Biko Lives by Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander and Niger Gibson is launched at Xarra Books in Johannesburg on Saturday @ 3pm. With you in spirit!

ABOUT THE BOOK:

This collection looks at the on-going significance of Black Consciousness, situating it in a global frame, examining the legacy of Steve Biko, the current state of post-apartheid South African politics, and the culture and history of the anti-apartheid movements.

Steven Biko ranks amongst the most important top three anti-apartheid movements key thinkers and revolutionaries - Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe. Biko Lives! does three unique things, firstly, for the first time the very important 1972 interview with Steve Biko is published here. Secondly, for the first time Biko is being treated formally by other philosophers, in a non academic and accessible way and thirdly, the book up dates the ideas of Biko through a critical appraisal.

Biko Lives! Is the most important book on Biko since 1994 and is critically important to contemporary South Africa still struggling with racism and xenophobia amongst others social pathologies.

Racism in the Academy German style from Grada Kilomba. Those in the US and UK will recognise Ms Kilobma’s experience…

Academia is not a neutral location. This is a white space where Black people have been denied the privilege to speak. Historically, this is a space where we have been voiceless, a space we could not enter. Here, white scholars have developed theoretical discourses which formally constructed us as the inferior Other - placing Africans in absolute subordination to the white subject. We were made the objects, but we have rarely been the subjects. This position of object, which we commonly occupy, does not indicate a lack of resistance or of interest, as it is commonly believed, but rather a lack of access to representation by Blacks themselves. It is not that we have not been speaking; but rather that our voices - through a system of racism - have been systematically disqualified as valid knowledge; or else represented by whites, who ironically become the ’experts’ of ourselves. Either way, we are locked in a violent colonial hierarchy.

Download a copy of the End of the Rainbow: Increasing the sustainability of LGBT organizations through social enterprise”

The Last Plantation - Black police officers recount the systematic targeting of Cynthia McKinney by white U.S. Capitol Police Officers

An interesting piece on White Privilege from Rethabile’s blog

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

Tags:
LGBTI
Racism
Steve Biko

NONE ON RECORD AND HOMOFACTUS PRESS ARE BOTH SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FROM THE LGBTI COMMUNITY FOR TWO NEW BOOKS:

None on Record: Stories of Queer Africa Edited by: Notisha Massaquoi & Selly Thiam

WE are collecting stories of Africans from the continent and within the diasporic communities that identify as queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (QLGBT).

It is the goal of None on Record to link the struggles, triumphs, joy and pain of QLGBT Africans everywhere. We aim to add to the exponential growth of histories and stories being told by queer Africans all over the world.

We invite QLGBT Africans to submit original, unpublished essays, poems, short stories, plays, creative non-fiction, and visual art. We’re looking for work that explores the lives of QLGBT Africans and how your experiences have shaped you emotionally, politically, socially, and culturally. We are interested in the ideas and language that make you African and QLGBT.

We accept work from QLGBT Africans from the continent and those who have immigrated to other parts of the world. We also accept submissions from first generation QLGBT Africans born outside the African Continent. If you self-identify as a QLGBT African but do not fit the criteria written above and would like to submit work for consideration, please write to us.

The deadline is March 31, 2008. For more information please write: NORsubmission at gmail dot com

Homofactus Press is also seeking submissions for and anthology, which uniquely seeks to tell the tales of former queer youth and current queer youth who were forced to leave home because of their sexuality and/or gender identity.

This anthology will tell our collective stories of survival, weaving together descriptions of abuse, and homelessness with poignant accounts of the ways in which queer community centers offered sanctuary, and the power and importance of creating our own chosen families in the face of losing everything we have ever known. Kicked Out offers advice and wisdom to the queer youth of today from those who have been in their shoes. Additionally, it provides the opportunity for readers to get a glimpse into the world of those queer youth who as a result of circumstance have to leave home, while simultaneously shattering the stereotypes of who queer youth are, and what they have the potential to become.

For more information on Kicked Out please visit their website Homofactus Press

Tags:

None on Record
LGBTI
Africa
Homofactus Press

I have been invited to Haiti by “Haiti Solidarity” so am off there shortly. I will be staying and meeting with women activists from the Lavalas movement. I have a pretty good knowledge of Haitian history and contemporary politics but there is always more to learn and I needed to focus on details. So for the past month I have immersed myself in all things Haitian from talking with people - (all of a sudden I keep meeting Haitians!), reading books and news archives, listening to interviews and listening to Haitian music. The music has been a real revelation – listening to the drum rhythms is like I am listening to some deep Yoruba drumming and you begin to realise that the majority of Haitian people are still very connected to Africa.

Getting to grips with the complexities and intrigues of Haitian politics is no easy task. I believe the only way you can begin to grasp what has happened in Haiti over the past 10 years, and why, is by going back to the beginning and following the country’s history through to the present. Otherwise you are left frustrated and with too many unanswered questions.

I started with a re-reading of C.L.R. James account of the Haitian revolution, “The Black Jacobins” and ended with “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President” by Randall Robinson.

In the early hours of February 29th 2004, democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his wife Mildred were forced to leave their home under escort of US military and summarily marched onto an unmarked plane whose destination they did not know and were not told.

An Unbroken Agony presents a detailed day by day and hour by hour account of the immediate events leading to the kidnapping and removal of President Aristide. Noted activist and one of the few truly progressive African American voices, Randall Robinson, sets down the facts of the Coup D’Etat, side by side with his own commentary. He provides the evidence that the US was actively involved while France was directly complicit in the Coup that ousted Aristide and saw him flown, along with his with wife to the Central African Republic. Once there, they were literally dumped off the plane and for all intense and purposes held prisoner.
[Read more…]

I discovered a treasure of a bookshop yesterday in NW DC called Busboys and Poets - probably the best collection of progressive books I have come across in one single place. With the added bonus of coffee, couch, apple macs, poetry nights and trendy food, Busboys looked like one of the “hottest” places to hang out for DC’s coolist people. After only 30 minutes I already had a collection of a dozen books to buy but had to reduce this down to three for starters - Insurgency Online - a study of web activism using case studies from the Irish Republican Socialist Movement (IRSM) , the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA Peru); Ngugi wa Thiong’o Speaks: Interviews with the Kenyan Writer” and The Aftermath of Slavery: Transisitions and Transformations in Southeaster Nigeria”. My father should have written this one as a quick glance through it reiterates many of the stories he has told me over the years on the nature and form of slavery in what is today the Niger Delta and the immediate hinterland - Igobland, and the impact of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade on those communities and how they adapted to changes.

On my way out I picked up a leaflet about an organised trip and conference to Goree Island with an excursion to Juffre the Gambian ancestral home of Alex Haley. Reading the leaflet and the website reminded me of an article I read a while back by Saidiya Hartman called “Time of Slavery” in which she discusses the commodification of Elmina Castle and collective slave memories from the Diaspora. The plaque on the entrance to the castle reads

“In everlasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity. We the living vow to uphold this.”

I was taken to Elmina Castle as a child but I cannot remember going in - I don’t think we did. When I was older, I remember my first visit to Badagry near the Nigerian / Benin border where there is a small slave museum. The crazy thing was, I went there not to see the slave museum but to attend a birthday party someone had organised at a restaurant near the town. Somehow looking back it seems almost sacrilegious to have a birthday party next door to a slave museum. Also in Badagry is the first Anglican Mission house - slavery ended and the missionaries moved in to wrought more havoc on people’s lives.

In a search for Elmina castle on google, the first site is the Ontario Black History Society which describes the castle as “a tourist attraction”.

Today, Elmina Castle is a tourist attraction and World Heritage Monument in Cape Coast, Ghana. This hasn’t always been the case. Looking at the castle from the outside, nothing can ever prepare the unsuspecting visitor or tourist emotionally to hear about the tales of horror and atrocities that went on beyond those walls.

If one defines a “tourist attraction” as a place people go to visit as part of a recreational activity then how sad and inappropriate is it to describe Elmina as a “tourist attraction”. Looking up tourism on a Wiki page I discovered that under “niche” tourism you have specific types such as “dark tourism - includes travel to sites associated with death and suffering” which seems very appropriate for Elmina Castle and Goree Island. Note the term “dark” as usual used to describe something awful like slavery which in the case of these two “tourist attractions” was the slavery of Black people. At this point I am not sure where I am heading with this post so I am going to stop. If you are really interested in knowing what other forms of “niche” tourism exist then check the wiki

Tags: Slavery; Nigeria; Slavery; Elmina Castle

A new online quarterly journal on African Writing with interviews, news, reviews, poetry, fiction, art and culture. Just what we have been waiting for!

Tags: Africa; Literature;