Africa Is a Country

The Minister of Finance

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Minister of Finance

By
Sean Jacobs

“The Minister of Finance,” one of a series of over the top, mock portraits by Zimbabwean-born, Johannesburg-based artist  Kudzanai Chiurai. The work was first exhibited as “Dying to be Men” and is currently on show in London (at the Victoria & Alibert Museum as part of a big show on contemporary South African photography) as “The Parliament.” Below is the PR from the Victoria & Albert. You can also see the full series on the website of his South African gallery’s website:

His satirical series The Parliament depicts the fictitious characters of an imaginary government cabinet in a parody of media representations of masculinity and political power. The series draws upon the conventions of African studio portraiture, dramatised magazine features, hip-hop, film and fashion as well as the story lines, stereotyped characters and plots of soap operas.

Here’s the Minister of Education:

And, the Minister of Defense:

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.