Black Looks

Western Sahara human rights activist Aminatou Haidar ended her 32 day hunger strike after Morocco finally allowed her to return to the capital Laayoune. Aminatou returned to Western Sahara after a trip abroad and insisted on maintaining her nationality as Western Saharan and not Moroccan. The Western Sahara has been under occupation by Morocco for some 26 years is recognised by the AU, UN and Arab League – everyone except Morocco. There are thousands of Saharawi’s living in refugee camps in southern Algeria – one of the hottest and most inhabitable areas of the Sahara..

Morocco annexed and occupied Western Sahara after the colonial rulers Spain pulled out of the oil rich territory in 1975 despite a ruling by the World Court in favor of autonomy for the territory. The Polisario Front is the political movement for the independence of Western Sahara and the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) is the government in exile and is a member of the African Union, recognised by 75 countries and the UN. Following a 16 year war between Polisario Front and Morocco a ceasefire agreement was signed in 1991. To date nothing has been resolved for the 300,000 Saharawis living in occupied territory and a further 150,000 plus living in the refugee camps of southern Algeria in Tindouf for the past 30 years. The camps are organised democratically into 4 Wilaya (districts) each named after a town in Western Sahara – Laayoune, Smara, Dahla and Aousserd. Each district is then divided into a daira (village) and then hays (neighbourhoods). Representatives are elected from each village and district and women are represented at all levels. Saharawi women like Aminatou Haidarhave been at the forefront of the organisation and management of the camps taking responsibility for health, education and sanitation. Women continue today to be at the center of life in the camps.

The 8th edition of the Bamako Encounters – African Photography Biennial is a month long celebration of African photography. This year, inspired by the theme “Borders”, 10 Nigerians made the journey from Lagos to Bamako by road in a Volkswagen mini bus driving through 6 West African countries: Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Burkina Fasso and Mali.

Via Osize @Twitter

The most essential aspect of the project is not the final destination, but the journey; therefore the participating photographers will produce works in form of photography and video while on the go which will be exhibited during the main events of the Festival in Bamako.

It was also fantastic to see my friend Zanele Muholi win the Casa Africa Prize – the only female to win one of the eight prizes of the festival.

Also check out Lucy Azubuike and George Osodi – has an exhibition coming up in Lagos at the end of this month [Nigeria] and Creative Arts for full list of artists

I was at an arts festival in Gratz Austria over the past weekend. The part of the event I attended was called “Real Energy World” and the theme was the Niger Delta. The whole of the first day passed without a single mention of women. Thank god for the final event of the day, Sandy Cioffi’s film Sweet Crude otherwise we would have all left imagining women did not exist in the Niger Delta. The invisibility of women then became the center of discussion. Fortunately the next day, I and photographer George Osodi had a great deal to say about the strength of the women in the Niger Delta – not activists, not professionals but everyday ordinary extraordinary women. In this video Nigerian writer Chris Abani talks about humanity – those big and small gestures of love often from strangers which tell us we are human. But as he says –

despite the horror despite the death women are never really counted, their humanity never seems to matter very much to us –

I had the honor of joining radical women of color (many of who are your favorite bloggers, BrownFemiPower, Black Amazon, Little Light, Mamita Mala, Sudy, Nadia, and sooo many more) in putting together an amazing album that chronicles experiences around struggle, love, motherhood, redemption, healing and community. You can cop the CD in January, along with a zine and listening party curriculum, so be prepared! More details to come soon but stay on this— there are only 200 copies currently available. This is an effort towards sustainability and self-funding and all proceeds from this album will go to supporting mamis wanting to attend the Allied Media Conference next summer. Album will be offered on a sliding scale.

Via Flip Flopping Joy

Radical Women of Color

2,200 women from across the world gathered together in Cape Town last month for the AWID conference [Association for Women's Rights in Development]

South African feminists attending AWID strategised for several hours, facilitated by Pregs Govender, and resolved to build a stronger women’s rights movement in South Africa by reaching out to other feminists and womens rights activists and holding a SA feminist forum or a women’s convention to further strategise. All Photos by Zanele Muholi

More AWID photos here by Zanele

Links: Zanele Muholi @ Michael Stevenson Gallery

Tags:
South Africa + Women
AWID
Zanele Muholi

Miriam Makeba, the world-renowned South African singer, has died at the age of 76 after being taken ill near the southern Italian town of Caserta.

Makeba died on Monday after taking part in a concert for Roberto Saviano, a writer threatened with death by the mafia, an Italian news agency said.

“I’m not yet absolutely certain of the causes of her passing, but she has had arthritis, severe arthritis, for some time,” her publicist told an Italian radio station.

Makeba was best known to her fans as ‘Mama Africa’ as she became the distinguished voice of Africa and a symbol of the fight against apartheid in her home country.
[continue...]

Everyone called her Mama Afrika. Her voice was like a bird singing in a cage. Many of us grew up listening to her proud music. She was a steady fighter against racism and discrimination in her native South Africa. I will miss Miriam Makeba, as will a lot of other people in the world. Words escape me.

I was not here in the 70s so no, I don’t remember Olive Morris but do remember the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) in the early 80s which she was a founder member. Morris was part of the Brixton Black Panther Party and early post -WWII Black struggle in Britain.

Olive Morris was a key figure in Lambeth’s local history. She worked with the Black Panther movement; set up Brixton Black Women’s Group, was a founder member of The Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and was central to the squatter campaigns of the 1970s. She died tragically young in 1979 at age 27.

The aim of this weblog is to create a collective portrait of Olive Morris, bringing together the personal memories of those who knew her, and publishing online information and materials relating to her life and work. Lambeth Council has one of its main buildings named after her and yet there is very little information about Olive Morris that is publicly available, especially on the Internet.

By the mid 80s police racial harassment along with the “sus – stop and search” laws contributed to the Brixton riots of 1981 and 1985; the Handsworth riots of 81 and 85 and Broadwater Farm riot in 1985. .

Tags:

Black Britain
Brixton Black Panthers
Brixton Riots

Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father, who died when she was six, was a Xhosa. Her professional career began in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers, before she formed her own group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of South Africa.

In 1959, she performed in the musical King Kong alongside Hugh Masekela, her future husband. Though she was a successful recording artist, she was only receiving a few dollars for each recording session and no provisional royalties, and was keen to go to the US. Her break came when she starred in the anti-Apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa in 1959. When the Italian government invited her to the premier of the film at the Venice Film Festival, she decided not to return home. Her South African passport was revoked shortly afterwards.

Makeba then travelled to London where she met Harry Belafonte, who assisted her in gaining entry to and fame in the United States. She released many of her most famous hits there including Pata Pata, The Click Song (Qongqothwane in Xhosa), and Malaika. In 1966, Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba. The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under Apartheid
[more...].

What I personally remember of Miriam is the voice, and the way she was beloved. My folks listened to her at the same time as they listened to Jim Reeves (go figure), and the two form the basis of my pre-teen musical heritage, together with my mother singing around her chores, around her cooking, singing Sesotho traditional songs or Miriam’s Xhosa songs: The Click Song, or Khawuleza. Beautiful woman. Happy birthday to her.

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Today in 1855, an enslaved 19 year old Black girl and mother named Celia was executed for murder after being found guilty by a jury of 12 white men. Melton McLaurin’s book Celia: A Slave is the story of her rape by her master and her trial for his murder. (Via Marian’s Blog)

The State of Missouri vs. Celia: A Slave officially began on June 25, 1855. Celia was charged with murdering her master and the father of her children; furthermore, she disposed of his body in her fireplace. In 1850, Robert Newsom, a widower, of Calloway County, Missouri, purchased Celia for the purpose of being his concubine. Newsom was 60 and Celia was 14. Five years and two children later, Celia wanted to end the relationship; of course, Newsom would not allow it. Therefore, Celia took matters into her own hands and struck Newsom over the head until he was dead. Despite the fact that she was pregnant again and ill, she dragged and shoved Newsom’s body into the fireplace in her cottage and destroyed the evidence of her crime. However, another slave with whom Celia was involved led the investigators to Celia’s door. Intense and lengthy interrogation followed, and Celia confessed to murdering Newsom. She was tried and sentenced to death by hanging. After exhausting the appeals process, she was executed in Calloway County, Missouri, at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, December 21, 1855. Celia was 19 years old. There are no records of where she was buried or what became of her children or other members of the Newsom family.

I just finished reading “I, Tituba” by Maryse Conde. Tituba was among the many women of Salem who were accused of witchcraft in 1692. The difference is that Tituba was a Black woman, a slave from the Caribbean who was like millions of other slave women, is lost to memory. Rescued by Maryse Conde from “historical silence”, Tituba comes back to life as the slave girl/woman who will not compromise. Though she spends much of her life chained and shackled, Tibuba remains persistent throughout in her refusal to be bound by the chains of mental slavery, racism and puritan ideals of sexuality.

Links:
A Citizen’s Reflections on Race, Violence and Power by Cynthia Boaz
Remembering Celia, 19 & enslaved: hanged Friday 21st, 1855

Tags:
Slavery
USA
Afrodescendant

A tribute to Sajida Khan, who fought against global capitalism at the continent’s largest rubbish dump – a fight that cost her life. Sajida was a key activist against carbon trading and died as a direct result of the toxins emitted from illegal medical waste in an incinerator and waste from a nearly paper mill and sugar factory on her doorstep. The landfill site will continue to emit toxins for the next 27 20 years.

Below is the Google Earth rendition showing the landfill and the surrounding houses in Durban including her family’s.

Sometimes when lives are judged by visual victories, we see failures, and after all, the dump remains right outside Sajida’s front door after her 14 year fight. But on the other hand, if a life is judged by a legacy that endures and is built upon, hers is one of multiple larger victories: of a woman standing against male domination of nationalist politics, of knowledge about global capitalist ecology over amnesia, of ordinary people harnessing the most incredible forms of expertise so as to enter forums usually dominated by people with multiple degrees, and of a political ecology that is a politics of all the people. Whatever you might say about her race and class privilege, the final denominator is that she’ll die fighting the cancer infection, and fighting the dump that gave her that cancer. This was not a death of privilege, it was murder Patrick Bond and Rehana Dada [Ashwin Desai]

The government had repeatedly broken it’s promise to close the dump and the practice continued unchecked in the post Apartheid period. In 1996 a landfill in Umhlanga, white suburb in the north of Durban, began closing down. And where did the waste previously destined for Umhlanga go? To Bisasar Road.

According to Carl Albrecht, research director at the Cancer Association of SA,

‘Clare Estate residents are like animals involved in a biological experiment.’

Sajida Khan documented 70% of Bisasar Road households with tumor cases, not to mention severe respiratory problems. Bisasar Road toxic dumps are replicated across the continent and no one knows how many poor people, many unaware of the dangers of the air they breathe, have died and continue to die from this practice.

Sources:
see CCS also for an interview with Sajida and more on her work as an eco-feminist activist.

“Trouble in the Air: Global Warming and the Privatised Atmosphere” A Civil Society Energy Reader edited by Patrick Bond and Rehana Dada.

Links: South Africa: Durban’s perfume rods, plastic covers and sweet-smelling toxic dump

Tags: Sajida Khan; Africa; Carbon Trading; Toxic Waste; Durban + South Africa