Exploring the belly button of Mother Africa

African Child, which channel do you use to reach out to the Continent? I know of people who use their work or jobs as a channel. They visit other African countries while working. I have two friends who’ve travelled extensively around the Continent. I still dream of a day when I will be sitting in their living rooms, toes wriggling excitedly after being set free from the throttle of smelly shoes, to draw the tales of their travel experience, from their memory. I cannot wait.

I also know of people who travel through the Continent for the sole purpose of experiencing it, and then writing books about this. A great brother, and story-teller, Sihle Khumalo, comes to mind. His book “Dark Continent My Black Arse” is epic. If you don’t believe me, ask Javas Xanti who ransacked the bookshops after reading my facebook postings about the book. I am sure that Sihle’s follow-up “Almost Sleeping My Way To Timbuktu” is so much better that Javas will retrieve his new copy from the bookshop at gun-point.

I have also used Credo Mutwa’s “Writings of a Zulu Witchdoctor” to glean into the Continent’s past moments. To cut the Isanusi’s long story short, Africans have been advancing through civilization for many years, long before the Arabs and Europeans came looking to trade, and to settle.

I have also been reading dreadful stories coming through writers like Robert Guest (The Shackled Continent) and George B. Ayittey (Africa Betrayed.) Dreadful as the stories being told may be, I appreciate the knowledge gained and therefore I am no longer naïve about the travesties pervading Mother continent.

There is also hope and bliss in the Continent, in abundance. Wangari Maathai’s book (Unbowed) comes to mind. It is a must-read. There are women in this Continent who have stood up to political and patriarchal tyranny and won, at least not literally but through raising consciousness and helping the perpetrators to “heal”. The book will make you cry, if you haven’t yet.

My most preferred channel of exploration is music. I have made instant friends through brokering the subject of music with other African siblings. To the uninitiated mind, my actions of cajoling siblings from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Nigeria, DRC, Kenya to share their music with me may seem bizarre. I know this because even my very own siblings, with whom my mother’s “mabele” (in Lingala, spoken in Congo) we have suckled, have given me those have-you-lost-your-mind looks every time I played north of Limpopo border artists.
 

I have been heckled for bothering them African fellows, even accusing me of fooling around with the “things” I cannot understand. Yes, I feel like I am using Ehis Ebhonu whenever I go to him, cap in hand, to beg for more. I know a childhood friend who put an end to our music get-togethers because while he still chills with Anthony Hamilton serenading his romantic sensibilities, I am that one who nudges him out of his comfort zone by introducing the infectious voice of Oumou Sangare (Mali), if not the bewitching allure of Rokia Traore’s guitar. Need I mention that sad, far-away look of Kadja Nin from Burundi? At least I have not lost a friend entirely.

There have been breakthroughs on the journey. Those who frown at my actions do not know what it is like to drive around Joburg with a Congolese companion in a car, just for a simple reason of listening to music. In one or two Sundays I drove around with Jolly. The car was meandering through a strangely absent Joburg traffic on Jan Smuts Avenue when Jolly rocked into endless guffaws. Seeing a 27 year scouring the belly of Africa through music must have struck her. Why would a guy working and living in Joburg develop an interest in the Congolese music? What was wrong with R Kelly and Brenda Fassie? It got worse for her when I asked her to interpret the lyrics in the song “colonisation” by Madilu System. The song left her in stitches; a long story involving a man castigating a woman who left her for a better (rich) man. But the melody of the song, MaAfrika. Ah!

I forget to mention that I miss those Saturday afternoons when I’d be driving from Joburg to Qwaqwa, and phoning Richard Nwamba in the studio to marvel at him and the kind of sounds he would be churning out.

This journey has been fruitful. I have communicated with two or three African musicians, bar the limitation of language in some instances, because of this channel I am using. I have received invitations to visit some of the countries because of this. I am going. Who is coming with me?

 

So, what is your channel to Africa, MoAfrika?

Happy Africa Day to you.

Big headache for standing on the podium of Africa

The morning of 27 April 1994 brought energy and anticipation to South Africa. It was a watershed moment. The older generation of frail, sickly, overworked, wretched and downtrodden people were looking forward to casting their first ever ballot for a democratic dispensation.
 
At that very moment, the people of Rwanda were gripped by fear. It was a 20^th day of bloody skirmishes which saw people hack their own kind to death in a 3 month genocide.

Forget that the south neighbouring Burundi was directly affected. In fact, this form of genocide between the Tutsi and Hutu people had been going on in Burundi for as long as 24 years already. South Africa hardly knew about this because we were permanently distracted by our own apartheid monster. And when Rwanda genocide happened, we were momentarily distracted by the hype of the first democratic national elections.

In Uganda, owing to its proximity to Rwanda, the situation was different. In 1994, Yoweri Museveni took to the tilting national podium. Uganda faced the prospect of plunging into another political crisis. Museveni held the pieces together through a 284 non-partisan assembly which managed to beat out a constitutional road map.

Without warning, the bodies of the Rwandan people, gushing with blood from gaping wounds impaled by machetes, rammed into the Ugandan podium from the south. The horror was demoralizing when the three districts on the shore of Lake Victoria had to be declared disaster areas because of the pollution cause by thousands of bodies floating down the Kagera River from Rwanda. When the drunk, high-on-drugs and brainwashed Ba-Hutu gang chanced upon anyone who was taller, finer and thinner than their collective self-image, a “cockroach” had to be clubbed and hacked to death.
 

South Africa is a part of this melting pot of Africa. As we await formal announcement of the election results, the podium which Jacob Zuma is standing on is on the skids. The IEC’s reputation as a competent and neutral institution is at stake. The protests over notable election irregularities in some parts of the country, including in Alexandra, is gripping the nation. The presence of the army in the area suggests a worrying stand-off.
 

The ANC 62% electoral performance is possibly affecting President Jacob Zuma’s leadership confidence. The growing desperation of people is showing through the emergence, and surprise performance, of a robust Julius Malema-led EFF.

As was the case with the podium which Yoweri Museveni stood on in 1994, Jacob Zuma faces the hail storm gripping the South African people who voted as peacefully as they could. The constitutionality of our democracy is facing a test. How the leaders of political parties handle themselves during this time will be crucial, including COPE’s Mosiuoa Lekota who must finish eating that hat.
 

The posture of the State in resolving the electoral disputes is under scrutiny. We are about to pop the champagne to celebrate the free and fair election period. The IEC personnel are about to switch off their computers to head for holiday. The opposition parties are saying Not yet!
 

As if that was not stressful enough to our president, the snobbish armed forces from U.S.A, U.K and France are intent on landing in Nigeria to “help” (render the African leadership incapable.) In their spirit of “helping” to subdue the marauding pro-Islam Boko Haram, and to rescue the abducted girls, the powerhouse trio are deliberately reminding the African mind that the West is in charge of the world. As long as the West can pin the smell of Al-Qaeda on the trail of Boko Haram, the Western army is not leaving any time soon.

 

Curiously, the mass action instigated from West, with Hilary Clinton, John Kerry and Michelle Obama leading the charge, is gaining such a momentum that the women in Nigeria, clad in red cowls, are practically hitting the streets.

 

The people of South Africa, hobbled by a stormy election campaign, are dragging themselves to the streets, brandishing the placards, in a show of latent solidarity. We will try to save face, but to what extent? Is there still time to do so? President Zuma, what options do you have available to you? You only have two hands and a big headache. President Goodluck Jonathan, Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and all your African peers, what’s on your stressed up mind right now?