ only). Must be postmarked by September 30.

 

Short Story:  Length not to exceed 5,000 words per story. Entry fee is $20.00 per entry (U.S.$ only). Must be postmarked by November 30.

 

Poetry:  Length not to exceed 50 lines per entry. More than one poem may be submitted, but all poems together must not exceed the 50-line limit per entry. Entry fee is $15.00 per entry (U.S. Funds only).  Must be postmarked by November 30.

 

Entries must be accompanied by either check or money order. (U.S. Funds only will be accepted.) Refunds for withdrawn entries will only be given through December 31.

A $30.00 processing fee will be charged for any returned check.

 

Make checks payable to Hackney Literary Awards and mail to 1305 2nd Avenue North, #103, Birmingham, AL 35203.

_____________

info@hackneyliteraryawards.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Announcing the Flo Gault Student Poetry Competition

First Prize:
$500 cash
letterpress broadside of the winning poem
publication on Website

Guidelines:

• Full-time undergraduate Kentucky college students only

• Submit no more than three poems, each typed on 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper

• Each poem must fit on one page in 12 point font

• Do not place more than one poem on a page

• Put your name, address, phone, and e-mail address on each poem

• Include a copy of your student ID or other proof of full-time attendance with the name of a professor in your university’s English Department

• Include a SASE for notification of winner

All submissions must be RECEIVED by November 1st of that calendar year!

Mail to:
Student Poetry Competition
Sarabande Books
2234 Dundee Road, Suite 200
Louisville KY, 40205

 

On Higher Ground

Posted by Paul Boakye on Jul 21st, 2010 and filed under Athletics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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It remains one of the most iconic photographs in sporting history. Heads bowed, black-gloved fists raised aloft, on a sweltering hot night in Mexico City, U.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos propelled themselves into the history books.

The image still resonates with quiet dignity and a palpable rage that is almost shocking to behold, especially in these politically neutered times. We live in an
age of bland sporting automata, steeped in the language of PR, super-aware of their salaried roles as ambassadors of Nike, Adidas and Reebok, and afraid of saying or doing anything that might alienate their sponsors.

Tommie Smith (C) and John Carlos (R), first and third place winners in the 200 metre race, protest at America’s treatment of its black citizens with the Black Power salute as they stand on the winner’s podium at the Olympic games in Mexico City, October 19, 1968. Australian silver medallist Peter Norman stands by unaware of history in the making.

Contrast this with 1968, when sociologist Dr Harry Edwards declared the ‘revolt of the black athlete,’ and added the voice of America’s black sportsmen to the civil rights movement. Dr Edwards was the organiser of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), and the group’s founding statement proclaimed that:

“We must no longer allow this country to use a few so called Negroes to point out to the world how much progress she has made in solving her racial problems when the oppression of Afro-Americans is greater than it ever was. We must no longer allow the sports world to pat itself on the back as a citadel of racial justice when the racial injustices of the sports world are infamously legendary…any black person who allows himself to be used in the above matter is a traitor because he allows racist whites the luxury of resting assured that those black people in the ghettos are there because that is where they want to be. So we ask why should we run in Mexico only to crawl home?”

Smith and Carlos’ distinguished, impassioned protest was to be the defining moment of the OPHR, the ’68 Olympics and – for better or worse – of their lives. History will remember them as heroes and also as martyrs. They made a stand for what they believed in and earned immortality – but they also paid a heavy for price for what they did that night.

Tommie Smith was born in Clarksville, Texas in 1944, John Carlos a year later, in Harlem. Both were raised in poverty – Smith was one of 12 children, the son of a ‘dirt farmer,’ while Carlos lived in an apartment behind his father’s shoe store with his four brothers and sisters. Like many young black men, sport seemed to offer them the possibility of a better future, and their burgeoning athletic prowess won them scholarships to San Jose State College. It soon became clear that the two had the potential to become world-class athletes.

Smith went on to break records over 220 yards, 400 metres, and 440 yards, but his favoured distance was 200 metres, where his so-called ‘Tommie-Jet Gear’ allowed him to tap into a new burst of pace whilst travelling at high speed, leaving opponents trailing in his wake. However, in the Olympic trials, Carlos was to
defeat Smith over 200 metres in a world record time, setting up the prospect of an American one-two in the 1968 Games.

But Carlos and Smith had more on their minds than medals and records. At San Jose State, they became friendly with Dr Harry Edwards, who asked them, and all the other black athletes selected to represent the United States in the Mexico Olympics, to boycott the games, in order to bring the world’s attention to the injustices facing black America, and to expose how the U.S. used black athletes to project a lie of racial harmony at home and abroad.

The late 60s were a time of change and struggle – 1968 saw the assassinations of Dr Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy; anti-war protests coincided with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which saw the U.S. lurching towards ignominy and defeat; only 10 days before the games were due to begin, hundreds of students occupying the National University in Mexico City were slaughtered by Mexican Security forces. The atmosphere was ablaze with a revolutionary spirit that is hard to imagine ever emerging again, especially in a U.S. that seems to be docilely submitting to a right-wing hegemony left behind by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Co, after an ever so brief fling with the idea of change. While the proposed boycott did not occur, OPHR members decided to compete in Mexico and protest individually. Carlos, in particular, was by now a political firebrand who had been in support of a full boycott. But, as he stated many years later:

“…not everyone was down with that plan. A lot of the athletes thought that winning medals would supercede or protect them from racism. But even if you won the medal it ain’t going to save your momma. It ain’t going to save your sister or children. It might give you 15 minutes of fame, but what about the rest of your life? I’m not saying they didn’t have the right to follow their dreams, but to me the medal was nothing but the carrot on the stick”

John Carlos took the bronze medal in a time of 20.10 seconds during the heats of the 200m at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.
© George Herringshaw / Sporting Heroes Collection Ltd.

However, he and Smith surely knew that their chance would come, as they renewed their rivalry on the track and made swift progress through to the 200m final, with Carlos establishing a new Olympic record during the preliminary rounds. In the final, Smith drew his least-favourite inside lane, and ran with a strained thigh muscle, yet still came through to win the Gold medal in a then world record time of 19.83 seconds, while Carlos finished in third to earn the Bronze medal. Carlos controversially went on to claim that he slowed down in the finishing straight in order to allow Smith to win as, “the Gold medal meant more to him.”

This was a comment typical of a relationship that was fractious at best. The two were always colleagues rather than friends, as many people have assumed. However, as they took to the podium, they were in perfect harmony, coordinated in an eloquent, planned protest that would send shockwaves around the sporting and political worlds, and which would reverberate throughout the rest of their lives.

Stepping up to receive his Gold medal, Smith wore a single black glove on his right hand which, when he raised it above his head, was to symbolise black power in America. Around his neck he wore a black scarf, representing black pride. Carlos wore a glove on his left hand to symbolise unity in black America, and around his neck he wore a beaded African necklace that he said was,“for those individuals that were lynched, or killed that no one said a prayer for, that were hung tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage.” Both stood shoeless in black socks, to represent the enduring, abject poverty of black America.

As the Stars and Stripes were raised high above the stadium in Mexico City, and the bombastic strains of the Star Spangled Banner blared out over the tannoy, Smith and Carlos raised their fists and lowered their heads, disassociating themselves from the nationalistic triumphalism of the moment and sending a message of rage and defiance to the world. A thousand flash bulbs popped, history was made, and the lives of John Carlos and Tommie Smith changed forever.

There is an interesting side-note in the creation of this eternal image, in the shape of the silver medallist, Australian sprinter Peter Norman. When studying the photograph, Norman seems to represent a bland, white-bread counterpoint to the two black athletes. Their outstretched arms seem to make them tower above him; they gaze mournfully downwards as he stares, obediently, straight ahead, cutting an almost gormless figure, seeming to personify all the self-absorbed myopia of the white sporting world. However, Norman too played a part in the protest. Opposed to his own country’s pro-white immigration policy, he grabbed an OPHR badge from the crowd, and wore it on the podium in an act of solidarity with the two Americans.

The fallout from Smith and Carlos’ protest was immediate and devastating. The International Olympic Committee demanded that the U.S Olympic Committee ban them from the games. The U.S. team refused, but the IOC threatened to ban the entire American team, forcing the USOC to climb down. Smith and Carlos were sent home in disgrace, to face the wrath of a media who were both bewildered and outraged by their gesture. As a 1967 U.S. News and World Report put it, athletics was one arena, “where Negroes have struck it rich” – that two black athletes had chosen this forum to protest was perceived as uppity ingratitude. The press showed no mercy. The athletes’ bowed heads were perceived as disrespectful towards the American flag, and the clenched fists mistakenly interpreted as in support of the feared Black Panthers. Yet, never afraid of contradicting themselves, other media outlets described their “Nazi-like salute,” with Chicago columnist Brent Musburger dubbing them “black – skinned Storm-troopers.” Time magazine ran a picture of the Olympic insignia, replacing the motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger” with the words “Angrier, Nastier, Uglier.”

Carlos did little to placate a furious white America with his public comments: “We’re sort of show horses out there for the white people. They give us peanuts, pat us on the back and say, ‘Boy, you did fine’.”

Tommie Smith threw his arms into the air and broke into a wide smile 5 metres before the finish. He shattered the world record with a time of 19.83 seconds.
© Ed Lacey/Sporting Heroes Collection Ltd.

Smith and Carlos found themselves ostracised, struggling to find work, and in receipt of regular death-threats. Smith was forced to attend night-classes when he returned to college, and had to battle to make ends meet: “A rock came through our front window into our living room, where we had the crib…it seemed like everybody hated me. I had no food. My baby was hungry. My wife had no dresses.”

Smith was able to borrow enough money to complete his education, and became a qualified teacher. He spent several years with the Cincinatti Bengals American football team, later moving on to Santa Monica College, where he remains as a social science and healthcare teacher, and coaches athletics.

The outspoken Carlos found life even more difficult, being forced to travel to find whatever work he could, spending time as a security guard, a gardener, a caretaker. His situation became so dire that he was forced to chop up his furniture for firewood to keep his family warm. The stress of life as an out-cast was too much for his wife, who committed suicide.

Years on, Smith and Carlos have been justly recognised as heroes, being inducted into the African American Ethnic Hall of Fame in 2003. But John Carlos still cannot rest: “I don’t feel embraced; I feel like a survivor, like I survived cancer.” He is dismayed that his and Smith’s legacy seems to have been wasted by a generation of black athletes who have reaped the financial rewards of sporting success, but turned their back on their social and political obligations. He believes there is still a battle to be fought, and is contemptuous of those who believe that athletes should be seen and not heard:

“Those people should put all their millions of dollars together and make a factory that builds athlete-robots. Athletes are human-beings. We have feelings too. How can you ask someone to live in the world, to exist in the world, and not have something to say about injustice?”

While Smith seems to have found some peace, Carlos’ revolutionary spirit cannot come to terms with today’s insipid, apolitical, hyper-commodified world of sport. He paid a terrible price for his actions one hot night in Mexico City, but the image that was created there will live forever as a beautiful symbol of defiance. Forty-two years on it burns as fiercely as it ever did, still resonating with all the possibilities of the human spirit. But, for John Carlos, the fight goes on.

A glimpse into Mukoma's consciousness

Two generations of Kenyan writers, Mukoma wa Ngugi (left) with his father and Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Photo/FAMILY ALBUM 

By MWENDA wa MICHENI  

Posted Wednesday, July 21 2010 at 10:26

In Summary

• Mukoma wa Ngugi: a poet, essayist and novelist.
• Writer considers blind afro-optimism as dangerous as afro-pessimism

 

Mukoma wa Ngugi has written a lot of poetry including a collection titled Hurling Words at Consciousness, and essays for different publications. The essays can be found in publications such as BBC Focus On Africa Magazine where he is a columnist and Nairobi's Business Daily newspaper.

Last year, the writer who has been living in the US, took a different direction with the release of Nairobi Heat published by Penguin. Even before readers in some African countries like Kenya get a chance to buy copies from home bookshops, the detective novel has been highly debated elsewhere. It’s a story that explores race issues, justice and identity. At another level, his novel manuscript, The First and Second Books of Transition, has been picked to compete for the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing.

To understand the forces that have shaped this politically conscious writer, Africa Review organised an interview. Here, Mukoma wa Ngugi who is the son Kenyan’s literary icon Ngugi wa Thiong'o speaks his mind, freely.

Related Stories

• Penguin Prize for African Writing

 

What compelled you to write Nairobi Heat?

The story, at least the seed of it, found me.  I came home late one night and found a white woman, dressed in a cheer-leader outfit passed outside my door.  I did not know her; she must have been at a party or on her way there.  I called the police for an ambulance and the policeman who accompanied it was African-American.  They promptly took her away but that set-up stayed with me and it eventually morphed into the novel – where in Madison Wisconsin, an African American detective is investigating the murder of a white woman and his main suspect is an African.  From my end, I did the best I could with the story, but as to whether I achieved what I set out to do very much depends on the reader.  If the reader’s imagination is excited by the novel, then yes.

 

Its been described as stereotypical and largely (mis)informed by your Diaspora experiences; a story removed from the Nairobi realities that the book attempts to depict. Was this deliberate?

There are two things here.  The first is that we have to distinguish between the author, the authorial voice (which in my view pretty much functions like a character interacting with the reader) and the world view of the characters. 

Ishmael’s view of Africa, the Diaspora, US racial and class dynamics are vastly different from mine. Ishmael is coming to Nairobi/Africa as an African-American. He is conscious that he views Africa in an ambivalent way. So throughout the novel he fights for his own understanding of Africa and his relationship to Africans, and indeed to his own blackness and American identity.  He is constantly re-evaluating himself.

I on the other hand was born in Evanston, Illinois to Kenyan parents but we left when I was a few months old.  I grew up in Kenya so I am traveling in the opposite direction in relation to Ishmael. My relationship to the US is as complex as his is to Kenya. 

But I have no ambivalences in relation to my Kenyaness.   If my understanding of the social realities is wrong, my Diaspora experiences are not the culprit – we are wrong for many reasons most of them having little to do with the location one writes from.   By the same token, proximity may not make one’s analysis more correct.  I think this line of literary criticism exhausts itself quickly.

The second thing, and to me this is more serious, is that Afro-Pessimism is being replaced with unquestioning Afro-optimism.   Afro-pessimism (best exemplified by the 2000 Economist Africa Cover Story titled - The hopeless continent) keeps the positive coming out Africa out of view.  So there was a concerted effort to also talk about the positive things coming from the continent. But now accusations of Afro-pessimism are being used to silence constructive-criticism.  There is pressure for the writers to create a happy cover story for Africa especially when in conversation with Westerners. 

Both Afro-pessimism and unquestioning Afro-optimism are terrible trappings because we end up in a situation where we cannot have honest re-evaluations and dialogue.  And without honest critical dialogue there can be no basis for positive change.  I for one will not be part of the Africa-hakuna-matata-tourist-attracting writing crew.

 

It was launched in South Africa by Penguin. Does this mean you have no faith in Kenyan publishers and the Kenyan book market? Why so and what must be done to improve publishing in this part of the world?

I have a lot of faith in Kenyan publishers (East African Educational Publishers and Story Moja in particular) and independent African Publishers such as the Cassava Republic Press, Kwela Books and Farafina.  In fact both EAEP and Cassava were interested in publishing Nairobi Heat but we had signed over the Africa rights to Penguin.

To improve publishing means an overhaul of the whole publishing system - the writer, the reader, the publisher, and the education ministries each have their own role to play. For now it looks like traditional publishers are mainly interested in producing textbooks and I think this has stifled creative works. Independent African publishers are producing creative works but they need readers in order for them to thrive as a business.

We need more literary journals and literary prizes for primary, high school and university writing.  We need regional magazines and regional prizes. In other words we need to have a literary system that makes it possible for a child in Kangemi to become a writer – we need to create the steps between dreaming to reality, a paved literary road that nurtures writing talent from childhood into adulthood.

 

The last time you were in Nairobi, you hinted at lack of serious literary agents and publishers in Africa. How has this affected the quality of African writing and portrayal of Africa in the literary world?

 Well, a good number of us are working with Western literary agents who are familiar mostly with Western publishers. This in turn means that they are likely to represent books that will be assured a Western audience.  This means that there are good books that have Africans as their primary audience that are not being published.  But in the absence of viable publishing in most African countries, even African literary agents would have a problem. 

I think this is why we have to support independent initiatives such as Cassava Republic Press that has taken its mantra of “feeding the African imagination” very seriously.

RELATED STORIES

• Penguin Prize for African Writing

 

You also went into the responsibilities of publishers (Storymoja festival 2009) operating in Africa as corporate citizens to authors and the community. Talk freely about this.

 Well, if you consider the amount of money generated by publishers such as Heinemann and how little they have given back, you cannot but help think they are just as exploitative as the next Western corporation.  Surely, Heinemann should have set up a Chinua Achebe first book prize by now.  It should have set up a writer’s foundation that caters to younger writers even if only in the self-interest of having future writers to exploit.  Now, the argument is that like any other business, publishers have to make money in order to stay afloat. 

But I think there is also a moral responsibility, a duty even to give back when money is being made out of the talents of the dispossessed.   I mean without nurturing future generations of readers and literary critics, how else will African literatures grow?  Let us not forget that Africa is an immense continent with a population estimate of 800 million – yet how many young writers can one name?  We are in the hundreds but in reality we should be in the thousands.  We have a huge problem and the corporate publishing industry has a huge role to play in the solution.  As I said, every entity involved in the writing industry, from writers to publishers have a role to play.

 

Most of the Literature coming out of Africa, especially published by the big name today, is by young writers (The Caine Prize generation) in the Diaspora. Their take on Africa cannot be the same as Chinua Achebe’s and the earlier generation of writers then based in Africa and writing mostly for Africans, not for Caine Prizes. In your view, is this a good thing? Why?

Each generation of writers builds on the literature that is there, and has been there before it. This generation then takes that literature and lets it grow in different directions.  This is how we end up with a literary tradition, the constantly new growing on the backs of yesterday’s innovations.  If you want to understand the continuities and differences between my generation and that of Chinua Achebe, think about Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel. 

In Things Fall Apart, that which eventually nationalists will fight for is very clear – Igbo culture is well defined, and even though in English that the characters are speaking in Igbo.  What is at stake as the colonising culture meets African culture, and who the enemy is, and what must be done are understood rightly or wrongly, as being very clear.  Hence Okwonkwo can be categorical, he can refuse to bend and consequently, to bring in King Lear, he breaks. 

In Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel, what ails Nigeria is not so clear – the enemy is not as clearly defined, cultural lines not so demarcated.  The characters are in state of melancholy, they really can’t articulate what ails them.  Yes, its neo-colonialism but how do you talk about an enemy twice removed and represented by a black face installed by misguided nationalism? 

And in terms of culture, what is there to recover when our generation has never really experienced that culture? As an entity outside the colonial encounter?

So Habila’s novel cannot be realist and linear like Things Fall Apart – it is fractured.  And in order to try to make sense out of this reality, the novel has to have multiple narrators.  It is in my opinion Waiting for an Angel is the novel from my generation of writers that captures what it meant to grow up in the lazy, destructive, and stomach only dictatorships of the 1980’s and 1990’s.  These were the dictatorships led by the greedy elite that Frantz Fanon termed as “good for nothing” in Wretched of the Earth. They have contributed nothing – not better roads, hospitals, universities, schools, or national industries.  They have been good for nothing.

 

The rich African Idioms, wise philosophies and social systems have been out of the picture especially in what is fashioned as contemporary African writing, music, dance, literature even poetry and theatre. Where do you see this moving to in future and is it a good thing especially in the context of societies and cultural identities?

I think we need to talk seriously about African philosophy – lets debate the Ezes, Wiredus and Houtondjis.  This is where the struggle for the African minds is taking place.  I also think that sooner or later my generation of writers will have to seriously deal with the language question.  For now we are holding it at bay.  But sooner or later we will have to contend with T.S. Elliot’s maxim that a writer’s first responsibility is to his or her own language.

 

There are many art/culture projects around the continent that are driven by foreign funding. In your opinion, how is this shaping future African realities? Is this a good thing or should Africa go back to the drawing board?

This is a huge problem.  National cultures cannot be undergirded by foreign funding.  The problem with the African elite is that they have no sense of culture and no ambition beyond the stomach.  Western capitalists understood that a nation with culture makes better business decisions – the Rockefellers and Carnegies.  A nation with a sense of culture has a sense of what it is worth.  It can take pride in what is locally manufactured and at same time be weary of outside exploitation.  Interestingly enough, the US went into depression when its capitalists abandoned national capitalism for global capitalism, when immediate profit took the place for long-term investment within the country in not just industry but also in the arts.

The African elite, and they are the ones with the money have no notion of legacy building, or being remembered through endowments – it’s the politics of the stomach, of immediate money-making and spending, usually abroad.  Consider that some African governments are selling or leasing land to foreign governments for growing cash crops.  What could be more cynical than this?  Instead of having African farmers growing what those countries need for sale, our governments are cutting out the farmers all together. How then can the elites at the helm of such governments be expected to be thinking about the arts and culture?

With that said, I think those in the writing industry, from independent publishers to the writers lucky enough to make a living out of their work (or a semblance of it); we have a duty to insurgency.  We need to pool our resources no matter how meager and underwrite some of our own adventures.  I would like to see a conference that brings my generation of writers in dialogue with my father’s generation – but surely such a meeting cannot be primarily sourced by foreign funding.

 

 

 

 

Miller on African Secret Societies in Cuba

July 24, 2010 in Ivor Miller
Tags: african diaspora, books, scholarship, caribbean

Ivor L. Miller.  Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and
Cuba.  Caribbean Studies Series. Jackson  University Press of
Mississippi, 2009.

In Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller shows how African migrants and their political fraternities played a formative role in the history of Cuba. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no large kingdoms controlled Nigeria and Cameroon’s multilingual Cross River basin. Instead, each settlement had its own lodge of the initiation society called Ékpè, or “leopard,” which was the highest indigenous authority. Ékpè lodges ruled local communities while also managing regional and long-distance trade. Cross River Africans, enslaved and forcibly brought to colonial Cuba, reorganized their Ékpè clubs covertly in Havana and Matanzas into a mutual-aid society called Abakuá, which became foundational to Cuba’s urban life and music.

Miller’s extensive fieldwork in Cuba and West Africa documents ritual languages and practices that survived the Middle Passage and evolved into a unifying charter for transplanted slaves and their successors. To gain deeper understanding of the material, Miller underwent Ékpè initiation rites in Nigeria after ten years’ collaboration with Abakuá initiates in Cuba and the United States. He argues that Cuban music, art, and even politics rely on complexities of these African-inspired codes of conduct and leadership. Voice of the Leopard is an unprecedented tracing of an African title-society to its Caribbean incarnation, which has deeply influenced Cuba’s creative energy and popular consciousness.

via University Press of Mississippi

H-Net Review by William A. Morgan here

 

BP accused of 'buying academic silence'

By Robyn Bresnahan BBC News

Bob Shipp said BP wanted to hire his entire marine science department

The head of the American Association of Professors has accused BP of trying to "buy" the best scientists and academics to help its defence against litigation after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

"This is really one huge corporation trying to buy faculty silence in a comprehensive way," said Cary Nelson.

BP faces more than 300 lawsuits so far.

In a statement, BP says it has hired more than a dozen national and local scientists "with expertise in the resources of the Gulf of Mexico".

The BBC has obtained a copy of a contract offered to scientists by BP. It says that scientists cannot publish the research they do for BP or speak about the data for at least three years, or until the government gives the final approval to the company's restoration plan for the whole of the Gulf.

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It also states scientists may perform research for other agencies as long as it does not conflict with the work they are doing for BP.

And it adds that scientists must take instructions from lawyers offering the contracts and other in-house counsel at BP.

Bob Shipp, the head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama, was one of the scientists approached by BP's lawyers.

They didn't just want him, they wanted his whole department.

"They contacted me and said we would like to have your department interact to develop the best restoration plan possible after this oil spill," he said.

Russ Lea from the University of South Alabama: Some clauses in the contract "were very disturbing".

"We laid the ground rules - that any research we did, we would have to take total control of the data, transparency and the freedom to make those data available to other scientists and subject to peer review. They left and we never heard back from them."

What Mr Nelson is concerned about is BP's control over scientific research.

"Our ability to evaluate the disaster and write public policy and make decisions about it as a country can be impacted by the silence of the research scientists who are looking at conditions," he said.

"It's hugely destructive. I mean at some level, this is really BP versus the people of the United States."

In its statement, BP says it "does not place restrictions on academics speaking about scientific data".

'Powerful economic interests'

But New Orleans environmental lawyer Joel Waltzer looked over the contract and said BP's statement did not match up.

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Good scientists, they're going to be giving their opinions based on the facts and they are not going to bias their opinions”

End Quote Professor Irv Mendelssohn Louisiana State University

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"They're the ones who control the process. They're depriving the public of the data and the transparency that we all deserve."

But some scientists who have been approached by lawyers acting on behalf of BP are willing to sign up.

Irv Mendelssohn is a professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University.

"What I'm doing wouldn't be any different than if I was consulting with one of the natural resource trustees. I am giving my objective opinion about recovery."

Some scientists approached by BP lawyers have been offered as much as $250 an hour.

Prof Mendelssohn says he would negotiate his normal consulting fee, which is between $150 and $300 an hour. But he says that is not why he is doing it.

"Good scientists, they're going to be giving their opinions based on the facts and they are not going to bias their opinions. What's most important is credibility."

But Cary Nelson is concerned about the relationship between corporations and academia.

"There is a problem for a faculty member who becomes closely associated with a corporation with such powerful financial interests.

"My advice would be: think twice before you sign a contract with a corporation that has such powerful economic interests at stake."

COREXIT is Eating Through Boats in the Gulf

http://www.youtube.com/user/o0Levitik...

Corexit has started eating through boats in the Gulf . . . BP told the EPA "to stuff it" over the use of Corexit, which was found to be 4 times more toxic than the oil itself. BP is also in control of the U.S. Coast Guard which has threatened reporters with arrest that have gotten to close.

Music Produced by: 2Deep - Just Another Day

This video is for educational and news purposes only, which is protected under sections 107 through 118 of the copyright law.

Kid with oil stuck on her Destin Beach Fl June 23rd 2010 Oil Rain Louisiana River Ridge Bp CNN almost all exxon valdez cleanup crew dead Kindra Arnesen Venice LA Needs to Evacuate BP Spill Environmnetal Disaster Fishing Industry health risks Chemical in South Carolina corexit dispersant toxic blocking blocks media access new orleans

 

 

 

 

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'

The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle

By Patrick Cockburn

Saturday, 24 July 2010

Getty Images

Children in Fallujah who suffer from birth defects which are thought to be linked to weapons used in attacks on the city by US Marines

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Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.

He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."

The survey was carried out by a team of 11 researchers in January and February this year who visited 711 houses in Fallujah. A questionnaire was filled in by householders giving details of cancers, birth outcomes and infant mortality. Hitherto the Iraqi government has been loath to respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health during military operations.

Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals, particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists and anybody conducting it or answering questions would be arrested. Those organising the survey subsequently arranged to be accompanied by a person of standing in the community to allay suspicions.

The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout".

Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.

Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima.

The US cut back on its use of firepower in Iraq from 2007 because of the anger it provoked among civilians. But at the same time there has been a decline in healthcare and sanitary conditions in Iraq since 2003. The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004. War damage was only slowly repaired and people from the city were frightened to go to hospitals in Baghdad because of military checkpoints on the road into the capital.