Maisha is seeking applications from Screenwriters, Directors, Editors, Sound Recordist and Cinematographers for our 2008 Annual Lab that will be held in Kampala, Uganda. Maisha trains in the short film format and requires a maximum of a 10 page scripts from the screenwriters/Directors using natural light. The technical crews must send in samples of there previous work. The 25-day Lab begins with 12 selected screenwriter/directors who have been selected by a 35-person international reading committee based on their submitted short film scripts.

Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success From the beginning of the oldest and greatest civilization - the ancestral link from the Blacks in Kamit (Ancient Egypt) to their descendents who are now scattered to the four corners of the world - the world of creating, inventing and designing has always been a part of the Black experience.

Ashoka’s Changemakers and Nike have partnered to open a worldwide search for leading innovations that use sport to improve community, accelerate development and drive social change. Organisations are invited to submit their proposals until January 8, 2007. The Changemakers online community will vote for three winners from approximately 12 finalists who will be selected by our panel of judges. The three winners will each receive $5,000. All groups and sports enthusiasts can join the online Changemakers community to make suggestions and recommend resources that will help refine and strengthen the strategies presented by competition entrants. For more information on entering, the online review, and voting please visit the following website:http://www.changemakers.net/competition/sports

In the quest of understanding the causations of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), otherwise known as the Biafran war, I stumbled upon an interview with Chinua Achebe, a prolific Igbo writer that is best known his book Things Fall Apart (1958) that has earned over twenty honorary doctorates and several international literary prize.[1]

In understanding this brief yet complex war of the Eastern tribes of the colonial territory - which later became the Federal Republic of Nigeria – it was important for me to get under its skin, so to speak. Getting-under-the-skin of Biafra implies that there were causes much deeper than secession from the Federal Republic of Nigeria, yet in order to understand the struggle for a nation separate from Nigeria, it is critical to include the well known driving force of control over the oil territories and the policies that disenfranchised, and continue to disenfranchise, the various populations of Eastern Nigeria.

It is also necessary to understand the thick layer of the divide-and-conquer strategy, as used by the British, which stimulated negative relations and undermined any unity efforts that would have taken place between Nigeria and the proposed sovereign nation of Biafra. Resting at the core of this getting-under-the-skin analogy is the cancer filled causation of corruption that assisted in the political and social unrest that attributed to the senseless massacres of the Igbo that lived in the North and Western regions of Nigeria – a major factor in the logical conclusion for the formation of the separate nation of Biafra. All of these factors were addressed by this leading writer, poet and intellectual, Chinua Achebe, in an interview conducted in 1968 by Transition - just a year into the three year arms dispute that was to follow the Biafran legacy, a dream tainted by bloodshed in the infancy of neo-colonialism.

Massacres in Nigeria

This interview started our with Chinua Achebe recounting the trauma he felt from the reality of war by stating, “…you got used to sleeping with the sound of shelling and all the other things…I only realized how nervous I had become when I got out to London about three weeks ago. The first sound of an aeroplane I heard and my first reaction was to take cover.”[2] Shortly after this chilling prelude, he starts an even more devastating story of killing sprees that defined his life as an Igbo in post colonial Nigeria:

"…between May and September 1966, there were massacres in Northern Nigeria, and not only in the North, but also in the West and Lagos. People were hounded out of their homes, as I was from my house in Lagos and we returned to the East…"[3]

It is in this retreat to the East that Achebe reported as the involuntary organization that began the necessity for a separate nation of Biafra. According to Achebe, this necessity for a separate nation did not begin in an egotistic desire to divide and create a separate world for he mentioned that “[Igbos] went out in the spirit of this experiment of one nation,”[4] and that the settlement outside of the indigenous Eastern region was a voluntary move to work as one nation.

In further support of this argument, Achebe stated,

"The original idea of Nigeria had its base from the leaders and intellectuals from the East, and they had, with all their shortcomings, this idea to build the country as one, and a long time this has been the paradox of the situation. It was the Easterners who were pressing for one Nigeria. The first people to object were the Yorubas. Awolowo came and created the Action Group on the basis that the sons of Odudu were the founders of the Yoruba people. Eventually the Northerners took it on and developed their own Northern Peoples’s Congress. This was supposed to be the national party, yet it refused to change its name from Northern to Nigerian People’s Party, even for the sake of appearances…So you had a possibility for tribal conflict accentuated by the power struggle in the political scene."[5]

The most devastating part of these massacres, as Achebe described, was the Nigerian governmental support against this movement to annihilate the Igbos,

"…if it was only a question of rioting in the streets and so on, that would be bad enough, but it could be explained. It happens everywhere in the world. But where you had a plan in detail – mass killing which the Government – the Army, the Police, the people where there to protect life and property – brought against the people they were supposed to protect – this is to me something quite terrifying."[6]

In another report of these massacres, more fittingly described as genocide, C. Odumengwu Ojukwu described in detail the events leading to the final retreat to the East,

"From police reports, I know that the May, 1966, riots claimed more than 3,000 lives. Indeed, the police reports say 3,300. I know that on the first night in Zaria, Northern Nigeria, 670 people were killed. I know also that in Kano, also in the North, on the same day of the riot, we lost over a thousand people, including women and children. International Press Conference, Enugu. October 11, 1966" [7]

It is with these recounts that I began to question the true motivations that led to this seemingly obvious state-sponsored acts of violence, a trend that Africa will see time and again in the successive tragedies of Rwanda, Somalia and, most recently, in Sudan. It is here the excavation of layers of debris of understanding the effects of colonization begins for me, and with the help of Chinua Achebe (amongst other brave souls that took it upon themselves to tell this story), my comprehension is learned through Biafra.

Divide and conquer

The term ‘divide and conquer’, rooted in the Latin words divide et impera, can be understood in its modern usage in computer science as splitting a large system into manageable components.[8] Ironically, this system that works well for the computer technology currently craved by contemporary African countries seeking development was a major tool of implementation and sustainability of colonial rule. As Walter Rodney describes in his famous book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1973):

"…the gap in levels of political organization between Europe and Africa was very crucial. The development of political unity in the form of large states was proceeding steadily in Africa. But even so, at the time of the Berlin Conference, Africa was still a continent of a large number of socio-political groupings who had not arrived at a common purpose. Therefore, it was easy for the European intruder to play the classic game of divide and conquer. In that way, certain Africans became unwitting allies of Europe. Many African rulers sought a European ‘alliance’ to deal with their own African neighbour, with whom they were in conflict. Few of those rulers appreciated the implications of their actions. They could not know that Europeans had come to stay permanently, they could not know that Europeans were out to conquer not some but all of Africans. This partial inadequate view of the world was itself a testimony of African underdevelopment relative to Europe, which in the late 19th century was self-confidently seeking domination in that part of the globe."[9]

It is with this science that Biafra found itself a victim of divide and conquer. In Achebe’s reporting of the involvement of the former colonial master, Britain, during the Nigerian Civil War, he lamented that, “…my position would be that [Britain] has no right to supply arms to Nigeria, in these particular circumstances and especially on this scale.”[10] In the truly invisible nature of divide and conquer, it was difficult to fully implicate the British as allies of the Nigerian Army as Achebe explained, “They will try to refute your charge by technicalities: they would say, for instance, that they are not sending any airforce pilots or any Royal Navy personnel; they are merely seconding them to the Nigerian Navy or Air Force.”[11]

The strategy of divide and conquer was also used in efforts to build divisions between the various tribes of Eastern Nigeria. As Achebe responded to a question posed about the alleged ill-treatment of non-Igbo groups that reside in the Eastern region,

"A very good example of propaganda. Rather than go into any special pleading, I have made the position quite clear, if anyone things that these minorities would rather not go among the Biafrans, it is quite a simple procedure to go and ask them through plebiscite, and if they want to go with Nigeria…my own personal belief is that if you did hold this plebiscite you would find that these people would not want to go with Nigeria."[12]

Unfortunately, divide and conquer continues to play an active role in Nigerian politics as there has not been a president from the East since before the Biafran War and this continues to inspire organized efforts at secession such as the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) due to charges of discrimination and marginalization as evident in federally mandated policies towards issues that concern Eastern Nigeria.[13]

The oil factor

Nigeria’s first oil-cargo was exported in 1958 from the Oloibiri oil-field (located in present day Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta region), under the sponsor of the Shell-BP Development Company of Nigeria, jointly financed by the Royal Dutch Shell group and British Company.[14 Shortly following this discovery, the Nigerian government granted 10 oil exploration licenses to five companies - Shell-BP, Mobil Exploration Nigeria Incorporated, Amonsea, Texaco and Nigerian Gulf oil – and in 1965 commissioned the first oil refinery to be located at Port Harcourt, also in the Eastern region of Nigeria.[15]

By the beginning of the Biafran war, Nigeria was already a major oil producing nation with its production of more than 152 million barrels per annum being extracted from the Eastern region.[16] The desire to keep control of this lucrative oil business was a motivating factor for the British involvement in supplying Nigerian Army with arms against Biafra.

Achebe explains his belief that oil was a major factor in the arms struggle in Nigeria,

"…Well, I think there are many economic reasons. It is probably clear to them that Nigeria will be the worse for not having the place now called Biafra, not only in terms of natural resources but in human resources. But more, there is the glamour with oil. I think this is by far the most important reason…"[17]

Unfortunately, Achebe’s assertions would be proven correct and made evident in the policies taken after the end of the Biafran War. In May of 1971, a year after the end of Biafra, the Nigerian national Oil Corporation (NNOC) was set up as a government agency empowered to engage in all phases of oil industry from exploration to marketing – this being a formation of a powerful governmental union between the ministry of petroleum and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).[18]

By the mid 1980s, under the leadership of the military leader President Babagida, NNPC would re-organize itself into six semi-autonomous units known as sectors in a bid to privatize oil and under the pretenses of encouraging revenue, Nigeria would sell oil at a cheaper rate than other member of OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) – hence making way for inflation that has led to the disparities of lack of economic compensation in the present day conflicts in the Niger-Delta region on claims that the indigenous tribes are not receiving reparations for the privatized oil drilling by foreign corporations.[19]

Biafra: A dream tainted by blood

Towards the end of the interview, Achebe remembered the enthusiasm that came as a result of Tanzania recognizing Biafra as a sovereign nation. He recounted, “it was a fantastic day….the streets were filled with people dancing and singing. For the first time in months you found dancing again, and the radio was playing Tanzanian music…the gesture meant nothing in military or material terms but it assured us – the effects it had on us – was electric.” [20]

It was with this innocent desire for autonomy that inspired millions of tribes-people of Eastern Nigeria to believe in this liberation and waited for the world to support them in their desire for freedom and independence…a call that would be answered in trickled and faint responses. As Ojukwu reported,

"The Biafran problem, to most major powers, is a nuisance. They would rather not have to deal with it in a world already gripped with the Vietnam war, economic crises, monetary crises, election fever here and there. There is an initial resentment against Biafra for leading them into another problem when they have got so much to deal with…"
Address to delegation of World Council of Churches, Umahia, March 28, 1968.[21]

Biafra was isolated. There were only five countries in the world that officially recognized Biafra: Gabon, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Zambia.[22] A big part of this isolation was due to the lack of media coverage of this case due to the state-sponsorship of the atrocities towards the people of the East, particularly the Igbos. Achebe recounted the bombing in the center city of Aba that happened in the presence of twenty foreign journalists just arriving and how that event broke the news and successive international protests at the injustice imposed on the people of the East.[23]

As a descendant of two ex-Biafran soldiers, my mother and father, this story stings with the remembrance of a tragic time in our people’s history. However difficult of a subject that this matter may be, it is necessary to remember how situations like this arise so as to be part of efforts to stop them from happening again. Unfortunately, Africa finds herself in many other conflicts that resemble Biafra and it is with this knowledge that I take the time to remember the root causes that stem in public policies towards certain groups, primarily on ethnic bases. As Biafra served as the sound bell for one of the most tragic consequences of the colonial tool of divide and conquer in its neo-colonial manifestation, so must of its memory serves as a reminder that in 2007 African nations still suffer from this type of seemingly invisible rule. As Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, prophetically noted the five point of neo-colonialism in 1965:

•It continues to actively control the affairs of the newly independent state

•In most cases neocolonialism is manifested through economic and monetary measures. For example the neocolonial territories become the target markets for imports from the imperial centre(s)

•While neocolonialism may be a form of continuing control by a state's previous formal colonial master, these states may also become subjected to imperial power by new actors. These new actors include the United States or may be international financial and monetary organizations

•Because of the nuclear parity between the superpowers, the conflict between the two take place in the form of "limited wars." Neocolonial territories are often the places where these "limited wars" are waged.

•As the ruling elites pay constant deference to the neocolonial masters, the needs of the population are often ignored, leaving issues of living conditions like education, development, and poverty unresolved. [24]

The consequences of going against the grain of neo-colonialism were expressed by Chinua Achebe in his concluding statements at the end of this published interview on Biafra as he affirmed, “I have no intention of being placed in a Nigerian situation at all. I find it untenable. I find the Nigerian situation untenable. If I had been a Nigerian, I think I would have been in the same situation as Wole Soyinka is – in prison.” [25]

It is with this reflection on neo-colonialism that I also conclude this review with the hopes in remembering Biafra because I realize my part in the efforts to recognize the bigger picture of what has gone wrong for Africa since the 1960s, the supposed era of independence. This remembrance is not aimed at the continuous tensions inspired by divide and conquer tactics but as an invitation to look at Pan Africanism despite the scars and wounds with sympathy towards all other African nations that have fallen prey, and continue to fall prey, to the divisive effects of neo-colonialism.

Endnotes
1] “Chinua Achebe Profile” found at
2] Chinua Achebe on Biafra” by Achebe, Chinua. Transition No. 36 (1968), pp. 1-38. Durhan, NC: Duke university Press
3] Ibid, pp. 32
4] Ibid, pp. 32
5] Ibid, pp. 33
6] Ibid, pp. 35
7] “On Genocide,” Random Thoughts of C. Odumegwu Ojukwu, General of the People’s Army by Ojukwu,Chukwuemeka O. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Incorporated, 1969.
8] Divide et Impera: A Computational Framework for Verifying Object Component Sustitutability by Nordhagen, Else K. Olso, Norway: University of Oslo, Department of Informatics, November 1998
9] “Europe and the Roots of African Underdevelopment: 4.4 The Coming of Imperialism and Colonialism”. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney, Walter. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1963.
10] Achebe on Biafra, pp. 35
11] Ibid, pp. 36
12] Ibid, pp. 37
13] http://www.biafraland.com/massob.htm
14] “Oil Policy in Nigeria: A Critical Assessment” by Nwaobi, Godwin Chukudum. Abuja: Quantative Economic Research Bureau, 2005.
15] Ibid
16] Ibid
17] Achebe on Biafra, pp. 33
18] Oil Policy in Nigeria, 2.0 “Nigeria’s Oil History”
19] Oil Policy in Nigeria, 3.0 “Oil Policy Evaluation”
20] Achebe on Biafra, pp. 37
21] “On the World,” Ojukwu.
22] http://www.biafraland.com/nations_that_recognized_biafra.htm
23] Achebe on Biafra, pp. 35
24] “Neocolonialism” by Yew, Leong, Research Fellow, University Scholars Programme of Singapore. http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/post/poldiscourse/neocolonialism1.html
25]Achebe on Biafra, pp. 37

* Chioma Oruh is a Doctorate student at Howard University in Washington DC.

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

You, our gods of immortals and living Of seas and lands Of all visible and not we beseech, hear our cry this day and come to our rescue.

Our sacred weapons of pleasure are being destroyed by the day rendered useless by our overseeing Lords and Ladies of ancestral descent.

They perform a barbaric operation on our 'flesh of honour' and call it 'Female Circumcision' in the white man's language.
They mutilate our pride and say it is 'tradition' "The initiation to womanhood."

They cut us!
Oh yes, they cut us with the blade.

In the gaze of our fellows, they cut us!
At times in the secrecy of our mother's haven.
They do not concede to the tools, nor words of the physician's for our safety.
To them it has been for ages and tradition dare not be defiled.
They just cut us.

Against our will as they are wont to, for we foresee the agony and anguish.
To these we try to parry but helpless we are.
Our eyes have cried, tears of unending pain and torment They have run dry of water.
Our hearts, laden with loathsomeness we fear may burst.

They cut us! with or without our consent.
Left to bleed by their ignorance sometimes fatal to our existence.
Other times, we become plagued with illness of strange names "Infection" the physician would call it.

Again, they say it delivers us from the hands of promiscuity as we ascend the ladder of womanhood.
Such blasphemy! We think.
As if we are not bound for the act of consummation in our 'married' days.

As we watch our counterparts this day-buried deep in this sin, Sisters whom we term fortunate, cut at childbirth fortunate to have escaped the pain we feel now, we can't but wonder… "Who is fooling who?"

You, our ancestral Lords and Ladies suffer us no more we beg.
What profit do you aspire when our lives are wont to expire in this course of tradition?

Oh! What a shame.
That you who drum to our ears to revere the dignity between our legs become the ones that destroy it.

* Poetry by Chinwe Azubuike | Nigeria. © Chinwe Azubuike

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Reggae musician Lucky Dube was shot dead in a hijacking on Thursday in Rosettenville, Johannesburg police said. Captain Cheryl Engelbrecht said the incident took place at about 8.20pm when Dube (43) was driving a blue Volkswagen Polo in the Johannesburg suburb. She said Dube was dropping off his son in the area when he was attacked. "His son was already out of the car. When he saw what was happening, he ran to ask for help."

Up to 40% of all patients receiving anti-HIV drugs in sub-Saharan Africa are thought to have either died or discontinued treatment within two years, according to a systematic review of African ART (antiretroviral treatment) treatment programmes published on October 16th in the journal PLoS Medicine.

The decision of the Nobel Literature Prize committee to name Doris Lessing as this year’s laureate should raise red flags in the minds of those concerned with the integrity and cultural autonomy of African literature, writes Wandia Njoya. The fact that Lessing has finally received one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the Western hemisphere comes as no surprise, since she has been proposed for this award before but has been bypassed by previous laureates. What should raise eyebrows, however, is the historical and political context within which the committee finally decided to recognize the octogenarian.

On 10 November 1995, the Nigerian military regime, under General Sani Abacha, hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa, the writer and minority rights activist, and eight other members of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) after a judicially flawed trail.

The hangings were a critical event for the Nigerian junta and for Royal Dutch/Shell, the major international oil company operating in Nigeria’s Niger delta, which played a key role in shaping the Ogoni tragedy. When Citizens Revolt re-examines the evidence concerning the Ogoni struggle for self-determination and raises questions about its origins and implications as a case study of the emergence and persistence of ethnic identities and the communal politics they engender in postcolonial Africa.

Ike Okonta disagrees with the arguments of such leading Africa scholars as Mahmood Mamdani and Donald Horowitz regarding the provenance and dynamics of ethnic politics on the continent and submits that ethnicity is not necessarily antithetical to democracy, and indeed that it may be a necessary aspect of democratic citizenship in multiethnic states like Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. The Ogoni story, he contends, is the classic case of a people, who in order to secure their civic rights as citizens in a state increasingly resorting to rapine despotism, became “tribesmen” in their struggle to become citizens.

Africa World Press, Inc. & The Red Sea Press, Inc. 2007

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/324/43763-from-jhelum-to-tana… a personal journey to find her history and identity, angered by the lack of recognition given to Indians in Kenya's fight for independence and inspired by a portrait of her great-grandfather, it took Neera Kapur-Dromson five years to create the book, “From Jhelum to Tana.” A fourth generation Kenyan of Indian origin, Neera Kapur-Dromson was born in Nairobi, where she grew up. At the feet of gurus in India, she studied the art of Indian classical dance. She continues to perform Odissi, a style of dance from the eastern state of Orissa, and regularly writes articles on socio-cultural subjects; From Jhelum to Tana is her first book.

Jhelum is a river that flows through Miani, a little town in Punjab now in Pakistan. This is where Lala Kirparam Ramchand, the author's mother's grandfather, was born. His ashes were released into the Tana - a river in Kenya, eastern Africa, which flows out into the Indian Ocean. India was where he was born; Kenya was where he spent the better half of his life. It was where he experienced Kenya's wilderness - hunting zebras and dodging lions during the building of the railway; and the enchantment of Kenya's old coastal towns - Lamu, Malindi, Mombasa. He started a thriving business, gave rise to many generations, endured the Second World War, the end of colonialism, and survived outbreaks of cholera and malaria. “From Jhelum to Tana” is a personal account of Kapur's family history from 1898 - the time her great-grandfather sailed from India to Kenya in a dhow - till today. It is more than a personal family story being passed down.

Kapur, using her vibrant imagination and through many conversations with her mother, extended family, and friends, pieces together each family member's individual personality, re-living their lives a century ago. She traveled different continents, explored libraries, old towns, and archives and read numerous books to produce both a family story and a historical documentary, where the twists and turns of family life are intertwined with African and Indian legends and the political and global scenario at the time. The thorough research that has been done is clearly visible. Interwoven into this family story is a history of many nations and many races - Kenya, India, Europe and their ethnic communities. In this rich and informative book, Kapur re-tells history as seen from the point of view of an ordinary citizen, and touches on issues such as race, culture, values and politics. The book is aimed at focused readers who take the effort to shift their thinking back and forth from one era, one country, and one continent to another.

The author gives our ancestors a personality, a character. She put herself in her ancestors' shoes and took the time and effort to ask questions that are not frequently asked; questions about infidelity, family politics, traditions and home truths. Kapur exposes intimate family stories, and in the Asian community, where people like to keep certain things secretive and private, this is a very daring thing to do. But she feels she has to, and she should. “So many people refused to divulge information,” says the author. The book quenches curious minds, answers complex questions and raises just as many. It leaves the readers with a different mindset and it serves as the perfect platform to begin one's own introspection into your family roots, your country's roots - the country you were born in, live in or work in. This book is important not only for Kenyans and South East Asians, but generally for migrants and the diasporas; it opens eyes, and provides an insight into many cultures and traditions. It has facts, figures and priceless information about cultures and periods of history hardly known to even our descendants. Adding to its honest wholesomeness, on the one hand the book is emotionally and spiritually involving and on the other hand, it raises issues of universal philosophical value.

In the realm of African-Indian writing, fiction writer Moyez Vassanji takes the lead, and after the acclaim he has received, it is difficult to surpass him. In that respect, Kapur's choice of writing a memoir/biography is perfect.

Conversely, due to the myriad of topics and mass of information contained in this book, some areas lack continuity of story making the book seem patchy. A reader may get lost with all the relations, which is especially possible when it involves large Asian families. It is the type of book that one must read a second time to get a full grasp of.

In Nairobi, in her mother's garden surrounded by jacaranda trees, Kapur and her mother spent long hours at the breakfast table discussing the generations gone by. In this same garden I sat with the author. Talking to her was like going behind the scenes into the making of a saga; an essential piece of literature that will make part of history. There could not have been a more appropriate time for this book to materialize… Our globalized, multi-cultural environment is literally driving us to search for or cling to our identity and roots; to appreciate other cultures through sharing. Kapur could not have said it better, “As people of different cultures we must look at our common identities, and rather than always picking on our differences, concentrate on our similarities.”

* Heer Raja is a passionate young woman, driven by curiosity and striving to be authentic. She has a huge fascination with the human mind.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

With the view to preserving the history of black gay people in South Africa, Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (formerly Gays and Lesbians Archives of South Africa [GALA]) published a book entitled Till the time of trial – The Prison letters of Simon Nkoli. The book was launched a week ago in Johannesburg at Constitution Hill. While celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action contributes to the development of human rights and democracy in the country by sharing its archived information about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) affairs with communities.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/323/43627-disllusioned-african… time ago, in 1993, a forum of Anglophone Cameroon writers held under the auspices of the Goethe Institute of Yaounde produced, among many excellent articles, a reflection by Tatah H. Mbuy on "The Moral Responsibility of the Writer in a Pluralist Society". Every such writer, says Mbuy, is to see himself as a spokesman for his society. He must seek the truth, propagate it and defend it. He is to be the prophet and soothsayer of his society, pricking the consciences of all and trying to correct faults where these are to be found. Elsewhere in this forum other participants described present-day Anglophone writing as concerned with "deconstructing victim hood", through a discourse revolving around shared values or reference points.

This also entails the need to move on, into reconstruction of heritage that Cameroonians, and indeed all Africans, are clinging to precariously, in the pluralist era of Africa's democratisation.

It is in the new, post-election scene, which Nyamnjoh has described elsewhere as "a decline to one-dimensionalism", that "The Disillusioned African" takes his bearings on the world. Its framework is the ongoing politico-economic process of the 1990's with its own peculiarly African 'fin-de-siècle' flavour, seen from the distancing haven of an imaginary trip to Britain. The vehicle of communication is the letters of the philosopher-hero to his friend Moungo back home. The air-flight and touch-down, the first sight of London, the brief stay in academic Manchester, and an interlude in hospital, laid low with malaria, provide the author with a variety of jumping-off points from which to view both British society and his own.

Part One, situated in the "Mandela Hotel", evokes reflections on leadership, class systems and the universal greed for wealth - or what may be called "officially-sponsored theft".

Part Two provides much paradoxical comment on the foibles and attitude of what Nyamnjoh refers to throughout as the "Queendom" of Britain.

Part Three chronicles life as the only student of a university department of philosophy, bringing in its train wry observations on the ambiguous cross-cultural influences that followed in the wake of colonisation and including an appalling, scarcely credible specimen of official memoranda from the Belgian government to the departing missionaries to what is now Zaire.

From his hospital ward in Part Four, the narrator muses on the demise of Communist autocracies and their effects on the world balance of power: "Today, people have got to find new enemies, which isn't easy... The truth is, people have simply got to have something they fear, for people are united more by FEAR than by LOVE." After drawing a parallel between leftist dictatorships such as that of the Ceasuscus, and the present modes of government of various African leaders, the book takes a helter-skelter, tumble-down free fall to the present day, to the chicanery of the 1992 Cameroon elections, and the hero's flight from the central critical arena into his native Grasslands village.

The book was written before the accession to power of Nelson Mandela, the Rwandan genocide or the depredations of devaluation in the economies of francophone Africa could provide further examples of both the best and the worst scenarios for a problematic future.

Satirical writing has an honourable history among Anglophone Cameroonians, whose use of language as a political instrument is as powerful as any polemicist in nineteenth century England. Readers of Nyamnjoh's previous work have grown to expect, beneath the racy, humorous style, an incisive and merciless analysis of social ills. Here is indeed a seeker after truth. However, where the previous book, Mind Searching, adopted the light-hearted and hilarious device of an extended daydream taking place in church, as a vehicle for his observation of the Yaounde bureaucratic and religious scene, this work seems to fish in murkier waters altogether. By the medium of an apparent, tongue-in-cheek naivety, by repeated digressions and diverse literary and historical parallels, Nyamnjoh's subversive intent remains constant: to strip pretensions, to explode phoniness and humbug, to expose the sores that underlie the veneer of Africa modernity, particularly among the elites and their sad counterparts, the under classes. The vigour of expression reveals the bitterness that underpins the author's surface urbanity:

The African elite today loves kingly life so much that, at independence, what mattered to him most was political power, not economic power. The economic power was largely retained by the Europeans and expatriates, which is why the leaders suck the peasants like ticks in order to sustain their kingly appetites. Had the African leaders been sensible enough to think seriously of economic power as well, African countries today would certainly not be this dependent upon the unmechanised efforts of the peasants. And they would also be in a position to carry out their own development efforts, without necessarily posing as "les Mendiants du monde"."Beggars of the world, unite," Marx is likely to have written, had he been born in Africa." As he remarks elsewhere: "Nothing man-made is neutral, and this includes language..."

A counterpart to the African dimension is the book's extended commentary on life in the UK. Here is no innocent anthropologist. Charles's uproarious tour of London, in the company of those unlikely twins, Thompson and Thompson, and compared by him to circumcision or an initiation rite, occasions a mixed bag of comments on the British world view. A few well-worn themes come up for comment: the behaviour of the British on trains; the national meal of fish-and-chips; and, inevitably, the weather:
"The sun has not shone since I arrived in this Queendombut the English say this is the best summer they've had in decades."

Many in his host country would share his reaction to instant foods, to the paradoxical attempts on both sides of the racial divide to change the colour of one's skin. Though they might be puzzled by other assertions, such as the inferiority of the Queendom's methods of washing-up, or the supposed inability of its subjects to dance? No doubt many a Dark Continental visitor will have suffered the same frustration at the Western doctor's ignorance of malaria; even in the "Hospital for Tropical Diseases." Better not to go in the first place, but to stick with the traditional healers!

Keba, like many other tourists, is ambivalent about Britain; not without his own 'idées reçues '. At times, indeed he could be regarded as throwing the baby out with the bathwater: when, for example, he deplores the impact on Africa of Western education, or is disgusted by the publicity methods of aid agencies launching Third World disaster funds. In his search for inconsistencies, everything is grist to Charles's mill; but one cannot be a universal sender-up without falling at times into inconsistencies of one's own.

In the wide spectrum of contemporary Anglophone writing Nyamnjoh's genre stands somewhere between the sardonic humour of the political lampoonist and the anguished cry of prophecy. Bernard Fonlon, in his open letter to African students, declares:

"Still I persist in the belief that it is necessary, even imperative, that at least some intellectuals should steel their will and brace themselves and enter the arena of politics in order to usher in and further though and conscience and righteousness and integrity in the conduct of public affairs."

Is Charles's withdrawal, at the end of the book, into his Menchum peasant community an admission of defeat, or a case of 'reculer pour mieux sauter'? Is there hope for the future? Does Nyamnjoh, in the terms of his fellow-authors quoted above, provide any ways forward to the reconstruction of the African heritage? Coming as it does at a moment of even greater economic peril, political passivity and mendacious propaganda than that prevailing at the beginning of the story, one is bound to say that the vision is indeed sombre, the sense of despondency profound.

Yet this is a fighting literature and the analysis of victimhood is not wholly pessimistic. As witness the final, dream-letter from Keba to Moungo's wife:

"What we are witnessing are the signs of a crumbling system, one deaf and blind to the needs and wishes of our people. One in which the stomach has for thirty years been the only political compass. The violence and bloodshed show the tyrant as cornered and desperate, and with a little more effort and coordination on our part, tyranny would have met its Waterloo. Whenever the rays of change do at last penetrate the darkening thickness of our suffocating jungles, it shall be the result of a massive all-involving effort, the fruit of our collective suffering."

Whatever the imagined future for Africa, this courageous book will certainly provide, for both its foreign readers and the young generation of Cameroonians, a provocative insight into the complex web of despair, frustration, paradox and hope that, on the eve of the twenty-first century, constitutes the "downtrodden and forgotten bulk of the Darkened Continent."

One such young man, recently encountered in the North-West province, voiced his surprised discovery, rapidly growing into a conviction, that the liberation of Africa was not, as he had always thought, a process that would come upon it from outside, but a deep transformation to be wrought by each one from within.

To all who have Africa's interests at heart, the heartfelt cry of "The Disillusioned African" will come as a powerful incentive to set about the task of 'redeeming the time' and, whether from without or from within, of building a better future for the Continent.

* Published by Langaa Publishers, 2007 and available on amazon.com

* Reviewed by Louise Cuming - Catholic University of Central Africa, Yaounde

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The Nordic Africa Institute is organising, in co-operation with Dag Hammarskjold Foundation and Council for Economic and Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) a panel debate on the topic 'Has Africa got anything to say?' Academic cultural and publishing perspectives at Frankfurt Book Fair, International Centre (Hall 5.0 D 901) , on Friday 12th Oct. 11.30-13.00.

Veteran award winning reporter Hunter-Gault blends personal memoir with reportage and analysis, to challenge stereotypical reporting of Africa by, primarily, the Western media. It is no secret that media representations of the continent are most often stereotypical or sensationalised, focusing on conflict and disease; and the author sets out to systematically paint a different portrait: one of Africa which shows good, or so-called ‘new’ news.

When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of Aids in South Africa by Didier Fassin, translated by Amy Jacobs and Gabrielle Varro

The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West and the Fight against Aids by Helen Epstein

Dibussi Tande is an Anglophone Cameroonian. At least this is the threshold on which he stands in this collection of poetry titled No Turning Back. Yet Dibussi forces us to turn back and look at the pivotal volcanic moments in Cameroon’s history, 1990-1993. During this time, the wind of change which brought down the Berlin Wall and fuelled the Perestroika train reached Cameroon.

The result was not only the launching of the Social Democratic front by Ni John Fru Ndi in 1990, an event which ushered in multi-party politics in Cameroon, but a renaissance of Anglophone Cameroon nationalism, or what became known as 'the Anglophone Cameroon question'.

After over thirty years of a hopeless marriage with La Republic du Cameroun, Anglophone Cameroonians embarked on self-determination amidst arbitrary arrests, civil unrest, death threats, including cultural and political annihilation. The crowning moment of this self-determination was the organisation of the first All Anglophone Conference in 1993.

As a student activist and budding journalist during this historic period, Dibussi captures cadences of this struggle eloquently in this collection of poetry.

As the foremost Anglophone Cameroon playwright, Bate Besong, holds 'A writer with no sense of history is like a sparrow without wings, for the writer must be the visionary of living truth'. The poems in this collection thus frame the individual in a historical sweep of events.

The collection is divided into three sections. The first section is titled Visions. It is George Ngwane, the Anglophone Cameroon Africanist scholar who opined that where the older generation in Cameroon dreamt dreams, the young men of today should see visions. Yes, Dibussi Tande has a vision of a more humane and peaceful Cameroon and Africa. But that peace will definitely come at a price. For example although in the poem, 'Gathering Clouds', the clouds are followed by 'lightening' that 'violently barks' and the speaker sees 'fury in the horizon', one is also aware of the cleansing nature of a violent down pour.

Like James Ene Henshaw’s Fortune Teller puts it in his memorable play, This is our chance, 'A mighty wind shall blow, a great rain shall fall, much harm shall be done. But out of destruction there shall be calm’. This same duality is captured in the title poem of the collection, 'No turning back'. In this poem, the poet holds that 'Stars shine brightest/when the day is darkest'. In fact, Dibussi like Henshaw’s Fortune Teller, concludes this poem with these words:

Tyranny shall glow
And blood will flow
But the dream shall live on
Until freedom is won.

Moreover, a poem like 'Detention Blues', which captures the loss of freedom and torture from soldiers with 'sadistic glee', still ends on an energetic note, 'But our cause had been noble and right'. In addition, another poem 'Liberty city' captures this hopeful vision as the poet declares, 'hold on freedom lover/Darkness would soon be over'.

But Dibussi’s vision for a better world stretches beyond Cameroon. 'El Norte', 'Black Power' and 'Fading Dream' frame the United States as a place with paradoxes that may see Martin Luther King’s dream fade away if the vision of 'Medgar, Martin and Malcolm….(continue to be) devoured'.

The second section of this collection of poems 'Tribulations' is the vantage position from which the poet can be a visionary. The titles are very revealing. The titles range from 'Plunderers', 'Disillusion', 'Betrayed', to 'Democrazy'. With these titles one can easily piece together the story of Cameroon: The ruling president for 25 years and counting, Paul Biya has plundered the nation, the people feel betrayed, disillusion is rampant and 'demoCRAZY' now reigns.

However the third section titled 'Songs of hope' brings the reader back to a vision of hope. These poems return to Dibussi’s main area of focus, Anglophone Cameroon. In the opening poem of the section, 'Broken Dreams', he considers Anglophone Cameroonians in a francophone dominated Republic of Cameroon as:

A minority deprived of its dignity
And callously cheated of its property
The helpless victims of majority rule

It is a situation which Emmanuel Doh has also called 'horizontal colonialism' and according to the revolutionary playwright and poet, Bate Besong, 'the agony of the Anglophone Cameroon question is compounded by the endless uncertainty as to whether there would ever be an end to it'. But it is precisely the end that Dibussi sees in the final poem of the collection, 'We Shall Rise Again'. This is Dibussi’s apocalyptic vision for Anglophone Cameroon:

The mighty Fako mountain
And the crumbling Bismarck fountain
Shall spit out freedom’s fiery venom
That will end this shameful serfdom;
Our Nation shall be born again
And our freedom forever regained.

This poem carries the image and vision of hope that dominates the collection. While the 'crumbling Bismarck fountain' acknowledges our crumbling colonial past, the image of 'mighty Fako Mountain' underscores the potential of postcolonial realities. But what stands out here is that Dibussi sees the hibridity embedded in these two powerful images as the foundation of a new nation, a new nation where Anglophone Cameroonians would not be treated as 'serfs' on their own land and our past will play a role in our present for a wholesome human existence.

However, besides the content, what makes this collection of poems truly memorable is the lucidity with which the poems are rendered. These poems exude the poet’s youthful exuberance at the time that they were written. The poems are very accessible and despite Dibussi’s admiration for the prolific playwright and poet, Bate Besong’s 'Soyinka style' of poetry, Dibussi instead fits into the poetic school of another prolific poet, Niyi Osundare. In an interview, Osundare explained that poems by poets of the generation before him like:

Soyinka, Okigbo, J.P Clark and Kofi Awoonor where extremely difficult, particularly those by Soyinka and Okigbo...When I started writing…I felt it was the duty of the new generation of Nigerian (African) poets to bring poetry back to the people.

With poetry collections like Dibussi’s, poetry readily returns to the people and this is worthy of our attention.

Dibussi Tande: No Turning Back: Poems of Freedom, 1990 – 1993. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa Publishers. 2007. Available from the African Books Collective and Michigan State University Press,

Works cited

Besong, Bate. “Foreword” “Anglophone Cameroon Literature: is there such a thing”. Anglophone Cameroon Writing, Ed. Lyonga, Nalova, Bole Butake and Eckhard Breitinger. Bayreuth: University of Bayreuth, 1993. 16-18

Doh, Emmanuel, “Anglophone Cameroon Literature: is there such a thing”. Anglophone Cameroon Writing, Ed. Lyonga, Nalova, Bole Butake and Eckhard Breitinger. Bayreuth: University of Bayreuth, 1993. 76-83

Henshaw, E. James. This is our chance: Plays from West Africa. Ibadan: University of London Press, 1956. 14

Ngwane George, Interview with Joyce Ashuntantang, The Herald Newspaper, 1993.

Osundare, Niyi. Interview with Osundare” Presence Africaine 147 (1988). 97

Review by Joyce Ashutantang, Ph.D. (Department of English, University of Connecticut, Greater Hartford, USA).

Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

In the early hours of February 29th 2004, democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his wife Mildred were forced to leave their home under escort of US military and summarily marched onto an unmarked plane whose destination they did not know and were not told.

An Unbroken Agony presents a detailed day by day and hour by hour account of the immediate events leading to the kidnapping and removal of President Aristide. Noted activist and one of the few truly progressive African American voices, Randall Robinson, sets down the facts of the Coup D’Etat, side by side with his own commentary. He provides the evidence that the US was actively involved while France was directly complicit in the Coup that ousted Aristide and saw him flown, along with his with wife to the Central African Republic. Once there, they were literally dumped off the plane and for all intense and purposes held prisoner.

Robinson begins with an historical overview of Haiti from “the most fateful of days” in 1492 when Christopher Columbus landed on the shores of the island he named Hispaniola but which the indigenous people called Ayiti to the only successful slave revolt in history which led to an independent nation in 1804. The struggle for emancipation by the Black Jacobins was led by Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines and denied France the most profitable slave economy in the world. Not only was Haiti the most profitable, it was also arguably the most cruel. For example slaves were slaughtered for the amusement of their French masters and on one occasion, men were bayoneted and then dogs were let loose to rip them to shreds and devour them.

The history of Haiti is often a tale of history repeating itself. In response to the creation of the “first free republic in the Americas” the US and Europe imposed a global embargo and France demanded that Haiti pay $21 billion (in today’s dollars) as compensation for loss of it’s slaves and territory. Thus right from the beginning the new country found itself in a debt which it has never recovered from. In 1915 the US occupied Haiti for 19 years and, despite independence, the wealth of the country was held in the hands of a tiny minority and remains so till today. Robinson spends a whole chapter discussing class and caste in Haiti from it’s historical roots to the present. A society that saw itself as almost “a race apart from the large majority of Haitian people”.
“In Haiti today color remains as insuperable a barrier to social progress as ever”. ….Not even the least controversial of President Aristide’s proposed social reforms were conceded by his lighter-skinned and more privileged fellow citizens. Not even his proposal to strike the word peasant as a category of citizenship from the national birth certificate for that all rural blacks bore.”

He continues with a quote from Langston Hughes:

“It was in Haiti that I first realised how class lines may cut across color lines within a race, and how dark people of the same nationality may scorn those below them”.

Robinson chronicles the rise to power of Aristide from his early days during the Duvalier years, as a young priest in La Saline, a poor neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince to the populist and much loved leader of the Lavalas family. He details the actions of the various rebel groups supported by the Haitian moneyed classes and businesses and trained and armed by the US.

“Over the course of 2003, the Bush administration broadened its assault on Haiti into a crippling, multipronged campaign. In addition to arming the Duvalierist insurgents and organising Haiti’s tiny, splintered political opposition, the administration moved apace to strangle Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, into a state of economic, social and political collapse.”

President and Mrs Aristide’s last 24 hours in Haiti are detailed hour by hour moving back and forth between their activities and the whereabouts and manoeuvring of the rebels 100km from Port-au-Prince. Robinson goes into great detail to show that neither President Aristide nor his wife changed their routine or cancelled scheduled appointments including an interview with US radio journalist Tavis Smiley. That they were under great pressure during that period is a fact but until the early hours of the morning of the 29th both insisted they were not leaving Haiti. He also shows that despite warnings from the US that Aristide was going to be shot and the rebels were on their way to Port-au-Prince, they were in fact in the area of Gonaives and not moving.

Robinson’s presentation of Aristide is almost saintly. He does not try to hide his unwavering support of Aristide and his Lavalas party. I’ve read criticisms that Robinson does not address Aristide’s governance and there is only one good guy here and that is Aristide. Whilst I agree he does not cover Aristide’s governance and that the book is partisan, I do not take that as a failing as some have said. Randall Robinson, Maxine Waters and Amy Goodman have time and time again proved their honesty and determination to see justice done. The US on the other hand has a record of lies, deceit, assassinations and attempted assassinations of leaders it does not like, support of rebels against governments it doesn’t like whether they are elected democratically or not. The US has a record of supporting undemocratic oligarchies, monarchies and dictatorships when it suits them.

Randall Robinson set out to write about the history, oppression and punishment of a nation of Black people who dared to resist White Supremacist hegemony and in this he succeeded. The purpose of the book is to chronicle the US government’s actions in the support and removal of a democratically elected President. One who was escorted in the dead of night on a US military plane by US military personnel and unceremoniously dumped in Central Africa. As Robinson points out, the irony was that his host/jailer in the Central African Republic was an unelected ruler who came to power via a coup but who was supported financially by the US and whose country was and remains under French ownership.

The book sets the record straight and acts as a counter balance to the wall of untruths and misinformation presented by the US, other Western governments and the media which continues to present the Bush government’s version of events without question.

* An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President” Basic Civitas Books, New York, 280 pages, USD $26.
* Randall Robinson: http://www.randallrobinson.com/
* Sokari Ekine is online news editor of Pambazuka News
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

The Burkina Faso government will distribute millions of free books to primary school students and launch a pilot project to give no-fee schooling in a push to curb the number of people in the country growing up without even basic education. “This is the end of the time when reading and maths textbooks are seen as luxury items for parents,” pledged Odile Bonkoungou, minister of basic education and literacy, on 27 August, launching the free books project.

African Writing is a new monthly print and online journal, published full colour in newspaper format in the mode of the Africa Review of Books or the New York Review of Books. It promises to be ‘a leading quality, literary paper…committed to reflecting writing and literary work from all the countries, literary generations and official languages of Africa...our Africa-centred but international outlook is evident in the varied perspectives, interests and subjects of the contributors’.

It is produced by a small team of writers, editors and publishers ‘...from our Oxford base we hope to become a magnet, especially, but not exclusively, for African literary talent, wherever it may be found’.

Some 35 contributors make up an impressive line-up from African and diaspora literatures. Brian Chikwava writes the story of Zimbabwe. George Ngwane comments on ‘Cameroonian literature in transition’. Uzor Maxim Uzoatu contributes an essay on Ahmadou Kourouma. New fiction comes from Helon Habila, Ike Okonta and Femi Osofisan.

Remi Raji, the award winning poet and cultural activist pays tribute to Niyi Osundare ‘the most important trailblazer of the sub-tradition of tabloid poetry in Nigerian literary culture’: ‘I celebrate the faith, the commitment of your art, the persistence of your vision’. A rich poetry section includes the work of Tanure Ojaide, Femi Oyebode and Harry Garuba.

The journal includes a useful survey of 50 African writers of the post-1960, Achebe and independence generation: ‘the writers of a disillusioned Africanist enterprise, who are not naïve about international realities but who have become more hesitant about blaming outsiders because they have experienced a lot of enemies within…the writers of the internet age, the age of theory, globalization, exile and its fractured identities’, whose ‘peculiarly alienating experience of recent African history has made them the first generation of African writers to live and write mostly outside Africa’, a statement characteristic of the editorial feel of the journal overall.

The lead essay confidently deals with the shambolic gestures of the British to deal honestly with the historical narrative of slavery: ‘it has to be remembered that trans-Atlantic slavery went on for about four centuries… Together with aspects of the colonial experience that followed, the devastating impact on Africa of slavery cannot be understated – in much the same way, as you cannot successfully seek to diminish the advantages it gave to the slaving nations’.

African Writing strikes an important note then, situating the subject of slavery firmly within British post-colonial African literature and history, where there is still a tendency to think of it as an ‘American’ subject - of little concern, Britain’s role as the largest trader in African slaves notwithstanding… It is opportune moment for such a new publication from a growing confident and articulate younger generation of Africans and peoples of African descent no longer prepared to put up with the crass racism and crude distortions of spun historical narrative in official, academic and media contexts.

A couple of small suggestions to the editors: include longer biographies of the contributors on the contents page: celebrate your writers. Women are also underrepresented, although writing by women is present in a feature article on Femrite, the Ugandan women writers’ collective; Chika Unigwe’s fascinating piece on being elected to a political position in Belgium; and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s recent success in the Orange Prize is covered in a useful literary news section.

African Writing has announced itself as a serious literary news journal, deserving of wide international dissemination. One senses the fighting spirit and sheer bloody mindedness behind its achievement ‘…we hear it say often that Africa can’t be done. We say with African Writing that Africa can be done, and we wish to prove over time that Africa can be done quite brilliantly, successfully.’

– Well, all of us at Pambazuka News can echo that! To all of you at African Writing, we send our warm congratulations. We wish you, the editors and your authors the very best of luck.

Contacts for submissions, subscriptions, review and media enquiries:

publisher (at) african-writing (dot) com
editor (at) african-writing (dot) com
subscribe (at) african-writing (dot) com

ISSN: 1754-6664
Issue 1: August 2007, 40pp
Published by Fonthouse Ltd., Oxford, UK.
Subscriptions: £18/ €30/US$40, individual; £30/ €50/US$40, institutional.

It was as if my CD player had developed a heart, a passion, a resonant emotion of its own. How, I thought to myself, can an instrument such as the double bass, usually lost as the background in the orchestra, so rarely heard as an instrument in its own right, play with such passion and meaning? And how was it that it has such meaning for me, largely unschooled in Western classical music? I don’t pretend to have even heard of the Italian romantic composer Bottesini, so I can’t say whether it was just the music that touched me. But I also sensed that it was the player, the South African musician Leon Bosch, who was reaching out to me, across years of experience of repression and suffering – that was what made listening to this an extraordinary experience.

‘I have no doubt that the double bass and I were made for each other,’ writes Bosch on the CD sleeve. ‘- we’re completely inseparable and the music we make together brings me unbridled joy! It has always been my mission in life to defend the cause of the underdog and my passion for the double bass, the ‘Cinderella’ of instruments, will never die.

‘Every note I play on the instrument embraces my life experiences, both in Europe and in my South African homeland. I’ve known love and comradeship, but also witnessed the epitome of hatred. I’ve felt both shining optimism and deep despair. I’ve benefited from the pleasures of civilised society, but also seen the destructive impact of poverty and ignorance. I’ve been privileged to stand side by side with people who’ve lost their lives in the defence of their principles.’

As a 15-year-old protestor in Cape Town Bosch was arrested, detained and tortured by the apartheid regime. After a trial at which he was found not-guilty as a result of being defended by Abdullah Omar (subsequently Minister of Justice in the new dispensation), Bosch wanted to study law, but was denied a place at University as a consequence of his political activities. And that made him turn to music, first at the South African College of Music and then the Royal Northern College of Music in the UK.

There is a long tradition of music as a place for protest and politics. We are used to hearing jazz, reggae, hip-hop, and similar forms of music expressing the struggle against oppression. To hear the same through classical music is rare, and even rarer was to hear the soul of the double bass sing of the struggle and of love. This is something to be experienced. Add this one to your collection.

We hope to feature extracts of this music in future Pambazuka News podcasts. Look out for these!

* Virtuoso Double Bass: Giovanni Bottesini 1821-1889 is published by Meridian Records, 2007 (www.meridian-records.co.uk)

* Firoze Manji is editor of Pambazuka News and director of Fahamu

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/