Anti-xenephobia march video

Here's a video of the march against Xenophobia in Hillbrow Johannesburg. In it you can see how happy these immigrants were to see South Africans take a stand.

You have to feel for these people, many who come from the most desperate countries imaginable.



There are many reports of thousands of Mozambiquecans leaving South Africa. Their country is stable and economy booming (although from a small base). Many other immigrants don't have that luxury.

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The New Apartheid - YouTube video

Mhambi has found this incredible documentary made two years ago by Channel 4 in the UK. Startling in fact. Nothing in it is news to me but its weird to see what we South Africans have become, on screen.

And in the context of what has happened afterwards - the xenophobic eruption - even more compelling viewing.

Part 1




Part 2




Part 3

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Death revives Live in Joburg video

Mhambi almost forgot about Neill Blommenkamp's Live in Joburg video. But after the xenophobic violence around Johannesburg of the past few days, it's as relevant.



A mixture of actual SABC TV footage, live action and excellent special and computer generated effects makes for great sci-fi social commentary.

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Obama makes nuanced, complicated, risky race speech

Barack Obama delivered on Tuesday the kind of speech rarely seen in Western politics. It sounded heartfelt, and certainly treaded on dangerous ground for his candidacy. Because it was nuanced, sophisticated and eschewed shallow sound bytes.



Said Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.

Most people, of course, aren't sitting around watching speeches on morning cable. They will form impressions of the speech from the TV coverage and the newspaper headlines. In short, a long, discursive rumination about race will be sliced and diced by our sound-bite culture.

I don't know whether this defuses the Wright problem or not. Obama seemed absolutely determined not to disavow him, and that won't help him politically, no matter what the chattering classes say.

And the New York Times said:

"The speech violated several conventions of campaign discourse -- for one, the injunction that all politicians must speak about racial and ethnic groups in upbeat stereotypes.

Presidential politics usually requires candidates to either wholly adopt or reject positions and people. Mr. Obama did neither with his pastor, rejecting his most divisive statements but also filling in the picture of Mr. Wright and his church... He admitted that his pastor is both a divisive figure and an inspiring one."

Obama claimed that he could not disown his ex black pastor Mr. Wright, who caused the furore by lambasting a racist and corrupt America, like he could not disown his white grandmother. She once confessed a fear of black men to him and made derogatory remarks on more than one occasion he said.

The reason he could not reject them is Obama said, because they are all part of him and of America. Because these racial views is the reality for many black and white Americans outside of polite company. It can't be wished away.

Sjoe, Mhambi wonders if any South African politician will have this ability to see the anger and fears of all sides any time soon? A bit like mister Mandela.

Let's hope this complicated honesty has not sunk Obama, who increasingly seems like a rare political animal. Principled, brave and intelligent. One I increasingly like.

If the USA still elects Obama, South Africa will seem light years behind with its crippling racial politics.

Obama's ex pastor and church say they campaign for black self determination. Obama still defends the reverend Mr. Wright saying he has always treated whites with respect. Sounds a bit like Afrikaners defending Karel Boshof.

As a minority is the US I have allot of sympathy for black Americans. It's interesting that how in the US, if you have some black blood, your considered black by the majority of the population. And in South Africa, if you have some non black blood, you are considered not African.

Obama would have been considered coloured (mixed race) in South Africa and not black enough to become president.

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Police raids in Stellenbosch and Johannesburg

I just got a message from Adriaan Pelzer of the band Nul on Facebook. Apparently this weekend the police violently raided three music venues.

In one incident Afrikaans folk singer Bacshus Nel's equipment was 'confiscated' at the Bohemian in Johannesburg, where a protesting band supporter was allegedly called a "white pig" by Metro police.

I just messaged Lizelle Smit who attended the gig, she said it was "...soos in die 90's. Kon dit nie glo nie." Like in the 90's I could not believe it.

According to Smit the incident was relatively calm until the police took Bacchus Nel - who is blind - instruments. The crowd reacted in protest.

But the incident was not nearly as violent as what transpired in Stellenbosch.



In the Bohemia in Stellenbosch police raided military style. You can watch for yourself what transpired. One cop can be seen firing a shotgun wildly into the air, apparently oblivious that the bar has an upstairs area.

It was captured on the venue's CCTV cameras.

There was also a raid on the Mystic Boer where a video is available but we are still trying to get hold of a video of that.

There is a Facebook group about these incidents of police brutality.

Also read a Beeld report about one of the incidents.

Update Nel has got all his equipment back.



This video was made by Cape Town based Afrikaans paper Die Burger and contains allegations of police assault on the student bar patrons. And of police confiscating mobile cameras when students took pictures of the police to identify them.



And The Independent reports that The Springbok bar was also raided.

One student, who asked to remain anonymous, had a blue eye and several bruises on his face, after being kicked four times in the face, allegedly by a police officer, after he and his friends were ordered to lie on the ground in the pool room in Die Mystic Boer.

"They told us to stop drinking and smoking. My friend lit up a cigarette and they slapped him in the face. I yelled: "Dude, what the f**k are you doing to my friend? That's when they hit me and kicked me four times in the face. Then they sprayed mace or pepper spray in my eyes." Niel Bekker, a journalism graduate and son of Koos Bekker, the chief executive of Naspers, said he saw a man from the Netherlands who had been invited to speak at the Woordfees and his Belgian friend confront the police.

The Belgian man and his girlfriend, who tried to intervene, were knocked against a wall.

He also saw how a girl, who was having an asthma attack and who tried to use her phone, was hit with a baton. Stefan Sessa, the marketing manager at Cia Media, also at Die Mystic Boer, said police hit him and threw him to the ground. Johan Blom, who was at Springbok Pub with his friends, said a police officer shouted at everyone to "put away your f**king phones" and when he asked her why she was swearing at him, he had pepper spray sprayed into his eyes.

"I had to rely on my friend to lead me home, because I was blinded." Bevan Williams, who was also in the Springbok Pub, said his doctor confirmed his eardrum had ruptured when a police officer hit him after he tried to take a picture of him.

Update

While the investigation into the controversial police raids on mainly student night spots in Stellenbosch at the weekend was handed over to the Independent Complaints Directorate on Tuesday, the news of two European writers caught up in the raids raised international attention.

Acclaimed author Breyten Breytenbach, in an open letter in Die Burger on Tuesday, apologised to the two authors for how "our pigs in bulletproof vests" treated them.

Flemish poet Dirk van Bastelaere and Dutch author Tommy Wieringa, speakers at the annual Woordfees cultural festival, were among those allegedly manhandled.

Comment

Mhambi reckons this was an example of standard SAPS behaviour and not that far removed from the 'ordinary' police raid on a shebeen in the townships. But white middelclass kids ain't use to this kind of thing.

It does not make it right of course.

Update

The incident's Facebook group has been mobilizing students to file complaints.

"Guys and girls, PLEASE leave the race issue out of this!!! There were white, black, coloured cops and costomers/students involved!!!!!! This is not a racial thing, its a human rights issue. Its not black vs white, its police vs public! PLEASE focus on the topic.

Please come into Bohemia or Mystics and give them your account of what happened or yoo can follow these steps:

First thing would be for the guys to open criminal cases.

If you were hit or kicked - Assault
Pepper Sprayed - Assault GBH
Woman searched by males - Indecent Assault
Phone damaged - Malicious Injury to Property

If you were assaulted first go to the nearest police station and get a J88, it's a form that a doctor needs to complete in order to note the injuries that you sustained. This is very important as it can also be used in any future civil claims.

After that type out your statement and go open your case at the police station.

Lodge a formal complaint with the Independant Complaints Directorate (http://www.icd.gov.za)

Getting charged with Assault is nothing for a policeman. Having the ICD all over your ass, is hell."

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Don't imagine, just do it

Richard Barbrook, has published another book, called Imaginary Future's. Essentially it's an argument against technological determinism. An argument against the belief that superior technology is going to make the world a better place. It's still up us to decide how to use technology best he says. It's for us to shape the technology.

Richard wrote a great polemic a few year's ago in which he claimed that most New Media/ Internet fundies, techies and entrepreneurs are beholden to an ideology, which is a hybrid belief system that mixes left inspired libertarian philosophies like feminism and civil rights, and right wing market capitalism. He called this the Californian Ideology.

In the video Barbrook explains a bit about his book, which he says is "a history of the future".

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Siener - Rian Malan's comical take the future

Talking of Music videos, here is Rian Malan's Siener video - a little sweetner for those Afro pessimists out there.

Malan's dog Tommie can see the future. Don't say you have not been warned.

It ends with the line, even if everything goes wrong for 50 years, in the end we will have a jol in Africa.

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NuL - the online superstars

NuL has recently released an video to accompany their song, Online Superstar. As with everything else NuL does, they made the video themselves, in downtown Pretoria South Africa nogal.

NuL also has an excellent website where you can download all their tracks for free through the creative commons license.

Read more about NuL on wikipedia.



And Nul is great live.

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Great holiday reads: Corruption, racism and death

Mhambi has gone on a Jo'burg shopping spree. I have bought Andrew Feinstein's After the Party (it was sold out at many book shops), Christi van der Westhuizen's White Power, and Mark Gevisser's Thabu Mbeki, A dream deferred and Kobus!'s album Swaarmetaal.

So far I have only done with Kobus!'s raucous offering. Technically magnificent, it has one standout track - Witman (White man) Another song about white anxiety in the new South Africa. But here it's delivered with no subtlety.

A song from Kobus!'s new album

But alas I'm no fan of heavy metal and even though their music may be tongue in cheek, brilliantly executed, the compositions are not as good as their previous albums. AND the song Doodstraf (a call to mobilize support for the reintroduction of the death penalty) does not sit comfortably with Mhambi.

The death penalty is back on the South African political agenda after presidential candidate Jacob Zuma voiced his support for its reintroduction.

The original finding of the death penalty as unconstitutional by the South African Constitutional Court left open an attack. The court found that if it could be proved that the penalty acted as a deterrent on serious crime, it would be sympathetic.

If it could be proven that the death penalty acts indeed as a significant deterrent, then I to would be in favour. A cursory glance at the internet serves to confirm that with current research its not clear at all.

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Another immigrant dies

Another immigrant has died, after being tazered by police. Not a Zimbabwean, no - this one was Polish and the Police force in question was not South Africa's but Canada's.




Robert Dziekanski, a 40-year-old construction worker, arrived in Vancouver on Oct. 14 to begin a new life with his mother. After a 10-hour delay caused by immigration processing, Dziekanski became upset when he could not find his mother, Zofia Cisowski, who waited several hours before returning to her home in Kamloops, British Columbia, under the mistaken impression that her son had not arrived in Canada.

Unable to speak English, Dziekanski became distressed and began shouting in Polish, moving furniture around, shoving a computer off a desk in an arrival area and, at one point, throwing a chair. His actions soon attracted the attention of other passengers and security officials.

A family lawyer said he was likely distraught after a mix-up at the airport in which he waited for as many as 10 hours for his mother in a secure area, while she waited for him on the other side of a wall in the public arrivals area.

By the time he emerged to find her gone and panicked, he had been traveling for 25 hours, said the lawyer.

When airport security officials first appeared, passengers could be heard shouting to them that Dziekanski did not understand English.

Moments later, four members of the Mounties arrive in the waiting area wearing bulletproof vests. Dziekanski repeatedly shouted either the Polish word for "help" or "police," which sound similar, before walking away with his arms raised in the air. There was a brief conversation followed by a loud sound, apparently a Taser shot, and Dziekanski fell to the ground screaming in pain.

A member of the public captured all this on video.

The recording captured what appeared to be a second Taser shot as three officers piled onto Dziekanski to subdue him. One minute and eight seconds after the police arrived, Dziekanski appeared to have stopped moving, and the recording ended shortly afterward.

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Gee die bal vir Bryan Habana

Mhambi is way too negative. Mbeki said such nice things yesterday, and everybody was so happy. Maybe a victory by the Boks can make the country a better place. Perhaps there's hope for our blighted rainbow nation.

So - in this change of mood - lets discuss Springbok tactics. It's simple and effective, like most good strategies.



Gee die Bal vir Bryan
Held van Suid-Afrika
Held van Pretoria
Bryan Ha-ba-na-na Bryan Ha-ba-na-na

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Rose and Olive does video as well

Very sexy & fun. And Olives delicious laugh. Yum!

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Soldaatvolk soldiers on

While kids in Europe in the USA are either into ironic indie rock or electro clash, Afrikaans music is for the most part somewhere else.

Cape Town based DJ Donald of Wedding DJ fame is on the while not impressed. To him Afrikaans rock is not cool. The musical style is out-dated and the lyricks, way too serious. Que bands like Fokofpolisiekar.

Afrikaans dance, is for the most part monopolised by bubblegum pop merchants.

While I agree that the musical style of most Afrikaans rock is basic and dated. Fokospoliskar sounds as naive as The Presidents of the United States of America. Basic drums, and simplistic epic guitar riffs characterise their music.

Fokofs lyricks, on the other hand is wonderfully existential if a bit too didactic. Nihilistic, fatalistic and despairing, it expresses the angst of post-Apartheid Afrikaners brilliantly. Nothing I have listened to from the West compares.

And now Mhambi has found another example. Soldaatvolk's (Soldier people) Foto na dans (Picture after a party).

It features a party in an up market house, full of girls with beautiful frocks, which turns into an orgy of drug taking and sex. The singer tries to make sense of all the excess amid the angst - everything is falling apart. There is only place for one person in his coffin he sings. I could only look on while everything is destroyed.

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Loslap by Snotkop

Mhambi stands accused of dropping his musical tastes. It has been eroded by nostalgia, caused by years away from my vaderland.

Well, here's another track which runs the borderline between cool and zef (chav). But definitely come down on the cool side in Mhambi's opinion. It's Loslap by the artist Snotkop. (Afr: Slapper by Snothead).

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Ek is verlief op die kind

Mhambi is in Geneva. For those travellers feeling nostalgic and missing home, an nice old song from South Africa: Ek is verlief op die kind. Thanks for Nerina aka Locura from NY for sending it to me.

Actually, on second thoughts - perhaps me liking this song is proof that expat nostalgia is detrimental to your music taste? Mmmmm...

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Boks gagged and possibly nameless

This morning Mhambi woke with a song in his heart. A heavy hearted song -

Wen'uyang'ibambezela
You're pulling me back

Yes, it ain't a nice song.

umshini wami, khawuleth'umshini wami
My machine, Please bring my machine (gun)

But a rather angry one.



News has it that the African National Congress (ANC) want's to abolish the national rugby team's Springbok emblem. On top of that the South African team has been gagged from speaking to the foreign press.

The official reason given is that the symbol represents a racially divided past. Mhambi thinks otherwise. It's potential as a sybol of reconciliation is well established. What's more its embebed in the sense of identity of Afrikaners. Mhambi - it has to be said - sees control freakery and shortsighted spitefulness.

Strange that Mhambi frequently sees black (presumably) South Africans (but not exclusively so) wearing the Bok rugby jersey in London. I have not seen anybody wear Bafana bafana, the national football teams' colours.

This is a report from the New Zealand Yahoo Xtra rugby site.

Yeye has taken on a high profile in the team, fronting the media with an injury update every Monday. Relations between the team and local media are frosty.

Scribes were reduced to pleading for a player to interview on Monday, and after several refusals Schalk Burger was eventually enlisted when he was spotted drinking coffee nearby in the hotel lobby.

At Tuesday's training in Durban, media were escorted from the training venue 15 minutes after it started, the same time as the gates were flung open to the general public.

At the team announcement, newly-confirmed captain Victor Matfield was nowhere to be seen. Only hooker Gary Botha and replacement Bismarck du Plessis were available.

NZPA's one-on-one interview with White, promised for two days, never happened as Yeye urged him from the room.

"We don't want people cornering the coach," Yeye explained.

A group of journalists did manage to "corner" White, albeit briefly.

He was courteous and engaging, but media minders ended it before he was asked how he had coped with the past few months.

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Behind the Boerewors curtain

"It's like rice in Japan, we will always be here...": Said a peroxide blond boy in a heavy Afrikaans but definitely camp accent.

Mhambi accompanied a long time gay friend to a screening of two documentaries at the UK National Film Theater about gay life in South Africa. Black Beulah's and Behind the Boerewors curtain.

Black Beulahs is a well crafted film and was interesting for what it was not showing. In its world black South African gay men don't really interact much with white ones, except events like the gay pride marches, which tend to be disproportionally white.

Considering the conservatism and prevailing discourse that being gay is a Western import this is not surprising. But the film never explores the antagonism towards being gay in the black community or the apartheid within the community. Still its an interesting insight into a world not often seen.

All the men in this movie are relatively wealthy and deals with the same issues as gay men the world over.

Behind the Boerewors curtain is a film about a minority in a minority in a minority in a minority. Not only are they gay, but they are white, and Afrikaans AND they like to to listen to Boeremusiek and lang-arm (a kind of close and paired dancing which we used to derisory call wind-surfing. See the dancing see the clip below).

Now my friend comes from a small Afrikaner town in the Northern province and is a rather accomplished lang-arm dancer. But he claims he and his fellow Afrikaans moffies would not be seen dead dancing lang-arm. He cringed embarrassed in his seat next to me, while people were spinning around each other on the screen.

Still the film provides evidence that there is allot of gay lang-arm dancing going on. It's a short flick, but it all revolves on the meaning of dancing in this particular way. And according to the dancers - both gay males and lesbians - the reason is that they are Afrikaans. It's an expression of who they are. Yes they say, others think that if we dance like this that we are racist.

In the end, they don't try to defend their gayness. They defend their Afrikaansness. They claim that being Afrikaans is so part of South Africa, it's like rice in Japan, it will never die out.

Here's a Youtube clip of lang-arm dancing. It seems the dancing has made it's way to London.

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DJ Sbu vs Kurt Darren

Last week Aubrey Matshiqi opinioned that Oskido should remix the now controversial song De la Rey. But according to the Sunday Times, a collaboration between Afrikaans pop boy Kurt Darren and urban DJ Sbu is more likely.

Both have been nominated for South African Music Awards (Sama) song of the year awards.



De la Rey received no nominations. An opportunity for appropriation of the song by a wider audience has been missed. Darren, who's album was also nominated for best Afrikaans pop album, makes bubblegum lekker lekker pop, euro disko style.

But obviously some are excited by his music.

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CBS News 1994: Mugabe Reassures White South Africans

The blog ConstitutionallyspeakingSA posted this remarkable video about Zimbabwe, and had this to say about it:

"This is a CBS documentary on Zimbabwe, which was broadcasted the week before South Africa's 1994 election. It argues that whites in South Africa has little to fear and shows Mugabe telling South African whites not to be scared.

Rather an ironic piece, I must say. For right wingers it will confirm all their racist fears. For the rest of us it will remind us how wise the fathers and mothers of our Constitution was for limiting the term of the President to two five year terms."

Mhambi agrees, but having the South African constitution with its checks and balances without other large counter forces would probably not be enough. The fact that South Africa has a big industrial base, a massive union movement, a strong civil society, no majority ethnic group (like the Shonas in Zimbabwe) and a much larger black industrial working class and black middle class are all positives that helps to prop up the constitution and makes South Africa allot more complex.

In fact South Africa's economy is more than 22 times the size of Zimbabwe's and Zimsbabwe's white population at its height (1980) was no more 400,000. Comparisons are only that useful.

But not everything in this video is off the mark however. The vast majority of South Africans have not only not seen their hopes realised, their lives are like Zimbabwe in 1994 - worse.

It is this situation - the governmenents inability to lift up poor Zimbabweans - that the MDC (a broad church made up of Union members and democrats) eploited to create a meaningful oposition to Zanu-PF around 1997. Mugabe had nearly 20 years to begin land reform, but had not done so. Suddenly, feeling his power threatened, as an act of diversion he instigated farm invasions, popular with the rank and file Zimbabwean.

The ANC has done very little to better the lives of poor South Africans. Will they try this kind of populist tactic if threatened by popular discontent?

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Iron Maiden The Trooper By Gauchos

Is Bok van Blerk's De la Rey song actually loaded with meta textual references to Iron Maiden's The Trooper?

You'll take my life but Ill take yours too
Youll fire you musket but Ill run you through
So when your waiting for the next attack
Youd better stand theres no turning back

The bugle sounds as the charge begins
But on this battlefield no one wins
The smell of arcrid smoke and horses breath
As you plunge into a certain death

Yes, It's the silly season, news is slow. The link is tenuous to my other high minded discussions on South African identity politics. So what.

Shout out to Wedding DJ Donald for the link.

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