Two not so new blogs but definitely worth regular visits. The first is Dogonland which was started by one of my best friends, Del Hornbuckle about a year ago but was shut down due to technical difficulties. She has now relaunched the blog and it is looking good! Neat and beautifully presented with some excellent commentary. Her last post is on a flim called Lomo about a Congolese woman, Lomo Sniai who survived rape by soldiers and as a result developed traumatic fistula. Del watched the film on PBS wrote a review here.

The second blog is one I discovered on MySpace by Nigerian writer and poet, Chinwe Azubuike - “African Writers”. This poem is on female circumcision

Our Dilemma

You, our gods of immortals and living
Of seas and lands
Of all visible and not
we beseech, hear our cry this day
and come to our rescue.

Our sacred weapons of pleasure
are being destroyed by the day
rendered useless by our overseeing Lords and Ladies
of ancestral descent.

They perform a barbaric operation on our ‘flesh of honour’
and call it ‘Female Circumcision’
in the white man’s language.
They mutilate our pride and say it is ‘tradition’
“The initiation to womanhood.”

They cut us!
Oh yes, they cut us with the blade……… Continue.

Leigh Raiford of CODEZ interviews revolutionary Black artist, Emory Douglas.

–For those of us born in the seventies, the post-soul generation, the artwork of Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party (1967-1979) and Revolutionary Artist (4Life), is wedged deep in our political unconscious. Our revolutionary imaginings have been fueled by Douglas’s powerful thick-lined drawings of armed and determined black children, stern-faced black men, righteous sisters, and avaricious pigs in uniform getting what was coming to them.

Leigh Raiford: What is revolutionary art today?

Emory Douglas: Overcoming obstacles. I mean then, now, in the future. Once you achieve a certain success, or establish a certain criteria as it relates to concerns then you have to implement that thing. And once you implement it it’s revolutionary. So it’s about overcoming obstacles, it’s dealing with change, the process of change. And giving people some insight into the issues that we’re dealing with. Racism. Racism is a rampant thing. In a way, it’s been almost mainstreamed now, to justify it. Apologists for it. These are things that perhaps can be thought out. How can you express that so people can see that? They may be thinking about it but they don’t see it visually.

But then again what you had then we had organizations. But now you got electronic media where you can access and reach millions of people in that way. But the actual out- there organization that we did during that period when the art was art of consciousness it was… You know you were out there, you had that connection, actual physical connection. So it’s a great difference now than then in a lot of ways. Because lots of people put their stuff on electronic media for people to look at. They get inspired, they’re moved they do something.

Read the entire Emory Douglas/CODEZ interview here.

Another film-maker, another documentary from South Africa - Thanks to Vincent Moloi and “A Pair of Boots and a Bicycle” another part of our hidden history is revealed and with it more stories of heroism and betrayal. From what I have heard this is a brilliant and absolutely riveting film that tells the story of the Black WWII war veterans, who played a vital role in the war only to return to home and be rewarded with “a bicycle and a pair of boots”.

A Pair of Boots and a Bicycle is a documentary about Maseko, a miner and one of 128 000 black soldiers who enlisted to serve in the Allied Forces against the Germans in North Africa. These men were there to provide supplementary services and were not meant to participate in combat, which explains why they were trained with spears, unlike their white counterparts.
Maseko was cheated out of his Victoria Cross (the highest award for valour in the Commonwealth forces), receiving a comparatively paltry military medal instead. In return for a better life, Maseko probably received a pair of boots, a coat and a bicycle, while his white counterparts reportedly received houses and farms………….More on the film.

I read Vincent Moloi dropped out of media college in SA (Boston Media House) in 1997 “because of having to do two consecutive assignments on U2″… Why are African students being asked to write about bono when we have hundreds of our own musicians from across the continent that no one has ever written about? That’s why our stores never get told because people are too busy trying to obstruct us from focusing on our own history.

Tags: A Pair of Boots and a Bicycle
Vincent Moloi
Film
South Africa
Native Military Corps

Joburg Rising has been sitting in my head for the past two weeks since the film’s opening on 13th July. The film is special because it was made by my dear sister friend Lindiwe Nkutha (writer, poet, photograher and film maker)

The film is a 48 minute documentary called Jo’burg Rising, and follows three men,a beggar, a vendor and a car guard, as they try to earn a living off of the streets of our beloved Jozi

and because, of my little bit of participation with the making of the film especially exploring the streets of Bree and Jeppe looking for shots, asking for permission to film people and places and watching the clips from the first days shooting before I left.

Some props from Rista of Cool Breeze

The one poem I learnt in high school that continues to echo in my mind is ‘building the nation’ by henry barlow.

It resonated anew at a private viewing of the documentary “Jo’burg Rising” which premieres tomorrow (Friday) at NuMetro in Hyde Park.

Yep, we’re all building the nation, one dream at a time. And props to Sokari who contributed along the arduous path of the documentary conceptualization.

I am only sad that I wasnt able to be there through the whole process and especially for missing the film’s opening.

Wally Serote’s poem “City Johannesburg” on the beauty, vibrancy and horror as he passes through the city that is his but not his, pass in hand.

This way I salute you:
My hand pulses to my back trousers pocket
Or into my inner jacket pocket
For my pass, my life,
Jo’burg City.
My hand like a starved snake rears my pockets
For my thin, ever lean wallet,
While my stomach groans a friendly smile to hunger,
Jo’burg City.
My stomach also devours coppers and papers
Don’t you know?
Jo’burg City, I salute you;
When I run out, or roar in a bus to you,
I leave behind me, my love,
My comic houses and people, my dongas and my ever whirling dust,
My death
That’s so related to me as a wink to the eye.
Jo’burg City
I travel on your black and white and roboted roads
Through your thick iron breath that you inhale
At six in the morning and exhale from five noon.
Jo’burg City
That is the time when I come to you,
When your neon flowers flaunt from your electrical wind,
That is the time when I leave you,
When your neon flowers flaunt their way through the falling darkness
On your cement trees.
And as I go back, to my love,
My dongas, my dust, my people, my death,
Where death lurks in the dark like a blade in the flesh,
I can feel your roots, anchoring your might, my feebleness
In my flesh, in my mind, in my blood, And everything about you says it,
That, that is all you need of me.
Jo’burg City, Johannesburg,
Listen when I tell you,
There is no fun, nothing, in it,
When you leave the women and men with such frozen expressions,
Expressions that have tears like furrows of soil erosion,
Jo’burg City, you are dry like death,
Jo’burg City, Johannesburg, Jo’burg City.

Tags:
Lindiwe Nkutha
Joburg Rising
African Film
Johannesburg + South Africa

Complication City by Ibou Ndoye - Art Works