From the book I Am Because We Are: African Wisdom In Image and Proverb, by photojournalist Betty Press

Quick Question: If media articles on maternal health in Africa began with a photo like this, would donor funding dry up?

“At the heart of the country is Kampala. An urban planner’s nightmare, its fabled seven-hilled pulse spawns a sprawl of arterial slums pumping with people carving out a living. Its pot-holed roads are home to its three million inhabitants: a thrumming hive of informal trade where street vendors flog sunglasses, single cigarettes and Fong Kong clothing, and telecoms shanties scattered along the sidewalks sell sim cards under single neon light bulbs. There are no street lights. It’s left to the swarm of boda-boda motorcycles and matatu mini-bus taxis to light your way.”

Possibly one of the best descriptions of Kampala that I have ever read in this Red Bulletin preview; the bad, the ugly and the beautiful; the frenetic, the kinetic and the chaotic.

The article is on the amazing Breakdance Project Uganda. If you find yourself anywhere near a screening of the documentary Bouncing Cats, drop everything and go and see it, send me a thank you email later. It is fantastic. Featuring Crazy-Legs, K’naan and Mos Def, narrated by Common

As Anne says: “Our parents [and, in some cases, grandparents] were the pioneers of the global African, most having left their homes to pursue higher education. We are beneficiaries of their struggle to ensure our access to education and opportunity and, as such, I  feel as though we have the obligation to be bolder, more creative, more innovative in how we express ourselves and in how we represent the continent.  I will always consider myself an Afropolitan. It’s not a geographic construct, but a state of mind.”

Related articles

• “Is feminism really un-African?” by MsAfropolitan (afrospear.com)

All hail Muthoni The Drummer Queen

From her facebook page bio:

“In her previous lives, the girl currently known as Muthoni Ndonga was among other things the head of Shaka Zulu’s harem , a cunning street urchin who converted into a renown mystic healer in current day Armenia, a polar bear, a Chinese dumpling maker and a fierce General under Napoleon. Her adventures run concurrently with the 300 wars, the invention of the envelope and the discovery of whisky. In this life, Muthoni Ndonga is a living breathing singer of the hero variety. This embodiment of talent is a songwriter-flow-poet by night and creative-social entrepreneur by day. And when she transnights between sleeping, waking, eating and breathing, she brandishes her sticks as… *insert victorious sounding horns*…THE DRUMMER QUEEN.”

Khuli Chana featuring JR

We have had a long and bloody time in our short history as an independent nation and therefore it is necessary to re-forget every day that our President is a war criminal, that our cabinet is full of thieves. That way we don’t have to consider our own role in creating, nurturing and enabling these leaders we choose every election cycle.

Because there are levels of war criminals and degrees of genocide and there is distance between me and you and Kampala and Gulu and Kigali and Darfur and Port au Prince and the Bronx and time does not heal all wounds but we keep going anyway.

Chimamanda Adichie, who reminds us that when it comes to Africa Many Stories Matter, has a short story collection called The Thing Around Your Neck, my favourite of which is The Headstrong Historian. It tells the story of Nwambga, a widow who protects herself from her in-laws by giving her son to be educated in the ways of white missionaries, and her granddaughter who grows up to write a reclamationist history of Nigeria.  I love this story because how many African stories are blessed with the continuity of both pre and post-colonial history. How many of us know the multigenerational epic that is our own family history?

If the damage that colonialism did to our history can be compared to complete retrograde amnesia , then not only must we go back and relearn our past, we have to keep reminding ourselves of the present. We must force ourselves to see the malnourished kids on Jinja road as if seeing them for the first time. Art has a role to play in making us see and feel the same images again, differently.

Remember this image?

It was taken on day 3 of the Walk to Work protests, by Echwalu Edward, whose dynamic photos straddle the lines between news and art. The image shows a protestor in Kireka carrying a stone to block the road. The composition is striking and it made sense as the cover of that week’s Independent magazine.

A couple of weeks ago, sitting in another endless traffic jam on Kyagwe road, I happened upon this mural.

Serubiri Moses All Rights Reserved

The same image repurposed onto an iron sheet fencing off a building site. The artist, David Kigozi is a talented member of Kampala’s art fraternity, who creates works that apply the same sense of nostalgia to both traditional and contemporary Kampala.

The text reads “billions spent to fight a man with a stone”

Serubiri Moses All Rights Reserved

The photograph and the mural build a layered narrative that reminds us that Walk to Work may be over but the anger that drove those protests has not died. Rising prices, the falling Shilling, traders and taxi drivers striking, the issues affecting ordinary Ugandans are real.

You can view more images of the mural here*, or if you are in Kampala, venture to Kyagwe road and see it for yourself before the iron sheets are pulled down.

Art is all around you, even in Kampala, pay attention.

*with thanks to Moses Serubiri, an amazing photographer in his own right

A few things to love about this video

• “This house is not for sale” #onlyinAfrica
• “The only MC with an MSc”
• The dude at the end with the diastema talking to Naeto C (you can’t hear what he’s saying but it still warms my heart)

Bobby Boulders directs this fantastic, proudly African music video

I am thinking in particular of three South African women who made a special place for themselves in the music industry and in my heart.

“Princess of Africa”

Ask anyone who lived in Africa during the eighties and they will be happy to sing some kind of localized version of Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s song Umqombothi. It is a song about home brewed beermade from sorghum or mealie-meal. It is first and foremost a party song, and I have fond memories of watching the adults get drunk and dance to it at parties when I was a child. It is also about the women who made umqombothi, and ran shebeens (speakeasies) in order to entertain the working men and feed their children in the poverty stricken townships. During Apartheid especially, shebeens were a cultural centre, an oasis of peace hidden from the burning South African sun of oppression.

Yvonne Chaka Chaka grew up under that sun; in fact she was the first black child to ever appear on South African television. When asked who she admired most, Chaka Chaka said

“My mother because she has always been there for me. My mother raised three daughters single-handedly on a domestic workers salary. That took great courage and strength. She is my mentor and hero. When I was born in 1965 in Soweto, it was during apartheid, and those were extremely difficult times. My dad was a great musician who could never realize his dream. He died when I was 11 years old. I inherited my talent from both parents, so music has always been in my blood .When I was little I would strum an empty tin and blow into a broom stick pretending it was a microphone. I sang in church choirs. I loved singing. I am blessed that I achieved my destiny, and been able to accomplish what my father could not.”

Another famous African songstress Miriam Makeba or Mama Africa as she is affectionately known, says of Chaka Chaka, “she’s my baby”.

“Queen of African Pop”

Even before Brenda Fassie’s untimely death, I would watch her sing passionately “Too Late for Mama” and cry. This song is my soundtrack for African mothers, women who brought me up, women who I watched sacrifice unselfishly for something so much bigger than themselves they will never get to benefit from it.

Brenda Fassie was not much like the silenced woman she sang about. She was loud, outrageous and a frequent visitor to the poorer areas of Johannesburg. Time magazine nicknamed her “The Madonna of the Townships.”

Her father died when she was 2, and with the help of her mother, a pianist, she started earning money by singing for tourists.

From the Time article:

“Making her U.S. debut at Washington’s Zanzibar club in 2001, South African singer Brenda Fassie sang passionately from the diaphragm for almost three hours straight. As if that wasn’t enough strain on her petite body, Fassie determinedly put on a frenetic dance show. Suddenly her breasts popped out of her costume. The audience gasped, but Fassie unabashedly grabbed her bare bosom and thrust it at the crowd. “This,” she proclaimed, “is Africa!” But America, it seems, was not yet ready for that part of Africa. “The promoters asked me not to do that again,” she said afterward. Which is too bad, because back home Fassie is known (and loved) for her outrageousness.”

In 1995 it seemed that Fassie’s hit making career was over. She was discovered unconscious with the body of her lesbian lover, Poppie Sihlahla, who had died of an apparent overdose. But after going to rehab Fassie got her career back on track in 1998 with the bestselling album Memeza (shout). If umqombothi was the party song of the eighties then Vulindlela (clear the way) was what we danced to at every party in the nineties.

Despite her continued success Fassie still struggled with her addictions which eventually led to her death in 2004, when she slipped into an overdose related coma after an asthma attack. Her fans who gave her the affectionate nickname MaBrr keep her memory alive.

“Drama Queen”

When Lebo Mathosa was just 14, Brenda Fassie arranged for the budding singer and dancer to come and live with her. In TV footage Brenda pulls a young Lebo in front of the camera and announces that Lebo is going to be the next Brenda Fassie.

Mathosa first burst onto the scene as part of kwaito dance group Boom Shaka. She was well known for her dyed blond hair, her live shows and outrageous stage outfits, and was openly bisexual. She launched a successful solo career, won numerous awards and performed all over the world, including in the United States with the Vagina Monologues.

Mathosa died in a car crash, aged 29, after her driver lost control of her vehicle in Johannesburg. Lebo used to say that Brenda made her strong. Of the constant comparison to Fassie and her drug-speckled career she said,

“You learn from the negative and the positive aspects […]Peer pressure really is hard to get out of, when you’re so deep in. I think that was the position she was in. Everything she wanted she could get … It is like me for instance. When I walk into a club, I want to pay. If it is my night, and I’m performing, only then do I want to be treated like a star.”

Her fans called her Sis Lebo, because despite her crazy hair and outrageous style, she was one of us, a big sister.

This post was first published at allgirlarmy.org

You might also like:

• Music is the Weapon of the Future II: Arrest the Music!
• Music is the Weapon of the Future I: Amandla! Music of the Anti-Apartheid struggle
• The Afro pop movement is good but still needs to be a bit more bold
• eh eh eh eh!

Minister of Defence

Chiurai’s portraits imagine an African cabinet that is at once provocative, modern, and hilarious even as it traffics in painful stereotypes, while speaking volumes about the current state of African political structures.

Minister of Finance

I LOVE IT

Minister of Arts and Culture

It is particularly relevant at a time when Presidents are putting out rap songs, parliament members are being kicked out for wearing earrings and shades, and rampant corruption and theft has African ministers more akin to crime lords and mafia dons than esteemed members of cabinet.

You can find more images from the series here

You can find more about the artist IF YOU GOOGLE HIM (What? Your fingers don’t work?)

Hat-tip Africa is a country

And you might also like:

• How we see ourselves
• Wochena vs Wosachena
• “Wall and Piece” 
• Obstacles as Springboards for Creativity
• A lifetime at the museum