Political Theater
Robert Mugabe and how how quickly style and showmanship can sweep away an audience, even when the underlying message promotes violence and jingoistic triumphalism.
6395 Article(s) by:
Marjorie Ruganda
Marjorie Namara Rugunda is a writer, researcher, and PhD student at the University of British Columbia.
Elisofon’s Africa
The photographer, Elliot Elisofon’s ‘choice’ of what to see and how was embedded in a visual colonial archive. It was never a unique choice.
Going to the Mall in Brazil
Since last December, Brazilian shopping malls have become the stage for a new style of youth gathering: the rolezinho. Roughly translated as “little excursions” or outings, the rolezinhos can be characterized as planned meetings (via social network) of a large group of youth from poor neighborhoods, with the intent of seeing each other, flirting, eating and drinking at McDonald’s, taking pictures to post on Facebook, and simply having fun.
Did I ever tell you about that time a guy followed me in the NYC subway and offered me $40 to touch my leg?
Real talk: Who else is tired of gender/race swapping to make a point about racism/sexism? I
The most important public intellectual of the last 50 years
In gratitude to Stuart Hall, a socialist intellectual who taught us to confront the political with a smile.
How to deal with uncomfortable journalists
If a journalist reports on the unsavory parts of Nigeria, attack them on Twitter. For reporting while white. There’s no comeback when you bring race into it.
The #BullshitFiles: Tsunami and the Single Girl — One Woman’s Journey to Become an Aid Worker and Find Love
Every side-eye, cringe, SMH and WTF in the world has gathered for a family reunion in
British-Nigerian Me?
The issues faced by people of dual heritage who are torn between two different cultures and are confused about their identity.
The first Kenyan mockumentary about NGO’s
“The Samaritans” explores the absurdities of the NGO world. The main characters work for “Aid for Aid,” a fictitious NGO that “does nothing.”
Give that man a Bells
There's a commercial for Bell's, a popular South African whisky ("Give that man a Bells"), that
The clamor for a ‘credible opposition’ in South Africa?
William Gumede, who wrote a book about the ANC, makes a strange and careless argument–without recourse to evidence–about the ruling party’s fortunes.
Just don’t do it
Saying that blackface is an American thing (everyone now uses this excuse) and therefore not a problem anywhere else, makes you look dumb.
John Akomfrah, Stuart Hall and the Film Essay
Akomfrah’s films gives voice to the legacy of the African diaspora in Europe, and his experimental approach to narrative and structure helped pave the way for the re-emergence of the “essay film” today.
The ‘Born Free Generation’
The Fader (yes, they're still around) has been putting up a series of posts from Johannesburg (Obey You Collective: South Africa) that focuses on "artists, trail-blazers, and bright young talents from South Africa." (The series is paid for by soft drink company Coco Cola.) Much of it seems to be filmed around the part of the city marketed as Maboneng. In the latest instalment, they published an interview with Tarryn Alberts, part of dance crew, V.I.N.T.A.G.E. (If you remember, Zach Rosen interviewed them for AIAC, here). Anyway, the interview includes this illuminating passage about the Catch 22 for young black people after Apartheid:
The Question of International Aid
How a documentary about a radio station provides a window into aid policy in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“Happy Africans”
It's unclear how big the Gun Owners of America are (the NRA predominates in the numbers
The closest thing to real life
The documentary film. “Zoran and his African Tigers,” shows how harsh and unforgiving international football can be.
A level of decadence
Muntu Vilakazi photographs the ‘Politics of Bling’ on Johannesburg’s East Rand.
Ponte City
The 54-storey building in Johannesburg, built in the 1970s, is the tallest residential building on the continent, and subject of a new photobook.
To be an artist in Egypt right now
An Egyptian theater company puts on Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in colloquial Arabic. The choice was no error.