Africa Is a Country

Winter In America Edition

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

Winter In America Edition

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Africa Is a Country

Music Break Number 102 goes out to our American family, set to face four years of struggle against a new set of rulers.

Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Image credit John Lucia via Flickr CC BY 2.0.

The former British colony of the United States of America, inaugurates its 45th president – a far-right fascist – today. The great theorist of American foreign policy, Noam Chomsky sums up the general mood to Brooklyn Rail:  “… The stakes are very high: literally, survival of organized human society in any decent form.”

For that reason, this weekend’s Music Break goes out to our American family, who are set to face four years of struggle against a new set of rulers led by “a mendacious and cathartic white president.” The political decisions made in the nation with the largest military, some of the world’s largest corporations, and the loudest media companies in the world affect all of us.

But let’s not be too quick to panic.

Suppose American citizens are firm in their resistance. In that case, the regime will be checked by a balance of powers (we’d recommend some political history, e.g. Corey Robin and Stephen Skowronek), and a law-making and enforcement regime that is spread between 50 semi-autonomous states (though the power these states enjoy, could see some of them – those governed by hard-right Republican Party politicians – introduce retrogressive laws around trade union organizing,  the minimum wage, abortion or gender rights).

For starters, you can play these sounds – 21 minutes long and courtesy of Chicago MC Common and the imitable Steve Wonder – to drown out the noise of Donald Trump’s inauguration speech today.

 

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.