If you find yourself in a taxi heading from Gugulethu to Cape Town, you’d better hope that rappers Ill-Literate-Skill (a.k.a. Ill Skillz) aren’t jamming in the back seat. This Mother City hip hop crew will chew off your ears and stew your brain in a sea of alphabet soup. Unless you can perform the mental gymnastics required to process the stream of consciousness that rattles from their lips (or at least have a strong Arabica piloting your system), it’s likely that their bombardment of rhyming couplets will cause you to blow a fuse. Back in the day, guys like these were heralded for their sophistry and became bosom buddies with the monarchs in the form of court jesters. Times changed and they took to the tour buses as wandering minstrels, or “original backpackers” as Ill-Literate-Skill like to see themselves. That’s right, these self-proclaimed illiterates have vocabulary skills that don’t bow to the gangster lexicon. They may claim to be bad at reading and writing (and their spelling is admittedly atrocious) but if African storytelling is about oral transmission then Tommy Jinnix and Jimmy Flexx score ten out of ten for the gift of the gab. Look out for the debut album Off the Radar.
There is a raw and maverick quality to the short film Alive in Joburg. Ever seen a prawn Poleepkwa in a bio-suit toss a casspir at a pair of pestering soldiers? Not only did the 2005 project showcase some slick computer-generated imagery but it also put a curious spin on the theme of discrimination by dropping found-footage from the Apartheid era into a story about intolerance towards stranded aliens. South Africa’s subsequent xenophobic attacks bathed the piece in a glow of surrealism and made it even cleverer than it was originally meant to be. The compelling stylistic amalgam earned director Neill Blomkamp a string of jobs to promote the release of Halo 3 and got him earmarked to direct a feature based on the Halo franchise. When the project fell through, Peter Jackson came to the rescue by offering to produce a feature-length re-working of Alive in Joburg. Jackson stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out US$30 million in loose change. Blomkamp went to the kasi and came back with District 9.
The evolution of democracy is hinged on people’s ability to shake the cage and when it comes sticking it to the zookeepers, few are as elegantly insubordinate as Jonathan Shapiro. Political cartoonist for the Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times, Zapiro has been in the game for over twenty years. It was during Nelson Mandela’s presidency that he injected himself into the national consciousness with flattering depictions of Madiba. In recent years, however, he has found a nemesis in the form of Jacob Zuma, creating iconic renderings of the President of the ANC with a showerhead protruding from his oddly-shaped cranium.
The word “xenophobia” is fraught with contradiction. It has kidnapped Zen from the realm of enlightenment and tossed it into a world of fear. A word that belongs to the shortest chapter in the dictionary, xenophobia is not only directed toward minorities but is a minority itself. Moreover, when pinned to the atrocities committed by South Africans in May 2008, the word slides from the tongue with clinical detachment.
“Thought leader” Khaya Dlanga has produced a series of profoundly South African album covers. Julius Malema’s Greatest Hits feature the miscalculated blunders of the President of the ANC Youth League pasted onto COPE election flyers. Albeit work of viral campaigning genius, these randomly snatched quotes do little to concretize the vision of a party that magically materialized no more than four months ago. Instead, COPE is positioned as the party to vote for in order not to vote for the ANC.
Should photography draw attention to a specific space and time or is seeking to capture universality a more venerable undertaking? A conversation between esteemed South African photographers Jo Ractliffe and David Goldblatt (held at the National Gallery in Cape Town on Wednesday 25 February 09) was inadvertently hinged on this question. Goldblatt played the role of interlocutor and described the discussion as a “regression.” The process saw him interrogating the trajectory of Ractliffe’s career from past to present and culminated in an introduction to her recently published book.
As the world grows more accustomed to the face at the helm of the United States, the phrase “first black president” is being less frequently tagged to the name Barack Obama. Given the history of discrimination in the United States, Obama’s achievement lent itself to being branded as symbolic of America’s progressive attitude towards race. The media, however, has all but exhausted this angle, providing an opportunity for free thinkers to reflect on what has really happened.
The Kwazulu-Natal Midlands is where John van de Ruit’s Spud novels are set. The “Kwazulu” part, however, was absent when the events in the books took place. Nevertheless, van de Ruit conceived a profoundly South African setting for his upmarket boys boarding school. He took a lesson from the old adage that “truth is stranger fiction.” Names were changed to protect the identity of the people and places involved. Queue video.
Way back in the 1440s, the word “spud” was used to describe a digging instrument used to inter the seedling of a plant that yielded a starchy tuber. By 1845, the word was used to describe the starchy tuber itself. And so began a word’s etymological journey through the world of language, at least until a meddlesome polyglot by the name of Mario Pei came along. Author of The Story of Language (1949), Pei attributed the origin of the word “spud” to the acronym of a league of potato-fearing Englishmen called “The Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet.”
It’s the mid-70s and a French philosopher and historian by the name of Michel Foucault (15 October 1926-25 June 1984) has just hammered out a book concerning the birth of the prison system. The work tracks the evolution of the social and technological mechanisms used to entrench discipline in Western Society. His ideas serve up an effective theoretical means of understanding the dystopian world conceived by George Orwell in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Moreover, Foucault has devised a philosophical matrix through which the existence of Big Brother can be perceived in familiar contemporary contexts.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
The Cape Town Goema Orchestra and the birth of a new vision for South African music.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Mama Goema, a documentary exploring Cape Town's most representative musical genre.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
The word “xenophobia” is fraught with contradiction. It has kidnapped Zen from the realm of enlightenment and tossed it into a world of fear. A word that belongs to the shortest chapter in the dictionary, xenophobia is not only directed toward minorities but is a minority itself. Moreover, when pinned to the atrocities committed by South Africans in May 2008, the word slides from the tongue with clinical detachment.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
The Cape Town Goema Orchestra and the birth of a new vision for South African music.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Mama Goema, a documentary exploring Cape Town's most representative musical genre.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::