Reviewed by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

In 1977, Tejumola Olaniyan narrates, Nigerian soldiers armed with AK 47’s invaded a musical concert by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. The purpose was “To arrest the music” as per the order issued by the commanding officer . The officer meant for the soldiers to seize the musical instruments and disrupt the concert. But this particular phrase, Olaniyan, by way of introducing the book, tells the reader would not leave his mind. “It [the phrase] reveals, for example, the peculiar character of the relations between art, specifically oppositional music, and a postcolonial African state.” By shining light on the contradictions of the post-colonial state, the artist who during the fight for independence was a nationalist ally quickly became an enemy.

To further underline the relationship of the artist and his or her art to the post-colonial government, the phrase “Arrest the Music” recalls the issuance of an arrest order for Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s fictional Matigari whom the government understood to be a real life trouble maker. It might also recall a time when a highly placed Kenyan government official became so exasperated with a trouble maker called Karl Marx that he was quoted as wondering why the government couldn’t just arrest him. After all he was easy to identify, a long white beard and a heavy head with white hair. This for all we know might have been the criteria used to arrest and detain Wole Soyinka in Nigeria during the Biafran War. The post-colonial authorities ban, detain, kill and exile efficiently but their bumbling efforts do provide the artist with potent occasions for satire.

Olaniyan does several things at the same time. He captures the movement of Fela from an artist who imitates to an artist who has found his own distinctive voice that becomes Afro Beat. If Fela was many things, he was first a musician committed to developing his craft and its form. Olaniyan also traces the movement of Fela from an artist who at first created art for its sake, to entertain or for that matter for money, then to one who merely raised questions of morality and finally to an artist who was socially committed.

It is the same movement give or take a stage that musicians who enter the fray of liberation politics undergo. Improvisation of what becomes one’s calling is not just peculiar to musicians, before they became revolutionaries. Fanon was a psychiatrist, Che trained to be a doctor and Mandela was a practicing lawyer.

Olaniyan sees Fela’s ideology as a “matrix” of radical black nationalism which “opened out to a much more expansive Pan-Africanism and Afro-centrism” and a “sturdy partisanship for the oppressed lower classes that could be described as socialist in orientation” and an “irrepressible libertarianism that frequently tries to be the anchor and articulator of the other two” (76). Fela’s solidarity with “the oppressed lower classes” was complete. “He lived in their midst, trumpeted their sounds to national attention, experienced their brutalization at the hands of official lawlessness, and even shared their poverty” (81).

But Fela, as Olaniyan recognizes, is also fraught with contradictions and tragic flaws. As has often been the case, women are understood as the repositories and keepers of culture. To protect African culture from Western culture, African women have to be cleansed of lip-stick and mini skirts, circumcised, kept away from schools, driven from politics and domesticated. The domestication is done either through brute force or through the pedestal of veneration where the woman becomes a the symbol of a pure Africaness, the African queen.

The effect of either suppression or veneration is the same – African women are silenced in both the private and public spheres. In this bid to protect African culture from Western culture through the African woman, the kind of cultural nationalism that Fela adopts and propagates either suppresses or venerates the African woman. Lady, one of Fela’s most popular songs, understands the struggle for equality between the African male and woman as being infected with Westernization. Conversely, a domesticity where the African man reigns supreme over the African woman becomes African culture.

Because Olaniyan actually vocalizes some of the contradictions that Fela could not, Arrest the Music becomes in part a critique of national liberation ideologies and politics that attempt to authenticate and restore a version of African culture that rests on the suppression of the African woman.

Olaniyan is also careful not to fall into the pitfalls that a lot of critics analyzing African art fall into – the pitfall of seeing African art as always functional. In this rubric, an African artist pursues truth alone and beauty is incidental. In offering a critique of Things Fall Apart, critics first see it as a response to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. On the other hand, Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters, which in part deals with the imagination and the artist’s role in newly independent states is for the most left on the wayside of African literary criticism. In both instances, the art of how the story is weaved is not part of the critic’s concern. In short very few critics deal with the African artist as an artist who is first moved by images and sounds and carefully works to articulate them.

Yet the truth of it is very simple. Music perhaps more than written literature, has to first move the listener and that happens to the extent the artist uses time, space and rhythm. In Fela’s music, Olaniyan suggests, space and rhythm are just as important as the lyrics. Fela, as Olaniyan reminds the reader, is a musician’s musician; that is a musician who other musicians listen to and learn from. This in my opinion is the highest recognition an artist can receive from his or her colleagues. What happens is that the search for his musical voice, which he calls an African voice, becomes indistinguishable from his search for a political voice which attempts to articulate a beauty and ugliness peculiar to Africa. In other words, it is as if the political and musical quests take turns leading. The political leads him to another note and beat and that new beat and note leads him to another political understanding. Until at the end of it all, the listener cannot distinguish between the two. The end result of Fela’s journey is that he creates a genre of music that before him did not exist. And Afro-Beat in its own way becomes a language that mediates between Africans.

In Limuru, Kenya where I grew up, I had a friend named Joe who had the most extensive music collection in town and a music system to match. Every now and then, my brother, I and friends would descend on him to listen to his records. Inevitably we would end up dancing to Fela. Many years later, after a conference on African languages at Boston University, we (participants from all over the continent, Diaspora and the US) relaxed with Fela in Victor Manfredi’s house, himself a New York born American whose intellectual labor is on behalf of Fela’s Nigeria. In a lot of ways Fela’s music is borderless. This is not to say it is an abstract universal; I would suggest it seeks out the marginalized of the post-colonial state wherever they are and gives them “sound”.

There is a way in which, as Olaniyan suggests, Fela is cosmopolitan. Olaniyan writes that given the “circumstances of his socialization and resocialization, he cannot not be cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world” (167). I prefer the term citizen of the world because implicit in the term is a demand to be accorded human and state rights no matter where you are. At the same time it does not deny home and therefore one can be a world citizen at home. I think perhaps more than cosmopolitanism, world citizen allows for solidarity across borders whereas cosmopolitanism applies more to subjects from the ‘Third’ World who are trying to make a home in the West.

Nigeria to an extent has survived due to the resiliency of the Nigerian people, given a succession of governments that in the words of Fanon have been “good for nothing”. Ken Saro-Wiwa, a poet who was hanged by Abacha in 1996, was in a long of line of artists who have been and continue to be devoured by the post-colonial State. But like Ken Saro-Wiwa whose son has picked up his pen and activism, Fela has Femi Kuti. When I saw Femi in concert in Detroit in the summer of 2002, he opened by stating boldly that he does not apologize for his music being political. Detroit couldn’t have been a more fitting city for Afro Beat. It is a city that has seen its own share of civil strife, economic gutting and racist policies that have left the African American without any economic recourse, paralleling the plight of the Ogoni people and their exploitation by Shell.

The last chapter therefore fittingly gives a critical appraisal of Fela’s heirs to Afro-beat and Afro-beat politics like Femi Kuti. Nigeria since the Biafra War has seen its share of near implosions but none have looked as dire as the ones we are witnessing today. The government remains bent on controlling the resources. But the people of the Delata Region are tired and unable to continue with the old ways of exploitation of their labor and natural resources; they have risen up in violent opposition. It is well known that Nigeria by the year 2025 will be providing 25% of US oil which can easily turn it into an Iraq. These new Afro-Beat voices become all the more critical now.

Most writers and critics will agree Olaniyan has accomplished a most difficult task. To use words to convey the energy of music, the beat, the sound of the trumpet and the space between notes could not have been easy. But he does this seamlessly. He thereby offers a beautiful and charged translation of Fela’s music into words which in turn become a critical composition of his own. In this, that I can only call an intellectual biography of Fela, Olaniyan has not only offered a new way of looking at the man and his music, but new critical tools and concepts with which to analyze the African artist in the post-colonial state. To talk about Fela Kuti then is to talk about the state of post-colonial Africa and the artist who gives sound to the people, and the people who in turn give sound to the artist.

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A book about alleged British atrocities against Kenyan Mau Mau independence fighters has won this year's US Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. Caroline Elkins wins $10,000 for her book "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya". She says that many thousands of Kenyans died in British detention camps during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s. Her research also suggests British colonial officials exaggerated the number of people killed by the rebels.

In the museum map for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wangechi Mutu's work is listed as: "Site-specific gallery installation by up-and-coming artist. Visitors may find certain works in this exhibition challenging. Parents/guardians are advised to preview the exhibition before sharing it with children."

One might be forgiven for thinking that Mutu, born and raised in Kenya, now based in New York, has already "up and come". Her work resides in museums of modern and contemporary art in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. It has been exhibited at prestigious art museums and galleries in London, Paris and Tokyo. It has received critical attention in numerous glossy journals and publications.

"Beauty" and "horror" are the two words most frequently used about the Mutu opus. She creates collaged images of women, using clippings from fashion magazines, news magazines, and porn magazines (which feature, she's asserted, the most realistic brown skin). Smooth shiny arms that end in manicured talons, sexy stiletto-shod legs, emerge from bodies which are continents of mineral, wood, plant, forest, flesh, rock, jewel, feather. Close up, we see that each of these bodies is mutilated in some way – amputated, pierced, shattered, bleeding.

"There are elements and references to violence, but my work is not about violence," says Mutu. "It concerns what brings about violence, and ideas of power – female power, how history is proscribed or worked out on the bodies of women."

The installation I viewed in San Francisco is entitled "The Chief's Lair is a Bloody Mess". One wall of the white box gallery space has been gouged with dozens of small holes, like gunshot wounds, tinged with red pigment. Three chairs dominate the center of the room, poised on extended spindly stilt legs. A bottle of wine hangs over each one, drips on the chair and spills on the floor, drying to sticky odorous bloodstains. These "thrones" are a satire on Western global hegemony: "A leader can sit on his seat and tell people to go out and fight the wars he has created." Yet the ease with which the same seats could be toppled, as they wobble on their perches, suggests the precarious base of military dominance.

In the collage "Bloody Old Head Games", a tiny figure, half-female, half-bird, perches on the elbow of a gigantic standing woman with scars and dark patches where we would expect to see breasts. A pistol in the hand of the avian woman points directly into the skull of the main figure, spews an explosion of red and brown particles. The eye moves down the picture to a girdle of pubic hair that morphs into long dangling strands of a grass skirt, over a leg raised as if to dance. Mutu plays a head game with the viewer, challenges our preconceptions, seduces and frightens, lures and repels.

The work of an African artist exhibited in the Western world is never free of imposed expectations of "authenticity". San Francisco museum curator, Tara McDowell, says of Mutu's work: "Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, she creates work that reflects her African identity and heritage as well as a politics of place with which she is deeply familiar, having spent years exposed to the mutilations that are common in parts of Africa debilitated by civil strife and the diamond trade."

Wangechi Mutu was a schoolmate of mine at Loreto Convent, a private Catholic girls' school in Nairobi. The mutilations referred to may be common in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Congo – they did not figure in the experience of upper middle-class Nairobi schoolgirls in the 1980s. While Mutu admits to a "Catholic-obsessed mind", and clearly draws on the iconography of the ritualized sacrificial body, we see at work in McDowell's comments the unexamined racism of "collective representation". Anyone hailing from the African continent is assumed to have first-hand experience of every aspect of the social, political and economic history of every region of the continent. This is the only way their art can be legitimate. Unlike Western artists, Africans may not address a subject simply because it engages them – it must reflect some aspect of their own heritage.

If Mutu's work does indeed reflect a politics of place, it is a universal place she explicates herself: "I position myself as a violator, a person who destroys. There's something horribly satisfying about it. People have to clean up after you. Someone has to come around to heal the wall. And it takes a lot to repair. It's also about creating that cycle of responsibility that's part of the performance of this piece. Women's bodies […] are like sensitive charts - they indicate how a society feels about itself."

It takes creative courage to gouge out a white gallery wall. It takes intellectual and artistic courage to recontextualize mass-produced images of the female body in ways that may still be misinterpreted. Mutu's work has been reproduced on magazine covers with captions such as "Fashion and Art", or worse, "Sex Sells". But there is a deeply satisfying aesthetic fused with a radical politics here. A holy mess that draws us into the best kind of head game - one that forces us to re-examine our conditioned responses to the imagery that surrounds us.

* Visit for more information. Shailja Patel is a Kenyan Indian poet and spoken word artist. Visit www.shailja.com

* Send comments to [email protected]

Reviewed by Francis B. Nyamnjoh

The Number very broadly articulates the democratization of South African society since the end of apartheid in 1994, and the impact of this transition on prison communities structured on the principles of apartheid and the discipline and punish logic of prisons everywhere. In the words of the author, the book demonstrates “why generations of young black men lived violent lives under apartheid, and why generations more will live violently under democracy” (p.11).

Using the life of William Steenkamp/Magadien Wentzel, Steinberg demonstrates the proximity of the history of crime to the central fault lines that have shaped and continue to shape South African society. In William Steenkamp/Magadien, Steinberg sees the sort of man he wanted to write about, especially as: “I was frightened of penning a story about hell; I wanted to find a redemptive tale, to write about someone who had journeyed to the heart of the inferno but had come out the other side.” (p.27-28). The Number thus recounts Steinberg’s and Magadien’s journey into the latter’s past (p.44) Thus informed by how William Steenkamp/Magadien Wentzel has come to understand his own past and why, The Number, a highly researched book rich in prison ethnography and organizational sociology, is as much about history as it is about memory. Two themes have caught my attention: (a) democratization and (b) identity.

On Prisons and Democracy in South Africa

In post-apartheid South Africa where the rhetoric of equality of humanity, democracy peace and reconciliation are the order of the day, personal and communal identities are increasingly seeking representation for a complexity and plurality that the rigid policing of identities in the past had rendered invisible to the insensitive bureaucracies of legality and legitimacy. Considered as the most outlawed and subhuman of dehumanized blackness under apartheid when it was commonplace for white men to play out “their fantasies that blacks were animals, and in the process brought out the animals in themselves” (p.10), the black prison population has not been indifferent to the democracy bandwagon, often appropriating it to reinterpret the past, justify their actions and dream new futures of tolerance, belonging and conviviality.

Even the prison administration, used to disciplining and punishing, would have to re-invent itself through a revalorization of black humanity and a more empathic and contextualised understanding of crime and punishment. Both of these dimensions are captured through the story of a prisoner widely known under the false name of William Steenkamp [name in a stolen ID book (p.303)], who joined the 28s [one of the three competing and complementary prison gangster groups – The Number] in the late 1970s while still in his teens, and whom Jonny Steinberg, author of The Number, first met in October 2002, when he was about to be released from Pollsmoor prison.

The winds of change in tune with democracy and the contradictions arising from it in South African prisons are well epitomized by two coloured people at the centre of The Number - Jansen, the new administrator of Pollsmoor, whose philosophy and approach to prisoners Steinberg describes below, and Steenkamp, Steinberg’s main informant:

“He [Jansen] came armed with a philosophy as laudable as it was naïve: an evangelical belief that all men’s souls are naturally gentle, that only the cruelty of history had made them bad. He identified with the gangsters behind the bars. The humiliations he had suffered as a coloured warder working in apartheid’s jails were the same humiliations, he thought, that had turned many Cape Flats men into monsters…” (pp.24-25).

But both Jansen (as concerns democratising South African prison management) and democratization of the wider society face formidable hurdles, as the reality remains schizophrenic and pregnant with rhetoric.

It is therefore little surprise that Pollsmoor prison is “a world nourished by stories” as “weapons, tools, [and] the stuff of action”, and a place where prisoners want to unload their stories into a journalist’s notebook, organized around the master story of Nongoloza, the God of South African prisoners (p.17-18). Thanks to the mythical feats of Nongoloza, the prison Number gangs – the 26s, 27s and 28s - had demonstrated courage in the struggle against the indignities of apartheid.

A central theme of the book is that to change for the better, prisoners need the active cooperation of the outside world, a concern which William Steenkamp articulates superbly in the following words:

“It is no use us prisoners changing…if the world outside is still the same. You are still labeled a criminal when you leave, which means you don’t get a job. And inside here, we are told when to eat, sleep, walk, exercise, play sport, when to watch TV and when to phone our families. How can you expect a person enslaved in this mentality to have responsibility on the outside? That is why we always come back.” (p.29)

That is why prisoners consider the state and social structures - “the system” - “a factory for criminals”, making “criminals out of decent people” (35). It is also why The Number, whose death prisoners seeking redemption may wish, remains very strong even after democracy came in 1994, not only in prison, but also in the streets of cities and townships across South Africa (pp.38-39). Parallel to this, is the resilience of racism, despite the rhetoric of transformation and celebration of The Rainbow Nation.

On Identity – What is in a Name?

William Steenkamp, who has “served five or six sentences over the last 20 years, each time under a different name” (p.40), was, in the words of Steinberg, “a hell of identities not yet erased, and identities not yet formed.”(p.43). He captures his identity crisis (or should I say wealth) thus:

“My mother, she is the Wentzel in my life; she is a Muslim. My foster-mother, in whose house I grew up, her name is Mekka; she is a Christian. When I was a child I went to church. I sang in the choir. When I was told who my real family was, I was sent to mosque. So you can say I am confused. My father was a Christian. But I am not sure if he was really my father. If he was my father, why didn’t they give me his surname? Why Wentzel? Why my mother’s name?”

“I want to know who my father is, and when I find out, I want to take his name. And then my sons must take his name. JR and Steenkamp must disappear. I owe it to my children that they know who they are. And to their children and the children after that. I have fucked up my life. Why must I also fuck up the lives of children who have not yet been born? Why must they wander around nameless like me?” (pp.40-41).

To get a job with Mr Morris, he had to work under the name of William Steenkamp, a stolen ID he had assumed. But the troubles of going through with a false name were enormous, as the identity of ‘William Steenkamp’ haunted his work and made life at home intolerable.

“Do you understand what it means not to have a name? […] You can take it for granted that you are Jonny Steinberg. You’ve never even had to think about what it means. It means you are a Jew, that your grandparents came to South Africa in x year, that your father was born in y year. That you know your name means you will never have to sleep in a gutter or wander the streets like a stroller. You belong.” (p.302).

Uncomfortable with living a lie, “I wanted to go back to jail so this lie would end”, “I couldn’t live this life” (p.41) “I need to be Magadien Wentzel to live a proper life” (p.42). But there was the fear that this might never happen: “I have forgotten my own life … I was too fucking angry to take notice of my own life. I’m scared I will never get it back.” (p.44) And he is right to be scared, as it was all up to “a bunch of faceless bureaucrats, shifting through a biography that had been reduced to a slime dossier” to determine which of his lives was really his, often with an arbitrariness that shattered whatever sense of self he was trying to cultivate. (p.289).

The encounter between Mr Morris and Steenkamp demonstrates that reconciliation and empathy are possible between the world of crime and that of order, between imprisonment and freedom, and between communities rigidly divided and at conflict under apartheid, if only everyone in post-apartheid South Africa could make an effort to see the humanity in the other. Despite Steenkamp’s dishonesty, Mr Morris, a white South African, is able to see the goodness in him.

As for Steenkamp,

“I was brought here to serve this sentence because of what I did to Mr Morris…I loved them, you know, Mr and Mrs Morris. But a piece of me always held back. I would do stupid things to hurt him. I would smash the bakkie on purpose and then blame it on someone else. I would break his glass…A couple of years ago, I phoned Farieda. She said there was a new boss now; the Morrises went bankrupt. I walked back to my cell in a daze. I put my head on the pillow and cried. You see, I knew it was because of me, because of the glass I stole from him. I had destroyed him. He offered me love and I spat on him and destroyed him…When I get out, I want to work and save and try to pay him back. I know it will take me a long time. If he’s not there I can pay back his children. This is one debt I need to repay.” (p.288)

Finally released into the ‘normal’ world where he hopes to re-integrate himself into a ‘normal’ life as a ‘normal’ citizen of the now ‘normal’ South Africa, William Steenkamp/Magadien Wentzel comes “to learn that one cannot reinvent oneself without reinventing the people around whom one has lived a life”, for identity is not just how one sees and positions oneself, and also how others recognize and represent one. Identity, to make sense, is a negotiated reality.

Conclusion

This is a fascinating book with a compelling story told mostly from the standpoint of gangsters in prison who are more used to being disciplined and punished, than being given a voice to share their predicaments with the wider world. Steinberg has succeeded in doing what most writers cannot manage, being able to share, in a creative and irresistible narrative, the results of scientific enquiry or journalistic investigation with the wider reading public whose primary concern is a good story well told. The style is that of a master storyteller, but the content remains factual and sociologically outstanding. The Number is a major contribution to the peace and reconciliation, and to the crystallization of renegotiated identity essentialisms that should come from an understanding of all the facets and nuances of South African society past and present. Through his outstanding craftsmanship Jonny Steinberg has given a voice to the desperately voiceless in a new South Africa where every voice matters.

* Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Head of Publications and Dissemination at CODESRIA

* Please send comments to

During the Tech forum in Kumasi, Ghana, people showcased some of their work. Henry Addo showcased his Webmark site, a free (open source) online bookmark manager. Henry uses mostly cybercafes to access the web, and used to list his bookmarks on one of the computers in the cybercafe. When he found someone using the computer with his bookmarks, he used to get annoyed. Out of this need, he decided to develop an online bookmark manager.

The International Criminal Court has run into serious problems with its first big case - the situation in northern Uganda. There is no doubt that appalling crimes have occurred here. Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army have abducted thousands, many of them children, and have systematically tortured, raped, maimed and killed their victims. Nevertheless, the ICC has confronted outright hostility from a wide range of groups. This book argues that much of the antipathy to the ICC is based upon ignorance and misconception.

Alfredo Jaar's "Rwanda Project: 1994–2000" is a series of photography-based installation works derived from his experiences in Rwanda. He first travelled there in the summer of 1994 while the genocide was still ongoing and overwhelmingly ignored by the international community. It is estimated that almost one million people were killed over a period of three months, from April–July 1994. The Rwanda Project attempts to counter and transform the conventions of photojournalism, which frequently objectifies violence through unmediated images of victimization. Alternatively, Jaar reverses the lens' eye to focus on the eyes of the witnesses and the hauntingly beautiful landscape in which this massacre was enacted as a means of eliciting an emotional response from the viewer.

Hailed as "First Rate" and "Inspiring!" by the New York Times, Children of Uganda is an internationally touring dance and music troupe, composed of 22 young Ugandans aged 6 to 20. All the members of the company have lost one or both parents to AIDS. They live in homes and boarding schools supported by the Texas-based Uganda Children's Charity Foundation (UCCF). Children of Uganda was originally founded to teach orphaned children the songs, dances and stories that were in danger of being lost, as AIDS continues to shred the social and cultural fabric of Ugandan communities.

On opening the program for the Children of Uganda performance at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center, I was confronted by these stark facts:

- There are 2.4 million orphans living in Uganda today.

- They make up 10% of Uganda's total population, 20% of Uganda's population under 14.

- 1.1 million of them have lost one or both parents to AIDS.

- AIDS kills over 200 people a day in Uganda.

Yerba Buena's marketing materials say: "But what if the response to this heartbreak was dance and drumming, light and joy? Can art heal wounds this deep? Sometimes it's riskier to respond with joy than sorrow; the Children of Uganda invite you to take that courageous leap."

Does this make you feel a little queasy? Should anyone be required to respond to tragedy on this scale with "dance and drumming, light and joy?"

"People may think they're going to feel bad, but what they see is the antithesis of that," says Alexis Hefley, Texan American founder of UCCF. "It's an amazing production about hope and ethnic dance. It's happy and inspiring." Hefley was a banker until 10 years ago, when she visited Uganda in search of "meaning and community". She is a staunch advocate of the abstinence programs promoted by the Bush administration and Uganda's first lady, Janet Museveni. "Abstaining until you're married, then staying faithful to one partner is the most effective way to prevent HIV transmission."

The program states that Children of Uganda serve as "goodwill ambassadors for the 2.4 million orphans living in Uganda today" and "increase awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis in their homeland."

Perhaps I'm cynical, but haven't Bono, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt already cornered that market? Will greater "awareness" and "goodwill" give Africa ownership and control of its own resources, from oil to diamonds to soil to water? Create just, equitable terms of trade? Supply cheap antiretroviral drugs and accessible healthcare?

The financial goal of the tour is to raise $1.5 million for UCCF's orphan support programs, in donations and gifts from individuals and institutions. The foundation does not receive money from tickets sales of the tour, nor do any of the performers get paid. Financial statements and performance ratings for UCCF can be found on the site of independent charity evaluator:

To meet this goal, the young performers are on a 5-month, coast-to-coast tour of the US, during which they will play 31 cities in 20 states.

"If someone is tired, they don't have to dance," says Hefley. "We make sure to build in 2 days off for each 5 days of performance." The exception to this is a New York run of 7 shows in 6 days, but according to Hefley, "There are rest days going into that run, and afterwards."

A teacher travels with the troupe to monitor the education of the primary level children. The students are also given academic assignments by their teachers in Uganda. But the tour itself "is educational," according to Hefley. She cites trips to Disneyland and Universal Studios as examples of activities arranged for the children in their time off stage. And what are they like on stage?

The show is breathtaking. The New York Times is right to call it "first rate". Striking set and costumes, lighting design that enhances without dominating. The program offers the audience a spectrum of music and dance, drawing from all regions of Uganda, as well as material from Kenya, Rwanda, and the Congo. It showcases an impressive range of East African instruments, vocal styles, and complex, compelling movement.

The performers combine technical excellence with controlled exuberance to infuse the intricacy and grace of the dances with youthful power. Director Peter Kasule creates a show that allows individual personalities to emerge, from the showmanship of crowd-pleasing 6-year-old soloist, Miriam Namala to the dignity, superb athleticism, and reflective depth of the older dancers. Kasule's own charisma and stage presence are central to the show. At 24, he is a veteran performer of several Children of Uganda tours, and is currently on leave from his studies in music technology in Santa Fe. As narrator and master of ceremonies, he commands the auditorium, and the audience. He charms, beguiles and teases them into a sequence of arm movements, clapping out a harmonic rhythm, chanting in Luganda.

There are moments of delightful, subversive departure from the "traditional." As when we are told, gravely, that women were never allowed to touch African drums, as a drum touched by a woman would "lose its sound." In the very next piece, the boys abdicate the stage, the girls come on, and take over - on the drums.

So is Children of Uganda an uplifting and joyful experience? Without question.

Is it a good thing for American audiences to see these gifted and energetic performers, and to be educated about the context in which they make art? Absolutely.

Will the $1.5 million that the tour aims to raise, improve the lives of a small number of Ugandan children orphaned by AIDS? Yes.

Is it a valuable experience for young performers in any field to tour internationally, to perform on world class stages to packed houses, with state of the art production technology to showcase their talent? Of course.

Then why does Children of Uganda leave me with more questions than answers?

Consider, if you will, a parallel scenario for the US. Hurricane Katrina left 1.5 million Americans displaced, homeless, destitute. Devastated the rich cultures and communities of the African-American South. Thousands of children were orphaned. Suppose some benevolent well-meaning Nigerian banker, in search of meaning and life-purpose, decided to organize a global performing tour of orphans from Louisiana. The Children of New Orleans would tour the US, coast to coast, doing traditional dances of Creole and black Southern heritage. The tour would raise money for their own clothing, shelter, education, and the support of their "brothers and sisters" in orphanages.

Would America be able to confront itself in the shape of the Children of New Orleans? To accept that the tragedy of a natural disaster, combined with a criminal abandonment of black citizens by their own government, could become a "happy inspiring production about hope and ethnic dance?" Would the middle-class, theater-going audiences of America sit through "dance and drumming, light and joy", and emerge uplifted rather than unbearably disturbed? Or would they tremble with the exposure to their own indifference and complicity?

Dance does not destroy death or erase grief. Drums do not dissolve genocidal tragedies created from criminal indifference, corporate greed, centuries of exploitation. That the children of Uganda can still find a language of joy in their bodies, articulate it with grace and power, share it with such incredible generosity, should be a source of deepest shame and discomfort to audiences of the developed world. It should not leave them feeling good.

* Visit www.childrenofuganda.org for more information. Shailja Patel is a Kenyan Indian poet and spoken word artist. Visit www.shailja.com

* Send comments to [email protected]

Connie Ngondi-Houghton
Allavida £10 (outside East Africa)
ISBN 1904167101

There is a dearth of literature on philanthropy in Africa, and this pioneering work on East Africa by Connie Ngondi-Houghton should be warmly welcomed. Ngondi-Houghton starts by looking at what is meant by the term philanthropy, arguing that it has to be understood in the context of the region and its history. She believes that there is an indigenous tradition of giving, ‘an economy of affection’, which has survived the turmoil of colonization, post-colonial compromises, and the devastating results of imposed neoliberal economic policies.

The book then deals at some length with formal philanthropy in the region as it is today. She considers some of the new initiatives such as the Africa Philanthropy Initiative, the East Africa Grantmakers Association, Allavida, the Centre for the Promotion of Philanthropy and Social Responsibility (Ufadhili) and Resource Alliance, many of them driven by non-indigenous institutions. The last two chapters focus on the challenges ahead for philanthropy in East Africa, chiefly the need to link institutionalized forms of philanthropy with the long-standing traditional forms. The final chapter provides a set of recommendations on future research that is needed.

The author’s central argument is that conventional (or Western) definitions of philanthropy have ignored the rich ‘traditional African spirit of community, reciprocity and mutual aid based on the philosophy of ubuntuism’. This spirit is, she argues, ‘the spring of philanthropy among the majority in East Africa’. Many of us working in the region recognize these many forms of generosity that inspire and refresh one’s belief in humanity. I had hoped that the book would at last provide me with documentary evidence to silence the sceptics and those who hold a narrow definition of philanthropy. Unfortunately, there is little data about the scale and impact of such practices. This is a shame as I think that its absence seriously weakens her thesis.

Ngondi-Houghton argues that philanthropy should be seen as something embracing a spectrum of social and individual activities. The opening chapter begins by asserting that philanthropy is a term encompassing activities ‘motivated by the love for humanity and human advancement, and targeted towards the ends of human survival, dignity and fulfilment of all people’. It begins, she says, with the act of giving. She goes on to draw a distinction between charity and philanthropy that I found particularly helpful. Charity, she says, ‘can ameliorate’, but philanthropy ‘seeks to root out causes of poverty, suffering and inequality … it inspires and promotes individual growth as it nourishes human welfare.’

This distinction, however, is lost sight of in the remainder of the book. Indeed, what she mainly writes about is charitable giving. As the book develops, she falls increasingly shy of defining what she means by philanthropy, offering instead examples of the activities it embraces, from microfinance to scout camps, from trade union solidarity to NGOs making money from providing services where the state has retrenched in response to externally driven economic policies.

‘Philanthropy should be what the people of East Africa say it is for them,’ she asserts. While this may be different to how the West would define philanthropy, neither the Western nor the African definition is superior. ‘When viewed this way,’ she says, ‘the issue of spectrum of models, and whether a model at one end of the spectrum better deserves the name philanthropy than one at the other end, ceases to be significant.’ But the issue is not, surely, an argument about the absolute or universal definition of the term philanthropy, but rather about whether the term is used consistently and in such a way that its meaning can be communicated with certainty to the reader.

That said, I found the book stimulated me to reflect on many issues about giving and philanthropy in the region. It could have been much longer, giving the author more space to develop and explain some of her ideas. As it stands, it is full of thought-provoking observations that give you only a taster of insights that, frustratingly, are not developed further. I would also have like to have seen much more information than was provided about philanthropy in Uganda and Tanzania – the book focuses overly on Kenya. Nevertheless, it represents a major milestone for the region, a sentinel starting point for the development of a much-needed literature on the subject.

* Firoze Manji is Executive Director of Fahamu and editor of Pambazuka News. He can be contacted at firoze (at) fahamu.org

This article first appeared in Alliance Volume 11 Number 1 March 2006
To order: Within East Africa, contact Allavida, Email [email][email protected]
Tel +254 020 310 526

Rest of the world, visit

The purpose of this post is to ensure that bookings of Interactive Themba Theatre Performances are maintained in schools, and all follow-up work is achieved effectively and appropriately. The office is in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

War between Villages, one of four documentaries in 'The African Dream' series, is about sport in Africa and shows the annual football competition between villages in Senegal. As so much hangs on the sport, including the honour of the villages themselves, villagers turn for assistance to spiritual methods of support, not wanting to rely only on their own prowess and ability. Football on One Leg Reportage shows how the people of Sierra Leone in general are trying to rebuild their lives after the recent devastating civil war there and this film shows how a special group of youngsters are turning to football.

Lines of Attitude spans geographical latitudes in its exploration of media and human rights issues through the work of leading graffiti artists from South Africa, Kenya and the United Kingdom. The project partners the British Council with leading South African graffiti artists Faith 47 and Falko, bringing them collaboratively together with legendary UK graffiti artists Dreph and Mode2, as well as Kenya's Phiks. Through murals, workshops, publications and an exhibition, Lines of Attitude embraces the positive, professional side of this popular street art form, offering an alternative viewpoint to the singular perception of graffiti as vandalism. Embracing the particular resonance of graffiti in contemporary urban youth culture, the project engages young people in an exciting, active dialogue around freedom of expression, whilst also aiming to leave a permanent line of "can do" attitude on the public landscape. For details about the exhibition see below. Pambazuka News had the opportunity to interview Phiks, an artist from Kenya.

Pambazuka News: Can you tell us about what you are doing here in Cape Town? What is the project you are involved in?

Phiks: The project called "Lines of Attitude" involved coming to Cape Town as part of the project. We (artists I work with) painted a wall in Kenya last November and we just finished painting a wall here in Cape Town. The upcoming exhibit "Lines of Attitude" is also a part of the project, and all the artists have contributed pieces to it. This is a project which has got graffiti artist from different countries working together on the following theme: "How Western media affects culture." We came up with this theme in Kenya and started working on it last year. The aim of the project is to try and give graffiti a positive attitude towards the masses.

Pambazuka News: What is the connection for you between art and social change? How can the medium of graffiti be used to raise awareness or inspire action?

Phiks: My personal connection between art and social change is a love for art. Art is what I eat and most of my inspiration comes from things that happen around me, as well as the people around me. The media of graffiti can be used to raise awareness or inspire action, not only in big time events like the exhibit. You have to keep in mind what you do on a small scale level because people out there are watching everything I do. I try to keep it real for the young and old people – so I try to keep positive to promote art.

Pambazuka News: Can you describe the "matatu" culture in Kenya? What is its significance?

Phiks: Matatu culture is a big thing in Kenya. Matatu’s are not only a form of transportation, but since the 80's have been made into a form of art. There is a lot of competition because it is a source of income for Matatu owners. I do air brushing and other work on these. The significance of them is that this is the kind of grafitti I do in Kenya – this is where I come from.

Pambazuka News: What is the art scene in Kenya like? Is there a strong connection there between art and political criticism?

Phiks: The art scene in Kenya is really catching up to other places. At my level, it's great – there is also a really strong connection between the art and political criticism.

Pambazuka News: What is the government response to what you do? What about the general public?

Phiks: I would say that no, the government at the moment doesn't like what I do. They are trying to stop Matatu art because some Members of Parliament in Kenya are also in the Matatu business and they want to cut down the competition by putting up laws against us.

The general public, on the other hand, loves it! The population is made up of lots of young people under the age of 35. But it's hard – you can't mess with the government in Kenya unless you have power – which means money or good connections.

Exhibition Details:
Exhibiting artists:
(UK) mode2, dreph;
(Kenya) phiks;
(SA) falko, faith47

Opening on 16 March. Running until 06 April, District 6 Homecoming Centre 15 Buitenkant St. Cape Town.

* Please send comments to

The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents is an all in one guide for both beginners and seasoned bloggers. The guide is roughly divided into two parts. The first covers “how to get started” and includes blogging tools, ethics, how to stand out and promote your blog. All of these can be found on many different sites on the internet such as on Wikipedia and blogger.com. The second part deals exclusively with blogging anonymously and how to get around issues of censorship for those blogging from countries where there are repressive regimes.

In countries were the mainstream media is censored and or under pressure, bloggers can often circumvent the censorship laws and provide the only real independent news. This puts bloggers in these countries under extreme danger from the government and in many cases they have been arrested by their government and thrown into prison. Countries such as Iran and China are particularly dangerous but bloggers in Tunisia and Egypt have also been arrested and detained.

However, blogging anonymously is not the only challenge faced by those who live under repressive regimes. How do you promote your blog and how do you circumvent filtering systems that the repressive government may have put in place? The guide provides step-by-step answers to these kind of questions.

The guide to being an “ethical blogger” and what makes your blog shine are probably the most contentious out of the whole book. Many bloggers feel that codes of ethnics do not belong in the blogosphere and that readers will make up their own minds on which blogs to trust and which not to, based on their own set of criteria. Setting up a blog is the easy part. Getting people to read it and even more important to trust the content is more difficult. If for example a blogger continues to make errors of fact and present commentary that is overly biased readers will soon tire and go elsewhere. In that sense then there is really no need to follow a strict code of ethics in the same way as one would in the mainstream media. Blogging is a tool of freedom of expression and bloggers do not want to feel they are constrained by the ethics or codes of mainstream media.

The chapters on how to blog anonymously and how to circumvent censorship are the most useful part of the guide. Blogging anonymously includes using cybercafés rather than your own computer at home, university or workplace. Alternatively you could set up web access via an “anonymous proxy” which would hide the real IP address of the computer you are using. Other options are explored such as using a “circumventor”, similar to a proxy server but requiring the help of a third party in a “safe country”. More complicated and technically challenging is the “invisibleblog” which requires posting via a specially formatted email system that is encrypted. All of these options are explained in detail with links to sites that can provide the blogger with further information and help on how to beat censorship laws and avoid detection by government security forces.

The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents is an extremely valuable guide for those bloggers living under repressive regimes where they are at risk of imprisonment. For the rest of the blogging world the guide provides useful tips on getting started and promoting your blog.

* Please send comments to

With his biting lyrics that name and shame African leaders and denounce Western politics, West African reggae star Tiken Jah Fakoly knows his music has made him as many enemies as friends. The 37-year-old singer, who lives in Mali in self-imposed exile from his troubled home of Ivory Coast, is one of the most powerful voices for young African people. But he is also a thorn in the side of African politicians.

Director Gavin Hood projects the inherent failure of unbridled capitalism in the "New" South Africa subtly in his award-winning adaptation of playwright Athol Fugard's "Tsotsi". Through a character study of hardened man-child Tsotsi, whose name simply means "thief" in local Jo'burg slang, Hood explores the meaning of the "new" South Africa. An adaptation of Athol Fugard's play written in the 1950's, the film echoes the inescapable conflict colonialism has stained the continent with since the 20th century. Social ills, economic inequality, destabilized family centers, political corruption, and the shame associated with HIV/Aids are wondrously presented in Hood's immensely sensitive interpretation.

As Tsotsi claws his way through a life of crime and brutality he finds himself cornered between the state and his own self-destruction. Tsotsi has developed such a hard exterior that he pummels one of his closest friends in the opening scenes of the film after his friend challenges Tsotsi to tell the group his real name. Tsotsi goes on to carjack a woman that same night only to realize after crashing the car that there's a baby in the backseat. From there we watch Tsotsi unravel as he tries to cope with the newborn child.

Presley Chweneyagae is remarkable as Tsotsi. He offers a range of emotion and vulnerability often difficult for people to confront in real life. On screen his presence reflects vividly the unprotected lives of children whose families are pulled apart under the pressures of illness, poverty, and neglect. He clings to the baby with a fierce loneliness that captures our collective need for each other in a way that blends the sacred mother-father-child relationship.

Terry Pheto provides a steadfast will to her character as the young widowed mother, Miriam, who finds herself breastfeeding a child who's not hers at gunpoint along with her own newborn. It is through this uneasy relationship that Tsotsi gains enough clarity to restore a sense of order to the characters' lives in the film.

Fugard's play, written in the 1950's, is beautifully translated on screen as Hood lays kwaito tracks over sun struck township shots contrasted with dark, suburban Johannesburg. It is through the intricate commentary on South Africa's emerging middle class that we gain a sense of the incongruity that defines social life in South Africa. It is estimated there are as many as 5.3 million people living with HIV/Aids in South Africa as of 2003. The prevalence of the disease is a complex history of underdevelopment and apartheid legislation. Since the political liberation of South Africa, officials have had a myriad of frustrations to deal with and the continued relevancy of Fugards' play written in 1950 reinforces that.

Many scholars and critics cite the government's unmeasured acceptance of western policies as a prime factor in the continuing problems of unemployment, development, crime, and health care. The film sharply comments on how one affects the other as we watch Tsotsi remember a troubled past. The employment of unchecked free market business without adequate safety nets implemented through state and regional legislation makes these connections all the more pointed. Hood aptly picks up on Fugard's image of the lone wolf and revisits this image throughout the film. It is this lone wolf that forecasts the dangers of the Orphan Generation that South Africa has to deal with.

Though the movie's final scenes evoke a sense of surrender, the humanity that is reawakened in Presley's character echoes the hopes and dreams of downtrodden people everywhere. The economic gap between the masses of people in Johannesburg and the swelling middle class is the only way to address the problem of development and disease control. As young South African artists and filmmakers seem to remind us over and over again, it is up to the human family to prove that, "We can and we must do better than this".

* Teaira S. Buchanan is a volunteer contributor to Pambazuka News

* Fahamu was responsible for a pre-release screening of Tsotsi, which took place in Oxford on March 10. The film’s official United Kingdom release takes place on March 17.

The fellowships offered under this scheme are of short term duration (6 months maximum) and are intended for specialized training at the postgraduate level. Priority targets are promising and qualified specialists who seek to undertake advanced research or to upgrade their skills and knowledge of state-of-the-art developments in their field of study or work.

Writer Betty Caplan reports on a unique dance style that blends classical ballet, Spanish and Oriental flavours and traditional African dances to honour, celebrate, imitate and poke fun at the gloriously beautiful but vain flamingos of Kenya’s Lake Nakuru. What makes dance funny? I found myself musing on this question as I watched Kenya Performing Arts Group’s performance of ‘Flamingo Flamenco’ during the weekend of February 3-4, 2006 at the Village Market auditorium (not a place to enhance any kind of art at all – a soulless construction without even the basic facilities for artists.) The work, choreographed by Israeli Miriam Rother, takes a look at a flamboyant, gloriously beautiful but vain African bird, the flamingo. In a series of dances, the performers honour, imitate and poke fun at the Flamingo of Lake Nakuru. En masse, by the side of Kenya’s famous soda lake, it is a unique sight.

Petna Ndaliko Katondolo is arguably one of Eastern Africa’s leading experimental filmmakers though he detests his style being referred to as ‘experimental’. He talks to Ogova Ondego in Kampala about his role as an artist and activist.

Is it fair to talk about a film I haven’t seen?

That depends. Is the film The Constant Gardener? Then one might argue that it fails, as every Western film set in Africa has failed, to treat the continent as anything other than backdrop to the main story. The main story, it goes without saying, is the drama of the white people.

A few years ago, I borrowed a set of rules from brilliant American cartoonist, Alison Bechdel. In one of her Dykes To Watch Out For cartoon strips, she has a character say:

"I don't go to a movie unless:

1) It has at least two women in it, who
2) Talk to each other, about
3) Something other than the man in the movie."

I tweaked that for my Africa-films filter. Any film set in, and ostensibly about, Africa has to:

1) Have at least 2 African characters in it.
That's characters. Servants, waiters, extras, are not characters.
2) The two African characters have to talk to each other, about
3) Something other than the white protagonist(s) in the film

I avoided seeing The Constant Gardener because none of my friends who saw it could vouch that it met my 3 rules. Each snippet I came across about it fed my conviction that it would only irritate me beyond belief. Like hearing how the Western actors had been “shocked beyond belief” by the poverty of Nairobi slums. Like actress Rachel Weisz, describing the beauty of “Lake Magadi covered with flamingos.” There are no flamingos at Lake Magadi, Rachel. That’s Lake Nakuru.

Last Sunday night, Rachel Weisz won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Constant Gardener. In her speech, she paid tribute to the brilliance of her director, the John Le Carre novel the film was based on, and reeled off the customary list of personal thanks. She did not mention Africa, Kenya, or Kenyans. She did not even hint at the supposed central theme of the film – giant pharmaceuticals testing drugs on impoverished Africans.

It would appear, then, that it’s perfectly possible – in fact, the norm – to make a film that claims to be about Africa, shoot it in Africa, market it with relentless repetition of the word “Africa”, without actually seeing Africa. Or Africans. I see no reason not to accord such a film the same invisibility when I write of it.

* Shailja Patel is a Kenyan Indian poet and spoken word artist. Visit

* Send comments to [email protected]

The vicious murder of Zoliswa Nkonyana, a lesbian killed by a mob in a Cape Flats township, points to the brutal reality that despite constitutional protections, lesbians in South Africa continue to experience egregious assaults on their human rights, Human Rights Watch said today (March 3). Human Rights Watch called on the South African government to ensure that their ongoing investigation of the murder is thorough, effective, and capable of leading to the successful identification, prosecution, and punishment of all those responsible. According to local media reports, six young men have been arrested and charged with murder. Human Rights Watch also called on the authorities to provide police protection to Nkonyana's friends and to other lesbians who are at risk of violence in the wake of the attack.