Happy Birthday Mandela!

One of the great freedom fighters and figures in the history of humankind turns 90 years old today and is still with us.

Bush pronounces Mandela dead

Speaking of the U.S. and Nelson Mandela……..

U.S. has Mandela on terrorist list

Apparently, the name Nelson Mandela did not raise any flags and get the attention of those that are in charge of monitoring such information or perhaps it was not an oversight afterall. Either way, it’s laughable, right along with the legitimacy of any terrorist list that is designated by the world’s biggest war criminal.

upi.com

Mandela still on U.S. terrorist lists

WASHINGTON (UPI) — Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s Nobel Prize-winning symbol of hope for leading the fight against apartheid, is reported still on U.S. terrorist watch lists.

His inclusion means Mandela must have special permission to enter the United States, USA Today said Thursday.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls it “embarrassing” and some members of Congress vow to fix it, hopefully by Mandela’s 90th birthday on July 18.

The same entry requirements apply to other members of South Africa’s governing African National Congress, the once-banned anti-apartheid organization.

In the 1970s and ’80s the ANC was officially branded a terrorist group by the ruling white minority government.

Biko is fashion icon in South Africa

Biko is fashion icon in South Africa

By CELEAN JACOBSON, Associated Press Writer

T-shirts bearing the image of Steve Biko, the symbol of black resistance worldwide who was killed by apartheid police, can be found for sale at flea market stalls and exclusive boutiques across South Africa.

The question is whether the latest fashion is a sign the post-apartheid youth culture is embracing Biko’s message of racial pride and African unity, or just crass commercialization of one of the most important figures in South African history.

Biko, 30, died of a brain injury in a cell in Pretoria Central Prison on Sept. 12, 1977, after being beaten and tortured by apartheid police. The 30th anniversary of his death was to be commemorated in South Africa this week with events including a speech by President Thabo Mbeki.

At 22, Kenneth Mulaudzi was born after Biko’s death, and was still a boy when apartheid ended in 1994. In a trendy Johannesburg store over the weekend, Mulaudzi eyed a $28 T-shirt bearing Biko’s image.

“It’s not just a fashion statement. It is also a political statement,” Mulaudzi said. “Young people are proud of him. He is a hero. He fought for us.”

Mulaudzi, an aspiring journalist, knew quite a bit about Biko but hasn’t read “I Write What I Like,” Biko’s seminal collection of essays.

He does have a poster of Biko in his home and can sing the lyrics to Haitian-American rapper Wyclef Jean’s song “Diallo,” which draws parallels between the 1999 shooting of an African immigrant by New York police and the murder of the South African activist.

“I was surprised when I heard that song,” Mulaudzi said. “It means Biko has gone far.”

Biko’s message of black pride appealed to many people in South Africa’s townships. His death made him a martyr in the anti-apartheid movement and inspired films such as “Cry Freedom,” starring Denzel Washington and British musician Peter Gabriel’s anthem “Biko.”

The end of white rule in 1994 saw Biko’s appeal wane as South Africa’s black majority reveled in new political and economic freedoms.

However, today there is a growing disenchantment among young people who see the country’s leaders embroiled in scandal and a new black elite growing richer while most blacks find it harder and harder to keep up with inflation.

Jackie Radebe, 23, who bought a Biko T-shirt after reading “I Write What I Like,” sees him as a selfless leader whose politics of brotherhood are still relevant to South Africa.

“He had genuine compassion for the plight of the people, genuine concern about poverty, crime and loss of pride,” Radebe said.

While Biko would celebrate the “breakthroughs this young democracy has achieved,” Radebe believes his hero would be disappointed in the country’s leaders.

“As far as morals, integrity and principles … contemporary political leaders seem to be driven by money and self-interest,” he says.

June Josephs-Langa, managing director of the African-focused Xarra Books in Johannesburg’s Newtown Cultural Precinct, says those wearing Biko T-shirts are making a statement.

“In the same way many don’t know much about Cuban politics, the revolutionary status of Che Guevara is someone they want to identify with, want to parade,” she said.

But Johannesburg-based academic and cultural commentator Achille Mbembe, who is delivering a lecture in Biko’s honor this week, doesn’t see fashion as a fitting tribute to a man whose “death and life dramatically embodies the idea of freedom.”

“I think South Africa could commemorate Biko’s contribution to black emancipation in more powerful ways,” he said.

Nkosinathi Biko, who was 6 when his father died, takes a more reconciliatory tone. He points to the tradition in the anti-apartheid movement of using T-shirts to spread political messages or pay tribute to fallen comrades.

He also acknowledges the wealth of artistic material created in his father’s name has been important in keeping the memory of Biko alive.

“He is one of the attractive symbols of popular culture. Not just here but on the streets of New York, Brasilia and Liverpool, he is someone who resonates well,” he said.

The Next Oil Wars

Africa – Where the Next US Oil Wars Will Be

by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

On Feb. 7 George Bush announced the formation of AFRICOM, a new Pentagon command which will, under the pretext of the so-called “Global War On Terror”, plan and execute its oil and resource wars on the African continent. What does this mean to African Americans? And to Africans? BAR consults Prexy Nesbitt, an architect of the anti-apartheid struggles of the 70s and 80s.

The Pentagon does not admit that a ring of permanent US military bases is operating or under construction throughout Africa. But nobody doubts the American military buildup on the African continent is well underway.

From oil rich northern Angola up to Nigeria, from the Gulf of Guinea to Morocco and Algeria, from the Horn of Africa down to Kenya and Uganda, and over the pipeline routes from Chad to Cameroon in the west, and from Sudan to the Red Sea in the east, US admirals and generals have been landing and taking off, meeting with local officials.

They’ve conducted feasibility studies, concluded secret agreements, and spent billions from their secret budgets.

Full Article

Review of “Blood Diamond”

Excellent review from the Black Commentator website.

I saw the movie this past weekend. Dr. Ransby is right about the portrayal of the black characters in the movie. It is the biggest weakness of the movie. I also thought the film could have done without all the melodrama in the buildup towards the end.

That said, Di Caprio and Hounsou are both superb. I think they are both “Oscar worthy” (whatever that means anymore) performances. It is a career high for Di Caprio. The best work he has ever done.

The politics of the movie could have been better but it is a Hollywood production with a big time movie star in it. Any expectations about a better or more honest depiction of the humanity of opressed people or of the true heroes who are active in the daily struggle in Africa and that are fighting for a better world is a worthy goal for a film.

Great expectations for sure but a little unrealistic for a mainstream movie.

Blood Diamond
A Film Review
By Dr. Barbara Ransby, PhD
BC Editorial Board

I went to this film with high expectations. It is touted as a part of the growing genre of socially conscious Hollywood productions that have a positive message. In this case the message is that our frivolous attachment to the world’s most expensive gems is one that fuels violence and friction in desperate and impoverished African countries like Sierra Leone. That good message however, is loudly drowned out by the many bad ones. And the bad messages are not about the diamonds but about the people of Africa.

I walked away from this movie with the thundering of non-stop explosions and gunfire still ringing in my head but feeling that I had just seen a dressed-up, high tech Tarzan flick with Leonardo DiCaprio as a modern-day Johnny Weissmuller. In scene after scene the African population serves as backdrop for the main story about love and ambition involving two white protagonists, a young liberal reporter (Jennifer Connely) and a tough ruthless diamond smuggler and former mercenary (DiCaprio). In a recent review in the New Yorker, David Denby actually praised the movie because it did not make westerners (aka whites) feel guilty about the problems of Africa. That’s because it blames ruthless bloodthirsty black ‘rebels’ who prey upon helpless, voiceless black peasants.

DiCaprio, a bitter racist who clings fondly to good old days of pre-independence Zimbabwe, where he grew up, is the hero of the movie. He calls himself Rhodesian in open defiance of black majority rule that came with the end of the Apartheid-like system in Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe) in 1980. And in a fit of rage he lashes out at his reluctant black collaborator, Djimon Hounsou, as a “kaffir,” the African equivalent of the n-word. His goal in life is to steal, swindle or otherwise procure enough diamonds to buy his way out of Africa, a place he sees as God-forsaken and doomed. When there is no other way out, he finally redeems himself in a gesture of generosity at the end.

Of course, good fictional characters, like real people, are always complex so I don’t have an issue with Danny Archer, DiCaprio’s character, and DiCaprio’s acting is phenomenal. What is absolutely indefensible, however, is the simplistic one-dimensional portrayal of almost every single black character. Each and every one is either a blood-thirsty mindless killer and pillager or a childlike noble savage and feeble victim. The talented Hounsou is the later. He is cast as hapless, helpless and clueless in the land of his birth. He is a big innocent good guy who would not know whether to run toward or away from the gunfire if DiCaprio did not pull him in the right direction. OK, he is a rural fisherman so perhaps he would not know how to navigate the city streets of Sierra Leone’s capital, but in the rugged terrain of the jungle he is equally naïve and perpetually confused.

In a classic scene that captures the contradictions of the movie, Hounsou puts his and DiCaprio’s lives in danger by acting with the impulse of a two-year old in the face of armed opponents. Moreover, there are no black women in Africa that utter more than two sentences, either “help me, help me,” as one is being kidnapped or a proposition to offer sexual services to the “big white man who is all alone” in the city. There is no black agency in this film, except for one school master who tries to rehabilitate child soldiers only to be shot by one of them five minutes after he appears on screen. Viewers are left to conclude the age-old racist stereotype that Africa is lost without European sympathy, know-how and might.

This genre of film advertises itself as something more than banal entertainment. It promises to raise awareness and consciousness about serious problems in the world. At the end of the credits there are a set of statistics that drive home that the subject of the film is real and serious. The narrative and storyline, however, distorts more than it illuminates the real players involved. For every child soldier and blood-thirsty rebel there are compassionate social workers and reformers, intellectuals, writers, and opposition politicians. There are Africans who are tough and tender, savvy and sinister and the whole range of personalities and motivations that we see in any other group.

Among blacks in Africa, 90% of the continent of sub-Saharan Africa, we see more diversity than among the handful of whites. Hounsou’s character however does not show the intelligence and creativity that so many Africans have exhibited in response to inhumane conditions. Real people who have fought to save their country from violence and internal chaos like human rights activist FannyAnn Eddy who was tortured and killed in 2004 for her outspoken actions on behalf of lesbians, gays and women. But that tradition of African self-help and self-determination does not appear in this movie.

This producer and director, Edward Zwick could not somehow see beyond the one-dimensional types and simple binaries we have been fed through television for generations.

After African Queen, The Constant Gardener, the Interpreter, and now Blood Diamond, and with the notable exception of Hotel Rwanda, when will Hollywood be able to make a movie about Africa that actually acknowledges the full humanity of black African people?