A sweeping, jazz-scored exploration of Cold War intrigue and African liberation, Johan Gimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” lays bare the cultural and political battlegrounds where empires, artists, and freedom fighters clashed.

Still from Soundtrack to a Coup d’etat via IMDB.

“America’s strongest weapon is a blue note in a minor key” punctuates Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’s thumping opening sequence. A moment later, American radio phones are dropped from the sky, appearing as bombs, and teleported into African households. Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, armed with his golden trumpet, tours a variety of newly-liberated African countries to swathes of adoring fans; another searing title card appears on-screen: “Today he’s got a saxophone, tomorrow he’s a spy.” 

Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is a tremendous historical thesis into the early years of post-coloniality and the crunching, brutal machinery of Western imperialism. America’s puppeteering of foreign governments in the Global South during the Cold War warrants little elaboration, and what makes Johan Gimonprez’s effort a revelation is that it argues that American arts and culture, imparted by its larger-than-life cultural emissaries, were as influential a weapon of the imperial arsenal as any forms of espionage or militarism. As Dizzy Gillespie chirps, who the American government also deploys to perform in Iran to commemorate the election of the US-backed Shah, and in Egypt while Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal: “I would be a better emissary than Kissinger.”

One of Soundtrack’s central themes concerns the position of African Americans in the functioning and upkeep of the American imperial core, while that same system imprisons, dehumanizes, and impoverishes them domestically. Black Americans are seen as Africa’s children, naturally, they are inconspicuously welcomed and adored by their ancestral lands and peoples, while for intents and purposes, they are American citizens who, whether they know it (or like it) can become emissaries of imperialism’s machinery. The polarity and contradictions of the African-American position in the struggle of people in the Global South are played out stunningly. During a particularly affecting scene, where so rarely has a film ever uncovered the dramatic heft of archival footage, Louis Armstrong performs in Accra, Ghana. He sings (What Did I Do To Be So) Black & Blue?  As his voice quavers with the passion of the lyrics, his eyes are joined by the reverent gaze of Kwame Nkrumah. The edit cuts between them, although they do not eventually share the frame. They may both know all that it means to be Black and Blue, and could even be distant relatives to one another. However, a chasm of geo-political power structures still separates them from becoming brothers in any meaningful sense. Later on, it is revealed that Armstrong is sent to perform in the secessionist Katanga state as a smoke-screen for agents of the CIA to plot the assassination of Patrice Lumumba with Moi͏̈se Tshombe and his cronies. “Today he’s got a saxophone, tomorrow he’s a spy.” 

Much like the bittersweet scene between Armstrong and Nkrumah, Soundtrack combs through history by use of experimental re-interpretation of archive material from news clips, documentaries, home videos and television shows, with a chorus of voice-overs sourced from voice-acted excerpts of memoirs, audio dairies and a staged interview which avoids the talking-head model in favor of performative spoken word from author In Koli Jean Bofane reciting his book, Congo Inc. 

Despite the depth and scope of the research that makes up his two-and-a-half-hour thesis, Gimonprez resists the temptation of scholarly-inclined documentarians to opt for stolid didactic storytelling for the sake of narrative efficiency and legibility. He employs a frenetic, pastiche editing style that presents history as a scribbled manuscript—littered with a dizzying onslaught of footnotes, quotes, satisfying visual and stylistic quirks, and tangential passages with the lifespan of a whisper of smoke; long enough to make their point, but short enough to escape the obligation of justifying their existence. 

Soundtrack begins its chronology of events with The Bandung Conference, held in Indonesia in 1955. Hosting a consortium of leaders from newly independent colonies from Africa and Asia (a line-up of heavyweights including Egypt’s Nasser, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, and China’s Zhou Enlai), the prestigious heads of state are gallantly paraded on-screen as champions of the new world, forebearers of a new international order that’s neither East nor West but Non-Aligned. Concurrently, Dizzy Gillespie announces a fake bid for the presidency, with his cabinet featuring (among others) Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk. Both events are played for spectacle, which risks trivializing the force behind the genesis of the Non-Aligned Movement. Yet the euphoria of the time, emphasized by the unburdened expressionism of the post-bebop jazz sound that scores most of the film, presents the future as one malleable towards the imperatives of Black and Brown people from Mississippi to Mumbai. Soundtrack manages to celebrate the valor and vision of those post-colonial leaders while painting a picture of Cold War realpolitik that made those promises impossible to realize. 

The year 1960 marked Nkrumah’s “Year of Africa” and, most significantly, Congo’s independence from Belgium. Shortly after the latter, a Belgian invasion to protect its citizens began, and the minerally rich southern province Katanga (backed by the Belgian-owned mine Union Minière) seceded. Afro-Asian countries intervened in the unfolding crisis by establishing a UN peacekeeping force formed from neutral European countries and soldiers in the Afro-Asian bloc. The first of its kind, the UN peacekeeping force was a resounding indication that newly independent African and Asian states could influence anti-imperialist policies and precedents through the UN. What especially troubled Western powers was the ability to implement that influence in opposition to their interests. Scenes of the UN General Assembly in 1960, repeated, segmented, and dispersed throughout the film— sound of Nikita Khrushchev emphatically banging his shoe on a table is set to the rhythm of a jazz drum beat—are as riveting as any political thriller.

Noticing the shifts in world politics, Malcolm X beams from his podium: “There’s a new bloc emerging.”. Malcolm commands many sections in Soundtrack, often accompanied with accounts of his compatriot’s deployment as human camouflages for American interest in newly independent African countries (one account, featuring Nina Simone’s tour to Nigeria). He outlines to his audience that the liberation of African countries from colonial rule was synonymous with Black Americans’ struggle for racial equality in America. Soundtrack holds reverence for the clarity of Malcolm X’s convictions and affinity to the struggle of Africans on the continent, understanding that as much as the American imperial core was willing to inflict violence against its Black civilians, it was more than willing to do it, often in greater force, towards poorer nations abroad. 

As stretched, tangled, and seemingly unwieldy as the many threads of Soundtrack’s thesis are, the events leading to the assassination of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, are what hold everything together. One of the world’s most minerally rich countries, Congo’s plentiful cobalt, rubber, and uranium resources have made it a site of plunder and instability for centuries. Franz Fanon is aptly quoted in Soundtrack stating, “If Africa is shaped like a revolver, the Congo is its trigger.” The man with his finger on Africa’s trigger was Patrice Lumumba. 

At the time Raoul Peck made his early masterpiece on the same subject, Lumumba: Death of a Prophet (1990), accounts of Lumumba’s assassination as a Western-backed coup were shrouded in mystery, treated as a conspiracy from disaffected radicals. In the 30 years since the film’s release, recently declassified CIA intelligence materialized much of what Death of a Prophet could only suggest. Elements of Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat may be the film Peck would’ve wanted to make all those years ago. Peck exploited the censored pages in Congo’s history to create intrigue, where the absence of evidence did not mean the evidence of absence. Armed with everything Peck was deprived of, Gimonprez provides an abundance of textual, anecdotal, and visual evidence that beyond a reasonable doubt indicates whose hands are stained by Lumumba’s blood. 

There are few martyrs whose image is as inextricably linked to their demise as Patrice Lumumba. In an early sequence, footage of Lumumba’s rise in political influence is masterfully intercut with a dramatization of Jesus Christ’s procession to his crucifixion. The fate of the two men is inevitable. Whether or not one is yet to familiarize themselves with Lumumba’s story, the film’s message is clear: the events presented will portray our hero in the process of writing his death warrant.

The small victories during Lumumba’s short-lived tenure as prime minister can feel pyrrhic viewed through the perspective of time, but Soundtrack is most astonishing when it’s able to revitalize these moments with their initial revolutionary zeal. The Belgian King Baudouin’s unceremonious tour to the newly independent Congo, which began with a theft of his sword during his introductory parade, is comically represented in the film with a fitting vaudeville flair. The humiliating peak of King Baudouin’s visit, where after an unapologetic speech glorifying the history of his family’s colonial rule over the Congo, Lumumba would quickly improvise one of his most iconic speeches, castigating Baudouin’s ancestor, King Leopold II, for decades of brutal colonial dictatorship. The scene is an utter triumph, but quick to snatch us from the high of Lumumba’s righteous indignation, Soundtrack reminds us it was moments like these that only emboldened his detractors.

As much as some contemporary analyses of Lumumba’s tenure can characterize him as a charismatic leader without any cogent political strategy for his country’s independence, unity, and sovereignty, Soundtrack paints the realistic picture that his position was insurmountable, impossible to even the most adept of diplomats. The tragedy of his troubled tenure is cleverly articulated through the film’s emphasis on time-stamping the various crises and obstructions that occurred through the days, weeks, months, and, subsequently, quarter-months after Congo declared its independence. The repetition becomes an absurdist leitmotif, spelling out the impossibility of Congo’s sovereignty, that even if Lumumba’s vision could be a mirage, it only lasted for a paltry two-and-a-half months. With a conglomerate of interests spanning international mining companies, the Belgian government, and neighboring white-settler states in South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and Namibia, the guardian of the heart of Africa was isolated, defenseless, and outnumbered. 

Lumumba was not the first or last post-colonial leader to be assassinated for his uncompromisingly anti-imperialist disposition. The timing and shocking brutality of his murder was a sober reminder at the twilight of Nkrumah’s “Year of Africa” that as much ground had been gained, the indifferent machinery of imperialism would continue to operate as crudely and oppressively as it always had. Soundtrack often breaks its visual harmony to display dazzling modern-day adverts for the latest iPhone smartphones and Tesla vehicles, made from Congo’s cobalt reserves, as well as the current war waging in the East, articulating something the film is self-aware enough not to elaborate over a title card: colonialism has never left Congo. 

Soundtrack’s post-modern flair renders other towering and complicated figures of history as symbols, bordering on caricatured representations of themselves without accounting for the weight of their contradictions or nuances in politics. In some shades, it works. In others, it paints the foil of the Non-Aligned Movement to a robust and bluntly violent opposition instead of its internal contradictions. As William Shoki argued in his reflection on non-alignment half a century after the Bandung Conference, one of the primary reasons it could not coalesce into a significant geo-political bloc was that it lacked a formidable working-class base. The material conditions for such couldn’t materialize because “the sociological conditions for mass society and associational life—industrialization and collective provision through a strong state—never came to pass.” Non-aligned leaders saw equity in global politics as a means towards domestic development, but it was precisely domestic development that would’ve provided robust support from below for the newly independent countries to form a formidable geo-political bloc.

Soundtrack is brilliantly seductive at arousing justifiable geopolitical ressentiment, which has only fermented as the years since the Cold War have continued and intensified American imperialism and its hegemony in the developing world. For all its exceptional touches, Soundtrack dwells in this ressentiment, which at times imagines that adept diplomacy and more sympathetic world leaders (in the vein of Russia’s Nikita Khrushchev) may have been all it took for non-alignment to materialize outside of the mass-mobilization of working peoples of the Global South. However, Gimonprez takes us there in the film’s final act. 

Soundtrack reaches its crescendo as Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln’s performance of “Freedom” reaches its fever pitch, and a group of protestors, including Roach, Lincoln, and Maya Angelou, storm the UN General Assembly in 1960 shortly after news of Lumumba’s assassination is announced. As Lincoln’s voice roars, the protestors breach the conference hall. While the majority of the film takes place in the halls of power and explores covert espionage against the newly independent Congo, Soundtrack’s final message functions as a rallying call for global mass mobilization. Better late than never. 

In the half-century since the protest at the UN General Assembly in 1960, Non-alignment appears to carry more semiotic weight than material force, sincerely inheriting few of the ideas born in Bandung, often in the service of pursuing global equality to create domestic inequality in favor of the domestic ruling elite. Most jarringly, in contrast to the generation of Maya Angelou and Malcolm X, is the posturing of the modern-day African-American intelligentsia, who tend to exceptionalize the plight of their compatriots at the expense of building solidarity across the Atlantic. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ recent launch and tour of his book “The Message” garnered controversy through his reflection and newly-found understanding of the functioning of Israel as an Apartheid state. As one of the foremost voices speaking on race relations during Barack Obama’s presidency, there was a sense on either side of the fence that he was risking something. 

The institutions that had placed him on a pedestal felt betrayed, and even the most skeptical of observers could appreciate his willingness to test (and at times erode) the goodwill he had built over the past decade. The story that surrounded the launch of Coates’ book revealed less about the author than it did of the positionality of many public voices speaking for the advancement of African-American interest, many of whom have drawn themselves so intimately to the heartbeat of the imperial core, that condemning a state-sponsored genocide is tantamount to career suicide. As Soundtrack lays out clearly in its thesis, as Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong protest their deployment in Nigeria and Katanga after learning about the covert motivations behind their respective tours, in the public sphere, it appears no American is exempt from oiling the gears of the American empire. 

In its entirety, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is tremendous. Conventional forms of filmmaking have manufactured an expectation for legibility in our cinema.  Filmmakers begins to ask themselves a question, finds an answer, and start making their film. Few filmmakers dare to make the question itself a point of departure. It’s in these films that an ignition of improvisation and dialecticism takes hold. The answer a filmmaker arrives at in their final cut may not be succinct, but it nonetheless charts a remarkable journey. The splendors of these journeys are almost solely dependent on the depth and color of the filmmaker’s introspection.

For his part, Johan Gimonprez’s work on Soundtrack to a Coup E’tat is an outstanding testament that a film need not always be the conclusion to a thesis, but the thesis itself.

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President Tinubu’s reforms have plunged Nigerians into economic despair, with soaring costs and violent repression, exposing the brutal toll of neoliberal policies.

Swearing-in ceremony of Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Abuja, 2023. Image credit Paul Kagame via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The month of August saw mass protest erupt in the West African country of Nigeria. Spurred by anger over a cost-of-living crisis and drawing inspiration from the Kenya’s youth revolt, the #EndBadGovernance protests became a rallying point for calls to take action to curb inflation and reverse the hike in prices of fuel, electricity, and food. But instead of answers to the cost-of-living problems, the protests were met with water cannons and live bullets in most parts of the country, and especially in Northern Nigeria where at least 40 protesters were reportedly shot dead by security forces. This violence was also accompanied by a string of Gestapo-style arrests of alleged protest leaders and sponsors, many of whom were legally under-aged.

Characteristically, the Nigerian authorities promptly denied that any killing took place, with the inspector general of police on one occasion saying his men did not fire any live bullets. However, a new report released by Amnesty International has exposed the gory details of the repression that unfolded while the protest lasted. Titled “Bloody August: Nigerian Government’s Violent Crackdown on #EndBadGovernance Protests,” the report present a chilling insight into the brutal class war unfolding in Africa’s most populous country as an unpopular pro-West regime employs state terror to try to accelerate the full liberalization of Nigeria’s economy—an IMF/World Bank–inspired project from the 1980s, which had moderately slowed down under the previous administrations.

Seventeen months ago, barely minutes after he was sworn into office, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in an off-cuff remark that deviated from his written speech, announced the removal of the prevailing petrol subsidy. Hardly had the newly elected president left the Eagle Square, venue of the elaborate ceremony that ushered him into office, that the immediate effect of his imperious announcement began to manifest. Across the country, a condition of a partial strike developed as society came to a momentary halt. Queues surfaced at petrol stations as many motorists embarked on panic buying of petrol while thousands of commuters, including workers and students, were stranded at bus stops nationwide as transport fare rocketed.

At the time, Tinubu’s action was viewed by many as either a product of hubris or, worse, a stroke of madness. Later on, in a speech to a group of Nigerians in Paris, the president would try to cast his action in ethereal halo by saying he was seized by a sudden confidence. However, in hindsight, it has become clear that Tinubu’s action on May 29 is only a foretaste of the shock therapy that would define his regime’s methodology in the execution of the neoliberal project. In opposition to the gradualism of the Buhari years, which earned him the sobriquet “Baba Go Slow,” Tinubu’s approach consists of three parts: shock, awe and shock again. Before Nigerians had fully taken in the impact of the rocketing petrol prices, the regime went ahead to devalue the currency. By the time Nigerians were beginning to reel from the consequences of the foreign-exchange fiasco that ensued, the full impact of the band classification for electricity supply—effectively a dramatic hike in electricity costs—introduced by the outgoing Buhari regime about six weeks before leaving power, began to kick in, to the chagrin of household and industries.

Nearly two years after, not only has the price of petrol defied the laws of gravity but the combined effect of other neoliberal reforms also introduced in quick succession by the regime have plunged the Nigerian people into the worst cost-of-living crisis in nearly three decades. While prices of food and fuel have risen by 61 percent and 355 percent respectively in the last 16 months, wages have declined in real value. The result is that many are starving as transport and energy costs take up nearly all of people’s monthly wages. Tragically, over 80 percent of Nigerians work in the unregulated informal sector where the national minimum-wage law is hardly respected. Also many are out of jobs with over 11 companies leaving the shores of the country within the first year of the regime’s existence. Despite this, the privilege and opulent lifestyle of the ruling elite has continued with the president taking delivery of a new Cadillac Escalade and an Airbus 330 aircraft costing US$150 million in the midst of the general hardship.

In pure military terms, shock and awe—a rapid dominance strategy involving the utilization of overwhelming power to paralyze an adversary—is meant to demoralize the enemy making it incapable of resistance. Tinubu’s shock therapy was aimed at exactly the same goal, hence the regime’s knee-jerk response as the cloud of resistance began to gather from early July until it broke out the following month.

In their report, Amnesty International presents the gory details of excessive force utilized by security forces, principally the police and the army, to quell the protest. According to the report, at least 24 protesters were killed in Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Niger, and Borno States but other accounts show that the death toll is much higher. “In almost all cases the victims were shot by the police—firing live ammunition at close range, often at the head or torso, suggesting that they were shooting to kill. Of the survivors interviewed, two protesters suffered gunshot injuries after being shot in the arm and leg by the police. Several survivors were suffocated by indiscriminate use of tear gas,” the report claimed.

Some of the victims did not even participate in the protest, demonstrating how vicious the repression was. For instance Nana-Firdausi Haruna, 30 years old, was cooking a meal for her family when she decided to step out to buy charcoal. She never made it back home. The same goes for 20-year-old Salahuddeen Umar who was shot and killed while seeing off his friends who came to check on his well-being because he had been ill for days. Similarly, five-year-old Muhammad Sani was playing with other kids in front of their house when a bullet pierced his lap. Abduljal Yusuf of Rijiyar Lemo in Kano state was shot dead in his provision store while 20-year-old Fa’izu Abdullahi was accosted by policemen who ordered him to raise his hands, which he did, yet he was still shot dead.

If the state-orchestrated propaganda and threat that presaged the protest was anything to go by, they showed a regime in momentary panic about the prospect of the mass movement, if allowed to develop, upending the status quo. Recent events on the continent have shown how even small protests on any economic or democratic issue can supercharge underlying grievances while rapidly becoming a rallying point for a mass revolt. Therefore, the gratuitous repression against the August protest was an action of a state grappling for survival,  as are the allegations of a “Russian plot” and the ongoing trial of protesters for treason, which in Nigeria’s laws carry a death sentence.

Suffice to note that Tinubu had come to power after winning the lowest vote cast for any Nigerian president since 1979. He was elected by just 8.7 million voters—10 percent of the total number of registered voters and 36 percent of votes cast. Whatever slight social base the regime had managed to retain following the 2023 elections had gradually collapsed as the economic catastrophe of the neoliberal reforms tore through society. Ordinarily, if there was any regime ill-suited to implement IMF/World Bank neoliberal reforms, it is the Tinubu regime. Former President Goodluck Jonathan, a more popular president, was nearly overthrown in January 2012 when he made a similar attempt. Yet it is this lack of any real support at home that is acting as a compelling factor for the regime to act not only as the evangel of neoliberalism within Nigeria but also the poster boy of Western interest within the region. To do either, however, requires a social base the regime is lacking; hence the turn towards the police and the army to suppress and awe.

Wider afield, we see the iteration of the same pattern. Kenyan President William Ruto’s attempt to accelerate the neoliberal agenda catapulted him overnight from a president with a measure of popularity, because of his rags-to-riches history, to one whose political career now hangs by a thread. According to official figures, nothing less than 39 protesters were killed, 361 were injured, and 627 were arrested during the anti–Finance Bill protests in the East African country. This is in addition to at least 32 cases of “enforced or involuntary disappearances.” In the end, therefore, it can be safely averred that violent repression of civil liberties is an inevitable concomitant of the implementation of neoliberalism. In the case of Nigeria, the event of August may well be the first steps toward the consolidation of a civilian capitalist dictatorship.

Taken as a whole, the Amnesty International report presents damning evidence of extrajudicial murder against the Nigerian state and its appurtenances of repression. Sadly, there is no guarantee that anything will come out of this exposé. This is not the first time the Nigerian state has murdered innocent citizens without consequence. During the #EndSARS protest four years ago, a judicial panel of inquiry set up by Lagos State found the army responsible for the killing of at least 12 protesters in a brutal crackdown at Lekki toll gate on October 20, 2020. The report also recommended a number of people for sanctions, including officials of government and private persons, who played direct and indirect roles in the tragedy. Up till today, no one has been brought to justice for the killings.

In all likelihood, a similar fate may befall this new report unless activists, civil society groups, and unions are able to ramp up pressure on the regime to act. The potential for even limited action to have an effect was demonstrated early last month when social media outrage forced the regime to hastily free sick and malnourished underage protesters arrested in connection with the #EndBadGovernance protest, when footage of their arraignment in court set the internet agog.

Due to the lack of serious public engagement with the report, the inspector general of police appears to want to seize the initiative by promptly announcing an investigation even while simultaneously describing the report as “falsified and confusing.” Of course, it goes without saying that such a probe conducted by the police will not serve the cause of justice. The Amnesty International report implicated the entire police force, so any real investigation can only come from without, not within. This is why it is now urgent for activists to begin to organize online campaigns and physical actions, including protest rallies and demonstrations to demand the immediate constitution of an independent and public probe into the brutal repression of the #EndBadGovernance protest.

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Tyla’s rise as a global pop star highlights the complexities of race, identity, and cultural representation, challenging how Blackness is perceived across the diaspora.

Tyla on Late Night, 2024. Credit Rob Corder via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0.

In 2023, I noticed a young, racially ambiguous woman in cornrows frequently appear on my “For You Page.” I learned that her name was Tyla, and I also learned that she is from my hometown of Johannesburg, South Africa. In that same year, she emerged as one of South Africa’s most promising cultural exports, blending a kind of Amapiano rhythm with the global pop sensibilities of an international star. Yet, for me, Tyla represents something much more interesting. She has transcended the “pop star” label and has inadvertently become a symbol of racial anthropology; a figure caught in the complex crossfires of identity, representation, and global Blackness. Her career trajectory has challenged her to connect with a wide enough Black American audience and to navigate the divisive loyalty of her South African fan base, offering a captivating perspective that examines the diasporic politics of race and culture.

As a Black South African, I view Coloured identity as an unremarkable, normal part of our societal fabric. I grew up with the understanding, like most South Africans, that “Colouredness” was a legitimate identity and experience that was rooted in a mixed ancestry. But for those unfamiliar, the term, “Coloured” originates as a technology of racial classification during Apartheid South Africa. This tool was imposed to separate people of mixed ancestry from Black and white populations and became codified legislation under the Population Registration Act and Group Areas Act of 1950. However, as authors Tessa Dooms and Lynsey Ebony Chutel discuss in COLOURED: How Classification Became Culture, Coloured identity evolved beyond its colonial and Apartheid roots and, like Blackness, became a legitimate racial identity that is neither monolithic nor simple.

Coloured identity holds a multitude of cultures, spanning the Khoi and San people, enslaved Black South Africans, and settler-colonial European ancestry. Becoming more than racial ambiguity, it represents a legacy of survival and adaptation. Yet, when filtered through global eyes, Coloured identity is flattened into a perception of ambiguity that frustrates binary racial categorization. And while mixed-race identities are not unique to the world, the packaging of a mixed-racial heritage within an explicitly African context feels relatively novel to a global audience. While Tyla has yet to explicitly address her defined relationship to Coloured identity publically, I see it all over her appearance, accent, and artistry. This has complicated her reception on the world stage, where the Black and white binary dominates racial discourse.

To Black American audiences, Tyla’s identity may appear as a racial rejection that triggers distrust and disinterest. Black audiences often seek cultural figures who mirror their experiences, and Tyla’s colouredness presents a version of Blackness that may feel alien or irrelevant to those accustomed to interpreting Blackness through an American lens. The divergence is historical and aesthetic; where African-American music sensations such as Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar cultivate narratives steeped in Black-American culture. Whereas Tyla’s artistry reflects the sonic and visual language of Amapiano, a genre rooted in Black South African culture. For audiences unfamiliar with the cultural weight of Amapiano, its presentation through a racially ambiguous Coloured woman can feel suspicious.

Adding fuel to this complexity is the fervent defense Tyla receives from her South African fans online. South Africa’s social media spaces are notoriously combative, particularly when it comes to defending their contemporary cultural icon—Tyla. Much of this defense is rooted in pride over Amapiano’s global ascent and the validation of South African cultural exports like Tyla. However, it’s worth noting that part of this fervent support of her from her South African fans, also appears to be rooted in a kind of colorism. Tyla’s racial ambiguity may contribute to her perceived palatability for global acceptance and thus adamant defense of her—an observation that merits its own exploration in a separate article. Tyla’s rise has also been accompanied by waves of online vitriol directed at anyone who dares to question her identity and artistry.

And here lies the crux of Tyla’s struggle: the protective cocoon her team has wrapped her in, while well-intentioned, a strategic mistake. Shielding her from critique, particularly about her identity and how it is received, isolates her from the very discourse that could propel her career forward. This missed opportunity was evident when Tyla refused to address her identity directly in her Breakfast Club interview when the host, Charlamagne tha God, asked her explicitly about her ethnicity and heritage. By refusing to answer, she ceded control of the narrative surrounding her identity. That moment could have served as the avenue to which she could have proudly introduced her background to a global audience rather than leaving it open to interpretation or speculation. The history of Coloured identity in South Africa offers rich terrain for Tyla to offer a new layer to global Black identity. For Tyla, leaning into her different racial identities could offer a compelling counterpoint to the simplicity with which global audiences often approach race and identity.

Ultimately, it’s worth stepping back and acknowledging that much of this discourse—Tyla’s positioning in the so-called “diaspora wars,” debates over her identity, and the defensiveness of her fan base—is symptomatic of something deeper: the invention of race itself. Race, as we understand it, is not an inherent truth but a constructed imposition by colonial powers to divide, categorize, and control. It’s a legacy designed to fracture solidarity and redirect our energies inward rather than upward. Perhaps the real question isn’t whether Tyla is “Black enough” or whether Black Americans are justified in their skepticism. Instead, we might ask who benefits from these divisions and what they distract us from.

Tyla is undeniably beautiful and talented, and some may find it unfortunate that she has been transformed into an anthropological figure in the ongoing discourse on race and Blackness. But I believe this makes her artistry even more compelling. My hope for Tyla is that this conversation doesn’t break her, but instead empowers her to channel these tensions into something truly profound and groundbreaking in her artistry. This is fertile ground and it is all hers.

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As Ghana heads to the polls, its democratic promise fades amid economic turmoil, corruption, and disillusionment, leaving voters to choose between two flawed options.

The monument of independence in Accra. © Truba7113 / Shutterstock.

On December 7, 2024, Ghanaians will go to the polls to exercise what would have been their power if their nation’s democracy had accountability and good governance. In the absence of those key elements, citizens are set to empower a president and 275 parliamentarians who will likely continue the race to the bottom—a trend that has been noted in recent Afrobarometer surveys and good governance indices emphasizing Ghana’s declining democratic fortunes.

Saturday’s election will be the ninth uninterrupted time Ghanaians go to the polls since the return to multiparty democracy and the introduction of the current constitution in 1992. The two main political parties in this election—the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP)—have each won four of the previous eight contests.

The NDC began the eight-year cycle in 1992, when its founder and charismatic military ruler, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, hung his uniform and put on civilian attire to campaign for the people’s mandate—after having seized power in a coup in December 1981 and held on to it till 1992. Following his electoral victory that year, Rawlings was reelected in 1996 and stepped down after the two four-year mandates allowable by the constitution.

Following this, the NPP, led by John Agyekum Kufuor, won the 2000 election, occasioning the first power transfer from one elected president to another since Ghana gained independence from Britain in 1957. Kufuor won his second term in 2004, and when his term ended in 2008, Ghanaians felt the need to switch.

Then came Professor John Evans Atta Mills, who led the NDC to win the 2008 election. Atta Mills campaigned for a second term in the December 2012 election but died four months before the polls opened. His vice president, John Dramani Mahama, succeeded him as the NDC’s candidate. Mahama won the 2012 election, becoming the fourth substantive president of Ghana’s Fourth Republic and the fourth successive “John” to occupy that office.

The dynasty of the Johns ended in 2016 when Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the NPP’s candidate, who had lost the 2008 and 2012 elections, upstaged John Mahama’s attempt at a second term and the NDC’s desire to break the eight-year cycle of the two dominant parties. Nana Akufo-Addo won a second term in 2020 and will hand over leadership to the winner of Saturday’s election after a rather disappointing show.

The NPP has its umbilical cord attached to the political tradition that opposed Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and his socialist-inclined ideology. The party describes itself as a “center-right and liberal conservative party.” The NDC, on the other hand, was formed by Rawlings and co-opted a great number of the pro-Nkrumah loyalists following the fragmentation of Nkrumah’s political base that followed the long ban on the independence leader’s party by various military regimes. The NDC professes social democratic ideals.

That said, the ideological differences between the two parties exist largely on paper—in practice, they are indistinguishable. They compete with promises of social interventions and populist policies with immediate gratification that can translate into votes. They also enjoy an almost unbreakable duopoly because the two biggest ethnic groups in Ghana are two parties’ core support: the NPP commands a massive following from the Asante and Twi-speaking ethnic groups, while the Ewe ethnic group backs the NDC.

Credible predictions point to a victory for the NDC in the 2024 election, and there might be more to this than the usual tendency of Ghanaians to oscillate between the two barely tolerable alternatives every eight years. All indicators of good governance point to a bleak performance of the NPP under Akufo-Addo, and Ghanaians may be seeking respite from the suffocation they have endured, especially in Akufo-Addo’s second term.

Ghana’s economy has suffered the worst crisis in living memory, with inflation jumping to 54.1 percent in December 2022. Some Ghanaians believed the reality was worse than the government statistician’s estimate. When Akufo-Addo became president in January 2017, Ghanaians needed four cedis to purchase one US dollar. Now they need 16 cedis to get a dollar. In an economy that depends heavily on imports, traders must constantly cough up more cedis to get foreign currencies for their imports. And since they’re not running charities, the consumer bears the brunt of the depreciation of the local currency.

For the first time, Ghana defaulted on its internal and external debt repayment and was compelled to make another unholy pilgrimage to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for policy credibility and economic stability. That ritual journey to the IMF, the eighteenth since independence, was accompanied by domestic and foreign debt restructuring, which scarred many investors in securities and government bonds. Pensioners picketed at the Ministry of Finance for weeks because they could not access their savings. While the country reeled in debt, the president’s cousin who headed the finance ministry, Ken Ofori-Atta, was laughing to the bank—with his company providing financial services to the government and quietly cashing out with each subsequent loan.

Unfortunately for Ghana’s economy, it doesn’t seem the next president will provide an immediate remedy. The current vice president and presidential candidate of the NPP, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, was touted as an economic whiz kid before the NPP took over in 2017. Tellingly, he has fled from his area of expertise in this election and is instead focusing his campaign on touting his initiatives related to digitalization. That is a tacit admission of the NPP’s failure on the economy, giving the NDC an unchallenged playing field to woo Ghanaians with its policies. The NDC, on the other hand, is campaigning with the vague policy of introducing a 24-hour economy. If that means anything, the party struggles to explain it to voters.

Apart from the economy, whoever wins Saturday’s election would face the daunting task of restoring sanity to Ghana’s battered democratic institutions. The Akufo-Addo administration instituted an aggravated assault on the already shaky pillars of Ghana’s democracy. Even though Akufo-Addo won his election on the promise to fight corruption, his predecessor’s worst performance in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index was his best. Under him, Ghana’s press freedom ranking, compiled by Reporters Without Borders, fell from 30th in 2021 to 62nd in 2023.

Ghana’s judicial impartiality score was 94.1 points in Mo Ibrahim’s Index of African Governance when Akufo-Addo became president in 2017. In 2024, that score fell to 68.3.

In June 2024, the World Bank downgraded the performance of Ghana’s Audit Service from “C” to “D,” citing deficiencies in its independence compared to international standards. It did not surprise Ghanaians, because President Akufo-Addo hounded Ghana’s auditor-general from office in 2020, a move the Supreme Court would later declare unconstitutional. However, the Supreme Court waited for three years to decide on the matter, when the auditor-general had already reached his mandatory retirement age. That case, per the Supreme Court’s examples in recent pro-NPP cases, could have been decided in three weeks. The delay further deepened concerns that the courts, packed with Akufo-Addo loyalists, do not dispense justice impartially.

Ghanaians are generally losing faith in their nation’s democratic institutions, according to recent findings by Afrobarometer. Afrobarometer’s 2024 report notes that 82 percent of Ghanaians surveyed said the nation was headed in the wrong direction.

In light of this, one might expect John Mahama to campaign on the message that Ghana needs a complete “reset.” The record of his one-term presidency, however, does not inspire hope that the country’s direction would change under his watch. High levels of corruption characterized his presidency and partly accounted for his defeat. His administration presided over the worst power crisis in recent times. During his presidency, Ghana turned to the IMF for economic salvation.

Though the Mahama era was more tolerant of dissent, and the media and civil society operated without fear, many Ghanaians think a reset requires more than that. Ghana’s vibrant media and civil society appear fatigued. And some Ghanaians believe the country probably needs another military regime to reset the country.

Ghana is often considered a gold-standard democracy among African countries, and its decline does not portend well for the general stability of the West African sub-region, which is already rocked by a wave of military regimes that appear to enjoy widespread support from the masses. Unlike citizens of the coup-ravaged Francophone countries who see the coup makers as heroes standing up to neocolonial powers, Ghanaians see their predicaments as the failure of leadership. They are losing hope in democracy.

The voices of the people do not appear to matter. For the past eight years, the media, civil society, and other groups have sustained a campaign against illegal mining, which has polluted major rivers and destroyed forest reserves and cocoa farms, but the destruction persists because politicians are involved.

Protests do not yield much either. They are met with stiffer punishments from the state. Recently, authorities arrested and detained protesters against illegal mining,  which human rights activists have condemned as arbitrary. Mahama and Bawumia are known for tolerance, but even in the best of times, Ghanaians believe their politicians will always have their way, even if the people say otherwise.

These developments have attracted keen attention from the international community, especially as Ghanaians prepare for another acrimonious contest. For instance, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a policy in October this year to “restrict US visas for any individual responsible for undermining democracy in Ghana.” The presidential candidates have signed a peace pact ahead of Saturday’s polls, but the fear of violence remains a major concern for watchers of Ghana’s democracy.

The 2024 election, however, presents intriguing firsts in Ghana’s history. Dr. Bawumia is the first Muslim to lead a major political party in the Christian-dominated Ghana. He is also the first “outsider” to lead the NPP, which is dominated by the Akan ethnic group.

The two leading candidates in this election are from economically disadvantaged northern Ghana, another first. In the advent of the Fourth Republic, the two main political parties looked to the north for vice presidential candidates to balance the national equations. Mahama broke the jinx in 2012 when President Mills died, and he stepped into his shoes. Dr. Bawumia came later when he won his party’s primaries in 2023.

Mahama’s father and Bawumia’s father were the first and second ministers of Ghana’s northern region in the First Republic under Kwame Nkrumah. That their sons are making history on the national stage should have generated excitement, but the gloom, hardship, and hopelessness of the nation have extinguished the fervor that should have greeted this election.

Former President Mahama has only one term to serve if he wins Saturday’s election. Without the need to look toward the next election, a second Mahama presidency could allow him to implement tough policies. He could also be less accountable than in his first term, since he will not need to win the people’s mandate again.

Dr. Bawumia, who has been Akufo-Addo’s vice president, is tainted with the sins of the regime from which Ghanaians need respite. He could be his own man and do things differently, but some Ghanaians fear his victory will shield elements of Akufo-Addo’s administration from accountability.

Whichever way Saturday’s presidential and parliamentary elections go, the prospects are bleak. As I said in my 2019 book, The Fourth John: Reign, Rejection and Rebound, Ghanaians are presented with either death by firing squad or death by hanging as they once again vote in a democracy that is growing but not maturing.

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Materially speaking, oil is simply a sticky, black goo. It doesn’t have any innate power separate from the kind of society we live in—capitalism.

Oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Guinea. Image credit Jan Ziegler via Shutterstock.

There’s been a lot written on the history of oil over the last 50 years. Two classic accounts are Daniel Yergin’s The Prize and Anthony Sampson’s The Seven Sisters. Both these books narrate the rise of the big Western oil companies across the 20th century. They are rich in detail and full of fascinating vignettes but are highly personalized in the way they tell the story of oil. Their focus is on the individuals who led the big oil companies and their ruthless determination to control global oil supplies. What they largely ignore are the bigger social and economic realities that shaped oil’s emergence as the world’s principal fossil fuel.

Crude Capitalism was partly written as a critique of these kinds of approaches to oil. My starting point is that—materially speaking—oil is simply a sticky, black goo. It doesn’t have any innate power separate from the kind of society we live in. And that society is capitalism, a historically distinct social system characterized by endless accumulation, a drive to continually accumulate money that overrides all other considerations. If we are to truly understand oil’s place in our energy order, we need to foreground the priorities, logics, and behaviors that are conditioned by this social system.

In taking this approach, I was inspired by a range of other recent writing. These include Andreas Malm’s Fossil Capital, Matt Huber’s Lifeblood, and Hannah Appel’s The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea. Each of these books is written in an engaging style, weaving their historical narrative into a deeper analysis of what capitalism means for the production and consumption of fossil fuels.

One of the advantages of this approach is that it pushes us to consider what oil does for capitalism after it is refined and turned into something useful. In this respect, most of us tend to think about oil simply in the form of petrol and other liquid fuels. We often forget about another hugely important set of refined oil products: petrochemicals and plastics. The petrochemical revolution turned oil into much more than simply a fuel: as a raw material, it became a basic input into just about every commodity that surrounds us today.

Pioneering work on this synthetic shift is the writing of US ecologist Barry Commoner, especially his book The Closing Circle. There is so much we can learn from Commoner today, but he’s often missed in contemporary debates on climate and ecology (perhaps because he also insisted on thinking seriously about capitalism). More recently, the work of Alice Mah on petrochemicals is extremely illuminating. Her book Plastic Unlimited: How Corporations Are Fuelling the Ecological Crisis and What We Can Do About It, is a powerful critique of the petrochemical industry and its connection to the imperative of limitless growth.

An important theme of my book is oil’s connection to European colonialism, its place in postwar national liberation struggles, and the subsequent rise of a US-centered world order. Two books that make important contributions in this respect are Christopher Dietrich’s Oil Revolution and Giuliano Garavini’s The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century. The great merit of these books is their careful attention to transnational anti-colonial networks and the ways that oil shaped both the practice and thinking of liberation movements in the Global South.

In thinking about colonialism, we need to move beyond simply a view of oil as a material substance, and also consider what happens to oil wealth: who earns it, what currency it is denominated in, and where it goes. Here, I learned much from Stephen Galpern’s Money, Oil, and Empire in the Middle East: Sterling and Post-War Imperialism, 1944–1971. This fascinating book connects Britain’s Middle East oil strategy to concerns over the strength of British sterling. In doing so, it shifts the way we think about the control of raw materials such as oil. Another essential book on this topic—examining the period following the end of British colonialism—is David Spiro’s The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony. In this pathbreaking book, Spiro presents one of the first accounts of how post-war American financial power was connected to the recirculation of Saudi oil wealth into US financial markets.

Of course, the overarching question of any book on oil is the reality of the climate emergency. Here, I’ve found the work of Ian Angus, who runs the Climate and Capitalism website very useful. Angus’ book, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System, is a well-argued defense of eco-socialism and is written in a way that conveys the scientific research on climate change in a clear and straightforward manner. Angus’s approach is grounded in Marx’s concept of the metabolic rift—the idea that capitalism inevitably disrupts the “metabolic” interaction between humans and nature. The theoretical underpinnings of this idea and their implications for political movements are richly explored by John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, in The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth, and also John Bellamy Foster’s The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment. Adrienne Buller’s recent book, The Value of a Whale is also a remarkably lucid critique of “green capitalism” and the attempts to commodify nature that are now being advanced in the guise of climate action.

Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market (2024) by Adam Hanieh is available from Verso Books.

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Colonial-era censorship bodies continue to stifle African creativity, but a new wave of artists and activists are driving a pan-African push for reform.

Still from Rafiki.

Across Africa, censorship bodies—relics of colonial-era laws—restrict artistic expression and suppress dissent, stifling the transformative potential of art to challenge injustice and inspire collective progress.

We are in a unique moment where reforming censorship bodies is both vital and achievable. We are witnessing the rise of digital platforms—a tool for both communication and silencing—and social movements across the continent. In 2024, artists galvanized the youth-led, anti-austerity #RejectFinanceBill movement in Kenya; Sudanese cartoonists produced and communicated political analysis as their “forgotten war” moves into its second year; and theater makers in Zimbabwe redefined local participatory governance structures. Yet at all levels of artistic output, creatives face censorship, prosecution, and threats for expressing ideas and challenging power through their work.

On February 15, 2024, Nigerian filmmaker and scriptwriter Hajiya Amart received a letter from the Kano State Censorship Board:

I am pleased to write and revoke the license of Kannywood Enterprises Limited as a Distributor/Exhibitor as well as the License of Amart Entertainment due to the following reasons:

              Non-compliance to the Rules of the Law of the Board
              Defamation of character and abusing Director Film Production and Development in the Office of Executive Secretary in the Presence of Director Publications.

This letter wasn’t the first time Amart dealt with the censorship board. She had already received threats because of her advocacy against film piracy—often orchestrated to benefit board officials—and unfavorable depictions of authority in her work. As an advocate of artistic rights, she reported the board’s attempt to silence her to the commissioner of information and the attorney general in Kano State. In retaliation, the Kano State Censorship Board added “defamation of character” to her alleged offence and revoked her license entirely. Amart lost her livelihood and her ability to create and express, and she feared losing the company she had built to uplift the next generation of Nigerian filmmakers.

Amart’s story illustrates a systemic issue: censorship boards are key institutional mechanisms used to restrict artistic expression and protect political and cultural elites. In Kano State alone, artists reported over 160 cases of unjust censorship during the first three quarters of 2024. These trends spread across the continent. In Kenya, the acclaimed LGBTQ film Rafiki remains banned over six years after its release, despite an ongoing court case to reverse the ruling. And in July, Tanzanian authorities prosecuted and later abducted the painter and TikToker Shadrack Chaula after he criticized President Samia Suluhu Hassan through his art. These acts of censorship have a chilling effect on artists as the stakes of their expression become starkly evident.

Censorship boards’ entrenched power and approach to control is not coincidental. They are rooted in colonial-era frameworks designed to suppress art’s power to inspire cultural and political change. Today, they still operate under mandates of prohibition and restriction, not protection or classification. Their structure also responds to political agendas. These boards are almost universally composed of government appointees. In Nigeria, members of the National Film Video Censors Board are appointed by the president; in Zimbabwe, the Board of Censors is appointed by the minister; and Kenya’s Film Classifi­cation Board mirrors Zimbabwe with the addition of other members also serving in the executive branch of government.

Despite the challenges artists face across the continent, there is fundamental progress towards legislative reform.

In response to the revocation of her license, Amart filed a lawsuit against the censorship board at the Kano State High Court.  For the first time in Nigeria, on Wednesday, November 13, 2024, the court ruled in her favor, restraining the Kano State Censorship Board from interfering with her artistic operations. This landmark ruling set a powerful precedent, encouraging other artists to resist censorship.

Along with changing legal precedents, national reform is already underway in Zambia. The censorship board was enshrined in their constitution by a colonial 1929 law. The board itself, housed under the Ministry of Information, stopped functioning seven years ago as Zambia focused on protecting artistic freedoms. However, the law is still in place, and a shift in political will could reactivate its function at any time. The Zambian Ministry of Youth, Sport and Arts has started the process of repealing the long-entrenched law by writing a Cabinet Memo. The Cabinet will review the memo at their next meeting, initiating procedures for constitutional reform.

From Nigeria to Zambia, there is important work taking place to shift censorship structures at both the local and national level. However, shared challenges demand collective solutions. Despite the similar structure and mandate of censorship bodies across Africa, there is yet to be a unified regional response to their control. While there is considerable effort in African civil society and policy circles to address defamation laws, which have long been used to suppress critical voices more broadly, the same focus has yet to be applied to censorship boards that target their restrictions on artists.

Transforming censorship bodies is a pan-African project that requires regional cooperation, even with distinct national legislative and governance landscapes. This is a moment of legislative and political momentum when change is timely and achievable. We need to use our successes to generate a structured response.

Many organizations working with local artists and government officials on reform are unaware of similar efforts happening in other countries. We need to create platforms where these groups can share insights, develop tactics, pool resources, and coordinate strategies. Such efforts must also lead to engagement with the African Union and other regional bodies from a unified and coordinated collective.

To reform censorship laws, we must undertake a detailed legal assessment of censorship laws across the continent, comparing their structures with diverse international models. This analysis is exclusively legal, not political. By filling this knowledge gap, we will develop model legislation that shifts the mission of censorship boards to one that classifies and protects cultural interests rather than restricts creative rights.

But legal transformation requires more than top-down legislative changes—it is an iterative process that demands setting new legal precedents. Amart’s victory in Kano State has powerful implications for holding censorship boards to account. We must work with networks of lawyers to identify and defend artists whose rights have been infringed upon and use these cases as catalysts for legislative reform.

By coordinating civil society engagement, legislative reform, and strategic litigation, we can reshape the structure and function of censorship bodies across Africa.

Join us on Thursday, December 5, at 4 p.m. CAT for a groundbreaking panel discussion on reforming censorship boards to advance artistic freedom across Africa. Hosted by Africa Is a Country and Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), this event brings together leading artists and civil society advocates from across the continent to tackle shared challenges, celebrate progress, and envision transformative policies. We will explore strategies to protect artistic expression and build a freer, more inclusive African creative landscape.

The post Bored of suppression appeared first on Vuka News.

Election posters in Maputo. Image credit James Wan via African Arguments CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

By Africa Is a Country

Join us on November 21st as we discuss the politics underlying the popular uprising in Mozambique with António Bai, Anne Pitcher, and José Jaime Macuane.

On October 9, Mozambicans cast their ballots in the general election. The National Elections Commission declared a sweeping victory for Frelimo, which has governed the country since independence in 1975. The election results upset the set-up, with Podemos replacing Renamo as the leading opposition party. But Podemos leader Venâncio Mondlane rejected the results, claiming an outright victory. According to observers, the elections were marred by irregularities, including ghost voters, fake observers, ballot box stuffing, and fictitious tabulations. Under pressure, the Constitutional Council ordered the National Elections Commission to hand over the original tabulations. But the commission, which is dominated by Frelimo appointees, has been less than cooperative. In mid-December, the Constitutional Council is due to announce the final outcome. 

In response to the fraudulent elections—and the subsequent murder of opposition lawyer Elvino Dias and Podemos leader Paulo Guambe—an unprecedented wave of protest action has taken hold across the country. Heeding the call by Mondlane, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets, some marching peacefully and others blocking strategic logistical arteries, including the ports and national borders. The forces of repression have responded erratically, shooting tear gas into homes and live ammunition at protesters. While the casualty count is inconclusive, thousands are estimated to have been arrested, hundreds have been shot and at least 40 have been killed over the last week. 

As António Bai of the Bloco 4 Foundation argues, the persecution of oppositional voices and the closing of political space ultimately undermine the legitimacy of the state and public trust in state institutions.

To understand the politics of this popular uprising, it is important to reflect on Mozambique’s political economy. Over the last decades, there has been a rapid expansion of the extractive sector, which along with adjacent industries, absorbs 90 percent of foreign direct investment but generates only 15 percent of formal salaried employment. The growth of extractive industries has accelerated the expropriation of land and natural resources, undermined the redistributive role of the state, and ultimately resulted in its militarization. As Professor Anne Pitcher details, there is a close relationship between the national oligarchs, who have been able to amass wealth as intermediaries, global capital, and the Mozambican military establishment. For Professor José Jaime Macuane, the propensity to conflict—from skirmishes with Renamo to the jihadist insurgency in Cabo Delgado—reflects the fragmentation of political settlements between elites within the governing coalition and between the governing and non-governing coalition.

Join us on November 21 as we discuss the politics underlying the popular uprising in Mozambique with António Bai, Anne Pitcher, and José Jaime Macuane. William Shoki and Ruth Castel-Branco will moderate the webinar.

António Bai is a researcher at Bloco 4 Foundation, where he transforms academic articles into animations. He has a bachelors and a masters degree in political science from the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. He publishes on social protests and freedom of expression in Mozambique.

Anne Pitcher is the Joel Samoff Collegiate Professor of Political Science and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. Her published work examines electoral and party politics, political economy, the distribution of public goods, and political violence in Africa. Most of her research over the past 30 years has been conducted in Mozambique, Angola, Zambia, South Africa, and more recently, Kenya.

José Jaime Macuane, is an associate professor of political science and public administration, at the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. His areas of interest focus on the theory of democracy and democratization, political economy of development, and state reform.

Ruth Castel-Branco is a senior lecturer and researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her published work examines the changing nature of work, worker movements, and the redistributive claims on the state.

Watch it live on YouTube here.

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Protesters in Maputo, Mozambique, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024. Carlos Uqueio for AP Photo.

A decade ago, the kind of protest movement gripping Mozambique over the last few weeks would have been difficult to fathom.

By Ruth Castel-Branco  – this post was first published on Africa is A Country: summary below by Vuka.news

Election Day and Fraud Allegations: On October 9, Mozambique held a general election. Many expected the ruling party, Frelimo, to manipulate the results, as they had during the previous year’s municipal elections. Widespread irregularities were reported, including “ghost voters,” fake observers, and ballot-stuffing. Journalist Tomás Vieira Mário noted that although “Frelimo may have won the elections, they lost the people.”

Election Results and Power Dynamics: The National Elections Commission reported that Frelimo received 71% of the vote, gaining 195 parliamentary seats. Podemos, the opposition party, gained 31 seats, becoming the main opposition. Opposition groups, including members of the National Elections Commission, contested these results, accusing the system of being “structurally rigged.” Elections are observed at polling stations, but final vote counts happen behind closed doors, giving Frelimo the advantage.

Assassinations of Opposition Leaders: Elvino Dias, a lawyer preparing a legal case for Podemos’ candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, was assassinated on October 19, along with Podemos leader Paulo Guambe. Police claimed the assassinations were linked to a “conjugal dispute.” Still, Dias had warned of his possible assassination and stated on Facebook Live that he had evidence of the true election results. Dias stated, “As for us, we died a long time ago. The vandals know where I live, which is why I have no reason to run away.”

Growing Support for Podemos and Mondlane: The assassinations sparked public outrage and support for Mondlane and Podemos. Founded by former Frelimo members, Podemos promotes “liberal socialism” and social justice. However, Mondlane, with a background as a preacher, has shown support for authoritarian populists, creating a mix of religious and political influence in his campaigns.

Protests and Strikes Following the Election: Mondlane called for a general strike, leading to widespread protests against Frelimo’s rule. People used tactics like banging pots, protesting at symbolic sites, and blocking roads. Police responded with force, using tear gas and live ammunition, resulting in arrests and deaths. The economic cost of these strikes is high, with an estimated loss of up to 2% of Mozambique’s GDP.

Frelimo’s Reaction and Internal Doubts: President Nyusi celebrated the election results, but some within Frelimo doubt the legitimacy of their landslide victory due to Mozambique’s poverty and crisis-ridden state. Frelimo leaders recognize that election rigging has damaged the party’s credibility.

Upcoming Constitutional Review of Election Results: The Constitutional Council is under pressure to review contested election results. Due to destroyed and manipulated records, verifying accurate results may require forensic investigation. Even if fraud is confirmed, high abstention rates might still favour Frelimo’s hold on power.

The Future of Opposition in Mozambique: Although Podemos and Mondlane have support, their alliance is fragile. Mondlane’s economic views may clash with Podemos’ “socialist” values, leading to potential internal conflicts. Mozambique’s protest movement is now too large and diverse to ignore, signaling that meaningful change will require justice for all.

The post No justice, no peace in Mozambique appeared first on Vuka News.

To navigate multipolarity, the continent needs a common narrative that strategically mediates its conversations with China and other world powers.

Addis Ababa light rail. Image credit ITDP Africa via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0.

With the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) fetching a commitment to a three-year funding envelope of US$51 billion, along with a promise of a million jobs from China, African leaders appear to have secured concessions from China. After all, Africa is that continent where unemployment is imploding into street protests with all sorts of implications. However, the way African leaders conduct Africa’s relations with China is disturbing. 

Africa relates to China without any known continent-wide narrative of the relationship. This should disturb all stakeholders of the Africa-China relationship, including China. There is no such narrative except the shared pride among African leaders that the continent is a privileged theater of Chinese global unfolding. Is it possible a collective African narrative exists but is hidden for strategic reasons? This is possible in the context of a multipolar, post-Cold War global order. Even so, there is little to be gained from hiding a narrative because narratives and the power relations they almost always enact determine who gets what, when, and where. Self-narrativization or discourses are, therefore, not about secrecy. A global player without such self-narrative advertises itself as a player without clarity about what it wants from the system. 

This is more so because neither China nor any of the actors Africa relates with comes to the table without a strategic narrative. Finding itself as a global player after achieving social transformation at a pace and scale hitherto unimaginable, China declares itself a case of a “peaceful rise,” suggesting a great power ascendancy that is not threatening the status quo. It additionally defines its approach to relations with other layers of actors in the global order to be based on a win-win narrative instead of a winner-loser binary. Applied to Africa, the win-win narrative has been a particularly appealing feature of the Chinese presence on the continent, with its invocation of a legacy of a clean colonial record and a commitment to a mutual share of prosperity and adversity. 

In summary, China is not oblivious to how narratives create the reality they invoke if and when such narratives are canvassed to the consent and consensus of the audiences they are addressed to. The implication is that China, surrounded by a bodyguard of narratives, has better prospects of determining the winners and losers in its relations with other actors. China is not alone in this. The European Union loves reference to it as a normative power. With the Americans, one encounters “the city on the hill” or “the indispensable nation” narrative. Every other global player has one dominant self-understanding or another.

For Africa to be a winner, it needs a narrative of itself, one that sets the boundaries of its relationship with others, be it the European Union, the United States, China, Russia, or every other actor in the global order. Without that grand logic mediating the conversation between Africa and China, it is all about financing, infrastructure, trade, and similar issues. A coherent narrative could help Africa learn how to convert its own “centuries of humiliation” into the possibility of social transformation on any remarkable scale.

Africa’s relationship with the global powers cannot remain at the level of surface-level issues anymore. Otherwise, African leaders run the risk of unintentionally suggesting to others that they have no clarity of what the continent should be asking for from China or other players, for that matter. Yes, US$51 billion and a million jobs are not insignificant, but why is the unemployment level at such a threatening level in Africa more than any other region? Why is industrialization not a focus in the discussions so far? Is that coming at a later stage, or is it a case that such a topic is forbidden or simply a case of an issue not raised? 

Without such questions, what seems to be happening is a repeat of the scenario that enabled the now defunct Jubilee 2000 Coalition and other global civil society platforms—rather than then Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo and his brothers, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal—to take center stage at the G8 meeting in Okinawa, Japan in 2000. The coalitions took center stage by raising debt cancellation, among other pressure tactics. No such pressures have been exerted by African leaders on the scale required. Yet, the African leaders have had the advantage of additional opportunities to mount such pressure and negotiate concessions in the light of the reinvigorated EU-Africa Partnership or the US-Africa Leaders Summit and Russia-Africa Summit.

There is no doubt that Africa needs infrastructure, financing, trade, jobs for the millions of unemployed, and lots more. But it first needs the narrative that will underpin the conversation over how to accomplish these specifics. The starting point is framing the continent’s relationship with China.

The post What does Africa want? appeared first on Vuka News.

Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.

Photo by Abdullahi Maxamed on Unsplash

The Horn of Africa, a region once described by Jeffrey Lefebvre as one of the world’s most “highly penetrated regional subsystems,” is on the brink of a dangerous turn as several actors intensify their displays of power in Somalia. Turkey, Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE, and other regional powers are taking sides in what is fast becoming Africa’s Lebanon—a fractured country where multiple national factions and entities pursue conflicting political agendas, inviting foreign actors to further their own influence and advance their political positions. The most prominent player in this new escalation is Egypt, which has begun channeling military experts and weaponry into Somalia to gain much-needed leverage with Ethiopia concerning the Nile water conflict. 

Recently, Egypt sent sizeable military aircraft and cargo ships to Mogadishu, delivering a significant quantity of weaponry. Additionally, Egypt has proposed deploying military contingents to the Horn of Africa nation as part of a newly adopted African peacekeeping mission. This rapid militarization of the conflict has raised serious concerns in Ethiopia, Somaliland, and among certain Somali regional authorities. 

Addis Ababa has been at odds with Mogadishu since last January, following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland, allegedly granting Ethiopia a 20-kilometer stretch of coastline for sea access. Relations have now hit a nadir not seen since the Cold War years. SNTV is broadcasting footage of its army in 1977, the year Somalia launched an invasion of Ethiopia, and Ethiopian officials have resorted to petty insults, calling the Somali foreign minister an “al-Shabaab agent.”  

As a counter-strategy to Egypt’s growing military involvement in Somalia, Ethiopia has increased its military presence in parts of the country, strengthened relations with Somali regional authorities, and, most notably, repositioned its eastern command (Hararghe command) to Godey, closer to the Somali border. Alongside this significant military posture, numerous videos have surfaced on social media showing an increased supply of weapons from Ethiopia to Somali federal authorities and influential clan politicians—some of whom are reportedly allies of the Somali president. 

Some of these weapons have been looted en route to their destinations by clan militias in the Galgaduud region of Somalia. In addition, Ethiopia has recently intensified its longstanding military cooperation with Somaliland, which shares similar concerns with Ethiopia and has accused Egypt of engaging in destabilizing activities in the region aimed at Somaliland. The flood of arms into the country has prompted one analyst to remark that “soon there will be more guns than men in Somalia.”  

The tension between Somaliland and Egypt is a key factor in the region’s escalating conflict, as Egypt has pledged full support to Somalia in maintaining its territorial integrity, a stance that implicitly threatens Somaliland’s autonomy. In response, Somaliland last week closed an Egyptian cultural centre in Hargeisa and expelled the Egyptian staff overseeing it. 

Since 2011, the newly assertive Turkey has been working hard to establish a military presence in Somalia, as President Erdoğan seeks to expand Turkish influence in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, with ambitions that echo Ottoman-era aspirations. Mahmut Rıdvan Nazırlı, a member of Erdoğan’s ruling AKP who sits on the foreign affairs committee, viewed the maritime pact between Somalia and Turkey, as something which made his country a state that “has a say in the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.” Nazırlı added that Turkey had a historic role in the region dating to the 16th century. 

Although Turkey has made significant investments in Somalia’s military training and security sectors, and secured strategic partnerships and trade agreements, its role in Somali politics has been more subtle. Turkey has carefully managed to downplay the competing priorities of Somalia’s political and ruling elites to avoid jeopardizing its long-term strategic vision. It doesn’t want to hitch its future to any Somali actors’ political bandwagon. Nevertheless, Turkey’s presence has been enough to raise concerns among other regional powers, particularly Gulf states such as the UAE, which has its own ambitions in the Red Sea and adjacent Horn of Africa regions.  

Already fragile, Somalia has now become a battleground for a multi-party proxy war, with Ethiopia and Egypt playing the most prominent roles. The involvement of these two nations in Somalia has long been controversial and viewed with suspicion. Ethiopia and Egypt share deep-seated animosity and unresolved fears over the Nile’s waters. Addis Ababa sees the Nile as an Ethiopian resource heavily exploited by Egypt, while Cairo regards the Nile as a divine gift to Egypt. Indeed, the Greek historian Herodotus famously described Egypt as “the gift of the Nile” in the 5th century BC. 

Somalia has been drawn into its rivalry since its independence in this deeply rooted conflict over the Nile. The Nile begins its journey in Ethiopia’s Lake Tana, flowing southeast towards Somalia before turning northward to Egypt, which claims the benefits of this natural resource. Meanwhile, Somalia, though not directly benefiting from the Nile, has borne the brunt of this geopolitical tension. Egypt has long viewed Somalia, including Somaliland, as Ethiopia’s vulnerable southern flank, due to its extensive border and ethnic ties that extend deep into Ethiopia’s heartland. During the Cold War, ties between Mogadishu and Egyptian presidents blossomed from Nasser to Saddat. Conversely, Ethiopia regards Somalia and its Somali population as an immediate national security threat not just to the country’s territorial integrity but also to the state.  

Based on these realities, both nations have historically supported opposing political factions and ideological groups in Somalia, with Ethiopia often holding the upper hand in shaping Somalia’s political landscape due to its much greater investment.  

Western powers, including the United States, have recently grown fatigued by Somalia’s persistent fragility and political turmoil. They are now seeking an exit strategy to alleviate the financial burden of Somalia, favoring a more active role for regional entities in addressing the country’s issues. The United States supports the involvement of the African Union (AU), IGAD, and the East African Community, of which Somalia has secured membership with US backing. However, current developments are not unfolding as the United States had planned or hoped. Instead, competing regional powers are exacerbating the state crisis in Somalia, undoing the modest gains of recent decades. This explains US objections to the memorandum agreed between Hargeisa and Addis Ababa. The US’s primary concern is the eradication or suppression of jihadist groups, and current conditions provide them with an opportunity to flourish.  

These growing interventions risk full-scale instability. Clan-based clashes are intensifying as the flow of weapons proliferates, particularly in the wake of Egypt’s military supplies to the struggling Mogadishu government and Ethiopia’s arms support to its allies, who oppose Egyptian involvement due to clan loyalties and concerns about possible al-Shabaab attacks.  

The current President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is inviting proxy wars into his country, further dividing an already fractured Somalia and jeopardizing the hard-earned legitimacy of the Federal Government of Somalia. His actions evoked comparisons to the situation in 1991 when Ali Mahdi installed himself as a leader in the post-Siad Barre era with the backing of Egypt and Djibouti but without the support of the broader Somali population. Ali Mahdi ultimately ruled a factional entity limited to a few neighborhoods in Mogadishu, and his claim to the title of “Somali President” remained controversial and divisive. 

The region is heading towards considerable unrest, and beyond the political and geopolitical power struggles, many observers are concerned that these weapons pose a significant threat to the already fragile Somali state. There is growing fear that they will spark inter-clan conflicts, creating a highly fertile environment for anti-peace elements and extremist groups. The additional risk is that these arms fall into the hands of al-Shabaab.  

A new wave of violence looms over the region, with the prospect of bloody clashes on the horizon. Urgent political solutions are needed to address the underlying conflicts among Somalis, particularly the long-standing tension and unresolved state of affairs between Somalia and Somaliland. It is also essential to curb the ambitions of leaders consolidating power in what is barely a post-conflict state. Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia, like Lebanon, will remain a fragmented state populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons. It will remain in the clutch of its more powerful neighbors, and the voices of its citizens will continue to be muffled by a structure that fails to translate their wishes into policy.

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No matter where they are, the children of African heads-of-state live lives comically far-removed from those of the average citizen in their home countries.

Image via Teodoro Nguema on Instagram (Fair Use)

This year has been an extraordinary year for politics in Africa.

In less than nine months, the continent has witnessed a lifetime’s worth of drama and tumult, largely driven by a youth population waking to its power and rejecting the empty promises of the old guard. In Senegal and South Africa, young people showed up to the polls eager to overthrow the APR and ANC, respectively, following spectacularly unsuccessful tenures defined by precipitous declines in economic output, rising unemployment, and wanton corruption. In Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Tunisia, a revolutionary charge of young people stormed the streets demanding the fall of a massively unpopular tax bill, accountability for government corruption, the fall of bad governance, and death to the dictatorship, respectively. In Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, a majority of young people have rubber-stamped the military juntas that have promised an end to a political order that was defined by domestic corruption and capture by foreign entities.

After years of being serially failed and disillusioned by the government, Africa’s young people are slowly turning their backs on the political establishment and looking up and out for better.

A consequence of this has been the creation of a vacuum in leadership. Where the tools of democracy have been available this vacuum has been filled by a young and vibrant crop of politicians, a la Sankara, who promise to revolutionize the landscape of politics, from Senegal’s Diomaye to South Africa’s Malema. Ibrahim Traore and other military leaders have filled this gap where democracy hasn’t fulfilled its promise to the people.

A third source young people have looked to for leadership and inspiration is the children of the establishment. This elite band of influencers-cum-politicians has for years evaded the scrutiny afforded to their parents, and has not begun to sell themselves as symbols of a brighter, better future for all, eschewing recognition as evidence of a massive crisis:

Africa has a first-children problem. 

No matter where they are found, the children of African heads-of-state are comically far removed from the lives of the average citizen in their home countries, attracting the glimmer and sparkle of paparazzi cameras. The most problematic amongst them occupy themselves with the affairs of mommy and daddy’s offices, securing ministerial positions, military and diplomatic appointments, and advisory roles at high levels of government. They rake in thousands of taxpayer dollars in salaries and gratuities and use their platforms to secure political futures as torch-bearers of their parents’ legacies.

Until the overthrowal of his father, Ali Bongo Ondimba, in a military coup, Noureddin Bongo Valentin was one such king-in-waiting, serving as the General Coordinator of Political Affairs in the Gabonese government, a title whose opacity mirrors that of its occupant’s mandate. Valentin was tasked with assisting his father “in the conduct of all affairs of the State”—effectively, co-president of the Republic. In nearby Equatorial Guinea, the situation is vastly more scandalous: Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue serves as vice president to his father, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, a position that in addition to placing him as next in line to the presidency, has secured him a criminal conviction in a French court, asset seizures in Switzerland and the US, and sanctions in the UK for his unusual obsession with sports cars and celebrity paraphernalia, funded through fraud and embezzlement.

On the other hand, there are those with powerful last names, who enjoy resplendent lives as socialites, lionized for their fierce appetite for a party. Robert and Grace Mugabe’s sons Chatunga Bellarmine and Robert Junior lead the pack. This duo was frequently featured in news publications for offenses ranging from mere faux pas to borderline criminal activities. Most notorious among their escapades was a wild night spent in a nightclub in upscale Sandton, South Africa, where video evidence emerged of Chatunga Mugabe pouring champagne over a $60 000 dollar wristwatch.

First children sometimes appear to break the first wall, briefly presenting themselves as one of us. Their motives in doing so are often deeply political: In 2021, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former South African President Jacob Zuma stepped away from her fabulously pampered lifestyle to claim her status as a “fan of the people.” Her objective? Calling on the South African public to take to the streets in defense of her father, who had been hauled out of his taxpayer-funded Nkandla residence to a nearby prison. As a member of her father’s Umkhonto we Sizwe Party, she has continued to assert “revolutionary” capital as a defender of the people, despite having sat by and benefited from her father’s corruption. Charlene Ruto, daughter of Kenyan President William Ruto was also quick to reintroduce herself as a “youth champion” in a prelude to her defense of her father’s record amidst mass protests by Kenyan youth over Finance Bill 2024, 

Brenda Biya, the daughter of Cameroonian President Paul Biya, belongs to this class. In 2016, she set tongues wagging after raging on social media about the allegedly racist driver of the $400 taxi she hired. Nearly half of Cameroon’s population is classified as multidimensionally poor, and could only dream of such sums of money. Brenda Biya was raised in the presidential palace that her father has occupied since 1982. She completed her early education in a primary school designed for presidential staff, before attending boarding school in Geneva. She currently lives in a massive complex in Beverly Hills, valued at over US$10 million.

Early last month, Brenda trended after posing with her partner Layyons Valenca in what has since been confirmed to be a coming-out post. Homosexuality is illegal in Cameroon, and amidst the expected cacophony of homophobic voices accusing her of violating the laws of her homeland, the voice of LGBTQ+ rights activists hailed her as a potential advocate for change in the country, and on the continent. Shakiro, a transgender Cameroonian activist based in Belgium called Brenda “a voice for change” in Cameroon, celebrating her coming out as a watershed moment for LGBTQ+ rights in the region.

Absent the fact that Brenda lives in California, free from the watchful eye of the Cameroonian police, Brenda’s coming out and reactions to it display far more than the pervasiveness of homophobia in Africa. It points to the readiness with which media agencies will platform the voices of the wealthy and well-connected, at the expense of those grassroots advocates working to make Cameroon a safer, more dignified environment for LGBTQ+ people. Major news outlets including the BBC, Reuters, and CNN, were quick to platform celebrations of Brenda’s coming out, but ignored the disproportionate impact that anti-LGBTQ+ laws have on the poor in Cameroon who have neither the finances nor the connections to freely come out, let alone do so from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. For many of them, coming out bears with it threats ranging from corrective rape to wanton arrest and brutalization by the police force. This is in addition to a lack of support from families and communities who often disown and persecute their LGBTQ+ members.

Brenda’s coming out deserves to be celebrated as an individual’s affirmation of their right to love as they please. The act of coming out represents defiance of a norm that sidelines the rights of people to be different. Brenda has taken the first step to combat that norm.

But Brenda is not our heroine. Brenda alone will not save us. And nor are the children of the leaders who placed many African countries in crisis our revolutionaries. They, too, will not save us.

In our fight for a better future for all, we must not platform the voices of the rich and well-connected over those of the community advocates. These groups and individuals are doing important work to track violence against queer people, litigating in defense of LGBTQ+ individuals, and trade expertise on how best to serve this deeply vulnerable population. This is in addition to the day-to-day work of deconstructing stereotypes and narratives about LGBTQ+ identities, carried out by ordinary people in households, communities, schools, and religious institutions.

There is no doubt that reform by the children of the establishment is possible. There is space for them and for everyone else, in the struggle against injustice and oppression. We are all victims of the present moment, and of the establishments that brought us into it. Our pursuit of inclusivity should, however, never come at the expense of us divesting our media, cultural, economic, and attentive capital from others.

In the game of reclaiming our agency, whether in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Tunisia, Comoros, or elsewhere, only solidarity in community will save us.

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During war, the internet is as critical as food or medicine.

Satellite over the African continent. Credit ESA/Mlabspace via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Sudan is battling not only bullets but also the suffocating absence of communication infrastructure, an often-overlooked lifeline that is as critical as food or medicine. As the country grapples with a severe food-security crisis, grassroots initiatives, such as mutual aid groups and emergency kitchens, are the only reliable sources of survival for millions. Yet these fragile support networks depend on stable internet access—a vital tool now throttled by war. With the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) tightening its grip on communications in territories it controls and using smuggled Starlink devices to monitor and control access, international actors remain disturbingly silent on this critical obstruction.

The stakes are clear: Without the restoration of internet access, Sudan’s humanitarian and political futures stand to collapse. The very infrastructure that once mobilized resistance, toppled dictators, and enabled life-saving coordination is now at the mercy of warlords and foreign indifference.

Sudan’s food-security crisis is dire and worsening. As international aid becomes increasingly inaccessible due to the conflict, the most vulnerable communities are relying on mutual aid groups, support from the Sudanese diaspora, and central kitchens run by voluntary emergency rooms. These grassroots initiatives are not merely filling gaps left by international humanitarian efforts; in many cases, they are people’s only lifeline. “Sudanese are barely helping each other survive, with minimal international support or protection,” said William Carter, Sudan country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council. For many, this local network is the difference between a daily meal and days of starvation.

However, these life-saving efforts rely entirely on stable communication and internet access. Families sending remittances, mutual aid groups identifying communities in need, and emergency kitchens coordinating supplies all need the internet to function. Without it, this already fragile support system—stretched to its breaking point—will collapse.

In RSF-controlled areas, communication relies solely on smuggled Starlink devices, which operate unofficially and at a steep cost. Access is scarce, dangerous, and heavily monitored, as many of these devices are controlled by RSF soldiers. It is outrageous that, despite the RSF’s ongoing obstruction of aid, international actors have remained silent on their failure to maintain communication infrastructure. This lack of accountability further exacerbates the humanitarian crisis and undermines the vital networks that Sudanese communities depend on for survival.

However, the stakes extend far beyond immediate humanitarian needs—the internet is crucial to Sudan’s political future. The ongoing war is reshaping the country’s political landscape and civic space. Long before the outbreak of conflict on April 15, the internet was a vital piece of infrastructure for civic engagement. It was the battleground where Sudan’s grassroots movements organized, confronted divisive narratives, and led the opposition that toppled a 30-year dictatorship in 2019. The same digital networks sustained resistance to the 2021 coup and spurred the remarkable local emergency responses we see today. Their activism was pivotal. Yet the ongoing war has dramatically disrupted this dynamic, threatening the very infrastructure that once empowered a generation of activists and transformed Sudan’s civic landscape.

The conflict-driven displacement has forced countless activists, politicians, and civil society leaders to flee major cities targeted by the RSF, with many unable to return due to the worsening security situation. In the relatively safer states of northern and eastern Sudan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) imposes severe restrictions, with increasing reports of activists and politicians being targeted. As a result, political and civil society gatherings have largely shifted outside Sudan, leaving the country’s internal civic space severely compromised. Resistance committees—once the backbone of civilian resistance—have been devastated by this displacement. Their ability to convene and organize within Sudan has been further crippled by communication blackouts. 

Despite repeated promises by the US special envoy to prioritize Sudanese citizen voices in the negotiation process, the design of these processes remains vague. Moreover, the demands placed on the warring factions have failed to restore civilian agency. On the contrary, the mediation framework has further militarized civilian actors, eroding citizen agency as many Sudanese are now left waiting for the outcome of US elections. A critical and immediate demand—restoring and maintaining internet access—cannot wait until a ceasefire. It is a fundamental right that must be secured without delay.

Meanwhile, the RSF continues to exploit humanitarian platforms, offering only lip service to mediators and international actors. A straightforward and enforceable demand—that they ensure a functional communication system in all areas under their control—would be a vital step, both easy to monitor and essential for the survival of grassroots efforts.

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In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, “Bayeng”(Visitation), 1990-1991. Pastel on paper. Photos by Gabriel Baard; courtesy Everard Read gallery.

While her mother earned a living as a domestic worker in Johannesburg, Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi was raised in the countryside by her grandmother, from whom she learned the traditional crafts of mural painting and pyro engraving of calabashes. As a teenager Sebidi had several short spells as a domestic worker herself, and it was while she was employed by the Petsches that Sebidi was first encouraged to pursue her artistic talent. 

Helen Sebidi took art classes at Dorkay House and at the Katlehong Art Centre. She experimented with abstract expressionist techniques at the Alexandra Art Centre with Ilona Anderson, at the Thupelo Workshops initiated by David Koloane, and with Bill Ainslie at the Johannesburg Art Foundation.

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi in 1991 in front of her work Diale (Where We Come From) prior to her departure to Nyköping, Sweden. Courtesy Gabriel Baard.

Traveling together in 1989, Ainslie, Koloane, and Sebidi were returning from the Pachipamwe II workshop in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, when they were involved in a severe car crash. Ainslie lost his life, and Koloane and Sebidi sustained serious injuries. Sebidi was rushed to Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, where she spent several weeks in recovery. It was during this time that she received a vision. Inspired by this divine intervention Sebidi set to work and produced an impressive oeuvre. It would be a momentous year in the life of the artist, who in 1989 became the first black woman to win the Standard Bank Young Artist Award. She won a Fulbright Scholarship to the United States that same year and was invited to be part of a group exhibition Bild/konst i södra Afrika (Art/Images in Southern Africa), which was shown at the House of Culture in Stockholm and toured the Nordic countries until May 1990.

Following this exposure, Sebidi was invited back to Sweden in 1991 to Nyköping Folk High School, a residential college for adult education south of Stockholm. The residency was to include workshops where she would meet with local artists and, significantly, hold a solo exhibition of her work. With this in mind Sebidi took some of her most important artworks with her to Sweden, where she met with artists and shared her experiences of South Africa with them.  

The exposition, however, did not take place. Guaranteed that she would be invited back for a new date in the coming year, Sebidi entrusted her artworks to Pieter Dewoon at the Nyköping Folk High School and returned home. A year passed without any further mention of the exhibition. Frustrated, Sebidi requested that her artworks be returned to her. It was then that she was informed that her artworks had been stolen. Despite numerous efforts, including filing a police report and a search of the Nyköping Folk High School, her artworks were not found. Ongoing efforts since 1992 to trace the body of work, including correspondence with the Swedish embassy, newspaper articles, and TV reports, were to no avail. A little more than three decades later, in May 2023, Jesper Osterberg, the Nyköping Folk High School’s caretaker, was cleaning out a cupboard in the ceiling when he discovered Sebidi’s artworks concealed there. They were still in their original packaging.

Ntlo E Etsamayang (The Walking House), 1990. Pastel on paper.

The year 1989 takes us back in time to a moment in South Africa’s history when Nelson Mandela was still behind bars, having served twenty-six years of his life sentence. The country’s townships were fueled with unrest and clashes between residents and the South African Defence Force. The found artworks contemplate those racially segregated times when community art centers such as FUNDA, FUBA, Johannesburg Art Foundation, and Community Arts Project were some of

the only viable spaces where black artists could further their training. 

This critical body of work from 1989–1991 reflects Sebidi’s journey between the rural and the urban, between tradition and modernity, and between the earthly and the spiritual. Human and animal forms overlap and jostle for space. Every inch of the surface is densely packed and bursting with movement and life; a reflection, perhaps, of the anguish in the townships then. Distorted faces with lopsided eyes and contorted noses viewed simultaneously from multiple angles are amplified in reds, blues, greens, ochres, and purples, intensifying the tension of the composition. One figure may sometimes reflect two heads or three; hands and limbs unite dissimilar characters. These configurations recall a connection to another world, of African spirituality and mythological fables, where animal characters are the chief protagonists guiding humans in their daily lives. 

Twenty-eight artworks were returned and exhibited earlier this year under the title Ntlo E Etsamayang (The Walking House) at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery from April 6 to May 17 and then at the Everard Read gallery in Cape Town from July 13 to 31. Four works still remain unaccounted for.  

Riason Naidoo spoke with Helen Sebidi in Cape Town. 

Riason Naidoo

How did you feel about seeing these artworks again for the first time since 1991?

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

I was brought up with a house inside me. When I grew up, I was told that, “we are building a house in you. When you travel the world you will meet other houses.” I went to Sweden in 1989 for the South African exhibition. Then in 1991, the exhibition was “lost.” The Swedish school where the artworks were lost offered me money. I refused. I was going to write it in my will what was to happen to my work when/if they found it.

I was with Bill Ainslie when we had the car accident, and I was taken by helicopter to Baragwanath Hospital. The doctors there said, “Who are you? Why do you come with a helicopter? Are you the wife of an ambassador or the wife of a king?” 

I happened to be given voices in 1989—26 August—when artist Bill Ainslie passed away. While in hospital, a beautiful woman appeared in my dreams, with a black dress, ginger hair, makeup, and red roses. She said, “You African people, why do you run to European culture? Why? It is only blood and death.” She said, “You must go back to your culture.” I wanted to go to my mother. The voices said, “No, you must go back to your grandmother in the rural area.” 

Mafatsi A Tlakana (The Meeting of Different Realms), 1991. Pastel on paper.

Later, I was seen as a threat by the doctors at Baragwanath. They thought I was a political activist. The voices told me I needed to get out of the hospital. I was in danger there.

Due to the accident, I was badly hurt with many broken bones. For about a month I was in this condition in hospital. I found Dr. Nthato Motlana’s phone number in my diary. I called him. He said, “Don’t talk anymore. I’ll be there in 20 minutes.” And before 20 minutes, he was at Baragwanath from Diepkloof. “You are lucky. Your ancestors are strong,” he said. “People are being killed there in the hospital.” He had fundraised in the US for clinics in Soweto. He took me to one of the clinics, where they gave me some medication.

Riason Naidoo

You mentioned previously that the artworks that you make do not belong to you but to those who have sent you. The honor is not yours. What do you mean by this?  

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

We don’t own anything, we don’t. African land has a purpose. European land has a purpose. Everything has a purpose. We grew up not owning, and we grew up living off the earth. We didn’t know money, and we didn’t spend money. There was a flowerpot at our home in the rural area. When someone gave us money, we would put it into the flowerpot. For months and years, that money would remain there. Sometimes we would give someone a place to sleep because they were traveling from far or needed a place to rest. And one day when we were cleaning we realized that that money is not inside there anymore … hahaha! Oh! That man who visited … So, money did not concern us. We did a lot of exchanges. But we had to watch those that came from the towns and cities, because they came with nothing, but they left our place with lots of things, so much that they could not carry.

My grandmother was getting older. She was my responsibility. I thought, Let me take care of her …

Otlisa Bophelo Ko Ntlong (She Brings Life in the Home), 1990-1991. Pastel on paper.

Riason Naidoo

Tell me about your grandmother

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

My grandmother said, “I build the home inside you … You must not get out of the home before you clean under your feet.”

Riason Naidoo

So, art for you is …

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

Not for me. Read the bush inside the tree. It’s another world. Read the animals. Through animals we read feeling and spirituality. 

Riason Naidoo

Is art for you a connection with the spiritual world?  

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

Europe was rural at one time too, like us. When they developed the cities, money came with exchange. They came dominating us with money. Our traditional leaders are nothing today. They are paper. Everything was taken from us. In Lady Selborne, outside Pretoria, where black people could own properties before apartheid—and where Mandela was boxing—they had this thing called “We see you.” And we also said, “We can see you too.” So art is a spiritual movement. Europe developed it quicker. Until we get our own understanding, only then we can be equal with Europe, and that house will be happy to knock on every door and be received.

Where to Go, 1991. Etching on paper.

Riason Naidoo

I read that John Koenakeefe Mohl was your mentor?

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

In the early 1970s I was studying under Mohl, and my grandmother was ill. He said, “Go back and look after your grandmother and you can do some research. That research comes from an early people before your grandmother. Ask a lot of questions. Keep questioning them to find out more. I don’t want to see any more work from Johannesburg and the townships. You have a big work to do there.”

Riason Naidoo

There are two dominant Western influences or techniques I see in your work. One is the Pointillist technique—with the small dots—and the other is the portraits with different angles depicted simultaneously, much like Picasso and the Cubists. Who influenced you in your art?

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

On techniques, it’s all the patterns that we grew up with; beadwork, cow dung work, mud work. African people have been working on the spirit for a long time. Now they call this wall painting and sculpture. There is no Ndebele. We are Tswana. Our tongue has been changed.

Riason Naidoo and Helen Sebidi in Cape Town on the 14th of July 2024. Courtesy Charles Schilling.

After Mr. Mohl passed away my grandmother guided me. She wanted us to always be working, and she found me always working. If someone visited us she did not want us to talk to them. She would protect us. We would make the tea and let her talk with the visitor while we continued with our work. She would do the talking. For 10 years I did that. After her passing away I felt that I was naked, empty. She was a social worker, a midwife—she did everything. With meeting Bill Ainslie I had this European influence in my work.

The post Coming home appeared first on Vuka News.

The protests against illegal mining in Ghana are revealing how the country’s political class still fears an engaged citizenry.

Police barricade during Occupy Julorbi House protest via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

In Martin Scorsese’s film The Departed, there’s a scene in which a police recruit is asked, “Do you want to be a cop, or do you want to appear to be a cop?”

At the start of September, several notable organizations in Ghana joined calls for decisive action against illegal gold mining, which has contributed to heartbreaking ecocide in some of Ghana’s resource-rich areas.

Groups not heard from in years crawled out of crevices to demand that the Nana Akufo-Addo administration, which many believe to be complicit, finally show commitment to protecting Ghana’s rivers from poisoning by illegal gold mining. A local broadcaster even hosted a six-hour marathon, during which some of these groups were granted airtime to voice their calls.

They care, right? Or do they merely appear to care?

Fast-forward to September 21, the birthday of Ghana’s independence hero and pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah. Like last year, a group of mainly young Ghanaians gathered for a three-day protest, hoping to march on the presidency, this time with a call to end illegal mining. Like last year, they were met with human rights violations by law enforcement, who have morphed into the zombies Fela sang about.

Police arrested over 50 people, manhandled some of them, and also denied them access to their lawyers. Among the citizens arrested were children below age 10 (who appear to have been released). Their only crime has been to move beyond calls and dare to challenge the president at the seat of power.

The police action was not surprising. However, the real disappointment has been a dearth of tangible support in the face of the blatant abuses of protestors championing a call the rest of the country appeared to support.

There is a painful dissonance around protest culture in Ghana, which, in normal times, manifests in siloed movements that limit sustainability. In the worst scenarios, the dissonance translates to a desire for respectability in protest, so these movements can be deemed worthy of support from those keeping up appearances. 

My biggest disappointment in the wake of the crackdown on anti-illegal mining protestors came from the Media Foundation for West Africa, whose director is on record commending the police for their conduct during the demonstrations. Mind you, the police conduct included roughing up protestors, taking them to undisclosed locations to prevent legal support, and basically starving them. I expected better from the figurehead of a human rights group.

Then there was A Rocha Ghana, one of the more vocal environmental groups in Ghana, which staged a nonconfrontational protest with the same message a day after the crackdown on the protestors. But there was zero solidarity for the detainees from A Rocha. They stood on sidewalks, held up placards, and made more calls for Akufo-Addo to end illegal mining. It was as if the scores of young protestors abducted by the police didn’t exist.

Indeed, it is almost like the autocratic markers of the Akufo-Addo administration do not exist. There is an absence of urgency that makes one wonder whether the few voices in the wilderness demanding accountability are crazy. On the international scene, Ghana’s PR is so strong that many act as if Akufo-Addo isn’t in the same WhatsApp group with Yoweri Museveni.

State capture under Akufo-Addo has robbed citizens of not just revenue and natural resources but also the rule of law. The judiciary seemed more independent when Ghana was under a junta in the ’80s, even prompting the tragic murder of three judges who now stand tall as martyrs of the rule of law in Ghana. Now, as police and the attorney general’s office violate basic tenets of the rule of law, shielding a cancerous executive, the judiciary does nothing. 

The rot wears down everyone in Ghana. For the vast majority, it has manifested in the ongoing generational economic crisis. Many of us are just as concerned by the generational environmental crisis that could see Ghana importing drinking water within a decade.

The cartel of a political class pillaging the people won’t vanish if we vote out the current political party, as Ghanaians are wont to do. We’ve always conflated elections with accountability, kicking politicians out of office with the billions they looted so they can bide their time until we get tired of the government we replaced them with. Sustained acts of protest seem to be the last resort to ensure accountable governance. 

Ghanaians can no longer settle for appearing to care. Moral fortitude must replace respectability so we can meaningfully challenge the political class. I bet Akufo-Addo shudders at the thought of a stagnant pool of red in front of his office, calling him a thief and a murderer of the environment. It’s why police turn rabid, and courts mete out draconian rulings to discourage further daring acts of protest.

We are at a crisis point, and we need to have difficult conversations and step on the toes of people and institutions that have shown nothing but contempt for citizens. Once we shed respectability in protest, we can catalyze a citizenry crying out for a beacon and inspiration.

Merely appearing to be protestors and good citizens has cost Ghana dearly over the last 30 years. Our democracy is a sham. But there’s enough evidence to show that the political class still fears an engaged citizenry. We just need a final push to make sure we shed the appearance of democracy for actual democracy.

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How the UAE-Backed RSF looted Sudan’s National Museum.

The National Museum of Sudan. Image via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has played a central role in financing Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), providing the resources that have allowed the group to sustain its military campaigns, pay its fighters, and acquire weapons. This financial backing has also enabled the RSF to engage in widespread looting, including the pillaging of one of Sudan’s most significant cultural institutions, the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum. The RSF’s actions have contributed to the destruction of Sudan’s cultural heritage and led to the trafficking of irreplaceable artifacts on the black market.

The Sudan National Museum housed some of the most important collections of artifacts in Africa, spanning thousands of years of history—from the Paleolithic era, through the ancient Kingdom of Kush, to the medieval Christian and Islamic periods. Each artifact within the museum was a tangible link to Sudan’s rich past, representing civilizations that played a vital role in shaping the Nile Valley. The museum’s treasures were not just relics of art and history but critical pieces of Sudan’s national identity.

One of the most valuable collections in the museum came from the Kingdom of Kush, an ancient civilization that thrived along the Nile from around 2500 BCE to 350 CE. The early period of Kush, often referred to as the pre-Meroitic period, is known for its powerful military and rich culture, and its rulers, the famous “black pharaohs” of Egypt’s 25th Dynasty, left a lasting legacy. The museum’s collection included granite statues of these pharaohs, remarkable for their detailed craftsmanship and imposing presence. The statues were just one part of a broader collection that also featured the Kushites’ advanced metalwork, such as gold jewelry, weapons, and tools, highlighting their expertise in metallurgy.

Equally significant was the museum’s collection from the Meroitic period of the Kingdom of Kush, which lasted from about 800 BCE to 350 CE. Meroë, the capital of this later phase, was renowned for its distinctive art and architecture. The museum housed numerous artifacts from this period, including intricately decorated pottery, funerary objects, and the famous Meroitic stelae inscribed with a script that remains partially undeciphered to this day. These artifacts provide a window into a civilization that continues to intrigue historians and archaeologists.

 As Sudan transitioned into the medieval era, the Christian kingdoms of Nubia, including Makuria and Alodia, flourished between the 6th and 15th centuries. The Sudan National Museum held a remarkable collection from this period, particularly the frescoes from the cathedral of Faras. These frescoes, dating from the 8th to 14th centuries, were among the finest examples of medieval African Christian art, depicting biblical scenes, saints, and the royal figures of Nubian society. The loss of these frescoes is a devastating blow to our understanding of the cultural and religious life in medieval Nubia.

The museum’s collection also reflected the shift in the country’s religious and cultural landscape with the rise of Islam in the 15th century. Artifacts from this period included exquisitely illuminated Qur’ans, some of which dated back to the early centuries of Islam in Sudan. These manuscripts were not only religious texts but also masterpieces of calligraphy and design, demonstrating the intricate artistry of Sudanese Islamic culture.

The RSF’s looting of the Sudan National Museum is not just a tragedy for Sudan but a global loss. The artifacts stolen from the museum have already begun appearing on black markets, sold through platforms like eBay and Facebook. These items, once housed in a public institution for all to appreciate and learn from, are now being traded to the highest bidder, often with little regard for their historical value or the stories they tell about the people and civilizations that created them. The black-market sale of these treasures represents the erasure of Sudan’s cultural heritage.

Each stolen statue, manuscript, or fresco is a puzzle piece in Sudan’s long and intricate history. The destruction and theft of artifacts like the statues of the black pharaohs or the Christian frescoes of Faras leave gaps in the story of Sudan’s past that may never be filled, meaning future generations will have an incomplete picture of the powerful civilizations that once ruled the Nile Valley. These artifacts connected Sudanese people to their ancestors, and without them, a critical part of Sudan’s identity is lost.

There is an urgent need for international action to stem the flow of stolen cultural property. Without intervention, Sudan’s heritage will continue to be auctioned off to private collectors, hidden away in personal collections, and forever separated from the public eye. The looting of these treasures is an irreversible loss—not just for Sudan but for the world.

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A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Mmabatho stadium. Image credit Silver Works via Pexels.

Three decades on from the year that Bophuthatswana dissolved in an ignominious sputtering of mutiny and revolt, the residues of the old order can be glimpsed in the architectural ossuaries that dot the otherwise featureless landscape of Mmabatho. This Potemkin town served as the seat of Lucas Mangope’s leadership.

Of Mangope himself, fewer traces remain: like his fellow top-hatted homeland grandees (except Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who slipped into post-apartheid civvies and remained around long enough to outlive his ignominy), he was airbrushed out, dismissed as a frowning Quisling. Somewhere, no doubt, there is a stockpile of the portraits from which Mangope’s likeness glowered like some wrathful Old Testament figure: such was the cult of personality over which he presided that his image seemed to loom in every public space. And yet, few historical figures have been as ripe for nostalgic restorying. Such is the emotional temperament of the post-Apartheid South African body-politic—unmoored by the precarities of the present—that anchoring nostalgias of a nationalist flavor are in high demand.

Oupa Segalwe’s assiduously researched biography, Lucas Mangope: A Life, risks being read as a sort of apologia for its subject, but it is an attempt to set the man in context. Running to some 320-odd pages, the book traces the contour of Mangope’s rise and fall. It lines up a series of dramatically narrativized episodes, each chapter assembling a part of the greater story. At its heart, the biography seems to be posing a simple question: was Mangope merely a self-important and self-serving tinpot ethnonationalist, or was he a utopian who dared to dream of uplifting his people’s dignity? The answer is somewhere between the two. Biographies seldom tread the path of newness: their role is to root about in the shipwreck and salvage what is worth saving.

What leaps out at the reader in this not especially vivid reconstruction of Mangope’s formative years is how the newly choreographed national fantasy that was early 20th-century South Africa took the shards of black life it had smashed and reordered them to fit its new mendacities. Chiefs became quasi-administrative functionaries, earning the favor of the authorities when they dutifully ensured the collection of taxes from the hapless people beneath them. Those who refused to be flunkeys were unceremoniously deposed, and it was just such a booting that paved the way for Mangope to be installed as paramount leader. Segalwe’s skilled unpicking of the generational Machiavellianism that paved the way for Mangope to quietly assume chieftaincy when he wasn’t the heir apparent, is perhaps worthy of its own book.

Like Buthelezi and Lennox Sebe (another Bantustan “plant”), Mangope illustrated that the most enthusiastic adherents are those who already know the hymns. Mangope had first excelled as an Afrikaans educator, a role in which he cultivated the air of sententious authority that would characterize his political career. Once so installed, he maintained a peevish recalcitrance, perhaps befitting of someone who constantly feared that someone would come asking for the seat he had usurped. What we learn from the history the biographer supplies is that Mangope’s drive to cement his rule was probably driven by a latent sense of unease about his authority.

Even though Bophuthatswana fell apart before its second decade was out, there’s a lot of material to get through. Segalwe dutifully wades into the rubble, pulling out discordant things and arranging them on the page. He is fond of beginning digressively, holding up a remote fact or anecdote before our notice before connecting it to Mangope’s story. A chapter might begin with an account of Gavin Hood’s 2004 Academy Award win for Tsotsi before winding meanderingly back to the subject (the genesis of the Kraft durch Freude-esque Mmabana cultural academies that dotted Bophuthatswana). We learn, perhaps unwittingly, that Mangope seems to have been a lay-Zionist, who expressed his admiration for Golda Meir and maintained a swish official holiday home in Tel Aviv:

By 1985, 81 people from Israel had visited Bophuthatswana. As many as 50 ‘important’ contacts were established in Israel. These included businesspeople, politicians, parliamentarians, government leaders and banks. Among several business projects that the homeland benefitted from between 1984 and 1985 were irrigation projects, security systems, television programming, aviation, a shoe factory and diamond processing.

By their friends shall ye know them. Even in this, Mangope was simply following on from his fellow despot Sebe’s playbook: Sebe had also courted Zionist Israel, establishing a mock embassy for the Ciskei in Tel Aviv. Mangope fancifully believed that by claiming independence from the Apartheid state, he was lodging a claim for “a place in the sun” for all his people. At the independence shindig that saw in the new homeland, Mangope lambasted Pretoria for its discriminatory practices. Was he being disingenuous? Certainly, Segalwe’s account suggests that Mangope felt that the show house he was being handed the keys to would provide an opportunity for a more moderate kind of self-determination.

Mangope: a Life is at pains to show that its subject often publicly criticized the Apartheid state while allowing it to fill his coffers. When Bophuthatswana’s debt soared to R300million –– much of it gone to opportunist grifters, Mangope’s peculatory tendencies, and vanity projects like the twinned Mmabatho and Odi stadiums that are now derelict –– PW Botha’s government quietly picked up the tab. And when, merely a decade into sham independence, rebellious go-getters in Bop’s army tried to topple Mangope, the SADF was the saber-rattling cavalry that rode in to restore him to his perch.

Indeed, the Apartheid state seems to have had a great deal of tolerance for Mangope. Said state seemed to regard him as something of a useful idiot, a buffer between white South Africa and the ANC-supporting Botswana. Mangope encouraged the establishment of casinos and resorts including white South Africa’s favorite gaudy getaway, Sun City. For 17 years, he was abetted in his authoritarian doings by the Apartheid state, and it comes as little surprise that when that institution itself began to falter, the homelands— houses of cards to the last—fell in swift succession. 

The details of Bophuthatswana’s ending—complete with right-wing AWB buffoons being gunned down before the eyes of the world, and Pik Botha, then the Apartheid state’s minister of foreign affairs, helicoptering in to tell a defiant Mangope that things were over—frame Mangope’s contradictions aptly:

He had been deposed for the second time in six years, except this time there were no SADF commandos coming to foil the overthrow and restore him to power. The man he had called a friend, Botha, had thrust a bayonet in his back and left him for dead, in political ruin.

Segalwe, ever fond of melodrama, frames Mangope’s final moments like a Greek tragedy. The reality is that it would have been impossible for Bophuthatswana to continue: circumstances had overtaken it so rapidly that Mangope, slow to see the end approaching, had acted too late.

The strain of necro-nostalgia that would resurrect Mangope and his homeland is, of course, deeply ahistorical. South Africa has always nurtured, at the level of its people, a profound mistrust of the complex truth, and so Bophuthatswana has been sentimentalized in the minds of credulous people who are desperate to hold close some tangible part of the fantasy it represented. This is the same strain of fact-divergent cultishness that afflicts those who think Ian Smith’s Rhodesia was an idyll of good-old-days social order. In uncertain times, many people are ready to buy into the shouty simplicity of Big Man politics, which is why a few years ago you could have witnessed former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba declaring that Lucas Mangope was not, in fact, an Apartheid stooge, but a visionary figure.

Bophuthatswana was a convenient fiction, a geographical mendacity confected with zeal by Apartheid South Africa’s cack-handed functionaries. Its capital, Segalwe tells us in one of the more interesting parts of this sprawling narrative, was constructed in only six months. Walking around Mmabatho today, the incongruity is stark: legislative buildings and council offices borrow the style of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, suggesting that, more than simply being a vanity project, the sense of utopian aspiration was more than vaguely present.  The university echoes this architectural wishfulness, suggesting a civic vision that deserves greater scrutiny than this book grants it.

Those citizens of the imagined country who were not part of the middle-class black coterie Mangope’s project created would probably have different feelings about the legacy of the homeland leader. Those still subsisting in abject conditions might justly feel that “Bop” (as it was colloquially referred) and its champion should remain in obloquy: there are no “good old days” worth harking back to.  

The position of a biographer regarding his subject matters a great deal. Here, Segalwe seems at times to have succumbed to the temptation to craft a heroic epic from the facts he has gathered. Mangope is presented as a man of action, “throwing down the gauntlet,” always presented in assertive terms. And yet for all of this, we don’t come much closer to learning who he was. In this sense, the book is more a catalog of actions, overspilling with detail but rarely bringing him to life in any tangible sense. For someone lauded by many as a gifted orator, Mangope is consigned to the stillness of passive voice.

A good biography should do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology. It should present the individual in all their human complexity. Here, Segalwe’s biography is a curious mix of the surprisingly compelling and the leadenly formulaic. The treatment of Mangope’s early years is a bit of an untidy flail, padded out in improvisational style by chunks of Peter Abrahams meant to supply ambience and cover over the paucity of information.

Many South African biographies are kneecapped by an inability to discern the thread of story that makes a subject fascinating. Here, the prose is too often diverted down offramps that spawn other side-roads. Segalwe tends to reach for the lore that is close at hand, with pedestrian results. Do we need a repeat of Verwoerd’s desiccated quote about Africans and education? Perhaps not. Elsewhere, a comparison between Mangope’s alma mater and Eton is invoked, unleavened by any sense that comparing Mangope to the porcine dullards David Cameron and Boris Johnson is not flattering.

Occasionally, a sentence catches with an uncomfortable bump and scrape, not quite clearing credibility: “Darius, who, according to family tradition, was blind, was a devoted Christian and lay-priest.” Not only is this a structurally poor sentence (all those commas?), but it unwittingly implies a rather horrible family ritual. This sort of thing rankles because it suggests a laissez-faire editing process. Unsurprisingly, the book is at its strongest in the mid-section: of Mangope’s post-Apartheid decline, little of real interest emerges.

As a documentary of a strange time, Lucas Mangope: a Life is an interesting project that too often falls back on the general and the non-committal. One senses that, having failed to extract much from the primary source, the biographer might have been better off releasing the book from the constraints of the genre. A project like Milisuthando Bongela’s self-titled documentary has shown us that delving into the very strangeness of the homeland idea produces a much more interesting work. As Mangope’s legacy—best symbolized in those gaunt, dilapidating stadiums that are slowly being reclaimed by the elements—sinks into the ash heap of history, this book neither damns nor rehabilitates him. As a result, it doesn’t quite do enough to justify itself.

Lucas Mangope: A Life (2024) by Oupa Segalwe is available from NB Publishers.

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One country is Anglophone, and the other is Francophone. Still, there are between 1 to 4 million people of Nigerian descent living in Côte d’Ivoire today.

Adjamé district, Abidjan. Image credit Cyprien Hauser via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0.

Lire en français ici.

There’s a saying—if there’s a place in this world where you don’t find Nigerians, it’s not a place suitable to live. Côte d’Ivoire is no exception. There are between 1 and 4 million people of Nigerian descent living in Côte d’Ivoire today, including Yorubas, many of them from Ejigbo in Osun State, as well as Igbo and Hausa ethnic groups.

The first wave of Nigerian resettlements began more than a century ago—in 1902, before either country became an independent, autonomous state. A couple of decades later, many Igbos continued to settle in the francophone nation after the Biafran War—at the time, former Ivorian president Félix Houphouët-Boigny had an agreement with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the first president of Biafra, to let him and his people settle in Côte d’Ivoire. The Igbo community still lives there to this day, among other Nigerians. Some of them were born in Côte d’Ivoire, and others migrated there, either alone or with their families. In Treichville, Abidjan, there’s even a neighborhood formerly known as Biafra. In Abidjan, Nigerians have their own hot spots, such as Bomakouté Ayass, a market in Adjamé, or the Yassonde maquis (a type of Ivorian bar) in Adjamé.

However, despite having a reputation for being very welcoming, Côte d’Ivoire, like all countries, is not immune to xenophobia. This tension goes both ways: the 2023 AFCON revealed both solidarity as well as divisions between countries, and before, during, and after the finale, some Nigerians expressed dismay and ignorance toward Côte d’Ivoire, a fact made even more baffling as millions of Nigerians live in the country. Ignorance on social media is nothing new, but it was still sad to see, as relations between Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire precede colonialism, and there have been many cultural exchanges between the countries.

Nigerians in Côte d’Ivoire mainly live in Abidjan, in neighborhoods like Adjamé or Yopougon. Olawalé Ibrahim, a businessman, is one of them. “I came to visit Côte d’Ivoire and then stayed. One day I’ll go back to Nigeria to settle down. I still have my house in Nigeria,” he explained. Ibrahim arrived in Abidjan in 1994. “Many other Nigerians in the country have a different opinion from mine. They have spent more time in Côte d’Ivoire than Nigeria and would rather stay there. They can’t go back to Nigeria; they’d prefer to die here. Côte d’Ivoire is our second country.”

Ibrahim recalls that when former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo came to power in 2000, many foreigners felt targeted by his policies. It reached a heightened point during the 2002 civil war. At that time, the Ivorian national radio would often broadcast xenophobic messages. His supporters went as far as looting shops owned by Burkinabé people. “Most Ivorians are pretty open-minded people, but politicians have impacted the way people think,” Ibrahim added.

Economic duress is one of the reasons why so many Nigerians are moving to Côte d’Ivoire. Ayanjimi-Jai, a used-clothes fashion seller, has lived in Côte d’Ivoire since 1993. “In Lagos, it was hard to plan my life, as there were many struggles to get fuel, electricity, and water. There were more facilities in Côte d’Ivoire,” he explained. “I used to be in the navy, and then I came to Côte d’Ivoire and never left.” Like many migrants, he faced difficulties, among them learning the language. “French is a very difficult language for me as an English-speaking person,” he says. Despite the language barrier, Jai chose Côte d’Ivoire as a country to live in over the neighboring anglophone country of Ghana. In his view, Ghana’s issues with public services such as electricity and water were too similar to those of his homeland of Nigeria.

Professor Bell Ihua, a Nigerian pollster, pan-Africanist, and the executive director of Africa Polling Institute (API), has written about Nigerian communities in Côte D’Ivoire. He explains another surprising reason behind the increase in Nigerians in Côte d’Ivoire: “Church expansion is another reason behind these migration waves,” Ihua says. “There are branches of those big churches from Nigeria that are now being exported in Côte d’Ivoire, such as the Redeem Church and the Christ Embassy.”

These waves of migration in Côte D’Ivoire have also brought an Ivorian influence to Nigeria. Professor Ihua mentions Ejigbo, a Nigerian town in Osun state with strong cultural ties with Côte d’Ivoire, where French is the second most-spoken language. Most of the people there have traveled to Côte d’Ivoire at some point or have family members there, naturally integrating French into their social fabric over the years. There are also some Ivorians living in Ejigbo. “You’ll find elders born in Côte d’Ivoire who are French speakers because of that long connection, even naming their children French names, eating Ivorian food such as attiéké and sauce gombo,” Professor Ihua explains, adding that the local architecture is influenced by Côte D’Ivoire. “They even have their own version of the allocodrome [open-air Ivorian takeaway shops], where people come to buy their attieké and plantain.” According to Professor Ihua, there are up to five buses linking Ejigbo to Abidjan every week, further indicating that the community feels connected to both Ivorian and Nigerian culture.

Ihua believes that the Nigerian migration to Côte D’Ivoire has increased over the years. “Igbos have continued to travel as well as Yorubas from Ejigbo,” he says.“Migration in Nigeria has been compounded by economic and social issues. Young Nigerians who might not be able to settle in Western countries might consider traveling to other West African countries instead.”

The relationship between both countries seems to be growing. “Diplomatically speaking, Nigerians do not forget the support given to Biafra during the civil war, and [the relationship] will continue to grow as a positive one,” Ilhua says. Cultural exchange goes both ways: Ayanjimi is proud to have taught Ivorians more about Nigerian culture. At present, Ilhua has no intention of returning to Nigeria and believes he will probably stay in Côte d’Ivoire. “Côte D’Ivoire is my home, and I am Ivorian in spirit,” he says.

African nations were created based on arbitrary borders and divisions depending on which European countries colonized them—and the borders created by the Berlin Conference of 1885 started the process of European leaders safeguarding their interests, dividing Africa’s land into “artificial nations,” as Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere once said. One of the unfortunate consequences of these arbitrary borders is that so many cultural and human exchanges between countries are prevented due to language and cultural barriers—it is substantially easier for francophone Africans to exchange with each other than it might be for an anglophone African and a francophone one. Despite this, Africans in the continent move between different countries and increase their understanding of the other. Nigerian communities have fostered connections in Côte d’Ivoire, where some of them have lived for decades, and set up lives abroad for, one might hope, the better. These multigenerational bonds might help set a template for future cultural exchange throughout the continent, unencumbered by the limitations of colonial structures.

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Without an immediate halt to US arms to Israel, it’s hard to see why Israel should stop slaughtering civilians in Gaza and Lebanon.

Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike north of Beirut, in the village of Ras Osta, Byblos district, seen from Maaysrah, Lebanon, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Israel has unleashed hell in Lebanon. On Monday, waves of Israeli air strikes that by Tuesday morning had killed 558 people in southern and eastern Lebanon, including women and children, while displacing thousands others who fled north for safety following Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) warnings to evacuate. At least 1,835 civilians have been reported wounded.

Footage shows Israeli forces carpet-bombing civilian homes across Southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, hitting at least fifty-eight towns and villages. According to Lebanon’s health ministry, the Israeli bombing has targeted homes, medical centers, ambulances, and the cars of people trying to flee. Entire Lebanese families have been wiped out. Horrific footage shows children trapped under the rubble. This is a blatant war crime.

The assault on Monday comes amid fears of a looming Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon, which threatens to escalate into a full-blown regional war. In a CNN interview on Sunday, UN secretary-general António Guterres warned that all-out war would risk “the possibility of transforming Lebanon into another Gaza,” which he said would be “a devastating tragedy for the world.”

But a regional war is precisely what Israel wants. Armed with a bottomless supply of US weapons, Israel is extending its genocidal war to Lebanon with clear intent on a regional escalation that could directly implicate the United States. Following the Monday massacre, the Pentagon dispatched additional troops to the region in anticipation of a wider conflict. The assault also comes just hours after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed his “support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Lebanese Hezbollah attacks.”

Taking a page from its Gaza script, the Israeli military has characterized the massacre as an “extensive” assault on Hezbollah, while parroting the genocidal logic that there are no civilians in Lebanon. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled on Sunday that the IDF assault on Lebanon is just beginning, boasting that “over the past few days, we hit Hezbollah with a series of blows it hadn’t imagined.” In a video posted to social media that Monday, an IDF spokesperson described the bombing as a preemptive attack launched amid “indications that Hezbollah was preparing to fire towards Israeli territory.” Another Israeli official described the assault as “de-escalation through escalation.”

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati on Monday called Israel’s wave of air strikes an act of genocide, declaring: “The continued Israeli aggression on Lebanon is a WAR of GENOCIDE in every sense of the word, and its goal is to DESTROY Lebanese VILLAGES!” Meanwhile, the Lebanese government has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council following the latest Israeli strike in Beirut, accusing Israel of carrying out acts “akin to genocide” on Lebanese soil.

Israeli ministers themselves have been openly calling for genocide in Lebanon, while others are now calling on the IDF to “take over” and establish a “buffer zone” in Southern Lebanon.

In response to the Israeli attacks, Hezbollah has fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel, which have been mostly intercepted and caused no casualties. (Hezbollah has repeatedly pledged to stop its attacks on Israel if there is a cease-fire in Gaza.)

The Monday massacre comes shortly after Israeli intelligence services launched a mass terrorist attack inside Lebanon, causing thousands of electronic devices to detonate remotely, killing at least forty and wounding and maiming thousands of others, while “unleashing widespread fear, panic, and horror among people in Lebanon,” to cite a top UN official. It follows the deadly Israeli air strike in Lebanon on Friday, which killed over thirty civilians, along with a high-ranking Hezbollah commander.

Israel has a long history of carrying out civilian massacres in Lebanon. The Monday massacre coincides with the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila massacre. In September 1982, IDF forces invaded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, allowing Maronite Phalangists to enter the camp and massacre thousands of defenseless Palestinian refugees in cold blood, mostly women and children. The massacre took place even after the camp had surrendered to the Israeli forces and Palestine Liberation Organization members had left Beirut.

On April 18, 1996, Israel carried out a horrific massacre near Qana, a village in then Israeli-occupied Southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military bombarded a United Nations compound, which was sheltering over 800 Lebanese civilians, killing at least 106. An Amnesty International report later concluded that “the IDF intentionally attacked the UN compound.” The Qana massacre was hailed by Israel as “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” in reference to the novel by US author John Steinbeck.

Under the guise of fighting terrorism, Israel continues to act with impunity in the region, emboldened by US unconditional support and unceasing flow of arms shipments. For twelve months, the United States has manufactured and shipped while Israel delivered the bombs that have massacred over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and nearly one thousand civilians in Lebanon. (According to the nonprofit organization Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), Israel has launched over 8,000 attacks in Lebanon since last October.) Since the start of its genocidal war in Gaza, Israel has committed war crimes nearly every day, and every war crime bears the undeniable imprints of US complicity.

Following the Monday massacre in Lebanon, a group of US lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to halt arms supplies to Israel. Rep. Rashida Tlaib wrote on social media: “It’s easier to stop sending Israel government weapons to conduct its genocidal wars than it is to evacuate every American in Lebanon.”

Without an immediate halt to US arms to Israel, it’s hard to see why Israel should stop slaughtering civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, while threatening to ignite a full-blown regional war that would be “a devastating tragedy for the world.”

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Shai Hills, Ghana © Seth Avusuglo, Library Manager of the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora.

By Kim M. Reynolds

IN SUMMARY

Concept of Return and Reconnection: For many in the diaspora, “return” and “reconnection” mean going back to their roots and connecting with their ancestral homelands.

Historical and Modern Practices: These connections have been made for centuries. For example, the Tabom people returned to Ghana from Brazil in the 1800s, and today’s diasporans continue to reconnect with their origins.

Notable Examples:

• Maya Angelou: Lived in Ghana, learned the local language, and explored the shared experiences between Africans and African-Americans.
• Maryse Condé: Wrote about her time in West Africa, comparing her experiences as a Caribbean-born Black woman to those she met.

Challenges and Romanticisation: Sometimes, these returns are overly idealized, ignoring past and present power imbalances while trying to connect with a lost history.

The Year of Return (2019): Ghana invited descendants of enslaved Africans to return, marking 400 years since the first enslaved people arrived in America. While it was a powerful cultural event, it was also driven by economic interests.

Economic Impact: The Year of Return reportedly brought $1.9 billion to Ghana’s economy, mainly benefiting businesses, government, and tourism, though full details are unclear.

Cultural and Economic Boost: The event spurred more tourism, business investments, and cultural activities, benefiting certain groups in Ghana.

Black Star Line Festival (2022): Created by Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa, this festival in Accra celebrates the unity and freedom of African peoples worldwide, inspired by Marcus Garvey’s historical shipping company.

These points show the challenges, intentions, and impacts of “return” for those in the diaspora.

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Decolonial African feminism and the revolutionary lives of three mothers of Kenya.

Left to Right: Mukami Kimathi (Mhadalo Bridging Divides Limited, 2019), Micere Mugo (The Standard, 1995), and Muthoni wa Kirima (Courtesy her family). Used under Fair Use.

This is not an essay; it is not a think piece. It is an inadequate expression of grief and gratitude, an act of remembrance, a memorial to three Chimurenga Maitũ: mothers in liberation.

In 2023, the world lost three legendary Kenyan mothers of liberation (from left to right, in order of their passing): Mũkami Kĩmathi (who passed on May 5, at the age of 101), Professor Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo (June 30, age 80), and Mau Mau Field Marshal Mũthoni wa Kĩrĩma (September 5, age 92). I had the humbling privilege of sharing time and holding space filled with living knowledge and committed affection with each of these remarkable women over the past few years.

Throughout their lives, each of these women were often, or even exclusively, referenced in relation to the towering men they struggled and created alongside: literary luminary Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in the case of Mĩcere, and Dedan Kĩmathi Waciũri, leader of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army during the Mau Mau Rebellion, husband to Mũkami and fellow revolutionary army leader alongside Mũthoni. My search for the archival remains of Dedan Kĩmathi’s life, inspired in no small part by Mĩcere and Ngũgĩ’s seminal play The Trial of Dedan Kĩmathi, led me to these three women, living monuments of the struggle. And yet, to meet these women, to learn from them, and to listen to their stories, even briefly, revealed something far beyond their relational value to powerful men and opened another set of relations: among women, among mothers and their children, among kin and comrades in everyday struggles. For this remembrance, I have chosen to use these women’s first names rather than their honorific titles or last names, not to claim an overly familiar relationality or reduce their hard-earned statuses but to honor how they requested I address them and draw us into a space of communal kinship. 

In an email in June 2022, ahead of my first visit to Mũthoni wa Kĩrĩma’s home in Nyeri, Mĩcere asked me to greet the Field Marshal as her Chimurenga Maitũ—her “liberation struggle mother.” The entangled lives of these three women—Mũkami, Mĩcere, and Mũthoni—embodied a liberatory ethic and radically decolonial African feminism, committed to the liberation of their people, their lands, and their bodies and spirits. Sylvia Tamale has called for this decolonial African feminism to deconstruct not just our conceptual notions of coloniality and gender but also our relational understandings of family, the body in its pleasures and pains, and liberation. As Mĩcere hailed, this revolutionary motherhood is both intensely local (Maitũ, the Gῖkũyũ word for “mother”) and Pan-Africanist (Chimurenga, a Shona word—variously translated as “collective struggle,” “uprising,” “revolution”—whose call to liberation has become a vernacular of struggle beyond the illusory borders of tribe or nation), the foremothers of Tamale’s rewriting of histories of Pan-Africanism and Mother Africa. 

Revolutionary mothering is neither a new concept nor one limited to African feminist discourses. As I write this, activists, artists, and scholars, mothers all, in Gaza, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Haiti and beyond cry out and carry the burden of martyrdom and loss: of their people, their children, and their land. In the face of such utter dehumanization, mothering itself “becomes a revolutionary force.”  As captured by Palestinian journalist Lama Ghosheh: “Mothering is a collective instinctual act, its force knows no bounds, and no prose can adequately describe it. Behind all the exhausted Palestinian mothers, there is the mother who shouldered all our burdens and endured all our pains, in a journey that dates back more than two thousand years. She is the keeper of our memories, and for her sake, our blood has been spilled. She is our great mother, and our land, Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

Building on the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, K’eguro Macharia, Saidiya Hartman, and others, Serawit B. Debele defines revolutionary mothering as a “disruptive practice” capable of “effecting social transformation through nurturing,” of imagining alternative futures, and of performing the “ultimate practice of love that makes possible life for those whose existence has been tampered with by forces such as the state.”

The Kenyan women remembered here liberated motherhood from its biological and gendered preconditions to encompass an ethics of care, homing, and healing as both everyday praxis and radical reordering. In “My Mother’s Poem”, Mĩcere wrote:

Then came

      the healing words

words embalmed

    with motherly love

words weighted

    with orature wisdom

words spoken

the day after

my father 

was buried

Daughter, do not 

romanticize home

Do not, daughter

For many who are home

have jail

for home

…

The whole land

is crying

for home

…

Do not, daughter

You who have

chosen the path

of people’s struggle

must find the courage

to build new homes

to start new lives

In another verse, Mĩcere wrote that to be a feminist was “to be the daughter / of my mother / it is / to be more than / a survivor / it is / to be a creator / it is / to be a woman.” “The Woman’s Poem” proclaims the global potentials of revolutionary motherhood: 

Ta imagini (just imagine) that

our wombs

issued forth

one populous 

global family

of women

combatants

Mĩcere’s creative work and cultural criticism open up intellectual production to a wider community of knowledge producers and practices through the “righting” of African feminist orature: “the creative imaginative art of composition that relies on verbal art for communication and that culminates in performance”—rounded rather than linear, relational rather than extractive. Mĩcere’s creative worlds, intellectual contributions, and political commitments were shot through with an expansive, inclusive, and militant conception of motherhood and mothering. It did not take long after her passing, however, for male “colleagues,” seemingly gleefully to spread rumors, personal attacks, and insinuations about her mental fitness, meant to undermine her immense intellectual and political legacy. Others, however, like Dr. Achola Pala Okeyo, wrote back against such attacks: of her intellectual sisterhood, her revolutionary mothering, her rebellious teachings, and her fearless fortitude in the face of personal, professional, and governmental persecution.

Mũkami Kĩmathi extended revolutionary motherhood into revolutionary widowhood: “I was only twenty-six years old yet I was the most famous widow in Kenya in a country full of widows.” She, alongside countless women and mothers, fought to liberate Kenya during the Mau Mau Rebellion: feeding, caring for, fighting alongside, and suffering in shared struggle with fellow freedom fighters. After the execution of her husband, Field Marshal Dedan Kĩmathi, she honored his request to keep his name alive by empowering all her subsequent children to carry his name. Wanjugu Kĩmathi (born to Mũkami in the 1970s) carries on the legacies of both Dedan and Mũkami through her leadership of the Dedan Kĩmathi Foundation, her unyielding search for the remains of Kĩmathi’s missing body, and her tireless fight for the restoration of land rights for Mau Mau veterans and others displaced by colonial dispossession and postcolonial corporate interests. Working as creative historical consultant on the recently premiered documentary Our Land, Our Freedom with directors Zippy Kimundu and Meena Nanji, I bore witness to Wanjugu’s strength, Mũkami’s resolve and humor, and the interwoven histories of familial struggle and national liberation. At Mũkami’s passing, while Kenyan commentators and academics alike fought over whether she “actually” fought in the forests of Central Kenya as part of the Kenya Land Freedom Army or was just a wife and eventual detainee in the “passive wing” in the villages, I could not help but feel again this legacy being diminished, questioned, and put in its place. In her biography, written in collaborative orature with Wairimũ Nderitũ who grew up calling her “Maitũ wa Kĩmathi,” Mũkami offered her story: of suffering without bending, of mothering generations of those born in the throes of liberatory struggle, of the gendered nature of struggle, and of her role as “wife and mother” to the movement: “Women’s bodies were theatres of war … The Mau Mau women paid heavily for their real and perceived roles in the war.”

Women’s bodies carry archives of liberation. The only woman to reach the highest rank of field marshal in the Kenya Land Freedom Army, Mũthoni’s life both defied gendered expectations and revealed new ways of mothering liberation, though silences, erasures, and manipulations  have marred her memorialization, as Mĩcere had predicted. Never captured or surrendering, leaving the forest only once political independence had been wrested from British hands, Mũthoni nonetheless gave her life to the cause of liberation. Alone, she embarked on the perilous journey through the forest to join the rebel camps without her husband or guides, and over those many years she suffered multiple miscarriages. Without biological children, she embraced another way to mother. From her early days delivering intelligence and supplies to Kĩmathi’s troops to becoming one of Kĩmathi’s closest confidants and top generals, Mũthoni earned a special nickname from Kĩmathi: Thonjo, or “the weaverbird,” small birds known for their ingenuity and ability to navigate and endure in harsh environs, building new homes and camouflaging themselves against predators. After a few months, Kĩmathi recognized the limitless horizon of Mũthoni’s leadership, upgrading her nickname to Ng’ina wa Thonjo—“mother of weaverbirds,” invoking her role training a cadre of spies specialized in gathering intelligence, stealthily moving through the forests, and transforming the natural environment into a decolonial landscape. After leaving the forest, she lived the rest of her life surrounded by generations upon generations, whom she invited to consider her their maitũ with both familial and liberatory inflections, a militant motherhood freed from the shackles of biological fictions and patriarchal controls. She was known to say that she had mothered the nation, the mother of the resilient weaverbirds who fought for their survival and the very existence of the nation. 

Mũthoni’s signature dreadlocks, uncut since she entered the forest in late 1952, entangled threads “yarning” a history that swept the ground with reverence, were an archive and living monument to the struggle. While Mũthoni told me her dreadlocks were not intended as a political statement but rather a practical consequence of life in the forest, they came to take on political meanings, as they had more broadly in Kenya, Jamaica, and beyond. She said often that she would not cut her dreadlocks until Kenya was truly free. Many were shocked when international headlines blasted the story of the shaving of Mũthoni’s dreadlocks in a public ceremony in 2022 by the mother of the nation, Mama Ngina Kenyatta, wife of the first president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, and mother of then president Uhuru Kenyatta. Rumors swirled around whether this performative spectacle occurred of her own free will: perhaps some of her children or opportunistic relatives were using the spectacle for financial gain or political leverage; perhaps the shaving of Mũthoni’s waist-length dreadlocks, heavy with the pains of history, would provide a powerful symbol that would shame the state into providing restitution to the family and other Mau Mau veterans; or, most cynically, perhaps the Kenyattas were attempting to bolster their waning political dynasty ahead of a heated election season. Back in 2013, when asked about President Uhuru Kenyatta, Mũthoni responded with reference to a well-known Kikuyu proverb: “Nda imwe yumaga muici na murogi”—translated variously as “The womb produces [gives birth to] a thief and a witch”—but in Mũthoni’s rewording to The Economist, “From the womb comes a warrior, a king, a rich man, a criminal, and a killer.”

Just as the passing of Mĩcere and Mũkami almost immediately brought out those who would question and diminish their legacies, many questioned the shaving of Mũthoni’s dreadlocks almost a year before her passing in an attempt to reduce and rob her of her agency and voice: in this very blog, two scholars, Nicholas Githuku and Lotte Hughes, wrote, “It is tragic that Muthoni may well not know, or remember, the history of the strained relationship between Kenyatta and Mau Mau, and could not object to being used in this way by such a powerful figure.” Further, they questioned “had she [Mama Ngina] met the likes of Field Marshal Muthoni before 2022? Most probably not. Why now?” Having spent time with Mũthoni in 2022, time the previous authors clearly had not, I can attest that she spoke often not only of her fondness for the “mother of the nation” Mama Ngina but also of their decades-long relationship that, while not without contention, was sustained and significant. Even after quoting scholar Margaret Gachihi’s reminder of Mũthoni’s words earlier that year that she felt “the end was nigh” and that shaving her dreadlocks may have provided a symbolic shedding of “her burden to the next generation,” Githuku and Hughes opted to dismiss and diminish Mũthoni’s own agency, historical memory, and deeply personal motivations. Mũthoni’s fortitude, intellect, sacrifice, and continued mothering of the struggle became casualty to this partisan, if not entirely new or unwarranted, argument. 

In my conversations with Mũthoni in the months that followed the ceremony, she was clear: the decision to shave her dreadlocks, however painful, and gift them wrapped in the Kenyan flag to her “friend” Mama Ngina, who had helped her secure an ivory license in the early years of independence, was hers alone. She added that the weight of carrying that history within her locks was causing severe physical and psychic pain, barely a year before she joined the ancestors, and that the unfinished work of liberation had now to be taken up by her “children.” Additionally, her dreadlocks were not the only affective and bodily archive Mũthoni maintained: she proudly exhibited her famous jacket worn in the forest, woven from the fur and skins of the thuni—dik-diks found in the Nyandarua forest—and invited me to touch its tattered remains. In a particularly intimate moment, she took my hand and guided it to the hard flesh in her shoulder where a bullet remained lodged after she was shot by colonial forces while barely escaping back into the safety of the forest’s canopy. As Rose Miyonga has argued, many veterans created their own archives, “engendered by the preservation of memories in personal archives and in survivors’ very bodies.” These archives carry both nostalgic memories and a literal “archive of pain” in scars, disabilities, and immeasurable losses. Whatever her motivations, Mũthoni had never been a woman to be used, silenced, or ignorant of the wider political contexts in which her decisions and actions might be interpreted and understood. 

The transcendent formulations of both revolutionary and public motherhood that these three Kenyan women embodied drew on long traditions found across the continent. Borrowing the concept from literary scholar Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi, scholars Lorelle Semley, Elizabeth Jacob, Nakanyike Musisi, Rhiannon Stephens, and Meghan Healy-Clancy have deployed “public motherhood” in the contexts of West Africa, Uganda, and South Africa to contextualize motherhood as “experience, institution, and discourse” that draws moral authority from both literal and symbolic maternalism and “untangles biologizing connotations of ‘mothering’ from social and political expressions of women’s leadership and power.” In Kenya, the 1992 Mothers of Political Prisoners protest tapped into historical and global movements that make public the symbolic and political power of mothers as caregivers and protectors of the moral life of the nation. Yet, as the life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela demonstrates, “mothers of the nation” often suffer particular historical burdens and public sanctions—their very wombs becoming a matter of state, as Nakanyike Musisi has so eloquently examined in the life of Baganda Queen Mother Irene Namaganda. The militant, creative, political, and moral interventions of public motherhood link these three Kenyan women in intellectual, affective, and revolutionary kinship that carries forward in the work and struggles of their “children.”

This is not an essay; it is an act of remembrance. I can still feel the warm liquid of their watery blessings as they spit into their hands, held mine, and with their saliva pressed into my palm invited me into their worlds. My personal debt pales in comparison to those who lived alongside these women and learned at their feet in daily communion. To so many, they offered intellectual interventions and affective solidarity with cautious yet overwhelming generosity. The braided histories and immeasurable legacies of these three women persist, and their lives and offerings deserve to be remembered and cited: as singular yet always relational, our Chimurenga Maitũ.

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