Michelle Mandela

1n 1998, on his 80th birthday, Nelson Mandela married former first lady of Mozambique, Graca Machel.

10 years later, we look at how Mozambicans view Graca today (2008). There are gender issues at play: from a patriarchal standpoint - where the widow of the hero is supposed to keep the memory of the nation - how do they feel? What is the feminist view? What is the history of crossborder matrimonial exchange between South Africa and Mozambique (i.e. rumours of Samora and Miriam Makeba)...What irreverent Mozambican writer or gender activist is bold enough to write such a story?

Winston Mankunku Ngozi

May 2008

Winston Mankunku Ngozi, one of South Africa's living jazz legends, is to produce his first DVD. The tenor sax and jazz composer will record live at Cape Town's Artscape Opera House at 8pm on 2 and 3 May.
It will be an orchestrated concert including the Darryl Andrews Big Band, Andile Yenana, Marcus Wyatt, Mike Perry, 12 backing vocals and many more musicians.

40 years after his famous recording of Yakhal' Inkomo in 1968, someone can write a concert review, imagined backstage interview, etc.

Generations & the construction of identity

Generation, South Africa's longest running and most popular soap (is it viewed by many more than 4.9 million people daily) tracks the vicissitudes of black business people in the advertising and marketing fields. Themes of co-option into white capital, loss of concern for roots, gender discrimination, homophobia in the light of cultural expectations and so on drive a fairly standard family saga. It confronts the problems which arise from the post-1994 changes in social milieu, especially among the younger generation.
We re-watch Generations, from the first episode that aired on SABC 1 in 1994 to the present, exploring the character development, the fashions, the lifestyles and the underpinning ideology, to understand and interrogate its role in sustaining social-political life and relations, and in constituting the social-political self in post apartheid South Africa.

Generations website (get blow by blow summaries of each episodes)

There have been a view academic studies in this regard

Mediating the Neoliberal Nation: Television in Post-Apartheid South Africa by Sarah Ives
An analysis of South African television’s political economy as a “public theaters of late capitalism” that is tied up with notions of national belonging.

"Soap operas like Generations, South Africa’s most popular television show, depict a ‘modern,’ urban, world of Black upper-middle class business elites. The show, with its emphasis on the emerging Black middle- and upper-classes presumably made possible by the new elections, encapsulates the hope of the post-apartheid era. Generations’ website makes frequent references to the links between the show and the post-apartheid era. Generations, the website proclaims, “can proudly claim to have not only survived political and social changes during this exciting period, but also to have evolved in tandem with our nation from the birth of its democracy in 1994 to the present time.... Equality, in this discourse, is measured by being able to succeed in the ‘masculine,’ ‘Western’ business world. In Generations these goals remain unquestioned.”

Making meaning, making a home: students watching Generations by CATHERINE MARY O'SHEA JUNE 2004

And Watching Soap Opera by Miki Flockemannn in Senses of Culture : South African Culture Studies by Sarah Nuttall, Cheryl Ann Michael (Oxford University Press, 2000)

Image Bank: Cape Times Burning Man Cover (May 19, 2008)

Writer: Ashwin Desai

Author of The Race to Transform: Sport in Post-Apartheid South Africa

"Post-apartheid South Africa put great stock in the potential of sport to break down racial barriers and build a united nation. The 1995 Rugby World Cup victory, and Nelson Mandela’s now-famous appearance in a Springbok jersey, seemed perfect catalysts for the dream of a “rainbow nation”.

In The Race to Transform, editor Ashwin Desai and eight other authors examine elements of change in a number of sports arenas including swimming, athletics, rugby, soccer and cricket.

With kick-off to the FIFA 2010 Football World Cup mere weeks away, this timely book takes stock of sport in South Africa, and provides a pioneering exploration of how sport reflects matters such as enduring inequality, racial transformation and the making (or otherwise) of a common South African destiny. Divided into chapters delving into a diverse set of sporting codes, the book enlivens and transcends the technical debates and contestations around transformation that have become such a prominent part of sports discourse. The book places an emphasis on how South Africa’s transition has impacted on township sport. Moreover, it provides a view on the relationship between elite and grassroots sport in the context of growing economic disparities.

The Royal Bafokeng Nation

- independent, self-sufficient community
- How do they manage their money?
- Economic model
- Can it be replicated?

History

Diamond mining in South Africa started in the 1860s. Thousands of fortune seekers from around the world flocked to Cape Town, the capital of the British-governed Cape colony, before undertaking the 1,500 km trek north of the arid western and Northern Cape to the mining town of Kimberley.

At the same time Afrikaner farmers (Boers), who wanted to escape British rule, started to settle in Rustenburg valley. They ignored the traditional rights of ownership enjoyed by the Bafokeng and started to survey and register farms. Kgosi Mokgatle, great, great, great, great grand father of the current king, realized that ownership of traditional Bafokeng land was likely to be seized. In a remarkable act of foresight and collective sacrifice, he ordered units of young RBN men to walk to Kimberly to work and earn money that was accumulated in a central community fund. As funds were generated, Kgosi sought out the help of Lutheran missionaries to front the Bafokeng and buy up farms in the area. Some 900 hectares, or two thirds of the land currently owned by the Bafokeng, was acquired in this way over a twenty year period. Today, the Bafokeng continue to acquire land in the area.

In the 1920s, geologist Hans Merensky discovered in the Rustenburg valley the surface outcrop of arguably the world's greatest ore body, a geological wonder known as the Bushveld Igneous Complex. In particular, substantial reserves of Platinum Group Metals (PGMSs) such as platinum, ferrochrome, rhodium and palladium were discovered on land owned by RBN. And thus began the pursuit of platinum.

Over the next 70 years, various attempts were made by the governments of the day, aided and assisted by the major mining companies, to dispossess RBN of their land rights. All were ultimately unsuccessful and the mining companies thereafter agreed to pay royalties to the RBN in exchange for the right to mine on RBN land.

For many years, RBN leadership was in conflict with the national and regional governments. The authorities retaliated by neglecting the development of the region. RBN therefore spends practically all of the royalty income it receives on infrastructure. During the past two decades, over R2 billion of communal wealth has been invested in regional infrastructure such as roads, and bridges, water reticulation and reservoirs, electricity supply extensions, schools, clinics, civic buildings and sports facilities.

Today, the Bafokeng Nation numbers roughly 300 000 people. About 160 000 live in an area some 150 km North West of Johannesburg, South Africa, with the balance scattered primarily throughout South Africa. The Royal Bafokeng Nation (RBN) has retained its unique cultural identity and traditional leadership structures and is led by a hereditary Kgosi (king), currently Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi.

Economy

The Royal Bafokeng Nation comprises a number of entities, each of which has a crucial role to play in reaching the Nation’s goal of a sustainable and self-sufficient community, where people have the skills and the support to reach their highest potential:

* Royal Bafokeng Holdings (RBH), an investment entity in Johannesburg, which is responsible for overseeing the growth and maintenance of the community’s income streams.

* Royal Bafokeng Sports, is an entity within the Royal Bafokeng Holdings and it is in charge of the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace, an official venue for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

* Royal Bafokeng Administration (RBA) is principally a town planning unit charged with service delivery and monitoring the progress of the Master Plan across all the regions. It looks after the various wards (kgotla) within the Nation to ensure that infrastructure and services are in line with the long-term vision.

* Royal Bafokeng Institute (RBI) is aimed at uplifting the quality of education and learning in the Royal Bafokeng Nation.

Vision 2020

Even before his enthronement as King of the Royal Bafokeng Nation, Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi set in motion the vital next phase in the development of his people. His brother, Kgosi Mollwane Lebone Boikanyo Molotlegi, paved the way for the initiative by proclaiming Vision 2020. This boldly challenges the Bafokeng people to reduce their dependency on their diminishing mineral assets and to become a self-sufficient community within the first 20 years of this century. Kgosi Leruo's challenge is to devise a workable plan to realize Vision 2020.

Thus, the time has come for the Royal Bafokeng Nation, like the oil-rich Middle East, to reduce its dependency on natural resources and develop new sources of wealth. The Bafokeng, Kgosi Leruo has concluded, must diversify by securing interests in other sectors of the economy and develop a more balanced portfolio, as it were.

The main areas of emphasis of Vision 2020 fall into the following areas:

* Investment diversification
* Economic Development
* Education Planning
* Infrastructure Development/Master Plan
* Health and Social Planning
* Crime Free Environment

source

Don’t Shoot

Riaan Cruywagen has been reading the news on television since it arrived in South Africa in 1976. He prides himself in the nickname “The face of news in South Africa” and his record of the longest serving Afrikaans news reader in the world. The film explores South Africa’s transformation through the eyes of an Afrikaans television reporter.

short film, released ’07, festivals ‘08

Stimela: The Search for the Missing Chord

A riveting look at one of South Africa's most important bands that went beyond the boundaries of the ordinary to urge those who listened to reach deep into themselves to reflect on their identity as well as to manifest their own destiny. Tracing the story from genesis to dazzling success, break up and make up, Stimela includes incisive interviews with band members as well as key roleplayers, archival material and music videos.

Screened 2008

Lost Prophets

Young South African filmmaker Dylan Valley presents the real scoop about legendary and influential hip-hop group Prophets of the City. Featuring a Molotov-cocktail of a soundtrack, and interviews with members Ready D, Jazmo, Ramone, Gogga and Ishmael, we are immersed in the life and times of a group whose discography could be read as a primer to the difficult art of making conscious music while not rendering the listener unconscious.

Theatre of Reconciliation

‘The dominant theme in South African theatre over the last ten years seems to be the legacy of the TRC, which uncovered more in the way of truth than it accomplished in reconciliation. Yael Farber’s MoLoRa, Lara Foot Newton’s Reach, Sindiwe Magona’s Mother to Mother, REwind: A Cantata by composer Philip Miller, and Truth in Translation by director Michael Lessac, all explored forgiveness.’

2008 also marks the ten year anniversary of the publication of the play Ubu and the Truth Commission.

[has their been a similar trend in the Rwandan theatre, or other areas faced with reconciliation?]



source

Akekho Ugogo (Grandma's Not Home)

Directed by Tiny Mungwe
Released 2008

The film traces the clubbing and kwaito scene in Durban and shows that for many upwardly mobile young people in Durban , clubbing offers the only and simplest form of escapism; clubbing almost becomes a religion, a place where people can articulate their individuality. Out of this scene has emerged a music subgenre called Durban Kwaito Music. Filled with controversial lyrics, this music is taking over the country and creating a prominent entertainment industry in Durban.

The City That Kills Somalians

Set in Cape Town, a city where socio-economic division exists largely on racial lines, The City That Kills Somalians documents the stressed lives of the city’s impoverished people. What starts out as an observational film, builds into a story that draws the viewer into the uncomfortable racial tensions of the city. Through intimate footage, this hard hitting film sensitively unpeels the tough layers of Cape Town, giving voice to the unspoken silence of a people in need to talk to each other.

Directed by: Riaan Hendricks

2007 (Screened at DIFF 2008)

Zimbabwe (film)

every day, 1000 people illegally cross the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa. Zimbabwe, the central character in the film whose patriotic name was bestowed upon her by her father in honour of the independence of the country, decides to jump the border and emigrate illegally to South Africa. The film chronicles her life as an undocumented domestic and the cyclical process of poverty, emigration, and violence.

Released 2008

Jerusalema and Depictions of African Cities in Film

Excerpt from Don Mattera’s NFVF review:

“In Jerusalema, the Hollywood spectre almost consumes the narrative of South Africa’s urban cities... The ’foreign’ characters receive fleeting stereotypical treatment – just like some photographs on a wall; no origins, no history; no soul; just money, drugs, women bloodshed and death.”

http://www.nfvf.co.za/content/jerusalema-south-africas-new-oscar-hope-review

Triomf wins Best South African Feature Film at DIFF

Directed by Michael Raeburn

…”by immersing itself into the often sordid world where poverty, and the educational gaps that attend it, meet an arrogant sense of entitlement, Triomf exposes a series of universal truths. The dirty secrets of capitalism, of racism, of manipulative politics, of the human heart are mirrored in the secrets of one family, whose disintegration reminds us that a nation's history is written by individuals”

Executive Outcomes: The Blackwater Prototype

Executive outcomes is the model on which all Private military companies (PMCs) operating in Iraq and Afghanistan are based. The mercenary firm formerly based in Pretoria, South Africa, and manned mostly by former members of the South African Defense Force, has proven to be a decisive factor in the outcome of several civil wars in Africa. Involved in forcing rebels to the negotiating table in Sierra Leone and more well-known for contributing to the Angolan government's success in forcing UNITA to accept the Lusaka Protocol in 1994, Executive Outcomes reportedly has a web of influence in Uganda, Botswana, Zambia, Ethiopia, Namibia, Lesotho and South Africa.

Even though the firm's expertise lies in fighting bush wars, it has diversified and reportedly operates 32 companies, whose interests range from computer software to adult education. The firm's tactic of quickly regaining control of a client country's mineral-rich regions is well-documented. Within a month of Sierra Leone's hiring of Executive Outcomes in May 1995, government forces had regained control of the diamond-rich Kono district, which produces two-thirds of Sierra Leone's diamonds. In Angola, oil- and diamond-producing regions were the first areas secured by government forces trained by Executive Outcomes. The firm also reportedly mines gold in Uganda, drills boreholes in Ethiopia and has a variety of interests in the other countries noted above.
Executive Outcomes claims that its sole purpose is to bring stability to the region by supporting legitimate governments in their defense against armed rebels. Nevertheless, rumors persist that the firm is connected to either the South African DeBeers Diamond Corporation or the South African government. These claims are denied by all parties, and the South African government has tried to restrict Executive Outcomes' business ventures.

The intermixing of paramilitary and commercial ventures makes it difficult to determine the number of mercenaries involved in various countries. Most reports indicate there were between 150 and 200 in Sierra Leone, while reports from Angola vary, indicating between 500 and 4,000 members in that country. At any rate, Executive Outcomes has proven to be a sound investment for the governments of Angola and Sierra Leone. Those successes may help to persuade other countries in the region to employ the firm's services. Increased involvement in regional security problems and an expanded portfolio of affiliated businesses suggest that Executive Outcomes will play a periodically visible role in sub-Saharan African affairs.

[source: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/executive_outcomes.htm
last updated 4/27/2005]

Executive Outcomes was dissolved on 31 December 1998.

Many of the company’s members went on to seek employment with other PMCs and PSCs such as Lifeguard, Sandline and Saracen. Despite numerous allegations in the media, these companies were never proven to be a reconstituted Executive Outcomes.

Browsing the Browse Mole Report

The leaking of the Special Browse “Mole” report arguably did more than any other event to tilt the balance of forces between the Scorpions and their foes in the Jacob Zuma camp.

Browsing the browse mole report
“browse” - research tactics used by security organisations
“mole” - influenced by fiction / spy story

relationship between fiction spy stories - Ronnie Kasrils: John le Carré
Spies for hire and information peddlers

Xenophobia : social movement organisations

Investigation into how three social movement organisations responded to the xenophobia violence that broke out in South Africa in May 2008, reveals that participation in such organisations by ordinary working class people makes them to be less xenophobic and even likely to help the victims of xenophobia, rather than join in the attacks. Members of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee and the Anti-Privatisation Forum were positioned by their organisations prior to the xenophobia attacks to respond in a progressive way to these attacks. These two organisations were also central in the formation of the Coalition Against Xenophobia that publicly united different civil society organisations against xenophobia.
Political understanding provides the ideological framework within which individuals evaluate the world and respond to its challenges. Revolutionary Pan-Africanism or democratic socialism, tends to provide individual social actors with an ideological foundation for opposing attacks against African immigrants in a country like South Africa. Alternatively, an undeveloped political understanding or consciousness opens a person to being swayed by the self-serving and circular arguments of the xenophobes.

Grand Inga Project: Another White Elephant for Black Africa

The Inga Dams are a series of hydroelectric dams located on the Congo River in Inga of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, approximately 225 km (140 mi) southwest of Kinshasa. The current two existing dams, Inga I and Inga II, are rated at 351 MW and 1,424 MW respectively. While the other two under development, Inga III and Grand Inga, are planned to rate at 4,500 MW and 39,000 MW respectively in installed capacity.

The current two hydroelectric dams, Inga I and Inga II, operate at low output due to lack of maintenance. The existing dams are famous white elephants of the former President Mobutu Sese Seko. They also served a political purpose, by allowing Kinshasa to control the energy supply of the sometimes rebellious Shaba province. The Inga Dams are part of the Inga-Shaba project. The largest dam project in the world being planned for Africa in a hydro-electric configuration “I find it interesting that for a project that would affect so many African countries, as it also involves 7 African countries with the intention of distributing electricity from DR Congo to Egypt in the North, Nigeria in the West and South Africa down South is coordinated by the World Energy Council in London.”

May 30th, 2008: 41st anniversary of the creation of Biafra

An opportunity to relook Biafra. Read Xenophobia etc via Biafra.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?