News & Events, December '08

Chimurenga Online: Mumbai Sanity Breach

"At midnight I photographed the spooky fragments of broken plaster, while an Al Jazeera crew asked "who do you think did it?" As soon as we start snapping, a crowd gathers. The camera makes the event or just brings it into focus I don't know." Naeem Mohaiemen responds to the Mumbai attack.

Remapping Africa, Football et l’Afrique, new films & books

"So it seems that North Africa is excluded—and occasionally also excludes itself… In this issue of Farafina magazine, I want to reclaim North Africa for Africa..." Laila Lalami guest edits Farafina. And an interview with Senegalese writer and filmmaker Mamadou Mahmoud N'Dongo, short fiction from South Africa, a cover on Obama and more in African Writing 5.

"Nearly 15 years since apartheid ended, millions of black South Africans still live in self-built shacks – without sanitation, adequate water supplies, or electricity. But A Place in the City will overturn all your assumptions about ‘slums’ and the people who live in them..." More on the film here.

Match Factory release Teza by veteran US-based Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima whose previous films include the portrait of slavery in Sankofa (1993) and the documentary Adwa (1999). More here.

Le Football et l’Afrique, edited by Paul Dietschy and David-Claude Kemo-Keimbou is FIFA and the Éditions E/P/A publishing house's "history of African football, combining  analysis of football as a game and as an instrument for developing national identity and a way for Africa to assert itself internationally." The book is currently available in French, and the English version will be published in early 2009.

"I got my first copy of Quartet in a second-hand shop in Long Street years after it was published..." James Matthews on Quartet: New Voices from South Africa, featuring District Six icons Matthews, Richard Rive, Alex La Guma and Alf Wannenburgh, has just been re-released by Realities press. The book was first published in 1963 by New York’s Crown Publishers and was banned in SA. More here.

Rethinking B[l]ack, Jazz Broadcasting, Audio Drama & African Space Program

Rethinking B[l]ack: black, back, lack... :The Gugulective are screening of a documentary around the life of Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement. Introductions by Korianda Izajah (poet/mc/activist and filmmaker), Abdulkadir Ahmed Said (a Somalian Filmaker) & Ntongela Masilela (University of California). November 29 at 2pm, Mlamli’s Shebeen, Ny-146 No-15, Gugulethu, Cape Town. Contact Athi: +27 78 614 0172.

Pan African Space Station (PASS) presents African Space Program with: DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid (NYC) & DJ Funafuji (Step Up! CT). Live @ Distrix Cafe, 106 upper Darling Street, Cape Town. December 15 from  9pm. More here.

"How did South African jazz survive, thrive and win this war of the airwaves under the highly unfavorable conditions of the apartheid police state – and what was it about jazz as a music that put it at the center of this struggle?" Gwen Ansell talks Jazz Broadcasting Under Apartheid, December 4, 7:30 pm, 620 Dodge Hall, Columbia University, New York City.

Catch "Stay-Awake" Conclave Audio (radio) Drama at the Performing Arts Centre at the University of the Western Cape, Saturday, December 6 at 2pm - the event includes presentations by kwaLanga's Finest, Black Ink from the Dunoon area, and performers from the Azaad youth community centre. Contact: + 27 21 467 7608 or + 27 21 447 5679.

Legendary Roots crew musician and Dj Questlove; Tumi and his Dj Papercut; Mozambiquen’s 340ML; South Western townships Pro; UJU; Kabomo the man; Richard the 3rd; Dj C-Live and Dj Kenny Kenzhero, December 12, Carfax, Newtown, Jozi. More here.

Kwani host their End Of Year Open Mic Slam, December 2 at 7pm at Club Soundd, Nairobi. The first 15 poets to register will get a chance to read / perform a 3 minute poetry piece. Winner through an unriggable secret ballot.

African literature, New books & Obamapoetics

John Ngong Kum takes The Bate Besong award for poetry (the first literary award for books published in Anglophone Cameroon) for his collection Walls of Agony. And Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu nabs the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature for Zahrah the Windseeker, published by Farafina in July 2008.

Barack Obama and the Black World – Call for essays on any aspects of the life and work of the Barack Obama for a book that is scheduled for immediate publication, entitled Barack Obama and the Black World. Deadline: December 31. Email: Bobook09@gmail.com.

Farafina's Big Yellow Bus: a mobile bookstore hits the streets of Lagos. Watch this spce.

Obamapoetics: Elizabeth Alexander on how the Derek Walcott-toting, June Jordan-quoting president will affect poets and poetry. Listen here.

Poets Gabeba Baderoon, Nadia Davids and Yvette Christianse read at the Modern Language Association Convention, December 28 in San Francisco.

Rhymes for Rights: New Internationalist is compiling a human rights based poetry anthology with poets from around the world. Please email your suggestions to: rightspoetry@newint.org.

African Books Collective are in the house at the CODESRIA General Assembly in Yaounde, Cameroon, December 6-11. Babi Yar Symphony by G.D. Nyamndi; Days by Niyi Osundare; Long Time Coming Short Writings from Zimbabwe Edited by Jane Morris and more will be available.

Shook aims to pick up where Straight No Chaser left off. Download: 001: Detroit, Muro, Simphiwe Dana, Invader, Bhangra…; 002: Bad beats, Badu, Arthur Russell, Pilooski…; and 003: Kid Creole, Acid House, Hector Lavoe, Junot Diaz…

The next edition of Wordsetc looks at – oh yes – Obama. "We’re looking at him through the lens of literature. Obama is that rare politician who can write (Dreams From My Father, and The Audacity of Hope)..." More here.

Botsotso launches Bluesology And Bofelosophy a poly-rhythmic, multi-genre collection by Mphutlane wa Bofelo; Izinhlungu Zomphefumulo (Emotional Pain) poems from Kwa-Zulu/Natal by Bongekile Mbanjwa; English translations by Siphiwe ka Ngwenya; and Sections Of Six an anthology of poetry and photography.

Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa’s As mulheres do meu pai is now available in English. Get My Father's Wives. Also check Chimurenga’s take Vol. 9: Conversations in Luanda and Other Graphic Stories (june '06). And read an extract of Agualusa's original text in Portuguese here. And view the photographs by Jordi Buch that inspired the art.

Resistance art & Unsung heroes

Thami Mnyele + Medu Art Ensemble Retrospective at the Johannesburg Art Gallery pays tribute to resistance artist Thami Mnyele & the Medu Art Ensemble (Medu), a cultural group formed in 1978 by South African exiles in Gaborone who hosts anti-apartheid conference: the Symposium on Culture and Resistance (Gaborone, 1982). Exhibition open November 30 at 6:30pm & a three-day art conference for Medu members as well as members of the public kicks off December 2 at the Hector Pietersen Museum in Soweto, before moving to the JAG on 3 December and to Constitution Hill on 4 December. Details here.

When Life Happens: HIV and AIDS focused Arts and Culture Festival, December 3 - 14, Jozi. Art by Phumzile Buthelezi, Happy Dlame, Michel Mhlungu, Yvonne Harvey, Vusi Mfupi, Themba Mofekeng and Mandla Manan; site-specific land art installation by Bronwyn Lace; performances by musicians, DJs, poets and wordsmiths including DJ Khenzero, Fifi, Pokah, Nomsa Mazwai, Ntsiki Mazwai, Afurakan and Blast; contemporary dance and more.

Kenya: Unsung peace heroes: "Who were the people that were prepared to risk their own lives to save others?" Check www.peaceheroes.ushahidi.com. And get to the 24 Nairobi Photo Exhibition at the Nairobi National Museum curated by Gonda Geets & featuring Allan Gichingi, Ardina Struwer, Boniface Mwangi, Guillaume Bonn, Jackie Lebo, James Muriuki, Jim Chuchu.

Gender Activism

No violence against Women and Children: read Feminist Africa 10: Militarism, Conflict and Women’s Activism and check out the Gender Links 16 Days Calendar and Action Plan.

"One of the interesting things was how easy the combat footage was to come by—you do a search for it... What was hard to find were the women working for peace, because no one knew they were there..." Check the trailer for Pray the Devil Back to Hell, a documentary about peace efforts of Liberian women led by Leymah Gbowee to end their country’s war.

"Writings on Sara Baartman have subsumed the life of this beautiful woman almost totally in those brief, if momentous, years she spent in Europe displayed as the Hottentot Venus. A short period at the end of her life has come to stand for all that passed before..." Read the introduction Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography by Clifton Crais & Pamela Scully.

The Children’s Hours: Stories of Childhood edited by Richard Zimler and Raša Sekulovic features Junot Díaz, André Brink, Melvin Burgess, Alberto Manguel, Meg Rosoff, Nicholas Shakespeare, Ali Smith, Joan Smith and Richard Zimler. All royalties go to Save the Children for its work to end violence against young people. Read Junot Díaz’s “Invierno” for the anthology here.

African cinema

The SKIFF film festival in Goma, Eastern Congo went ahead despite the violence. Sekombi Katondolo reports.

The Durban International Film Festival (July 22 to August 2, 2009) is calling for entries. Deadline is March 31, 2009 for short films and documentaries; 15 April 2009 for feature films. Details here.

Catch Come Back, Africa, the first anti-apartheid film shot secretly in South Africa by the American communist director Lionel Rogosin in collaboration with Lewis Nkosi, William (Bloke) Modisane, and Can Themba; Rostov-Luanda, Angolan Abderrahmane Sissako Mauritania's docmentary to track classmate from his revolutionary days in Moscow; and more at the London African Film Festival until December 7. Details here.

Watch trailers for: The Chicago Conspiracy, a response to a global conspiracy of neoliberalism, militarism and authoritarianism; and Trail of the Spider, which transposes the suppressed racial history of the American West onto the transforming landscape of East London.