WEST AFRIKAN EBOLA UPDATE
More than 9,500 fatalities have now been attributed to Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. The governments of the three countries have pledged to achieve zero Ebola infections within the next two months. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has called for a Marshall Plan for the Ebola-affected countries of West Africa. One Ebola Treatment Centre in Liberia has already been re-purposed to provide high-quality medical care to persons with serious illness. Others will be used as Primary Health Care Units. Liberia has released its last Ebola patient after going a week without any new cases of the virus, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It is the first time since May 2014 that Liberia has had no new cases of the virus, the officials added.
Sierra Leone was immediately granted more than $80m (£52m) to help end the Ebola outbreak and recover from its effects. The IMF has pledged a $187m financial aid package for Sierra Leone. Nearly $5bn has been pledged internationally to the Ebola effort, but less than half of the help has materialised.
The vice-president of Sierra Leone put himself into quarantine after one of his bodyguards, John Koroma, died from the disease. Mr Samuel Sam-Sumana said he would stay out of contact with others for 21 days as a precaution. He was showing no signs of the illness but said he did not want to take chances. His staff have also been placed under observation. He is the country’s first senior government figure to subject himself to a voluntary quarantine.
Augustine Baker who worked with children orphaned by Ebola at the St George Foundation has died of the disease himself. Thirty-three children and seven staff have been in quarantine since Mr Baker was diagnosed with the deadly virus.
The final stage of testing for an experimental Ebola vaccine began on 7 Mar in the Basse Guinee region of Guinea, which has the highest number of cases in the country. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that if a vaccine is found to be effective it will be the first preventive tool against Ebola in history.
Sierra Leonean sprinter Jimmy Thoronka, 20, who disappeared after the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow last year has been found living rough in London and is now in detention awaiting deportation. He was his country’s top 100m runner but did not return to his home country last year amid fears over the Ebola virus. Homeless Thoronka says Ebola has killed his immediate family in Sierra Leone. He was told during the Games that his uncle probably died from Ebola. He then heard that his mother had died from the disease and later discovered his three adopted sisters and brother also killed by virus
MITIGATING A MAJOR FOOD SECURITY CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA: THE IMPACT OF EBOLA ON AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIVELIHOODS
Friday, 13 February 2015
Author: Hetty Bailey (Africa APPG Research Coordinator)
(This is a memo from the joint meeting with the Africa APPG on Agriculture & Food for Development on 2nd February 2015. Audio recording available here.)
In 2014 the Famine Early Warning Network predicted that, if the Ebola outbreak continued unabated, West Africa could experience a major food crisis by early this year.
The Ebola outbreak resulted in a serious shock to the agriculture and food sectors in 2014. The epidemic started spreading when crops were being planted and expanded during the crop maintenance and critical harvesting period for the staple crops rice, maize and cassava. As a result, food insecurity and the number of people at risk of food deprivation and undernourishment are rapidly growing.
This panel sought to explore the current assessment of the situation and the action already being taken to prevent a major food security crisis in West Africa.
Dr. Arif Husain, Chief Economist, World Food Programme
Dr Arif Husain is Chief Economist and Deputy Director, Policy and Programme Division - Analysis and Trends Service at United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Rome, Italy. Dr Husain started working for WFP in 2003 and since then he has served in many capacities, including as Deputy Director of the Food Security Analysis Service, and Head of Food Security Analysis in Sudan. Dr Husain’s work focuses on analysing how external economic shocks affect food security and welfare conditions in developing countries as well as WFP’s capacities to deliver food assistance. Dr Husain has substantial field experience in working on food security and humanitarian issues in conflict and post conflict recovery countries. His research interests include studying linkages between economic growth and equity, poverty, hunger and conflict; and analysing how global economic shocks impact localised food security, social protection, agricultural trade, and emergency and development assistance. Dr Husain has a Ph.D. in agricultural and applied economics with a minor in forestry from the University of Minnesota.
The WFP was involved in three main activities, caring for patients and survivors of Ebola through providing food assistance, trying to provide people in quarantine with one moth ration and helping communities to transition from crisis to be able to support themselves.
Logistically WFP provide the backbone for humanitarian assistance in the region. Procurement, storage and telecommunications and establishing treatment and community care centres also.
The last report from WHO revealed that 8795 people of 22,000 have perished. It is now stabilising. WFP have assisted 2.7 million people and their families who have been affected by Ebola since April 2014 and have spent quarter of a billion US dollars. At the current rate another 750 million dollars is needed for the WFP to run its programmes until May 2015.
WFP have conducted food security and crop assessments and introduced mobile monitoring systems to find out what the food security situation is, including looking at market practices and coping strategies that people are using. From this WFP have identified that people are affected in three channels- social (fear & stigma, people avoiding each other and work), functioning of markets (Are commodities coming in and being used? How are supply chains working?) and livelihoods (Do people still have jobs? Are formal / informal wage rates being affected?)
WFP in their recent report found that border closures, quarantines, hunting bans and other restrictions seriously hamper peoples access to food. Such restrictions also threaten livelihoods, disrupt food markets and processing chains and exacerbate food shortages in areas with the highest infection rates.
In September 2014, the estimate was that about half a million people were food insecure and was believed that if certain actions were not taken the number could top a million by March/April 2015.
Losses of productivity and household income due to Ebola caused by loss of labour due to relative and family member deaths but also due to stigma and people being asked to stay away or staying away from work for fear of infection.
However, crops were planted last year therefore the level of production at the national level has declined but not hugely (10-15%). It is at the local level where problems are apparent facing issues such as households being unable to harvest their crops, or in some cases they were harvested but due to restrictions these crops did not make it to market.
The result it that households have reduced purchasing power as many have either been unable to work or unable to sell their produce. The impact has been different across the countries, Guinea was worst hit, then Sierra Leone and then Liberia due to the different economic dispersions.
Dr Husain pressed that it is crucial that the next planting due to happen now goes ahead with support through the provision of agricultural commodities and machinery as a substitute of labour as otherwise the next harvest will be affected and have long term consequences even once Ebola is contained.
Further, he said injecting liquidity through market cash transfers to assist affected people to buy food and revive economic activity was critically important. He added that as there is no social protection in these countries, investment is needed at the national and regional level to assist in social protection as well as healthcare.
Monty Jones recorded message, Special Advisor to the President of Sierra Leone
Monty is the Special Adviser to the President of Sierra Leone with a particular focus on agriculture. He is former Executive Director of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and co-winner of the 2004 World Food Prize. He won the award based on his discovery of the genetic process to create the New Rice for Africa (NERICA), which gives higher yields, shorter growth cycles and more protein content than its Asian and African parents.
Monty Jones drew attention to his work under the New Alliance for Africa initiative where he discovered NERICA rice and said he was frustrated by the lack of progress in achieving sustainable agricultural production in Sierra Leone. His most recent foray is an attempt to reorganise the Governmental structure of projects to meet international standards for best practice. This is geared towards enhancing nutritional and food security through agricultural fisheries and agro-industries.
He continued that he had been involved in strategic work through a proposed programme for agriculture, fisheries and agro-industry (AFIP) focused on introducing a collaborative approach to food security with strategic leadership and delivery in projects supported by donor farms. The aim is to allow for coordinated and results orientated project management and supervisory oversight of donor funded projects. However, the delivery and implementation time table was halted due to the Ebola outbreak and they are now reworking the modalities of the proposal to reflect the President’s aspiration for post-Ebola reconstruction.
As the health system comes under review, he added that they would fight for food security to be subject to a rigorous review in line with the recent findings of the World Bank and African Development Bank funded and FAO supported agricultural sector review of 2014. He said there is cautious optimism that the post Ebola reconstruction would provide donor partners with wider scope for engaging Governments on funded activities to restore confidence in a strategically placed oversight infrastructure and provide sector led approaches to the various areas of interest aligned to agriculture. He said collaboration on this would yield greater impact and cause genuine overflow to the wider economy.
He added that the constraints analysis on agriculture sector growth would be significant in designing a more robust agriculture policy framework whilst the realignment of Ministerial responsibilities for agriculture, fisheries and marine development would augment the holistic approach proposed by the AFIP programme.
Robtel Neajai Pailey is a Liberian academic, activist and author based at SOAS, University of London. She has consulted for the Government of Liberia, African Development Bank, Australian Agency for International Development, Ford Foundation, ActionAid, and Search for Common Ground. Her writing has appeared in the International New York Times, The Guardian (UK), Al Jazeera English, Newsweek-Daily Beast, and she has provided commentary for the BBC, NPR, Press TV, and Voice of America. Her anti-corruption children’s book, Gbagba, was published in 2013 to critical acclaim and has been placed on the supplemental list of readers for 3rd to 5th graders in Liberia.
Dr Pailey spoke about the report she was commissioned to write by the African Development Bank (AfDB) for the Special Envoy on Gender (not publicly available). The AfDB were concerned that women were disproportionately affected by the outbreak and that the data being collected was not disaggregated by gender.
The report found that women’s socio-economic vulnerabilities were particularly exacerbated due to the outbreak. As a result, any post Ebola planning would need to address these vulnerabilities head on. She also recommended a follow up report with more quantitative data.
In terms of the food value chain, before Ebola women had very limited access to land, credit, extension services, post-harvest technologies and training. She said these needed to be at the fore when discussing food security and quoted some key statistics from the report to demonstrate this-
Guinea
In Guinea, women only counted for 10% of the formal workforce and they were disproportionately represented in the informal sector, many of them lack access to land but work in the agricultural sector.
70% of women in Guinea live in rural areas and are engaged in agricultural sectors. Therefore as a result of the quarantine measures, closed borders and the inability to actually produce food they were disproportionately impacted.
Liberia
In Liberia, 68.8% of all economically active women are farmers and are involved in weeding, planting and harvesting crops, particularly cash crops. In fact women account for 80% of the Liberian agricultural labour force and contribute 60% to agricultural production as well as 80% to trade. Yet, they only generate 16% of all agricultural earnings- showing huge disparities.
In Liberia, 89% of women are considered vulnerable workers particularly in agriculture and in wholesale and retail trade sectors.
In terms of access to land, although there was a customary inheritance law passed a few years ago, which gives women equal access to land in law, the implementation of that has become incredibly difficult due to push back from traditional leaders in rural sectors.
Sierra Leone
Trends and statistics are similar, Sierra Leone has a law that allows land tenure and administration for both women and men equally but implementation varies from region to region. In the north-western part of the country women can own land indiscriminately, but in the South and Eastern areas women can only use the land that are owned by their male relatives.
84% of rural women and 63% of urban women are engaged in informal work and most are engaged in agriculture and petty trading. 70% of women are smallholder farmers.
Trends show that women are disproportionately represented in the agricultural sector but in terms of their earnings and access to land and credit they are disproportionately represented.
Women process, preserve, store and transport all the food crops for marketing. In Kailahun and Kenema, areas which were most adversely affected by the outbreak, women master farmers and heads of households had their livelihoods particularly compromised.
Same is true for Liberia that has 15 sub political divisions, north-eastern part of the country - Lofa County. Before the outbreak Lofa was considered the bread basket of Liberia and most farmers in that county are women.
In terms of cross border trade in the Mano River Union (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote D’Ivoire) 70% of all cross border traders in these countries are women and due to border restrictions were unable to travel to trade cash crops. This seriously impacts on their ability to have a livelihood.
Regarding markets, a Mercy Corps report (Nov 2014) said that marketers in these countries complained that because the borders were closed they had to rely on the capital cities to get their crops. Due to the increased transportation costs where trucks and cabs were carrying a limited number of people they had to pay an extra amount. In Sierra Leone, all the 13 districts also underwent quarantine measures; the marketers are predominately women.
Finally the moratorium on the sale of bush meat due to the assumption that the Ebola vector was bat has impacted mainly women as there are more women bush meat sellers.
Recommendations -
• When rapid assessments are being conducted they need to be disaggregated by gender as men and women experience crisis differently.
• When using social cash transfers to mitigate risks that people face, it is important for WFP and Oxfam etc to pay attention to gender nuances. If there are women heads of households that need social cash transfers it is important to institute that in the planning post Ebola.
• The African Union has proclaimed 2015 the year of women’s empowerment for which it is important to take a regional approach not just in the Mano River Union but continentally.
Larissa Pelham, Emergency Food Security & Vulnerable Livelihoods Adviser, Oxfam
Larissa Pelham is one of Oxfam GB’s global emergency food security and livelihoods advisers and is also the lead on food security & livelihoods for Oxfam GB’s Ebola response. Formerly working for save the children, care and currently Oxfam, as well as the institute of development studies and as social protection specialist at the world bank, She has worked on the design, implementation and monitoring of some of the major national safety nets and multi-donor food security programmes. She returned from Sierra Leone in December undertaking a rapid assessment of the need for food security and livelihoods interventions in response to Ebola and has almost literally just stepped off the plane from undertaking a markets assessment in South Sudan.
1. The outbreak highlighted the paramount importance of safety nets as a bedrock for supporting households in the face of shock.
Oxfam’s recent assessment in Liberia found that 78% of households did not receive any support from NGOs or the UN in the past three months from September and end of 2014. If safety nets had been in place it would have stopped the reduction in purchasing power of households amongst the communities.
She highlighted that the outbreak started just as two cash safety net programmes were about to be implemented and they are still not in place despite World Bank funding and country efforts. It was decided that instead of doing this for the poorest households they would implement it for the households directly affected (i.e. had a member die or recover from Ebola) which resulted in the dismissing of all households that were indirectly affected.
Because of the border and trade restrictions that were imposed, a large group of people could no longer get their goods to market or buy from the market. By not implementing the safety net it meant that a fundamental way of supporting people’s purchasing power was lost.
Jobs were lost and businesses went into administration and so those working in the formal sector were also affected.
2. Importance of coordinated food security intervention
The national coordination on food security was much weaker in Sierra Leone than in Liberia. Sierra Leone is still very much focused on getting a handle on the number and burials, as such food security coordination has been slow to get going.
The food security clusters were not operative in Sierra Leone. In Liberia they were still in place as they had not yet been removed following the civil war. This played an important role in Liberians engaging in food security.
The FAO was coordinating the food security response in Sierra Leone but it is an organisation that does not have emergency capacities and so it wasn’t ready to take preventative action.
This lack of coordination has had an impact by restricting how far NGOs can mitigate a food security crisis through collective intervention in this area.
3. Food security and livelihoods interventions were stalled due to a lack of concrete data
However, the World Bank and UN did work rapidly on assessments by mobile phone (which had its own limitations) but the issue was that whilst there was small scale data on what the impacts were on food security there was no large scale databases to prove all of this. Donors were keen to intervene but they wanted to see the large scale data which caused a tension as to how to manage that- there was a duplicity as to how to proceed as NGOs were trying to collect data whilst also taking action and so it was very limiting and stopped resilience approaches being adopted until now.
Larissa reported that on the ground, DFID were the only organisation looking at longer term interventions and that the main challenge was getting food security and livelihoods issues on the table due to the complete focus on the immediate healthcare demands of the outbreak. Despite the fact food security specialists were on the ground and ready to carry out assessments and start getting programmes going, they did not have the decision making power to get it through as this was all channeled upwards. It took 7 months for issue to get the profile it needed which was a big hindrance.
Larissa concluded that the key areas of focus going forward were better coordination for impact intervention and recovery- this would also convince donors of the need to intervene. She said more money was needed for the recovery and called on a pledge to be set up at the World Bank Spring meetings. Next, she emphasised the need to ensure purchasing power through cash in hand transfers at the household level to ensure there is a safety net. Finally, ensure that funding is restored to the service sectors to the agriculture and fisheries sectors.
Q & A
Q. Action Against Hunger - asked whether the action that was being called for was preventative of a peak in food insecurity that was to come or whether that peak was now.
Q. Lord Cameron (Chair of Agriculture & Food for Development APPG) - Asked about what is being done to support smallholders to get the raw materials that are needed now in time for next year’s harvest?
Larissa reported there is support for seeds and tools to ensure next year’s crop is planted now. She added that Sierra Leone had lifted its trade restrictions and so now people can move around. The impact on transport prices had not yet been realised and there is uncertainty whether that’s because international borders are still closed and so food is not actually going out of Sierra Leone.
Arif Husain agreed that the planting that is taking place right now (February-March) is going to determine the status of food insecurity going forward. He added that, the disease is not spreading as rapidly as it was and countries are now talking about getting to the ‘containment phase’ but the fear is still there. Schools have now opened in Sierra Leone and Guinea but not enough students have shown up and will take time for people to re-adjust and for surrounding countries to relax their borders again to allow for trade and movement of people.
Q. Sierra Leone co-operative of women - asked what she could take back in terms of good news for the women of the co-operative as to what programmes and initiatives could be expected to assist such groups.
Dr Pailey said the African Development Bank will shortly be launching a social investment fund specifically for women with the aim of accessing what these vulnerabilities are and to give them extra incentives (farm implements, money etc to mitigate the vulnerabilities that they have post-Ebola).
Q. Unite for West Africa Initiative - Concerned about the stigma created and how this might impact small scale tourism in West Africa. Asked whether the private, public and third sectors could work together post Ebola to grow confidence of potential investors and tourists?
Dr Husain said many things needed to happen before the conversation about tourism begins, including the opening up of airlines, routes, borders etc and that before tourism can increase, more returns from foreign direct investment (FDI) would be needed. In Liberia 70-80% is FDI and it depends how quickly returns can be made on this in addition to returns from plantations and mining.
Dr Pailey added that tourism was not just affected in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone but for countries in the region such as Gambia which relies on 20% of its GDP from tourism. She said the adversely impact was felt more widely due to the bad international media coverage that insinuated that Ebola was an African crisis. The international media need to report that it is okay for people to travel to these countries and the sub-region.
Q. Jamie from the Africa Research Institute - mentioned the International Growth Centre (ICG) report on the Economic Impacts of Ebola which suggested that food prices in Sierra Leone were following natural patterns for that time of year and that there was not a significant difference this year. He asked Dr. Husain whether the half a million people that are food insecure, are they food insecure because of Ebola?
Dr. Husain agreed that food prices were generally in the band that they should be for the time of year but argued that usually, you would say with all other things being equal, but what has happened here was a shift in price at the same time as an unexpected decrease in the purchasing power.
Larissa added that food prices have been following their seasonal trends but most of the assessments have been conducted by mobile phones which isn’t getting out to rural areas where there is no mobile phone connection. She argued that in such localities the pattern may be widely divergent to normal prices.
Further, she believed there could be a time lag in the data as people are only just starting to sell again and purchasing power hasn’t picked up. She added that the exchange rate devaluation could also lead to price increases.
Regarding exports, it seems as though the harvests are stable and that the flooding from last year might have had a bigger negative impact on this than Ebola. Further due to continued closure of borders there is not the supply going out of the country, so if you have a low harvest then the demand could stay stable as more supply is being kept within the country.
Q. Independent consultant to the World Bank & Monty Jones- He said Ebola has exacerbated weak systems of delivery to rural areas due in part to fragmented delivery at the country level but also by the donors, adding that Monty Jones mentioned the need for coordinated efforts for post-Ebola reconstruction. He asked whether the way the Governments have responded would enhance the way donors perceive their capacity or undermine it?
Dr. Husain said everyone was tested by Ebola due to the fact that the standard operating principles that usually apply in an emergency were no longer relevant. Therefore new ways of assisting people had to be designed which took experimentation and time but he believed that due to the fear and magnitude of the problem, Governments had raised their bar very quickly. He warned that it was not over and that if the response became complacent now, it would start up again.
Dr. Pailey added that she was concerned that when talking of state building in the post-conflict moment that we need to return to what state building actually entails. Is it about service delivery? Giving authority back to state institutions at the expense of service delivery? Donors need to discuss Governments how state building should look different post-Ebola.
***An audio recording of the event is available here.***
Additional links
The WFP / FAO report on food security in Sierra Leone is available here.
Oxfam have a policy brief on the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone here and also released a report last week on governance for health emergencies in West Africa, available here.
- See more at: http://www.royalafricansociety.org/analysis/mitigating-major-food-security-crisis-west-africa-impact-ebola-agriculture-and-rural#sthash.wtAbxVK9.dpuf
CRIME SCENE USA
Michael Brown memorial
The US Justice Department has found evidence of racial bias by Ferguson police in Missouri accusing the department of conducting stops without reasonable suspicion, using excessive force and making arrests without probable cause. While African Americans make up 67% of the population in Ferguson, they accounted for 93% of arrests between 2012 and 2014. The courts also engage in racial bias with African Americans 68% less likely to have their cases dismissed by a judge with officials using the money raised from fines to help balance the city’s budget. They regularly made tickets and other minor violations ‘go away’ for white people while some African American residents spent nights in jail for non-payment of tickets.
The civil rights probe began following the August shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson. Wilson has been cleared of any civil rights violations relating to the shooting. US Attorney General Eric Holder says leaders in Ferguson engaged in a “disturbing and unconstitutional” pattern of abuse including a man arrested at gunpoint after he objected to a police officer accusing him of being a paedophile without probable cause who lost his job because of the arrest. The probe also found explicit racial bias in the ranks including e-mails that depicted President Obama as a chimpanzee, as well as other offensive stereotypes about African Americans.
NAMIBIAN PRESIDENT HIFIKEPUNYE POHAMBA WINS MO IBRAHIM PRIZE
Hifikepunye Pohamba
The outgoing Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba has won the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership at a ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya. The prize is meant to be awarded annually to an elected leader who governed well, raised living standards and then left office but only three leaders have been deemed worthy of it since 2007. The $5m prize is spread over 10 years and is followed by $200,000 a year for life. Mr Pohamba was a founding member of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) that fought for independence from apartheid rule. Before becoming president he served as Minister for Land Affairs. He oversaw a scheme under which some land that had been owned by white farmers since the colonial era was bought by the government, for redistribution to black farmers. Mr Pohamba served two terms as Namibian president. He was first elected in 2004, and again in 2009. He is due to be succeeded by President-elect, Hage Geingob. Salim Ahmed Salim, the chairman of the committee that awarded the prize, said that under Mr Pohamba, Namibia had cemented its reputation as “a well-governed, stable and inclusive democracy with strong media freedom and respect for human rights”. The president hoped to use the prize to advance the objectives of the Hifikepunye Pohamba foundation, which helps students from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue higher education.
MORE EARLY HUMAN REMAINS FOUND IN ETHIOPIA
Jawbone from Ledi-Geraru research area
Scientists have unearthed the jawbone of what may be one of the very first humans. The 2.8 million-year-old specimen is 400,000 years older than researchers thought that humans first emerged. Prof Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas said the discovery makes a clear link between Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis hominin (human-like primate) discovered in the same area in 1974. The recent find was in the Ledi-Geraru research area, Afar Regional State, by Ethiopian student Chalachew Seyoum. The fossil is of the left side of the lower jaw, along with five teeth. The back molar teeth are smaller than those of other hominins living in the area and are one of the features that distinguish humans from more primitive ancestors. Previously, the oldest fossil attributed to the genus Homo was an upper jaw from Hadar, Ethiopia, dated to 2.35m years ago. This new discovery pushes the human line back by 400,000 years very close to its likely ‘pre-human’ ancestor.
A computer reconstruction of a skull belonging to the species Homo habilis, published in Nature journal, indicates that it may well have been the evolutionary descendant of the species. The dating of the jawbone might help answer the question - what caused some primitive ancestors to climb down from the trees and make their homes on the ground? A separate study in Science of the fossilised plant and animal life in the area suggests that what had once been lush forest became dry grassland. As the trees made way for vast plains, ancient human-like primates found a way of exploiting the new environmental niche, developing bigger brains and becoming less reliant on having big jaws and teeth by using tools.
Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London said the new species clearly does show the earliest step toward human characteristics but said half a jawbone is not enough to tell just how human it was and does not provide enough evidence to suggest that it was this line that led to us. He added: “The human-like features shown by Australopithecus sediba in South Africa at around 1.95 million years ago are likely to have developed independently of the processes which produced (humans) in East Africa, showing that parallel origins are a distinct possibility,”
A FEW WORDS
To mark the tenth anniversary of Nubiart Diary and other significant commemorative dates we thought we would share with our readers a few of our early lyrics and vibes from the 1980s and 1990 which appeared in our anthology ‘Of Slaughter and Consumption’ in 1991. The first one is untitled but we voiced a demo of it over Johnny Osbourne’s ‘Angel In My Arms’ rhythm. The last two were inspired by Gregory Isaacs’ track ‘A, Miner (Am)’, a protest against the massacres and repression in the townships and mines and economic destabilisation across the Frontline States perpetrated by the genocidal apartheid regime. The African Museum still remains the greatest influence on our worldview.
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something blew me out yesterday
had to wipe the tears from my eyes
seen a couple, a pair, a duo
adieu! always makes me want to cry
makes me want to cry
living in the rising heat haze
memories pass of bygone days
long lost forever
sweetest fruit has turned bitter
has turned bitter
what was I told?
what have I still to learn?
who trusts me to teach them?
and who wants to discuss?
who wants to discuss?
when every man do his thing
just that little way different
every woman in her style
and one thing I want to know
is who rules the child?
who rules the child?
© Afrikan Scientist of Truth / Leviticus 19 Productions
DOWNPRESSOR SKANKING
Grooving to the rhythm of chaos
Gyrating to the ecstasy of barbarity
Breakdancing to maintain the profit
Jumping up to deflower the moon
Jiving and duck-diving to continue the lie
Wining & dining to impress the corrupted
Exerting to scandalise my name
The hop, skip & jump to rewrite history
The belly dance to announce the coming rape
Gold diggers reel to consume the nature
Nose-rubbing to penetrate and confuse
Bear-hugging to instil false security
Dying(-fly) to make kindness a weakness
You get too close to me
Tracing my every movement
I’m war dancing in the right time.
© Afrikan Scientist of Truth / Leviticus 19 Productions – 31/7/90
GOVERNMENT YARD RESISTANCE
You choose to change your friends every time you change your style
But I’ll be around and I’ll see you once in a while
But don’t try to pretend you were right
Abusing me every day and night
In a government yard
Don’t come and make my life so hard
So I moved out deh pon the street again
The whole situation caused me so much strain
Can’t stand confusion can’t stand the fuss and fight
Soon you will realise only truths and rights
Conquers in a government yard
Gosh! You make my life so hard
The day will come when you will surely know
That in time you reap everything that you sow
I feel aswad so I can stand quiet
But don’t take me for an idiot
In the government yard
When being Black means your life is so hard
The time has come to call this thing to a halt
If you check white gods then that’s not my fault
I stand fine young, gifted and Black
I can’t back down on a matter of fact
No fight in the government yard
Don’t come and make my life so hard
Cos everyday we look at South Afrika
Slavemasters made young comrades so hard
They inspire us at home and abroad
For liberation not a nuclear war
© Afrikan Scientist of Truth / Leviticus 19 Productions
RESPECT DUE UNTO YOUR MOTHER
I come again in red, gold and green
I come again you know seh me deh pon the scene
I don’t feel to buy people’s interest
I don’t deal in their inside out business
But sister came husband beat her again
He doesn’t feel like she does that Babylon strain
Ease up on her so she keeps physical fitness
After all she is an Afrikan princess
So every day about in my area
The problems come and we must be harder
We ride the rhythms though daily its harder
Give thanks and praise looking unto our mother
You under 30 you over 13
Hey youthman show them you know what life means
Truth and rights throughout all this mess
You ask what is life? Life is a test
Yet to so many life is just a game
Down in Rome times they always seem the same
They mix us up with their phoney success
But they don’t know Blacks in this time are blessed
Soon every day in each and every area
Problems will fall ‘cos we know we are harder
We ride the rhythms though daily its harder
Giving thanks and praise looking unto our mother
So every day about in my area
The problems come and we must be harder
Still riding rhythms still making them badder
Giving thanks and praise unto Mama Afrika.
© Afrikan Scientist of Truth / Leviticus 19 Productions – 14/1/87
FORTHCOMING NUBIART PROFILES
NUBIART: Focus on arts, business, education, health, political developments and the media.
MAR PROMOS
~ 22 STRINGS – Seckou Keita [ARC Music – 26 May 2015] After travelling the world, crossing musical genres and collaborating with a host of artists across rap, rock, flamenco, jazz and celtic folk Seckou Keita comes back to his roots as the son of both a griot family through his mother and his father’s Keita royal clan. ‘22 Strings’ catches him flying solo with just his voice and kora heritage for company on 10 deeply heartfelt tracks that ask two questions – ‘who am I?’ and ‘who are we?’ The title refers to the tradition that when Jali Mady ‘Wuleng’, who received the first kora from the jinns, passed away his fellow griots took one string away in his memory. Yet in the Gabou empire of Casamance in southern Senegal and Guinea Bissau they kept the 22 string kora giving them an extra range and a memory of a home where the heart resides.
All the tracks here are truly contemplative and reflective but the standout track was always going to be ‘Mikhi Nathan Mu-Toma (The Invisible Man)’. Seckou grew up in his maternal grandfather’s home and it was there he first learned the kora repertoire. His father was a travelling marabout and by the time Seckou had a desire to track him down he was in Mali and before Seckou reached there his father had already passed away so the connection was both there and not there.
NUBIART LIBRARY – MAR MEDIA
We will only review books we have read and DVDs we have seen and that are available at reasonable prices online or in shops or libraries. However, given the nature and current state of Afrikan publishing and film production there may be books and films on this list that are worth the extra effort to track down.
~ ‘KINTU’ - Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi [Kwani Trust. ISBN: 978-9966-1598-9-2]
“God-fearing people tend to ape their deity in their own perverted way.” - Kintu
This epic novel telling of the fall and reparation of the Kintu clan spans 250 years of Bugandan history from before the arrival of the European colonists to the present nation-state of Uganda. The story starts in 2004 in the slum of Bwaise with the mob killing of Kamu Kintu, who is accused of being a thief because he has new gadgets in his shack. The story then spools back to the 1750s and the homestead of Kintu Kidda, the Ppookina of Buddu Province. He sets out for the capital to pledge allegiance to the new kabaka who has taken power in a palace coup. From one rash action a curse is enacted that afflicts the clan in their personal lives, business dealings and diminution of their culture.
In all there are six books or strands that focus on different parts of the extended clan. Unlike many writers who try to encompass such a vast historical and character span Makumbi manages to hold the readers’ interest in all the disparate and seemingly unrelated threads bringing them together expertly. The novel explores ideas of transgression, curse and perpetuity. You enter the world of the Ganda naming system, twin births, their relations with their neighbours and the Tutsi cattle herders, the impact of HIV/AIDS, mental illness, the often malevolent influence of the Abrahamic religions - and it wouldn’t be an epic if there weren’t a few secrets and lies along the way. “Have you ever sat on a bus and listened to your mother confess to strangers, to being a slut, to abortions and to killing innocent children? Have you ever sat in a school chapel with the whole school present listening to how your father started his sinning career with stealing eggs, then chickens, progressed to bestiality and graduated to raping women?”
Jennifer Makumbi experienced rejection from several publishers as the story was not based around the colonial interaction and therefore had no central European protagonist unlike much of the current crop of ‘post-colonial’ fiction. This is quality writing reflecting an Afrikan reality contemporaneous with but not dependent or mimicking the European ‘other’. We at Nubiart Diary will always support and promote quality Afrikan literature and we highly recommend her for sticking with her commitment to Afrikan history, mythology and cosmology.
We welcome feedback on any event you have attended that was listed in Nubiart Diary. It helps us with the selection of future listings and is also info we can pass on to the event organisers where appropriate.
~ ‘EBOLA: INSIDE AN EPIDEMIC’. Join Dame Sally Davies, chief medical advisor to the British government, as she leads a discussion on the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Afrika. Find out what we have learnt from the outbreak so far and what is being done to ensure continued resilience to epidemic scenarios. Speakers: Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust; Melissa Leach, Director of the Institute of Development Studies; Neil Ferguson, Professor of Mathematical Biology, Imperial College London; and Christopher Whitty, Professor of Public and International Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. On Mon 9 Mar at 6.30pm at The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AG. Tel: 020 7451 2500.
~ BLACK HISTORY STUDIES PRESENTS ‘REFLECTIONS UNHEARD: BLACK WOMEN IN CIVIL RIGHTS’. Where do Black women activists fit into the epochal struggles for equality and liberation during the 1960s and 70s? This feature-length documentary unearths the story of Black women’s political marginalization - between the male-dominated Black Power movement and second wave feminism, which was largely white and middle class - showing how each failed to recognize Black women’s overlapping racial and gender identities. Archival footage and in-depth interviews with former members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), SNCC’s Black Women’s Liberation Committee, the Black Panther Party, Third World Women’s Alliance, and the National Black Women’s Feminist Organization reveal how Black women mobilised, fought for recognition, and raised awareness of how sexism and class issues affected women of colour within and outside The Black Power Movement and mainstream feminism. Prominently featured activists include Frances Beale, Angela Davis, Kola Boof, Nikki Giovanni, Rosemari Mealy, Judy Richardson, Gwendolyn Simmons, Deborah Singletary and Eugenia Wiltshire. On Mon 9 Mar at 7-9pm at the PCS Headquarters, 160 Falcon Road, Clapham Junction, London, SW11 2LN. E-mail: info@blackhistorystudies.com Web: http://www.blackhistorystudies.com
~ NANA ASANTE, IN ASSOCIATION WITH TAOBQ (THE AFRICAN OR BLACK QUESTION) AND BBM/BMC (BRITISHBLACKMUSIC.COM/BLACK MUSIC CONGRESS) EVENTS
Harrow BHM Group’s African History Season 2014/15 continues with the Marcus Garvey / UNIA-themed Xtra History & Reasoning Sessions.
- ‘The Marcus Garvey / UNIA Quiz (Kwaku)’. On Mon 9 Mar.
- ‘Explaining The UNIA And ACL’s African Philosophy And Practice Of Marcus Garvey (Mandingo)’. On Mon 16 Mar.
- ‘Reflecting On Marcus Garvey / UNIA From A Young Person’s Perspective’ (Antonio & Marcel Phillip). On Mon 30 Mar.
All sessions at 6.30-8.30pm at Harrow MENCAP, 3 Jardine House, Harrovian Business Village, Bessborough Road, Harrow, London, HA1 3EX. Adm: Free. Booking: Eventbrite or e-mail: harrowBHM@hotmail.com
- Grassroots Community Meeting 5 including rare screening of ‘Blacks Britannica’. On Sun 22 Mar at 2-5pm at The Bridge, Christchurch Avenue, Harrow, Middlesex, HA3 5BD. Pre-book via Eventbrite. This fifth Grassroots Community Meeting is to discuss what gains Black (African & Asian) people have made within British society 50 years after their struggles and activism along with support from progressive factions led to the enactment of the 1965 Race Relations Act (RRA), the bedrock of all the subsequent equality legislations. The event, which takes place the day after UN Anti-Racism Day (officially International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) marks the 50th anniversary of the 1965 RRA and the first anniversary of the death of film-maker David Koff, whose rarely seen documentary, ‘Blacks Britannica’, precedes the discussions. The 1978 documentary became a cause célèbre when following a court case, the original US commissioning public broadcaster was allowed to air a re-edited version after refusing to broadcast Koff’s uncompromising cut, whilst no UK broadcaster would broadcast a film British politicians protested in and out of Parliament gave a “horrific view of racism” and Black immigration and integration in Britain. Contributors include Steel Pulse, Colin Prescod, Claudia Jones, A. Sivanandan, and Darcus Howe here. Followed by a discussion with community activist and TUSC parliamentary candidate Nana Asante, ‘Blacks Britannica’ researcher Margaret Henry and former Steel Pulse member Mykaell Riley.
~ NEW BEACON BOOKS AND THE GEORGE PADMORE INSTITUTE PRESENT ‘LEAVING BY PLANE SWIMMING BACK UNDERWATER AND OTHER STORIES’ BOOK LAUNCH. Lawrence Scott will read from his new short story collection and be in conversation with Dr Lucy Evans. In 2012 Lawrence Scott was awarded a Lifetime Literary Award by the National Library of Trinidad & Tobago. On Tues 10 Mar at 6.30pm at 76 Stroud Green Road, London, N4 3EN. Tel: 020 7272 4889. E-mail: newbeaconbooks@btconnect.com
~ V&A SOUTH KENSINGTON PRESENT ‘IN BLACK AND WHITE: PRINTS FROM AFRICA AND THE DIASPORA’. Essential exhibition covering four decades of campaigning and cultural printwork from some of the best exponents many of whom have had their own solo exhibitions in London in the last year: Faisal Abdu’Allah; Frank Bowling; Sonia Boyce; Nils Burwitz; William Cole; Emory Douglas, the Black Panther designer; Uzo Egonu; Ellen Gallagher; Joy Gregory; Margo Humphrey; Kerry James Marshall; Gavin Jantjes; Isaac Julien; William Kentridge; Atta Kwami; Glenn Ligon; John Lyons; the Santeria art of Manuel Mendive; the tender melancholy of the late John Ndevasia Muafangejo’s Biblical and political observations; Chris Ofili’s tributes to Stephen Lawrence; the New York collective PESTS challenging Afrikan representation in the art world; four of Tony Phillips etchings on the British theft of the Benin Bronzes; Adrian Piper; Tayo Quaye; the San artist Thomas Setshogo; Yinka Shonibare with his Afrikan material designs; Kara Walker’s pop-ups riffing on the Black image in America; Carrie Mae Weems; Sue Williamson redressing the lack of representation of Afrikans during apartheid South Africa; Diane Vitt’s charcoal drawings using Greek mythological themes transferred to Afrika; and Llewellyn Xavier’s tributes to George Jackson and the Soledad Brothers.
Art And Existence Talks Series
- ‘The Rise and Development of Black Print Culture’. Talk by Patrick Vernon, Founder of Every Generation Media. On Thurs 12 Mar at 2.30-4pm. Using the work of Joel Augustus Rogers (1880–1966) as a case study examining the role of the journalist, political activist, artist and publisher in countering racist stereotypes by creating an Afrikan-led perspective on print media, collected on people from the Afrikan Diaspora within books, newspapers, hand bills and pamphlets.
- ‘Calypso and the Black British Experience 1950s and 60s’. Talk led by Alexander D Great, Musician and Educator. On Thurs 19 Mar at 2.30–4pm. Tune into the calypsos of the great commanders and griots of this art form including Kitchener, Terror, Beginner, Roaring Lion and Sparrow, who all spent time in the Britain in the 1950s and ‘60s. The lyrics of Calypso were highly political and were contentious as they dealt with a variety of topics such as: poor housing; Independence and the Commonwealth; Afrikan, Caribbean and British affairs; the wars; and economic status.
Talks take place in Clore Study Room, British Galleries, Level 2. Exhibition runs until 6 July 2015. At 10am-5.45pm at Rms 88a & 90, V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL. Adm: Free. Tel: 020 7942 2211. Web: www.vam.ac.uk
~ PASCF WORKSHOPS
- ‘Facing Challenges & Empowering Change – There Is No Other Option!’ with Sis Yvonne Fields, Ubele. On Fri 13 Mar.
- ‘Taking Assertive Action Towards Protecting and Preserving Our Health and Wellness’ with Sis Hiikmah, Institute of Afrikan Wellness (Invited). On Fri 20 Mar.
- ‘Afrikan-Consciousness In Action – Remembering Ahmed Sekou Toure!’ with Bro Asari, AAPRP. On Fri 27 Mar.
All events at 7.30pm at 365 Brixton Road, London, SW9 7DA. E-mail: pascfevents@gmail.com Web: http://www.pascf.com / https://twitter.com/PASCFofficial / http://www.facebook.com/PASCFofficial
~ AFRICAN ODYSSEYS PRESENT
- ‘50 Years Of Struggle: Black British Civil Rights’. On Sat 14 Mar at 2-6pm. Professor Gus John and Gary Younge on 50 years of African-British people fighting for equality in education, housing, employment, religion, policing and health. Plus fantastic rare archive from their personal collections.
- ‘Legends of Ska’ starring Chris Rock, Prince Buster, Whoopi Goldberg, Rosario Dawson, Alton Ellis, Skatalites. Q &A with director and artistes. On Sat 4 Apr at 2-5pm. In the early 60s Ska introduced a unique sound that would transform popular music the world over. Its birthplace, history and rich cast of performers are presented in this feel-good documentary which features legends such as Prince Buster, Alton Ellis, The Skatalites and Derrick Harriot. Writer David Katz hosts a discussion with the film’s director and a star-studded panel of music pioneers including Owen Gray, Rico Rodriguez and Freddie Notes.
Both events at BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, London, SE1. Adm: £6.50. Web: www.bfi.org.uk
~ SOUTH AFRICA AT 20: THE FREEDOM TOUR
- ‘Khumba: A Zebra’s Tale’. Dir: Anthony Silverston. On Sat 14 Mar at 11am. Khumba, a half-striped zebra, leaves home in search of the magic waterhole that will cure his anomaly. It is not all black and white in this colourful animation for the whole family!
- ‘Come Back, Africa’. Dir: Lionel Rogosin. On Sat 14 Mar at 1.45pm. The classic and clandestinely made film, featuring a young Miriam Makeba, sincerely brings to life the injustices of the apartheid system in a way seldom seen on screen before. It remains a great historical and cultural document of the unique heritage of the townships of South Africa in the 1950s.
- ‘Future Sound of Mzansi’ + Q&A with Spoek Mathambo. Dir: Spoek Mathambo and Lebogang Rasethaba. On Sat 14 Mar at 11.30pm. This documentary explores South Africa’s cultural landscape through the vehicle of electronic music. The film engages with a potent range of pioneers sculpting the sounds of things to come. We swim in the sounds of deep house, glitch hop, sghubu sapitori, durban qhum, dubstep and shangaan electro. In a country still steeped in poverty, crime and injustice, young South Africans party like their lives depend on it. The groove is thick and infectious and the future looks blindingly beautiful. Spoek Mathambo’s life as a musician and filmmaker hasn’t just been about forging a career as one of South Africa’s most forward-thinking, recognisable and imaginative solo artists (his Sub Pop-released most-recent album, 2012’s Father Creeper, received global attention and last year he was nominated for Best African Act at the MOBOs for the third time), it’s also concerned his explorations into the history of South African music, where the music finds itself in the 2010s, and the myriad of its future possibilities. Last year, he travelled the breadth of the country as part of Vodafone’s ‘First’ initiative, recording – sometimes in the studio, sometimes in the field – musicians from different cultures, generations and tribes to create a single track, ‘Pula Rain’, that speaks of the great richness of South Africa as a musical nation. South African designer Chantel Koning (www.youmewe.co.za) will have some of her clothes and merchandise on sale.
On Sat 14 Mar at Dalston Rio Cinema, 107 Kingsland High Street, London, E8 2PB. Tel: 020 7241 9410. Adm: £10. Web: www.safilmtour.uk.
~ BLACK HISTORY WALKS EVENTS
- Notting Hill. On Sun 15 Mar at 11am.
There is much more to Notting Hill than Carnival but even that history is often mis-represented. Find out about pioneering African / Caribbean people who literally fought for equality and laid the foundation for modern multi-cultural London. Why does Portobello road have that name? Where in London is there evidence of 3500 years of African civilisation? We cover Baron Baker, Jamaican Freedom Fighters, White Defence League, Sus law, Sou-Sou / Partner System, Michael X, Peter Rachman, Claudia Jones, anti-black riots of 1958, Mau Mau, Shebeens and invisible black history.
- ‘Medical Apartheid: 400 Years of European Experiments on African Bodes’. On Fri 10 Apr at 6.30pm in the Blue Room, BFI Southbank, Belvedere Road, London, SE1. Adm: £3. A review of the scientific experiments and research performed on Black people to refine various drugs and medical treatments for use with white people. We also detail chemical and biological warfare. This presentation will draw on Harriet Washington’s book of the same name, various documentation from World War 1 and 2, Aboriginal history, Vietnam, US Prisons and Porton Down. It will cover: Piracy, Poisons and East Africa; Radioactive People: North Africa and the Pacific; Birth and Crowd Control: The South African Solution, Project Coast; National Security Memorandum 200; Vic Mackie and Congressional Inquiries; The ‘War on Drugs’, Haiti, Jamaica, USA; and The Mau Mau, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan
For bookings e-mail: info@blackhistorywalks.co.uk Web: www.blackhistorywalks.co.uk
~ ROYAL AFRICAN SOCIETY EVENTS
- ‘Will 2015 be the year for African women?’ On Tues 17 Mar at 7.15-9.15pm at Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS University. 2015 has been declared the “Year of Women’s Empowerment” by the African Union and it is also the year marking the end of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the dawn of this new development era post-2015, our panel of experts take stock of the current situation of African women and girls, identifying obstacles to change and discussing opportunities on the path to social transformation and gender equality in Africa.
- ‘The Looting Machine’. On Tues 24 Mar at 6.30-8.30pm at Brunei Suite, SOAS University. In what ways does the resource trade wreak havoc on Afrika? Tom Burgis’ new book, ‘The Looting Machine’, sheds light on the shadowy networks, which underpin resource exploitation in different parts of the continent. The author and a panel will discuss the continued negative impact of Western interests and reveal the human stories behind the headlines.
- ‘Sudan’s Elections: In the shadow of war, dialogue and secession’. On Wed 25 Mar at 6.30-8.30pm at Djam Lecture Theatre (G2), SOAS University. Scheduled to take place in April, Sudan’s elections will be dominated by President Omar El-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP). Most of the main opposition groups will boycott the polls, amid complaints about the strengthening of presidential powers and the lack of necessary measures to create an enabling environment for genuine and democratic debate. The panel will discuss the country’s political trajectory leading up to and beyond the 2015 elections.
Events at SOAS, Thornhaugh St, London, WC1. Adm: Free.
~ KIMATHI DONKOR RESIDENCY AT THE GATE THEATRE
- Open Foyer Event. On Wed 18 Mar at 5.30-6.30pm. Adm: Free but limited. RSVP: info@kimathidonkor.net
- Artist In Residence supported by the Chelsea Arts Club Trust. Until Sat 21 Mar. A foyer installation of new murals and oil paintings in response to ‘The rise and shine of Comrade Fiasco’ by the Zimbabwean playwright, Andrew Whaley.
All events at the Gate Theatre; 11 Pembridge Road, Notting Hill Gate, London, W11 3HQ.
~ GOETHE-INSTITUT LONDON PRESENTS ‘NOTES FROM LAGOS / AUFZEICHNUNGEN AUS LAGOS’.
- ‘Drama Consult’. Dir: Dorothee Wenner. On Wed 18 Mar. DramaConsult are two Nigerian business consultants helping a shoe manufacturer, an auto parts dealer and a real estate developer from Lagos to set up business links with Germany. Together they travel to Germany to meet potential business partners. It is a real project especially created for this film that aims to break through the standard north-south trajectory of the global economy.
- ‘Age of Cannibals’. Dir: Johannes Naber. On Wed 25 Mar. In this satire Lagos is reduced to a non-descript back drop. What we see of it through the windows of the hotel room in which most of the action takes place, is a featureless silhouette that looks more like a minimalist stage set than a real city.
Both screenings at 7pm at Goethe Institut, Exhibition Road, London, SW7. Adm: £3 / free for Goethe-Institut language students and library members. Booking essential. Tel: 020 7596 4000.
~ UN ANTI-RACIST DAY (OFFICIALLY INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION). In 2014, 10,000 people marched in central London for UN Anti-Racism Day which commemorates the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre in apartheid South Africa. It was part of a series of demonstrations across Europe and around the world. Some of the campaigns represented this year include: No to Islamophobia #MuslimLivesMatter; From Ferguson to London #BlackLivesMatter; Stamp out anti-Semitism Immigrants are welcome here! #standuptoracism #m21. Assemble on Sat 21 Mar at 12pm at the BBC, Portland Place, London, W1A 1AA. Rally to Trafalgar Square, London.
~ WINDRUSH FOUNDATION PRESENTS TATE & LYLE - SUGAR & SLAVERY. On Sat 21 Mar at 3-5pm at Black Cultural Archives, Windrush Square, London, SW2 1EF. Adm: Free.
~ BLACK SCIENTISTS & INVENTORS & THE POWER OF DEFINITION ARTS PRESENTS DID YOU KNOW? An evening of presentations, demonstrations and a family quiz celebrating the contributions which scientists & inventors of African heritage have made to the UK in particular and the world in general. On Sat 21 Mar at 4.30-7.30pm at Park View Academy, West Green Road, London, N15 3QR.
Mathieu K. Abonnenc, Foreword
to Guns for Banta, 2011, Courtesy
the artist and Marcelle Alix, Paris.
~ ARTISTS’ FILM CLUB: MATHIEU K ABONNENC. French director Mathieu K Abonnenc focuses on the forgotten or marginalized areas of recent history, figures and events associated with the 20th century’s struggles for emancipation of identity. On the basis of investigations and documents, he attempts to deconstruct the nature of representations of the geographical ‘Other’ in particular. Three of Abonnenc’s half-hour films will be shown followed by a Q&A with the artist: ‘Foreword to Guns for Banta, 2011’, highlights Abonnenc’s interests in the work of Sarah Maldoror. Abonnenc’s film includes stills and images taken by war photographers who accompanied the film crew from her unfinished film, ‘Des Fusils pour Banta (Guns for Banta)’; ‘Ça va, ça va, on continue’, illustrates Abonnenc’s research into former Portuguese colonies and the liberation movements. The film reveals the complications implicit in commemorating histories of anti-colonial revolt and revolutionary insurrection; ‘An Italian Film (Africa Addio)’ is based around the film ‘Africa Addio’ (1966) produced by Italian directors Franco Prosperi and Gualtierro Jacoppeti. Their film is about the end of the colonial era in Afrika which includes footage of the Zanzibar revolution. Abonnenc uses an installation of a factory creating copper bars to demonstrate the cutting of objects, signifying the violence within Africa. On Wed 25 Mar at 6.45pm in Cinema 1, ICA, Pall Mall, London, SW1. Adm: £5.
~ QUEEN NZINGHA LECTURE 26: ‘HOW TRUE AFRICAN DANCE WAS CORRUPTED INTO P...’
Afrikan dance and culture has often been appropriated by Europeans and divorced from its roots. This presentation aims to give a general background to Afrikan dance and show how movements / styles were borrowed or imitated by various European cultures. Those cultures would then re-name and take credit for the movements or totally pervert them. The presentation will cover: A selection of Afrikan civilisations pre or co-existing with European invasion; Original purpose of Afrikan dance; Weddings, fertility, birthdays, rites of passage; Appropriate time and season of dance; Appropriate Afrikan dress for dance; and Dance as politics; European censorship and disgust; Popular dances in the West that have Afrikan origins / elements; and Afrikan beats in the Top Ten but not called Afrikan. On Sat 28 Mar at 3-7pm at Portland Room, University of Westminster, Little Titchfield Street, London, W1. Adm: Free, if booked via Eventbrite, Donations accepted on the day.
~ CHI CREATIONS PRESENTS ‘THE GRIOT WAY STORYTELLING TRAINING’. On 15-17 May 2015 at Etherly Farm, Dorking, RH5 6PA. E-mail: Info@shanti-chi.com Web: www.shanti-chi.com
~ BLACK CULTURAL ARCHIVES PRESENT ‘STAYING POWER: PHOTOGRAPHS OF BLACK BRITISH EXPERIENCE, 1950S – 1990S’. Inspired by Peter Fryer’s seminal text ‘Staying Power, The History of Black People in Britain’, this exhibition focuses on a period of time when photography served as an archival tool to capture historical moments. From documentary to portraiture to staged allegorical photographs, Staying Power documents experiences from post-World War II through to the 1990s, covering topics from mass migration to hip hop fashions of south London. Contemplate the narratives behind the iconic work of Dennis Morris, Charlie Philips’ visual record of city life and local heroes, and Neil Kenlock’s photographic journalism. Discover the work of acclaimed photographer James Barnor who captured many greats during the ‘swinging sixties’, self-taught Colin Jones and his infamous images of youth alienation, the powerful images of uprisings and protest captured by Pogus Caesar, and allegorical portraits by Ingrid Pollard. Through the lens of the photographers celebrate the moment of ‘The Specials Fans’ by Syd Shelton and Gavin Watson’s insight into the ska youth sub-culture. Explore representations of beauty and aesthetics through the work of Armet Francis, Jennie Baptiste, Al Vandenberg and Raphael Albert. The photographs are complimented by previously unheard oral history testimonies from the photographers and contributors. Until 30 June at Black Cultural Archives, Windrush Square, Brixton, London, SW2. Adm: Free. Also until 24 May at 10am-5.45pm at V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL. Adm: Free. Tel: 020 7942 2211. Web: www.vam.ac.uk
Ronald Moody
Midonz 1937
~ BP SPOTLIGHT EXHIBITION ‘SPACES OF BLACK MODERNISM: LONDON 1919–39’. In the inter-war period cosmopolitan networks of artists, activists, writers and artists’ models in London helped shape the cultural and political identity of the city. The studios, art colleges and social clubs of Chelsea, Bloomsbury and Soho became places of trans-national exchange. ‘Spaces of Black Modernism’ draws together paintings, sculpture, photographs and archival material from Tate’s collection with others loaned from public and private collections. It follows the interactions between artists such as John Banting, Edward Burra, Jacob Epstein, Barbara Ker-Seymer, Ronald Moody, Glyn Philpot and Matthew Smith with others including the writers Claude McKay and Una Marson, the poet and political activist Nancy Cunard, the model ‘Sunita’ (Amina Peerbhoy) and the singer Elisabeth Welch. The display is a collaboration between Tate Britain and the Equiano Centre at University College London and builds on research from the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project, ‘Drawing Over the Colour Line’.
Exhibition runs until 4 Oct 2015 at Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1. Adm: Free.
~ BUNDU DIA KONGO (BDK). Afrikan cultural and spiritual group working towards the spiritual and psychological growth and development of Afrikans all over the world. Let us make a positive change now. Learn about Afrikan prophets, Afrikan history and Afrikan spiritual practices at our weekly Zikua.
- Sun at 1.30–4.30pm at PSCC, 1 Othello Close, Kennington, London, SE11 4RE. Tel: Makaba - 07951 059 853. E-mail: moyomakaba9@gmail.com
- Sun at 12.30–3.15pm at Malika House, 81 George Street, Lozells, Birmingham, B19 1Sl. Tel: Mbuta Mayala – 07404 789 329.
~ THE AUSAR AUSET SOCIETY GI GONG CLASSES. Every Monday at 7.30–9pm at Hazel Road Community Centre, Hazel Road, Kensal Green, London, NW10 5PP. Adm: £5 per class. Tel: 07951- 252-427. E-mail: Tauinetwork.europe@gmail.com
~ THE GREAT AFRIKAN BOOK SALE! Every book and CD is on sale at 50% off or more! There are over 5000 titles in the sale - never before have so many Afrikan interest books been offered on this scale in a sale. The finances raised will go towards the development of the MAA MAAT Project. On Fri & Sat at 5-10pm, Sat 12-8pm and Sun 12-5pm at Maa Maat Centre, 366a High Road, Tottenham, London, N17 9HT. Tel 07956 052 821.
Contact: Kubara Zamani, Afrikan Quest International, PO Box 35165, London, SE5 8WU. Tel: 07811 494 969. E-mail: afrikanquest@hotmail.com
External Links
Afrikan Quest International
More than 9,500 fatalities have now been attributed to Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. The governments of the three countries have pledged to achieve zero Ebola infections within the next two months. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has called for a Marshall Plan for the Ebola-affected countries of West Africa. One Ebola Treatment Centre in Liberia has already been re-purposed to provide high-quality medical care to persons with serious illness. Others will be used as Primary Health Care Units. Liberia has released its last Ebola patient after going a week without any new cases of the virus, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It is the first time since May 2014 that Liberia has had no new cases of the virus, the officials added.
Sierra Leone was immediately granted more than $80m (£52m) to help end the Ebola outbreak and recover from its effects. The IMF has pledged a $187m financial aid package for Sierra Leone. Nearly $5bn has been pledged internationally to the Ebola effort, but less than half of the help has materialised.
The vice-president of Sierra Leone put himself into quarantine after one of his bodyguards, John Koroma, died from the disease. Mr Samuel Sam-Sumana said he would stay out of contact with others for 21 days as a precaution. He was showing no signs of the illness but said he did not want to take chances. His staff have also been placed under observation. He is the country’s first senior government figure to subject himself to a voluntary quarantine.
Augustine Baker who worked with children orphaned by Ebola at the St George Foundation has died of the disease himself. Thirty-three children and seven staff have been in quarantine since Mr Baker was diagnosed with the deadly virus.
The final stage of testing for an experimental Ebola vaccine began on 7 Mar in the Basse Guinee region of Guinea, which has the highest number of cases in the country. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that if a vaccine is found to be effective it will be the first preventive tool against Ebola in history.
Sierra Leonean sprinter Jimmy Thoronka, 20, who disappeared after the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow last year has been found living rough in London and is now in detention awaiting deportation. He was his country’s top 100m runner but did not return to his home country last year amid fears over the Ebola virus. Homeless Thoronka says Ebola has killed his immediate family in Sierra Leone. He was told during the Games that his uncle probably died from Ebola. He then heard that his mother had died from the disease and later discovered his three adopted sisters and brother also killed by virus
MITIGATING A MAJOR FOOD SECURITY CRISIS IN WEST AFRICA: THE IMPACT OF EBOLA ON AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIVELIHOODS
Friday, 13 February 2015
Author: Hetty Bailey (Africa APPG Research Coordinator)
(This is a memo from the joint meeting with the Africa APPG on Agriculture & Food for Development on 2nd February 2015. Audio recording available here.)
In 2014 the Famine Early Warning Network predicted that, if the Ebola outbreak continued unabated, West Africa could experience a major food crisis by early this year.
The Ebola outbreak resulted in a serious shock to the agriculture and food sectors in 2014. The epidemic started spreading when crops were being planted and expanded during the crop maintenance and critical harvesting period for the staple crops rice, maize and cassava. As a result, food insecurity and the number of people at risk of food deprivation and undernourishment are rapidly growing.
This panel sought to explore the current assessment of the situation and the action already being taken to prevent a major food security crisis in West Africa.
Dr. Arif Husain, Chief Economist, World Food Programme
Dr Arif Husain is Chief Economist and Deputy Director, Policy and Programme Division - Analysis and Trends Service at United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Rome, Italy. Dr Husain started working for WFP in 2003 and since then he has served in many capacities, including as Deputy Director of the Food Security Analysis Service, and Head of Food Security Analysis in Sudan. Dr Husain’s work focuses on analysing how external economic shocks affect food security and welfare conditions in developing countries as well as WFP’s capacities to deliver food assistance. Dr Husain has substantial field experience in working on food security and humanitarian issues in conflict and post conflict recovery countries. His research interests include studying linkages between economic growth and equity, poverty, hunger and conflict; and analysing how global economic shocks impact localised food security, social protection, agricultural trade, and emergency and development assistance. Dr Husain has a Ph.D. in agricultural and applied economics with a minor in forestry from the University of Minnesota.
The WFP was involved in three main activities, caring for patients and survivors of Ebola through providing food assistance, trying to provide people in quarantine with one moth ration and helping communities to transition from crisis to be able to support themselves.
Logistically WFP provide the backbone for humanitarian assistance in the region. Procurement, storage and telecommunications and establishing treatment and community care centres also.
The last report from WHO revealed that 8795 people of 22,000 have perished. It is now stabilising. WFP have assisted 2.7 million people and their families who have been affected by Ebola since April 2014 and have spent quarter of a billion US dollars. At the current rate another 750 million dollars is needed for the WFP to run its programmes until May 2015.
WFP have conducted food security and crop assessments and introduced mobile monitoring systems to find out what the food security situation is, including looking at market practices and coping strategies that people are using. From this WFP have identified that people are affected in three channels- social (fear & stigma, people avoiding each other and work), functioning of markets (Are commodities coming in and being used? How are supply chains working?) and livelihoods (Do people still have jobs? Are formal / informal wage rates being affected?)
WFP in their recent report found that border closures, quarantines, hunting bans and other restrictions seriously hamper peoples access to food. Such restrictions also threaten livelihoods, disrupt food markets and processing chains and exacerbate food shortages in areas with the highest infection rates.
In September 2014, the estimate was that about half a million people were food insecure and was believed that if certain actions were not taken the number could top a million by March/April 2015.
Losses of productivity and household income due to Ebola caused by loss of labour due to relative and family member deaths but also due to stigma and people being asked to stay away or staying away from work for fear of infection.
However, crops were planted last year therefore the level of production at the national level has declined but not hugely (10-15%). It is at the local level where problems are apparent facing issues such as households being unable to harvest their crops, or in some cases they were harvested but due to restrictions these crops did not make it to market.
The result it that households have reduced purchasing power as many have either been unable to work or unable to sell their produce. The impact has been different across the countries, Guinea was worst hit, then Sierra Leone and then Liberia due to the different economic dispersions.
Dr Husain pressed that it is crucial that the next planting due to happen now goes ahead with support through the provision of agricultural commodities and machinery as a substitute of labour as otherwise the next harvest will be affected and have long term consequences even once Ebola is contained.
Further, he said injecting liquidity through market cash transfers to assist affected people to buy food and revive economic activity was critically important. He added that as there is no social protection in these countries, investment is needed at the national and regional level to assist in social protection as well as healthcare.
Monty Jones recorded message, Special Advisor to the President of Sierra Leone
Monty is the Special Adviser to the President of Sierra Leone with a particular focus on agriculture. He is former Executive Director of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and co-winner of the 2004 World Food Prize. He won the award based on his discovery of the genetic process to create the New Rice for Africa (NERICA), which gives higher yields, shorter growth cycles and more protein content than its Asian and African parents.
Monty Jones drew attention to his work under the New Alliance for Africa initiative where he discovered NERICA rice and said he was frustrated by the lack of progress in achieving sustainable agricultural production in Sierra Leone. His most recent foray is an attempt to reorganise the Governmental structure of projects to meet international standards for best practice. This is geared towards enhancing nutritional and food security through agricultural fisheries and agro-industries.
He continued that he had been involved in strategic work through a proposed programme for agriculture, fisheries and agro-industry (AFIP) focused on introducing a collaborative approach to food security with strategic leadership and delivery in projects supported by donor farms. The aim is to allow for coordinated and results orientated project management and supervisory oversight of donor funded projects. However, the delivery and implementation time table was halted due to the Ebola outbreak and they are now reworking the modalities of the proposal to reflect the President’s aspiration for post-Ebola reconstruction.
As the health system comes under review, he added that they would fight for food security to be subject to a rigorous review in line with the recent findings of the World Bank and African Development Bank funded and FAO supported agricultural sector review of 2014. He said there is cautious optimism that the post Ebola reconstruction would provide donor partners with wider scope for engaging Governments on funded activities to restore confidence in a strategically placed oversight infrastructure and provide sector led approaches to the various areas of interest aligned to agriculture. He said collaboration on this would yield greater impact and cause genuine overflow to the wider economy.
He added that the constraints analysis on agriculture sector growth would be significant in designing a more robust agriculture policy framework whilst the realignment of Ministerial responsibilities for agriculture, fisheries and marine development would augment the holistic approach proposed by the AFIP programme.
Robtel Neajai Pailey is a Liberian academic, activist and author based at SOAS, University of London. She has consulted for the Government of Liberia, African Development Bank, Australian Agency for International Development, Ford Foundation, ActionAid, and Search for Common Ground. Her writing has appeared in the International New York Times, The Guardian (UK), Al Jazeera English, Newsweek-Daily Beast, and she has provided commentary for the BBC, NPR, Press TV, and Voice of America. Her anti-corruption children’s book, Gbagba, was published in 2013 to critical acclaim and has been placed on the supplemental list of readers for 3rd to 5th graders in Liberia.
Dr Pailey spoke about the report she was commissioned to write by the African Development Bank (AfDB) for the Special Envoy on Gender (not publicly available). The AfDB were concerned that women were disproportionately affected by the outbreak and that the data being collected was not disaggregated by gender.
The report found that women’s socio-economic vulnerabilities were particularly exacerbated due to the outbreak. As a result, any post Ebola planning would need to address these vulnerabilities head on. She also recommended a follow up report with more quantitative data.
In terms of the food value chain, before Ebola women had very limited access to land, credit, extension services, post-harvest technologies and training. She said these needed to be at the fore when discussing food security and quoted some key statistics from the report to demonstrate this-
Guinea
In Guinea, women only counted for 10% of the formal workforce and they were disproportionately represented in the informal sector, many of them lack access to land but work in the agricultural sector.
70% of women in Guinea live in rural areas and are engaged in agricultural sectors. Therefore as a result of the quarantine measures, closed borders and the inability to actually produce food they were disproportionately impacted.
Liberia
In Liberia, 68.8% of all economically active women are farmers and are involved in weeding, planting and harvesting crops, particularly cash crops. In fact women account for 80% of the Liberian agricultural labour force and contribute 60% to agricultural production as well as 80% to trade. Yet, they only generate 16% of all agricultural earnings- showing huge disparities.
In Liberia, 89% of women are considered vulnerable workers particularly in agriculture and in wholesale and retail trade sectors.
In terms of access to land, although there was a customary inheritance law passed a few years ago, which gives women equal access to land in law, the implementation of that has become incredibly difficult due to push back from traditional leaders in rural sectors.
Sierra Leone
Trends and statistics are similar, Sierra Leone has a law that allows land tenure and administration for both women and men equally but implementation varies from region to region. In the north-western part of the country women can own land indiscriminately, but in the South and Eastern areas women can only use the land that are owned by their male relatives.
84% of rural women and 63% of urban women are engaged in informal work and most are engaged in agriculture and petty trading. 70% of women are smallholder farmers.
Trends show that women are disproportionately represented in the agricultural sector but in terms of their earnings and access to land and credit they are disproportionately represented.
Women process, preserve, store and transport all the food crops for marketing. In Kailahun and Kenema, areas which were most adversely affected by the outbreak, women master farmers and heads of households had their livelihoods particularly compromised.
Same is true for Liberia that has 15 sub political divisions, north-eastern part of the country - Lofa County. Before the outbreak Lofa was considered the bread basket of Liberia and most farmers in that county are women.
In terms of cross border trade in the Mano River Union (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote D’Ivoire) 70% of all cross border traders in these countries are women and due to border restrictions were unable to travel to trade cash crops. This seriously impacts on their ability to have a livelihood.
Regarding markets, a Mercy Corps report (Nov 2014) said that marketers in these countries complained that because the borders were closed they had to rely on the capital cities to get their crops. Due to the increased transportation costs where trucks and cabs were carrying a limited number of people they had to pay an extra amount. In Sierra Leone, all the 13 districts also underwent quarantine measures; the marketers are predominately women.
Finally the moratorium on the sale of bush meat due to the assumption that the Ebola vector was bat has impacted mainly women as there are more women bush meat sellers.
Recommendations -
• When rapid assessments are being conducted they need to be disaggregated by gender as men and women experience crisis differently.
• When using social cash transfers to mitigate risks that people face, it is important for WFP and Oxfam etc to pay attention to gender nuances. If there are women heads of households that need social cash transfers it is important to institute that in the planning post Ebola.
• The African Union has proclaimed 2015 the year of women’s empowerment for which it is important to take a regional approach not just in the Mano River Union but continentally.
Larissa Pelham, Emergency Food Security & Vulnerable Livelihoods Adviser, Oxfam
Larissa Pelham is one of Oxfam GB’s global emergency food security and livelihoods advisers and is also the lead on food security & livelihoods for Oxfam GB’s Ebola response. Formerly working for save the children, care and currently Oxfam, as well as the institute of development studies and as social protection specialist at the world bank, She has worked on the design, implementation and monitoring of some of the major national safety nets and multi-donor food security programmes. She returned from Sierra Leone in December undertaking a rapid assessment of the need for food security and livelihoods interventions in response to Ebola and has almost literally just stepped off the plane from undertaking a markets assessment in South Sudan.
1. The outbreak highlighted the paramount importance of safety nets as a bedrock for supporting households in the face of shock.
Oxfam’s recent assessment in Liberia found that 78% of households did not receive any support from NGOs or the UN in the past three months from September and end of 2014. If safety nets had been in place it would have stopped the reduction in purchasing power of households amongst the communities.
She highlighted that the outbreak started just as two cash safety net programmes were about to be implemented and they are still not in place despite World Bank funding and country efforts. It was decided that instead of doing this for the poorest households they would implement it for the households directly affected (i.e. had a member die or recover from Ebola) which resulted in the dismissing of all households that were indirectly affected.
Because of the border and trade restrictions that were imposed, a large group of people could no longer get their goods to market or buy from the market. By not implementing the safety net it meant that a fundamental way of supporting people’s purchasing power was lost.
Jobs were lost and businesses went into administration and so those working in the formal sector were also affected.
2. Importance of coordinated food security intervention
The national coordination on food security was much weaker in Sierra Leone than in Liberia. Sierra Leone is still very much focused on getting a handle on the number and burials, as such food security coordination has been slow to get going.
The food security clusters were not operative in Sierra Leone. In Liberia they were still in place as they had not yet been removed following the civil war. This played an important role in Liberians engaging in food security.
The FAO was coordinating the food security response in Sierra Leone but it is an organisation that does not have emergency capacities and so it wasn’t ready to take preventative action.
This lack of coordination has had an impact by restricting how far NGOs can mitigate a food security crisis through collective intervention in this area.
3. Food security and livelihoods interventions were stalled due to a lack of concrete data
However, the World Bank and UN did work rapidly on assessments by mobile phone (which had its own limitations) but the issue was that whilst there was small scale data on what the impacts were on food security there was no large scale databases to prove all of this. Donors were keen to intervene but they wanted to see the large scale data which caused a tension as to how to manage that- there was a duplicity as to how to proceed as NGOs were trying to collect data whilst also taking action and so it was very limiting and stopped resilience approaches being adopted until now.
Larissa reported that on the ground, DFID were the only organisation looking at longer term interventions and that the main challenge was getting food security and livelihoods issues on the table due to the complete focus on the immediate healthcare demands of the outbreak. Despite the fact food security specialists were on the ground and ready to carry out assessments and start getting programmes going, they did not have the decision making power to get it through as this was all channeled upwards. It took 7 months for issue to get the profile it needed which was a big hindrance.
Larissa concluded that the key areas of focus going forward were better coordination for impact intervention and recovery- this would also convince donors of the need to intervene. She said more money was needed for the recovery and called on a pledge to be set up at the World Bank Spring meetings. Next, she emphasised the need to ensure purchasing power through cash in hand transfers at the household level to ensure there is a safety net. Finally, ensure that funding is restored to the service sectors to the agriculture and fisheries sectors.
Q & A
Q. Action Against Hunger - asked whether the action that was being called for was preventative of a peak in food insecurity that was to come or whether that peak was now.
Q. Lord Cameron (Chair of Agriculture & Food for Development APPG) - Asked about what is being done to support smallholders to get the raw materials that are needed now in time for next year’s harvest?
Larissa reported there is support for seeds and tools to ensure next year’s crop is planted now. She added that Sierra Leone had lifted its trade restrictions and so now people can move around. The impact on transport prices had not yet been realised and there is uncertainty whether that’s because international borders are still closed and so food is not actually going out of Sierra Leone.
Arif Husain agreed that the planting that is taking place right now (February-March) is going to determine the status of food insecurity going forward. He added that, the disease is not spreading as rapidly as it was and countries are now talking about getting to the ‘containment phase’ but the fear is still there. Schools have now opened in Sierra Leone and Guinea but not enough students have shown up and will take time for people to re-adjust and for surrounding countries to relax their borders again to allow for trade and movement of people.
Q. Sierra Leone co-operative of women - asked what she could take back in terms of good news for the women of the co-operative as to what programmes and initiatives could be expected to assist such groups.
Dr Pailey said the African Development Bank will shortly be launching a social investment fund specifically for women with the aim of accessing what these vulnerabilities are and to give them extra incentives (farm implements, money etc to mitigate the vulnerabilities that they have post-Ebola).
Q. Unite for West Africa Initiative - Concerned about the stigma created and how this might impact small scale tourism in West Africa. Asked whether the private, public and third sectors could work together post Ebola to grow confidence of potential investors and tourists?
Dr Husain said many things needed to happen before the conversation about tourism begins, including the opening up of airlines, routes, borders etc and that before tourism can increase, more returns from foreign direct investment (FDI) would be needed. In Liberia 70-80% is FDI and it depends how quickly returns can be made on this in addition to returns from plantations and mining.
Dr Pailey added that tourism was not just affected in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone but for countries in the region such as Gambia which relies on 20% of its GDP from tourism. She said the adversely impact was felt more widely due to the bad international media coverage that insinuated that Ebola was an African crisis. The international media need to report that it is okay for people to travel to these countries and the sub-region.
Q. Jamie from the Africa Research Institute - mentioned the International Growth Centre (ICG) report on the Economic Impacts of Ebola which suggested that food prices in Sierra Leone were following natural patterns for that time of year and that there was not a significant difference this year. He asked Dr. Husain whether the half a million people that are food insecure, are they food insecure because of Ebola?
Dr. Husain agreed that food prices were generally in the band that they should be for the time of year but argued that usually, you would say with all other things being equal, but what has happened here was a shift in price at the same time as an unexpected decrease in the purchasing power.
Larissa added that food prices have been following their seasonal trends but most of the assessments have been conducted by mobile phones which isn’t getting out to rural areas where there is no mobile phone connection. She argued that in such localities the pattern may be widely divergent to normal prices.
Further, she believed there could be a time lag in the data as people are only just starting to sell again and purchasing power hasn’t picked up. She added that the exchange rate devaluation could also lead to price increases.
Regarding exports, it seems as though the harvests are stable and that the flooding from last year might have had a bigger negative impact on this than Ebola. Further due to continued closure of borders there is not the supply going out of the country, so if you have a low harvest then the demand could stay stable as more supply is being kept within the country.
Q. Independent consultant to the World Bank & Monty Jones- He said Ebola has exacerbated weak systems of delivery to rural areas due in part to fragmented delivery at the country level but also by the donors, adding that Monty Jones mentioned the need for coordinated efforts for post-Ebola reconstruction. He asked whether the way the Governments have responded would enhance the way donors perceive their capacity or undermine it?
Dr. Husain said everyone was tested by Ebola due to the fact that the standard operating principles that usually apply in an emergency were no longer relevant. Therefore new ways of assisting people had to be designed which took experimentation and time but he believed that due to the fear and magnitude of the problem, Governments had raised their bar very quickly. He warned that it was not over and that if the response became complacent now, it would start up again.
Dr. Pailey added that she was concerned that when talking of state building in the post-conflict moment that we need to return to what state building actually entails. Is it about service delivery? Giving authority back to state institutions at the expense of service delivery? Donors need to discuss Governments how state building should look different post-Ebola.
***An audio recording of the event is available here.***
Additional links
The WFP / FAO report on food security in Sierra Leone is available here.
Oxfam have a policy brief on the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone here and also released a report last week on governance for health emergencies in West Africa, available here.
- See more at: http://www.royalafricansociety.org/analysis/mitigating-major-food-security-crisis-west-africa-impact-ebola-agriculture-and-rural#sthash.wtAbxVK9.dpuf
CRIME SCENE USA
Michael Brown memorial
The US Justice Department has found evidence of racial bias by Ferguson police in Missouri accusing the department of conducting stops without reasonable suspicion, using excessive force and making arrests without probable cause. While African Americans make up 67% of the population in Ferguson, they accounted for 93% of arrests between 2012 and 2014. The courts also engage in racial bias with African Americans 68% less likely to have their cases dismissed by a judge with officials using the money raised from fines to help balance the city’s budget. They regularly made tickets and other minor violations ‘go away’ for white people while some African American residents spent nights in jail for non-payment of tickets.
The civil rights probe began following the August shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson. Wilson has been cleared of any civil rights violations relating to the shooting. US Attorney General Eric Holder says leaders in Ferguson engaged in a “disturbing and unconstitutional” pattern of abuse including a man arrested at gunpoint after he objected to a police officer accusing him of being a paedophile without probable cause who lost his job because of the arrest. The probe also found explicit racial bias in the ranks including e-mails that depicted President Obama as a chimpanzee, as well as other offensive stereotypes about African Americans.
NAMIBIAN PRESIDENT HIFIKEPUNYE POHAMBA WINS MO IBRAHIM PRIZE
Hifikepunye Pohamba
The outgoing Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba has won the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership at a ceremony in Nairobi, Kenya. The prize is meant to be awarded annually to an elected leader who governed well, raised living standards and then left office but only three leaders have been deemed worthy of it since 2007. The $5m prize is spread over 10 years and is followed by $200,000 a year for life. Mr Pohamba was a founding member of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) that fought for independence from apartheid rule. Before becoming president he served as Minister for Land Affairs. He oversaw a scheme under which some land that had been owned by white farmers since the colonial era was bought by the government, for redistribution to black farmers. Mr Pohamba served two terms as Namibian president. He was first elected in 2004, and again in 2009. He is due to be succeeded by President-elect, Hage Geingob. Salim Ahmed Salim, the chairman of the committee that awarded the prize, said that under Mr Pohamba, Namibia had cemented its reputation as “a well-governed, stable and inclusive democracy with strong media freedom and respect for human rights”. The president hoped to use the prize to advance the objectives of the Hifikepunye Pohamba foundation, which helps students from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue higher education.
MORE EARLY HUMAN REMAINS FOUND IN ETHIOPIA
Jawbone from Ledi-Geraru research area
Scientists have unearthed the jawbone of what may be one of the very first humans. The 2.8 million-year-old specimen is 400,000 years older than researchers thought that humans first emerged. Prof Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas said the discovery makes a clear link between Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis hominin (human-like primate) discovered in the same area in 1974. The recent find was in the Ledi-Geraru research area, Afar Regional State, by Ethiopian student Chalachew Seyoum. The fossil is of the left side of the lower jaw, along with five teeth. The back molar teeth are smaller than those of other hominins living in the area and are one of the features that distinguish humans from more primitive ancestors. Previously, the oldest fossil attributed to the genus Homo was an upper jaw from Hadar, Ethiopia, dated to 2.35m years ago. This new discovery pushes the human line back by 400,000 years very close to its likely ‘pre-human’ ancestor.
A computer reconstruction of a skull belonging to the species Homo habilis, published in Nature journal, indicates that it may well have been the evolutionary descendant of the species. The dating of the jawbone might help answer the question - what caused some primitive ancestors to climb down from the trees and make their homes on the ground? A separate study in Science of the fossilised plant and animal life in the area suggests that what had once been lush forest became dry grassland. As the trees made way for vast plains, ancient human-like primates found a way of exploiting the new environmental niche, developing bigger brains and becoming less reliant on having big jaws and teeth by using tools.
Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London said the new species clearly does show the earliest step toward human characteristics but said half a jawbone is not enough to tell just how human it was and does not provide enough evidence to suggest that it was this line that led to us. He added: “The human-like features shown by Australopithecus sediba in South Africa at around 1.95 million years ago are likely to have developed independently of the processes which produced (humans) in East Africa, showing that parallel origins are a distinct possibility,”
A FEW WORDS
To mark the tenth anniversary of Nubiart Diary and other significant commemorative dates we thought we would share with our readers a few of our early lyrics and vibes from the 1980s and 1990 which appeared in our anthology ‘Of Slaughter and Consumption’ in 1991. The first one is untitled but we voiced a demo of it over Johnny Osbourne’s ‘Angel In My Arms’ rhythm. The last two were inspired by Gregory Isaacs’ track ‘A, Miner (Am)’, a protest against the massacres and repression in the townships and mines and economic destabilisation across the Frontline States perpetrated by the genocidal apartheid regime. The African Museum still remains the greatest influence on our worldview.
*
something blew me out yesterday
had to wipe the tears from my eyes
seen a couple, a pair, a duo
adieu! always makes me want to cry
makes me want to cry
living in the rising heat haze
memories pass of bygone days
long lost forever
sweetest fruit has turned bitter
has turned bitter
what was I told?
what have I still to learn?
who trusts me to teach them?
and who wants to discuss?
who wants to discuss?
when every man do his thing
just that little way different
every woman in her style
and one thing I want to know
is who rules the child?
who rules the child?
© Afrikan Scientist of Truth / Leviticus 19 Productions
DOWNPRESSOR SKANKING
Grooving to the rhythm of chaos
Gyrating to the ecstasy of barbarity
Breakdancing to maintain the profit
Jumping up to deflower the moon
Jiving and duck-diving to continue the lie
Wining & dining to impress the corrupted
Exerting to scandalise my name
The hop, skip & jump to rewrite history
The belly dance to announce the coming rape
Gold diggers reel to consume the nature
Nose-rubbing to penetrate and confuse
Bear-hugging to instil false security
Dying(-fly) to make kindness a weakness
You get too close to me
Tracing my every movement
I’m war dancing in the right time.
© Afrikan Scientist of Truth / Leviticus 19 Productions – 31/7/90
GOVERNMENT YARD RESISTANCE
You choose to change your friends every time you change your style
But I’ll be around and I’ll see you once in a while
But don’t try to pretend you were right
Abusing me every day and night
In a government yard
Don’t come and make my life so hard
So I moved out deh pon the street again
The whole situation caused me so much strain
Can’t stand confusion can’t stand the fuss and fight
Soon you will realise only truths and rights
Conquers in a government yard
Gosh! You make my life so hard
The day will come when you will surely know
That in time you reap everything that you sow
I feel aswad so I can stand quiet
But don’t take me for an idiot
In the government yard
When being Black means your life is so hard
The time has come to call this thing to a halt
If you check white gods then that’s not my fault
I stand fine young, gifted and Black
I can’t back down on a matter of fact
No fight in the government yard
Don’t come and make my life so hard
Cos everyday we look at South Afrika
Slavemasters made young comrades so hard
They inspire us at home and abroad
For liberation not a nuclear war
© Afrikan Scientist of Truth / Leviticus 19 Productions
RESPECT DUE UNTO YOUR MOTHER
I come again in red, gold and green
I come again you know seh me deh pon the scene
I don’t feel to buy people’s interest
I don’t deal in their inside out business
But sister came husband beat her again
He doesn’t feel like she does that Babylon strain
Ease up on her so she keeps physical fitness
After all she is an Afrikan princess
So every day about in my area
The problems come and we must be harder
We ride the rhythms though daily its harder
Give thanks and praise looking unto our mother
You under 30 you over 13
Hey youthman show them you know what life means
Truth and rights throughout all this mess
You ask what is life? Life is a test
Yet to so many life is just a game
Down in Rome times they always seem the same
They mix us up with their phoney success
But they don’t know Blacks in this time are blessed
Soon every day in each and every area
Problems will fall ‘cos we know we are harder
We ride the rhythms though daily its harder
Giving thanks and praise looking unto our mother
So every day about in my area
The problems come and we must be harder
Still riding rhythms still making them badder
Giving thanks and praise unto Mama Afrika.
© Afrikan Scientist of Truth / Leviticus 19 Productions – 14/1/87
FORTHCOMING NUBIART PROFILES
NUBIART: Focus on arts, business, education, health, political developments and the media.
MAR PROMOS
~ 22 STRINGS – Seckou Keita [ARC Music – 26 May 2015] After travelling the world, crossing musical genres and collaborating with a host of artists across rap, rock, flamenco, jazz and celtic folk Seckou Keita comes back to his roots as the son of both a griot family through his mother and his father’s Keita royal clan. ‘22 Strings’ catches him flying solo with just his voice and kora heritage for company on 10 deeply heartfelt tracks that ask two questions – ‘who am I?’ and ‘who are we?’ The title refers to the tradition that when Jali Mady ‘Wuleng’, who received the first kora from the jinns, passed away his fellow griots took one string away in his memory. Yet in the Gabou empire of Casamance in southern Senegal and Guinea Bissau they kept the 22 string kora giving them an extra range and a memory of a home where the heart resides.
All the tracks here are truly contemplative and reflective but the standout track was always going to be ‘Mikhi Nathan Mu-Toma (The Invisible Man)’. Seckou grew up in his maternal grandfather’s home and it was there he first learned the kora repertoire. His father was a travelling marabout and by the time Seckou had a desire to track him down he was in Mali and before Seckou reached there his father had already passed away so the connection was both there and not there.
NUBIART LIBRARY – MAR MEDIA
We will only review books we have read and DVDs we have seen and that are available at reasonable prices online or in shops or libraries. However, given the nature and current state of Afrikan publishing and film production there may be books and films on this list that are worth the extra effort to track down.
~ ‘KINTU’ - Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi [Kwani Trust. ISBN: 978-9966-1598-9-2]
“God-fearing people tend to ape their deity in their own perverted way.” - Kintu
This epic novel telling of the fall and reparation of the Kintu clan spans 250 years of Bugandan history from before the arrival of the European colonists to the present nation-state of Uganda. The story starts in 2004 in the slum of Bwaise with the mob killing of Kamu Kintu, who is accused of being a thief because he has new gadgets in his shack. The story then spools back to the 1750s and the homestead of Kintu Kidda, the Ppookina of Buddu Province. He sets out for the capital to pledge allegiance to the new kabaka who has taken power in a palace coup. From one rash action a curse is enacted that afflicts the clan in their personal lives, business dealings and diminution of their culture.
In all there are six books or strands that focus on different parts of the extended clan. Unlike many writers who try to encompass such a vast historical and character span Makumbi manages to hold the readers’ interest in all the disparate and seemingly unrelated threads bringing them together expertly. The novel explores ideas of transgression, curse and perpetuity. You enter the world of the Ganda naming system, twin births, their relations with their neighbours and the Tutsi cattle herders, the impact of HIV/AIDS, mental illness, the often malevolent influence of the Abrahamic religions - and it wouldn’t be an epic if there weren’t a few secrets and lies along the way. “Have you ever sat on a bus and listened to your mother confess to strangers, to being a slut, to abortions and to killing innocent children? Have you ever sat in a school chapel with the whole school present listening to how your father started his sinning career with stealing eggs, then chickens, progressed to bestiality and graduated to raping women?”
Jennifer Makumbi experienced rejection from several publishers as the story was not based around the colonial interaction and therefore had no central European protagonist unlike much of the current crop of ‘post-colonial’ fiction. This is quality writing reflecting an Afrikan reality contemporaneous with but not dependent or mimicking the European ‘other’. We at Nubiart Diary will always support and promote quality Afrikan literature and we highly recommend her for sticking with her commitment to Afrikan history, mythology and cosmology.
Nubiart Diary
We welcome feedback on any event you have attended that was listed in Nubiart Diary. It helps us with the selection of future listings and is also info we can pass on to the event organisers where appropriate. ~ ‘EBOLA: INSIDE AN EPIDEMIC’. Join Dame Sally Davies, chief medical advisor to the British government, as she leads a discussion on the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Afrika. Find out what we have learnt from the outbreak so far and what is being done to ensure continued resilience to epidemic scenarios. Speakers: Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust; Melissa Leach, Director of the Institute of Development Studies; Neil Ferguson, Professor of Mathematical Biology, Imperial College London; and Christopher Whitty, Professor of Public and International Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. On Mon 9 Mar at 6.30pm at The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AG. Tel: 020 7451 2500.
~ BLACK HISTORY STUDIES PRESENTS ‘REFLECTIONS UNHEARD: BLACK WOMEN IN CIVIL RIGHTS’. Where do Black women activists fit into the epochal struggles for equality and liberation during the 1960s and 70s? This feature-length documentary unearths the story of Black women’s political marginalization - between the male-dominated Black Power movement and second wave feminism, which was largely white and middle class - showing how each failed to recognize Black women’s overlapping racial and gender identities. Archival footage and in-depth interviews with former members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), SNCC’s Black Women’s Liberation Committee, the Black Panther Party, Third World Women’s Alliance, and the National Black Women’s Feminist Organization reveal how Black women mobilised, fought for recognition, and raised awareness of how sexism and class issues affected women of colour within and outside The Black Power Movement and mainstream feminism. Prominently featured activists include Frances Beale, Angela Davis, Kola Boof, Nikki Giovanni, Rosemari Mealy, Judy Richardson, Gwendolyn Simmons, Deborah Singletary and Eugenia Wiltshire. On Mon 9 Mar at 7-9pm at the PCS Headquarters, 160 Falcon Road, Clapham Junction, London, SW11 2LN. E-mail: info@blackhistorystudies.com Web: http://www.blackhistorystudies.com
~ NANA ASANTE, IN ASSOCIATION WITH TAOBQ (THE AFRICAN OR BLACK QUESTION) AND BBM/BMC (BRITISHBLACKMUSIC.COM/BLACK MUSIC CONGRESS) EVENTS
Harrow BHM Group’s African History Season 2014/15 continues with the Marcus Garvey / UNIA-themed Xtra History & Reasoning Sessions.
- ‘The Marcus Garvey / UNIA Quiz (Kwaku)’. On Mon 9 Mar.
- ‘Explaining The UNIA And ACL’s African Philosophy And Practice Of Marcus Garvey (Mandingo)’. On Mon 16 Mar.
- ‘Reflecting On Marcus Garvey / UNIA From A Young Person’s Perspective’ (Antonio & Marcel Phillip). On Mon 30 Mar.
All sessions at 6.30-8.30pm at Harrow MENCAP, 3 Jardine House, Harrovian Business Village, Bessborough Road, Harrow, London, HA1 3EX. Adm: Free. Booking: Eventbrite or e-mail: harrowBHM@hotmail.com
- Grassroots Community Meeting 5 including rare screening of ‘Blacks Britannica’. On Sun 22 Mar at 2-5pm at The Bridge, Christchurch Avenue, Harrow, Middlesex, HA3 5BD. Pre-book via Eventbrite. This fifth Grassroots Community Meeting is to discuss what gains Black (African & Asian) people have made within British society 50 years after their struggles and activism along with support from progressive factions led to the enactment of the 1965 Race Relations Act (RRA), the bedrock of all the subsequent equality legislations. The event, which takes place the day after UN Anti-Racism Day (officially International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) marks the 50th anniversary of the 1965 RRA and the first anniversary of the death of film-maker David Koff, whose rarely seen documentary, ‘Blacks Britannica’, precedes the discussions. The 1978 documentary became a cause célèbre when following a court case, the original US commissioning public broadcaster was allowed to air a re-edited version after refusing to broadcast Koff’s uncompromising cut, whilst no UK broadcaster would broadcast a film British politicians protested in and out of Parliament gave a “horrific view of racism” and Black immigration and integration in Britain. Contributors include Steel Pulse, Colin Prescod, Claudia Jones, A. Sivanandan, and Darcus Howe here. Followed by a discussion with community activist and TUSC parliamentary candidate Nana Asante, ‘Blacks Britannica’ researcher Margaret Henry and former Steel Pulse member Mykaell Riley.
~ NEW BEACON BOOKS AND THE GEORGE PADMORE INSTITUTE PRESENT ‘LEAVING BY PLANE SWIMMING BACK UNDERWATER AND OTHER STORIES’ BOOK LAUNCH. Lawrence Scott will read from his new short story collection and be in conversation with Dr Lucy Evans. In 2012 Lawrence Scott was awarded a Lifetime Literary Award by the National Library of Trinidad & Tobago. On Tues 10 Mar at 6.30pm at 76 Stroud Green Road, London, N4 3EN. Tel: 020 7272 4889. E-mail: newbeaconbooks@btconnect.com
~ V&A SOUTH KENSINGTON PRESENT ‘IN BLACK AND WHITE: PRINTS FROM AFRICA AND THE DIASPORA’. Essential exhibition covering four decades of campaigning and cultural printwork from some of the best exponents many of whom have had their own solo exhibitions in London in the last year: Faisal Abdu’Allah; Frank Bowling; Sonia Boyce; Nils Burwitz; William Cole; Emory Douglas, the Black Panther designer; Uzo Egonu; Ellen Gallagher; Joy Gregory; Margo Humphrey; Kerry James Marshall; Gavin Jantjes; Isaac Julien; William Kentridge; Atta Kwami; Glenn Ligon; John Lyons; the Santeria art of Manuel Mendive; the tender melancholy of the late John Ndevasia Muafangejo’s Biblical and political observations; Chris Ofili’s tributes to Stephen Lawrence; the New York collective PESTS challenging Afrikan representation in the art world; four of Tony Phillips etchings on the British theft of the Benin Bronzes; Adrian Piper; Tayo Quaye; the San artist Thomas Setshogo; Yinka Shonibare with his Afrikan material designs; Kara Walker’s pop-ups riffing on the Black image in America; Carrie Mae Weems; Sue Williamson redressing the lack of representation of Afrikans during apartheid South Africa; Diane Vitt’s charcoal drawings using Greek mythological themes transferred to Afrika; and Llewellyn Xavier’s tributes to George Jackson and the Soledad Brothers.
Art And Existence Talks Series
- ‘The Rise and Development of Black Print Culture’. Talk by Patrick Vernon, Founder of Every Generation Media. On Thurs 12 Mar at 2.30-4pm. Using the work of Joel Augustus Rogers (1880–1966) as a case study examining the role of the journalist, political activist, artist and publisher in countering racist stereotypes by creating an Afrikan-led perspective on print media, collected on people from the Afrikan Diaspora within books, newspapers, hand bills and pamphlets.
- ‘Calypso and the Black British Experience 1950s and 60s’. Talk led by Alexander D Great, Musician and Educator. On Thurs 19 Mar at 2.30–4pm. Tune into the calypsos of the great commanders and griots of this art form including Kitchener, Terror, Beginner, Roaring Lion and Sparrow, who all spent time in the Britain in the 1950s and ‘60s. The lyrics of Calypso were highly political and were contentious as they dealt with a variety of topics such as: poor housing; Independence and the Commonwealth; Afrikan, Caribbean and British affairs; the wars; and economic status.
Talks take place in Clore Study Room, British Galleries, Level 2. Exhibition runs until 6 July 2015. At 10am-5.45pm at Rms 88a & 90, V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL. Adm: Free. Tel: 020 7942 2211. Web: www.vam.ac.uk
~ PASCF WORKSHOPS
- ‘Facing Challenges & Empowering Change – There Is No Other Option!’ with Sis Yvonne Fields, Ubele. On Fri 13 Mar.
- ‘Taking Assertive Action Towards Protecting and Preserving Our Health and Wellness’ with Sis Hiikmah, Institute of Afrikan Wellness (Invited). On Fri 20 Mar.
- ‘Afrikan-Consciousness In Action – Remembering Ahmed Sekou Toure!’ with Bro Asari, AAPRP. On Fri 27 Mar.
All events at 7.30pm at 365 Brixton Road, London, SW9 7DA. E-mail: pascfevents@gmail.com Web: http://www.pascf.com / https://twitter.com/PASCFofficial / http://www.facebook.com/PASCFofficial
~ AFRICAN ODYSSEYS PRESENT
- ‘50 Years Of Struggle: Black British Civil Rights’. On Sat 14 Mar at 2-6pm. Professor Gus John and Gary Younge on 50 years of African-British people fighting for equality in education, housing, employment, religion, policing and health. Plus fantastic rare archive from their personal collections.
- ‘Legends of Ska’ starring Chris Rock, Prince Buster, Whoopi Goldberg, Rosario Dawson, Alton Ellis, Skatalites. Q &A with director and artistes. On Sat 4 Apr at 2-5pm. In the early 60s Ska introduced a unique sound that would transform popular music the world over. Its birthplace, history and rich cast of performers are presented in this feel-good documentary which features legends such as Prince Buster, Alton Ellis, The Skatalites and Derrick Harriot. Writer David Katz hosts a discussion with the film’s director and a star-studded panel of music pioneers including Owen Gray, Rico Rodriguez and Freddie Notes.
Both events at BFI Southbank, Belvedere Rd, London, SE1. Adm: £6.50. Web: www.bfi.org.uk
~ SOUTH AFRICA AT 20: THE FREEDOM TOUR
- ‘Khumba: A Zebra’s Tale’. Dir: Anthony Silverston. On Sat 14 Mar at 11am. Khumba, a half-striped zebra, leaves home in search of the magic waterhole that will cure his anomaly. It is not all black and white in this colourful animation for the whole family!
- ‘Come Back, Africa’. Dir: Lionel Rogosin. On Sat 14 Mar at 1.45pm. The classic and clandestinely made film, featuring a young Miriam Makeba, sincerely brings to life the injustices of the apartheid system in a way seldom seen on screen before. It remains a great historical and cultural document of the unique heritage of the townships of South Africa in the 1950s.
- ‘Future Sound of Mzansi’ + Q&A with Spoek Mathambo. Dir: Spoek Mathambo and Lebogang Rasethaba. On Sat 14 Mar at 11.30pm. This documentary explores South Africa’s cultural landscape through the vehicle of electronic music. The film engages with a potent range of pioneers sculpting the sounds of things to come. We swim in the sounds of deep house, glitch hop, sghubu sapitori, durban qhum, dubstep and shangaan electro. In a country still steeped in poverty, crime and injustice, young South Africans party like their lives depend on it. The groove is thick and infectious and the future looks blindingly beautiful. Spoek Mathambo’s life as a musician and filmmaker hasn’t just been about forging a career as one of South Africa’s most forward-thinking, recognisable and imaginative solo artists (his Sub Pop-released most-recent album, 2012’s Father Creeper, received global attention and last year he was nominated for Best African Act at the MOBOs for the third time), it’s also concerned his explorations into the history of South African music, where the music finds itself in the 2010s, and the myriad of its future possibilities. Last year, he travelled the breadth of the country as part of Vodafone’s ‘First’ initiative, recording – sometimes in the studio, sometimes in the field – musicians from different cultures, generations and tribes to create a single track, ‘Pula Rain’, that speaks of the great richness of South Africa as a musical nation. South African designer Chantel Koning (www.youmewe.co.za) will have some of her clothes and merchandise on sale.
On Sat 14 Mar at Dalston Rio Cinema, 107 Kingsland High Street, London, E8 2PB. Tel: 020 7241 9410. Adm: £10. Web: www.safilmtour.uk.
~ BLACK HISTORY WALKS EVENTS
- Notting Hill. On Sun 15 Mar at 11am.
There is much more to Notting Hill than Carnival but even that history is often mis-represented. Find out about pioneering African / Caribbean people who literally fought for equality and laid the foundation for modern multi-cultural London. Why does Portobello road have that name? Where in London is there evidence of 3500 years of African civilisation? We cover Baron Baker, Jamaican Freedom Fighters, White Defence League, Sus law, Sou-Sou / Partner System, Michael X, Peter Rachman, Claudia Jones, anti-black riots of 1958, Mau Mau, Shebeens and invisible black history.
- ‘Medical Apartheid: 400 Years of European Experiments on African Bodes’. On Fri 10 Apr at 6.30pm in the Blue Room, BFI Southbank, Belvedere Road, London, SE1. Adm: £3. A review of the scientific experiments and research performed on Black people to refine various drugs and medical treatments for use with white people. We also detail chemical and biological warfare. This presentation will draw on Harriet Washington’s book of the same name, various documentation from World War 1 and 2, Aboriginal history, Vietnam, US Prisons and Porton Down. It will cover: Piracy, Poisons and East Africa; Radioactive People: North Africa and the Pacific; Birth and Crowd Control: The South African Solution, Project Coast; National Security Memorandum 200; Vic Mackie and Congressional Inquiries; The ‘War on Drugs’, Haiti, Jamaica, USA; and The Mau Mau, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan
For bookings e-mail: info@blackhistorywalks.co.uk Web: www.blackhistorywalks.co.uk
~ ROYAL AFRICAN SOCIETY EVENTS
- ‘Will 2015 be the year for African women?’ On Tues 17 Mar at 7.15-9.15pm at Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS University. 2015 has been declared the “Year of Women’s Empowerment” by the African Union and it is also the year marking the end of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the dawn of this new development era post-2015, our panel of experts take stock of the current situation of African women and girls, identifying obstacles to change and discussing opportunities on the path to social transformation and gender equality in Africa.
- ‘The Looting Machine’. On Tues 24 Mar at 6.30-8.30pm at Brunei Suite, SOAS University. In what ways does the resource trade wreak havoc on Afrika? Tom Burgis’ new book, ‘The Looting Machine’, sheds light on the shadowy networks, which underpin resource exploitation in different parts of the continent. The author and a panel will discuss the continued negative impact of Western interests and reveal the human stories behind the headlines.
- ‘Sudan’s Elections: In the shadow of war, dialogue and secession’. On Wed 25 Mar at 6.30-8.30pm at Djam Lecture Theatre (G2), SOAS University. Scheduled to take place in April, Sudan’s elections will be dominated by President Omar El-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP). Most of the main opposition groups will boycott the polls, amid complaints about the strengthening of presidential powers and the lack of necessary measures to create an enabling environment for genuine and democratic debate. The panel will discuss the country’s political trajectory leading up to and beyond the 2015 elections.
Events at SOAS, Thornhaugh St, London, WC1. Adm: Free.
~ KIMATHI DONKOR RESIDENCY AT THE GATE THEATRE
- Open Foyer Event. On Wed 18 Mar at 5.30-6.30pm. Adm: Free but limited. RSVP: info@kimathidonkor.net
- Artist In Residence supported by the Chelsea Arts Club Trust. Until Sat 21 Mar. A foyer installation of new murals and oil paintings in response to ‘The rise and shine of Comrade Fiasco’ by the Zimbabwean playwright, Andrew Whaley.
All events at the Gate Theatre; 11 Pembridge Road, Notting Hill Gate, London, W11 3HQ.
~ GOETHE-INSTITUT LONDON PRESENTS ‘NOTES FROM LAGOS / AUFZEICHNUNGEN AUS LAGOS’.
- ‘Drama Consult’. Dir: Dorothee Wenner. On Wed 18 Mar. DramaConsult are two Nigerian business consultants helping a shoe manufacturer, an auto parts dealer and a real estate developer from Lagos to set up business links with Germany. Together they travel to Germany to meet potential business partners. It is a real project especially created for this film that aims to break through the standard north-south trajectory of the global economy.
- ‘Age of Cannibals’. Dir: Johannes Naber. On Wed 25 Mar. In this satire Lagos is reduced to a non-descript back drop. What we see of it through the windows of the hotel room in which most of the action takes place, is a featureless silhouette that looks more like a minimalist stage set than a real city.
Both screenings at 7pm at Goethe Institut, Exhibition Road, London, SW7. Adm: £3 / free for Goethe-Institut language students and library members. Booking essential. Tel: 020 7596 4000.
~ UN ANTI-RACIST DAY (OFFICIALLY INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION). In 2014, 10,000 people marched in central London for UN Anti-Racism Day which commemorates the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre in apartheid South Africa. It was part of a series of demonstrations across Europe and around the world. Some of the campaigns represented this year include: No to Islamophobia #MuslimLivesMatter; From Ferguson to London #BlackLivesMatter; Stamp out anti-Semitism Immigrants are welcome here! #standuptoracism #m21. Assemble on Sat 21 Mar at 12pm at the BBC, Portland Place, London, W1A 1AA. Rally to Trafalgar Square, London.
~ WINDRUSH FOUNDATION PRESENTS TATE & LYLE - SUGAR & SLAVERY. On Sat 21 Mar at 3-5pm at Black Cultural Archives, Windrush Square, London, SW2 1EF. Adm: Free.
~ BLACK SCIENTISTS & INVENTORS & THE POWER OF DEFINITION ARTS PRESENTS DID YOU KNOW? An evening of presentations, demonstrations and a family quiz celebrating the contributions which scientists & inventors of African heritage have made to the UK in particular and the world in general. On Sat 21 Mar at 4.30-7.30pm at Park View Academy, West Green Road, London, N15 3QR.
Mathieu K. Abonnenc, Foreword
to Guns for Banta, 2011, Courtesy
the artist and Marcelle Alix, Paris.
~ ARTISTS’ FILM CLUB: MATHIEU K ABONNENC. French director Mathieu K Abonnenc focuses on the forgotten or marginalized areas of recent history, figures and events associated with the 20th century’s struggles for emancipation of identity. On the basis of investigations and documents, he attempts to deconstruct the nature of representations of the geographical ‘Other’ in particular. Three of Abonnenc’s half-hour films will be shown followed by a Q&A with the artist: ‘Foreword to Guns for Banta, 2011’, highlights Abonnenc’s interests in the work of Sarah Maldoror. Abonnenc’s film includes stills and images taken by war photographers who accompanied the film crew from her unfinished film, ‘Des Fusils pour Banta (Guns for Banta)’; ‘Ça va, ça va, on continue’, illustrates Abonnenc’s research into former Portuguese colonies and the liberation movements. The film reveals the complications implicit in commemorating histories of anti-colonial revolt and revolutionary insurrection; ‘An Italian Film (Africa Addio)’ is based around the film ‘Africa Addio’ (1966) produced by Italian directors Franco Prosperi and Gualtierro Jacoppeti. Their film is about the end of the colonial era in Afrika which includes footage of the Zanzibar revolution. Abonnenc uses an installation of a factory creating copper bars to demonstrate the cutting of objects, signifying the violence within Africa. On Wed 25 Mar at 6.45pm in Cinema 1, ICA, Pall Mall, London, SW1. Adm: £5.
~ QUEEN NZINGHA LECTURE 26: ‘HOW TRUE AFRICAN DANCE WAS CORRUPTED INTO P...’
Afrikan dance and culture has often been appropriated by Europeans and divorced from its roots. This presentation aims to give a general background to Afrikan dance and show how movements / styles were borrowed or imitated by various European cultures. Those cultures would then re-name and take credit for the movements or totally pervert them. The presentation will cover: A selection of Afrikan civilisations pre or co-existing with European invasion; Original purpose of Afrikan dance; Weddings, fertility, birthdays, rites of passage; Appropriate time and season of dance; Appropriate Afrikan dress for dance; and Dance as politics; European censorship and disgust; Popular dances in the West that have Afrikan origins / elements; and Afrikan beats in the Top Ten but not called Afrikan. On Sat 28 Mar at 3-7pm at Portland Room, University of Westminster, Little Titchfield Street, London, W1. Adm: Free, if booked via Eventbrite, Donations accepted on the day.
~ CHI CREATIONS PRESENTS ‘THE GRIOT WAY STORYTELLING TRAINING’. On 15-17 May 2015 at Etherly Farm, Dorking, RH5 6PA. E-mail: Info@shanti-chi.com Web: www.shanti-chi.com
~ BLACK CULTURAL ARCHIVES PRESENT ‘STAYING POWER: PHOTOGRAPHS OF BLACK BRITISH EXPERIENCE, 1950S – 1990S’. Inspired by Peter Fryer’s seminal text ‘Staying Power, The History of Black People in Britain’, this exhibition focuses on a period of time when photography served as an archival tool to capture historical moments. From documentary to portraiture to staged allegorical photographs, Staying Power documents experiences from post-World War II through to the 1990s, covering topics from mass migration to hip hop fashions of south London. Contemplate the narratives behind the iconic work of Dennis Morris, Charlie Philips’ visual record of city life and local heroes, and Neil Kenlock’s photographic journalism. Discover the work of acclaimed photographer James Barnor who captured many greats during the ‘swinging sixties’, self-taught Colin Jones and his infamous images of youth alienation, the powerful images of uprisings and protest captured by Pogus Caesar, and allegorical portraits by Ingrid Pollard. Through the lens of the photographers celebrate the moment of ‘The Specials Fans’ by Syd Shelton and Gavin Watson’s insight into the ska youth sub-culture. Explore representations of beauty and aesthetics through the work of Armet Francis, Jennie Baptiste, Al Vandenberg and Raphael Albert. The photographs are complimented by previously unheard oral history testimonies from the photographers and contributors. Until 30 June at Black Cultural Archives, Windrush Square, Brixton, London, SW2. Adm: Free. Also until 24 May at 10am-5.45pm at V&A South Kensington, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL. Adm: Free. Tel: 020 7942 2211. Web: www.vam.ac.uk
Ronald Moody
Midonz 1937
~ BP SPOTLIGHT EXHIBITION ‘SPACES OF BLACK MODERNISM: LONDON 1919–39’. In the inter-war period cosmopolitan networks of artists, activists, writers and artists’ models in London helped shape the cultural and political identity of the city. The studios, art colleges and social clubs of Chelsea, Bloomsbury and Soho became places of trans-national exchange. ‘Spaces of Black Modernism’ draws together paintings, sculpture, photographs and archival material from Tate’s collection with others loaned from public and private collections. It follows the interactions between artists such as John Banting, Edward Burra, Jacob Epstein, Barbara Ker-Seymer, Ronald Moody, Glyn Philpot and Matthew Smith with others including the writers Claude McKay and Una Marson, the poet and political activist Nancy Cunard, the model ‘Sunita’ (Amina Peerbhoy) and the singer Elisabeth Welch. The display is a collaboration between Tate Britain and the Equiano Centre at University College London and builds on research from the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project, ‘Drawing Over the Colour Line’.
Exhibition runs until 4 Oct 2015 at Tate Britain, Millbank, London, SW1. Adm: Free.
~ BUNDU DIA KONGO (BDK). Afrikan cultural and spiritual group working towards the spiritual and psychological growth and development of Afrikans all over the world. Let us make a positive change now. Learn about Afrikan prophets, Afrikan history and Afrikan spiritual practices at our weekly Zikua.
- Sun at 1.30–4.30pm at PSCC, 1 Othello Close, Kennington, London, SE11 4RE. Tel: Makaba - 07951 059 853. E-mail: moyomakaba9@gmail.com
- Sun at 12.30–3.15pm at Malika House, 81 George Street, Lozells, Birmingham, B19 1Sl. Tel: Mbuta Mayala – 07404 789 329.
~ THE AUSAR AUSET SOCIETY GI GONG CLASSES. Every Monday at 7.30–9pm at Hazel Road Community Centre, Hazel Road, Kensal Green, London, NW10 5PP. Adm: £5 per class. Tel: 07951- 252-427. E-mail: Tauinetwork.europe@gmail.com
~ THE GREAT AFRIKAN BOOK SALE! Every book and CD is on sale at 50% off or more! There are over 5000 titles in the sale - never before have so many Afrikan interest books been offered on this scale in a sale. The finances raised will go towards the development of the MAA MAAT Project. On Fri & Sat at 5-10pm, Sat 12-8pm and Sun 12-5pm at Maa Maat Centre, 366a High Road, Tottenham, London, N17 9HT. Tel 07956 052 821.
Contact: Kubara Zamani, Afrikan Quest International, PO Box 35165, London, SE5 8WU. Tel: 07811 494 969. E-mail: afrikanquest@hotmail.com
Afrikan Quest International
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