A House in Zambia

This is a new book (published 2010) but the approach of looking at the history of a space/ place has resonance

House in Zambia: Recollections of the ANC and Oxfam at 250 Zambezi Road, Lusaka, 1967-97’, edited by Robin Palmer: a reflection on ‘Southern Africa’s twin struggles for political freedom and economic development’ through the window of an ordinary house with extraordinary occupants.

Review: http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/65593

This book is something rather unusual, the biography of a house. Not some aristocratic family’s great residence. An ordinary house, a modern house, but worth ‘listening to’ because of the remarkable people who lived and worked in it. 250 Zambezi Road was for over twenty years witness to the longest and most daunting of Africa’s liberation struggles – the African National Congress’s (ANC) century-long fight to bring democracy and non-racialism to South Africa. For much of that time, and afterwards, 250 was also in effect Oxfam’s operational base in Zambia, as this most famous of Britain’s development charities played its part in Africa’s other historical battle: to win a decent standard of living for the poor.


This is not an ‘academic’ book, although historian Hugh Macmillan’s ‘Story of a House’ is a fascinating account of a little known corner of South Africa’s liberation story. Most of the book is written by a diverse group of Oxfam workers, many Zambians as well as Britons, who assemble their recollections of how they worked together. The reader only gets glimpses of the difficulties the ANC faced in exile, and learns too little of Oxfam’s unfolding perspectives and strategies in its development work. But beyond the occasional and probably well justified sense of nostalgia, there is a lot to be learned, particularly about how Oxfam worked in this part of the world. Victor Pelekamoyo perhaps sums this up best: ‘As an outsider, I wondered why Oxfam laboured so much to make the partners feel that Oxfam existed because of them, and not the other way round’. Dr Robin Palmer, who pulled this book together, and his contributors are to be congratulated on a remarkable and original work, and for arranging its publication in Zambia and not distant Europe.

Been-to

"I did not know how easy the coming would be. I have been with you in dreams and night wishes, but often this was only when the world was not going well with me. Aches and fears and troubles brought my thoughts running to you.

I am confessing to you now. Be kind to me: a new child coming back to you. You knew me ready to die again and enter this world those here above think so real, this world which you know is only the passing flesh of everything that lasts, the soul of our people.

Coming home to you put fear into me at times. Do not laugh at me. I did not see you clearly, and I had been so long in this other world that I had no idea but fear. I am here against the last of my veils. Take me. I am ready. You are the end. The beginning. You have have no end. I am coming."

Ayi Kwei Armah
Fragments, 1969

The flow of artists between Africa and the West is seen as one way: outa here! In recent years however we've sen a handful of artists returning, choosing to work on the continent. Riffing off Brice Wassy's observation that "something got lost" and the need to rediscover it from Africa, a look at Wanlov The Kubolor, Faustin Linyekula and well, more, more.. future etc.

*In Fragments (1971), the protagonist, Baako, is a "been-to", a man who has been to the United States and received his education there.

Many Haitians want exiled Aristide back

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti's president has lowered rice prices and the Senate has sacked the prime minister. But hungry Haitians who rioted over food prices still want more.

"Aristide or death! Aristide or death!" young men in sunglasses and low-slung ballcaps chant outside parliament. That's right, Jean-Bertrand Aristide — the slum priest-turned-president who needed a U.S. intervention to restore him to power in 1994, and who accuses Washington of kidnapping him into exile a decade later as the country descended into political chaos.

The clamor for Aristide's return was deafening during last week's unrest over skyrocketing food prices that left at least seven people dead, hundreds injured and Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis out of a job. Some protesters vowed to press on until they unseat President Rene Preval, a former Aristide ally.
Experts say it is unlikely that Aristide engineered the protests from exile in South Africa. But people living in Port-au-Prince slums say workers for a prominent Aristide loyalist went door-to-door drumming up support for the peaceful protests, some of which spiraled into violence as criminal gangs seized the opportunity to loot stores.

Either way, Aristide's return has become a key demand on the streets after entire slums rallied for the former president and protesters carried tree branches they said signified their support for his Famni Lavalas party. "If there were an election in Haiti, Aristide would win," said Mario Jeanty, a Haitian who lives in New York. "There's no one who can beat him."

Aristide Interview

Against backdrop of growing calls for Aristide’s return in Haiti we talk to him in SA
CIA in Haiti
kidnapping
exile
Unisa studies
Vision for the country