Dynamic Africa
Formerly, "This is Africa/fyeahAfrica".
(Profile Photo by Mama Casset)
DISCLAIMER:
I do not endorse any of the products or opinions shared on this site, nor do I claim any of the work posted here to be my own - except where stated. All posts originally made by me are credited. If no credit is given then the work is either my own/written by me or reblogged from another source.
A LITTLE ABOUT ME:
Student, 24
Based in Cape Town, South Africa
From Lagos, Nigeria
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(since Oct. 21th 2012)
NOTABLE AFRICANS: Danieri Basammula-Ekkere Mwanga II Mukasa
Taking to the the throne at age 16, following the death of his father Muteesa I of Buganda in 1884, Mwanga ruled as the Kabaka (king) of Buganda from 1884 until 1888 and from 1889 until 1897. The 31st Kabaka of Buganda, he would eventually be captured by colonial British forces and exiled to the Seychelles where he would eventually die in 1903.
He is most notably known for his aggressive expulsion of encroaching Christian missionaries in his kingdom by ordering Christian converts to either abandon their religion or face death.
From the Daily Monitor:
Two months into his reign, and oblivious of the negative reactions from imperial powers on his action, Mwanga censured all foreign religions, labelling them dangerous and destructive to Buganda. He saw the burning to death of three Christian converts; and also ordered the capture of Alexander Mackay and two of his fellow Protestant missionaries.
Three years after ascending the throne in 1884, Mwanga had ordered the burning of 45 of his pages; 32 of the murdered converts would later gain worldwide recognition as the Uganda Martyrs.
The executions, including of Bishop James Hannington in 1885, alarmed the Protestants and Catholics, who despite their potent religious disputes, allied to dethrone Mwanga; and they did on August 2, 1888 with the help of the Muslims.
By the time of his first ouster from the throne, Mwanga had no major group to support him. The Muslims were not on his side, after he refused to convert to Islam; the Christians didn’t shield his back either—for ordering several executions; and the Traditionalists, convinced that the small pox ravaging the kingdom then was a result of neglect of traditional cultures and beliefs, had little faith in the king.
The most crucial threat to Mwanga’s reign would, however, be the Europeans, who had the same year he ascended the throne in 1884, met in Berlin, Germany, to allot Africa among themselves. Although he knew that the ‘white man’ was intent on ‘eating’ his kingdom, Mwanga was clueless about the extent of their imperial appetite and greed.
After his deposition, Mwanga was replaced by his brother Kiweewa—but just like his brother, Kiweewa refused to face the circumcision knife and the Muslims - the strongest group then, united to depose him, 40 days into his reign.
Further reading: Wikipedia*
*This source makes reference to same-sex relations that the Kabaka may have had, which is how I came to know of him (I was watching a televised debate on whether homosexuality is un-African and one of the speakers mentioned this incident). What I do not appreciate is the way in which some sources (linked source elaborates on this) have used his sexuality as something that is synonymous with evil, or the leading catalyst that led to him ordering the execution of several Christians.
Was watching this documentary, did a quick search on Gannibal and realized that May 14th, today, is the anniversary of his death.
NOTABLE AFRICANS: Major-General Abram Petrovich Gannibal, also Hannibal or Ganibal or Ibrahim Hannibal or Abram Petrov
Much of his early life is unknown but historians speculate that the most famous black figure in Russian history, who was kidnapped at the age of seven and taken to the court of the Ottoman Sultan at Constantinople, could have been from either present-day Eritrea, or Cameroon. It is also speculated that he may have spoken Kotoko, an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in West Africa.
During the year of his kidnap, the Sultan of Constantinople was either Mustafa II (reigned 1695–1703) or Ahmed III (reigned 1703–1730), and in a German biography written anonymously and informed by Gannibal’s first-hand accounts it states that, “the children of the noble families were taken to the ruler of all the Muslims, the Turkish sultan, as hostages”. These children would either be killed or sold into slavery. It is also said that Gannibal’s sister Lahan was kidnapped at the same time but died during the voyage after being brutally raped.
The following year, 1704, Gannibal was ransomed and taken to Moscow where he was adopted by Emporer Peter the Great. In 1705, Gannibal was baptized in St. Paraskeva Church in Vilnius, with Peter the Great as his godfather.
Gannibal was sent to France where he received an education in the arts, sciences and warfare. By the completion of his education in 1722, he was fluent in several languages. Whilst in France, he fought with the forces of Louis XV of France against those of Louis’ uncle Philip V of Spain and rose to the rank of captain. During this time he adopted the surname that he is known by in honor of the Carthaginian general Hannibal (Gannibal being the traditional transliteration of the name in Russian). Whilst in Paris, his biographer Hugh Barnes claims that he met and befriended Enlightenment figures such as Denis Diderot, the Baron de Montesquieu and Voltaire.
Gannibal then returned to Russia in 1722. However, in following the death of Peter the Great in 1755, Gannibal was exiled to Siberia in 1727 but was pardoned in 1730 for his skills in military engineering. Peter’s daughter Elizabeth became the new monarch in 1741 and as a result, Gannibal became a prominent figure in her court, rising to the rank of major-general and became superintendent of Reval from 1742 to 1752.
Gannibal married twice. His first wife was Evdokia Dioper, a Greek woman. The couple married in 1731 and had one daughter. Unfortunately Dioper despised her husband, whom she was forced to marry. When Gannibal found out that she had been unfaithful to him, he had her arrested and thrown into prison, where she spent eleven years living in terrible conditions. Gannibal began living with another woman, Christina Regina Siöberg (1705–1781), daughter of Mattias Johan Siöberg and wife Christina Elisabeth d’Albedyll, and married her bigamously in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), in 1736, a year after the birth of their first child and while he was still lawfully married to his first wife. His divorce from Dioper did not become final until 1753, upon which a fine and a penance were imposed on Gannibal, and Dioper was sent to a convent for the rest of her life. Gannibal’s second marriage was nevertheless deemed lawful after his divorce.
On her paternal side, Gannibal’s second wife was descended from noble families in Scandinavia and Germany: Siöberg (Sweden), Galtung (Norway) and Grabow (Denmark and Brandenburg). Her paternal grandfather was Gustaf Siöberg, Rittmester til Estrup, who died in 1694, whose wife Clara Maria Lauritzdatter Galtung (ca. 1651–1698) was the daughter of Lauritz Lauritzson Galtung (ca. 1615–1661) and of Barbara Grabow til Pederstrup (1631–1696). Abram Gannibal and Christina Regina Siöberg had ten children, including a son, Osip. Osip in turn would have a daughter, Nadezhda, the mother of Aleksandr Pushkin. Gannibal’s oldest son, Ivan, became an accomplished naval officer who helped found the city of Kherson in 1779 and attained the rank of General-in-Chief, the second highest military rank in imperial Russia.
Some British aristocrats descend from Gannibal, including Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster and her sister, Alexandra Hamilton, Duchess of Abercorn. George Mountbatten, 4th Marquess of Milford Haven, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, is also a direct descendant, as the grandson of Nadejda Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven.
NOTABLE AFRICANS: Portrait of King Khama III, South Africa, early twentieth century.
Kgosi Khama III became chief of the Ngwato in 1875.
He visited Britain in 1895 on a self-funded journey with other chiefs, and successfully protested against the possible transfer of the administration of the Bechuanaland Protectorate to the British South Africa Company.
A cropped version of this portrait was printed in a leaflet, “Khama: The Great African Chief,” distributed by the London Missionary Society in 1923. Smart & Copley, Bulawato, also published the image as a postcard.
Read more about King Khama III.
NOTABLE AFRICANS: William Moore (attr.), inscribed: “Macomo and his chief wife,” South Africa, c. 1869.
Along with several other Xhosa leaders and their wives, Maqoma was imprisoned on Robben Island for leading insurgencies during the Frontier Wars of the eighteen-fifties.
This widely circulated portrait was taken after their release.
Even when they were photographed on Robben Island, Maqoma and his wife never sat for the camera without dress coats, hats, and shawls.
NOTABLE AFRICANS: Houari Boumedienne
A member of Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) who later served as the Chairman of Algeria’s Revolutionary Council between 1965 and 1976, born Mohammed Ben Brahim Boukharouba in Guelma, Houari Boumediene was Algeria’s second president. Boumediene’s presidency lasted a little over a year as after assuming office in December, 1977, following a 39-day coma, he passed away on December 27th, 1978, from a Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia, a rare blood disease. He was 46.
Educated at the Islamic Institute in Constantine, Algeria, Boumediene became a soldier in the FLN during Algeria’s War of Independence against France in 1955 where he rose to the ranks of Colonel. It was during this time that he adopted his nom de guerre ‘Houari Boumedien’, from Sidi Boumediène, the name of the patron saint of the city of Tlemcen in western Algeria, where he served as an officer during the war, and Sidi El Houari, the patron saint of nearby Oran.
From Wikipedia:
In 1961, after its vote of self-determination, Algerians declared independence and the French announced it was independent. Boumedienne headed a powerful military faction within the government, and was made defence minister by the Algerian leader Ahmed Ben Bella, whose ascent to power he had assisted as chief of staff. He grew increasingly distrustful of Ben Bella’s erratic style of government and ideological puritanism, and in June 1965, Boumédienne seized power in a bloodless coup.
The country’s constitution and political institutions were abolished, and he ruled through a Revolutionary Council of his own mostly military supporters. Many of them had been his companions during the war years, when he was based around the Moroccan border town of Oujda, which caused analysts to speak of the “Oujda Group”. (One prominent member of this circle was Boumédienne’s long-time foreign minister, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who, since 1999, has been Algeria’s president.)
Initially, he was seen as potentially a weak ruler, with no significant power base except inside the army, and it was not known to what extent he controlled the officer corps. But after a botched coup against him by military officers in 1967 he tightened his rule. He then remained Algeria’s undisputed ruler until his death in 1978, as all potential rivals within the regime were gradually purged or relegated to symbolic posts, including several of his former allies from the Oujda era. No significant internal challenges emerged from inside the regime after the 1967 coup attempt.
NOTABLE AFRICANS: Reverend John Chilembwe
John Chilembwe was a Baptist educator and political leader who organized an uprising against British colonial rule in Nyasaland (today Malawi). Though details about Chilembwe’s early life are largely undocumented, it is believed that he was born in the Chiradzulu region of Nyasaland sometime around 1871 to a Yao father and a Mang’anja slave. The Mang’anja were the traditional ethnic group of the area but fell victim to enslavement by Arab and Yao slave traders; the Yao, originally from northern Mozambique, fled famine in their native country and served as middlemen for the Arab slave-raiders. Chilembwe, a mix of the two ethnic groups, embodied the plight of both. He grew up under the prevailing atmosphere of insecurity of the southern Nyasa regions. When the British colonized the area in 1891, naming it Nyasaland, they established newly organized governance and missions, and sought to control the indigenous people of the region.
In the autumn of 1892 Chilembwe met the Baptist missionary Joseph Booth, who had recently established the Zembesi Industrial Mission as an alternative to the older Scottish Presbyterian missions that exploited the indigenous population. Though Chilembwe initially applied to be Booth’s cook, he quickly became a close friend and ally of Booth and took care of Booth’s daughter. The missionary educated Chilembwe on his egalitarian philosophy and baptized him on July 17, 1893.
The pair traveled to the United States in 1897 to fundraise for the Mission. There, Chilembwe was plunged into a milieu that was highly critical of whites. He met and was influenced by the radical Zulu missionary John L. Dube from South Africa, Dr. Lewis Garnett Jordan of the Negro National Baptist Convention and many other African American preachers and radicals. Staying behind in the United States as Booth returned to Nyasaland, Chilembwe attended Virginia Theological Seminary and College at Lynchburg, Virginia in 1898 and 1899. In the United States, Chilembwe gained an increasingly global perspective on the struggle of people of African descent against injustice and white supremacy. He took these newly acquired political ideas back to Nyasaland in 1900, returning as an ordained Baptist minister.
Once returned, Chilembwe founded the Providence Industrial Mission with aid from the American National Baptist Convention. By 1912, he had established a chain of independent African schools, constructed a brick church and planted crops of cotton, tea, and coffee. His attempts to uplift the local population, however, were undercut by continuing exploitation of Africans by the British. Triggered by British mistreatment of famine refugees from Mozambique as well as the conscription of natives to fight the Germans in Tanzania during World War I, Chilembwe invoked the name of the American abolitionist John Brown and organized a rebellion against the British.
He and 200 followers staged an uprising on January 23, 1915 with the aim to kill all male Europeans. The revolutionaries killed three British subjects, including a particularly corrupt plantation owner named William J. Livingston, a descendant of failed Scottish missionary David Livingstone, who they beheaded in front of his wife and daughter.
When the uprising failed to gain local support, Chilembwe fled to Mozambique, where he was killed by African soldiers on February 3, 1915. Though his rebellion was ultimately unsuccessful, Malawi, which gained independence in 1964, celebrates John Chilembwe Day on January 15th as his uprising is viewed as the beginning of the Malawi independence struggle.
Further reading:
(source)
Agathe Uwilingiyimana (23 May 1953 – 7 April 1994) was a Rwandan political figure. She served as Prime Minister of Rwanda from 18 July 1993 until her death on 7 April 1994. Her term was ended when she was assassinated during the opening stages of the Tutsi Genocide. She was Rwanda’s first and so far only female prime minister.
She joined the Republican and Democratic Movement (MDR), an opposition party, in 1992, and four months later was appointed Minister of Education by Dismas Nsengiyaremye, the first opposition prime minister under a power-sharing scheme negotiated between President Juvénal Habyarimana and five major opposition parties. As education minister she abolished the academic ethnic quota system, awarding public school places and scholarships by open merit ranking. This decision earned her the enmity of the Hutu-extremist parties.
From Habyarimana’s death until her assassination the following morning (approximately 14 hours), Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana was Rwanda’s constitutional head of government. The U.N. peacekeeping force sent a Belgian escort to her home before 3 am the following morning; they intended to take her to Radio Rwanda, from where she planned a dawn broadcast appealing for national calm. Uwilingiyimana’s house was further guarded by five Ghanaian U.N. troops on the outside in addition to the ten Belgian troops. Inside the house, the family was protected by the Rwandan presidential guard, but between 6:55 and 7:15 am the presidential guard surrounded the U.N. troops and told them to lay down their arms. Fatally, the blue berets ultimately complied, handing over their weapons just before 9 am.
Seeing the stand-off outside her home, Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her family took refuge in the Kigali U.N. volunteer compound around 8 am. Eye-witnesses to the inquiry on U.N. actions say that Rwandan soldiers entered the compound at 10 am, and searched it for Agathe Uwilingiyimana. Fearing for the lives of her children, Agathe and her husband emerged, and they were shot and killed by the presidential guard on the morning of 7 April 1994. Her children escaped and eventually took refuge in Switzerland. In his book, Me Against My Brother, Scott Peterson writes that the U.N. troops sent to protect Uwilingiyimana were castrated, gagged with their own genitalia, and then murdered.
She said in her last recorded words:
There is shooting, people are being terrorized, people are inside their homes lying on the floor. We are suffering the consequences of the death of the head of state, I believe. We, the civilians, are in no way responsible for the death of our head of state.
(via b-sama)
Tunisian Jewish boxing champion Victor Perez who survived by boxing until 1945, when he died during the death march from Auschwitz.
He was born to Khmaïssa Perez on October 18, 1911, and was raised in the Jewish quarter of Tunis. At age 14, alongside his older brother, he started training to be a boxer after being inspired by Senegalese boxer Battling Siki.
Standing at 5’1” and weighing 110lbs, Perez defeated Kid Oliva from Marseille to win the Flyweight title in Paris in 1930. The following year he won the International Boxing Union’s version of the Flyweight crown after knocking out American champion Frankie Genaro. This victory made him the youngest world boxing champion in history.
In September 1943, following the German Nazi invasion of France during the Second World War, Perez was denounced to the occupation authorities and was arrested and detained at the Drancy internment camp before being transported to Auschwitz in October. There, he was assigned to the Monowitz subcamp to serve as a slave laborer for I.G. Farben at the Buna-Werke.
Perez was killed on January 22, 1945 on the death march from Monowitz to Gleiwitz.
In 1986, Perez was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
“Nass El Ghiwane” appeared on the scene in the late 1960’s in Morocco. Whenever mentioned in the Western literature, they are referred to as The Rolling Stones of Africa, as American Producer Martin Scorsese once put it. They have been the most politicized of all the chaabbi-fusion groups and placed great emphasis on their lyrics, which are renowned throughout Morocco and North Africa.
Nass El Ghiwane are living legends who merged the rich repertoire of traditional Moroccan music with lyrics that sited political and social injustices. The group was formed by four young men from the poor district of Hay el Mohammadi in industrial Casablanca.…..
In a time where the only music available was middle-eastern pop music that sang about love, Nass el Ghiwane had prepared something new for Morocco: they mixed the Sufi chants and litanies of Zaouias (brotherhoods) like the Hmadcha and Aissawa with the elegant colloquial poetry of Melhoun adding to it the ancient rhythms of the Berbers and the healing dances of the mystical Gnaouas.Morocco just receiving its independence from the French and its population, still uncertain of what the future was hiding, was shocked and moved by the texts of Nass el Ghiwane: corruption, injustice and degradation of society. They were the first Moroccan band to mix such a diverse and rich heritage and to speak their minds even about the most forbidden subjects.Basically Nass El Ghiwane are group of moroccan bad-asses who spoke up against injustices and introduced the one of the first genre of Moroccan music—which would influence chaabi and rai and other music to come. :3So proud.
(via makeitinmorocco)
Reinata Sadimba Passema was born in 1945 in the northern part of Mozambique, in a village called Nemu. She is of makonde ethnicity, and learned from an early age to use mud to produce daily utensils.
In 1972 she got involved in Frelimo’s work to gain Mozambique’s independence, and in 1975 her art began to gain some visibility because of its strange forms and aesthetics.
She emigrates to Tanzania in 1980 due to the civil war, and returns to Mozambique 12 years later. Since then she has dedicated her time to her work and teaching about her art.
SaÏd Sifaw al-Mah’rouq (1946 - 1994)
The Libyan Berberist, poet, linguist, and writer SaÏd Sifaw el-Mah’rouq was born on the 18th of April 1946, in the Berber town of Jado, Nafousa Mountain, north-west Libya. His mother died when he was seven years old. His search for his “Tamazight” identity began when he was fifteen, but by the time he reached full maturity he found himself face to face with the “demons of darkness”, the victim of circumstantial absurdities of Libya’s darkest period in history.
His unique, powerful identity and pioneering, daring ideals attracted the enmity of the Libyan monarchy long before the installation of Gaddafi in 1969, when his scholarship to study medicine in Egypt was withdrawn by king Idris’ government; apparently because he was among the first to call for “revolution” against the corrupt monarchy. The kings’s diplomatic staff granted him the choice to denounce his revolutionary activities or else loose his scholarship, and being who he was he refused to bargain, lost his scholarship, and returned home. After the installation of Gaddafi, he continued to speak out the truth, in the open and without fear, since he used his real name to publish his views that even in today’s free Libya not many will dare to think, let alone voice in the open.
Without a doubt Sifaw will be for ever one of Libya’s heroes the real world has ever seen. Berbers around his charming company saw in him a dangerous personality stemming from his alert vision and simple attitude to life. A true legend of Berber history; a powerful and charismatic leader; a genius ahead of his time; a treasure of tales even recorded history miserably failed to see; and a stern activist afraid of absolutely nothing, not even the dark sky and its mythical stars.
The Assassination Attempt on Sifaw’s Life:
Having no other way to buy his loyalty or influence him to sell his soul, he was reportedly “hit-and-run” by a car on the 21st of February 1979, while trying to purchase some medicine for his child from the Najmachemist, nearby where he lived; only to wake up and find himself paralysed from the waist down and with broken bones and limbs. According to his last notes, he was followed by the Libyan intelligence on a number of occasions leading to the assassination attempt. The original report compiled by Hay al-Andulus police in Tripoli, which carried the number (854/1979), listed a “chase” as the cause of the incident and not an “accident” as others had later claimed. In fact the same police report states that the car that hit him had followed him from one side of the dual carriageway to the opposite side of the road, therefore eliminating the accident claim altogether. According to Sifaw himself, reportedly in a latter letter which he intended to send to Gaddafi, the same police report even mentioned the name of the driver of the car that hit him, namely Hasan Alkilani Ahmed Alhmami”, which he said he had no way of knowing if the name was real or “fictitious”. Bound to his wheelchair, he traveled around the world seeking medical help, without any noticeable success. This is not surprising, since all the Libyan departments including the embassies seemingly obstructed his moves for recovery, forged his medical reports, harassed his two children and wife, reduced his wages, refused to pay his insurance claim for so many agonising years, denied him access to medical facilities in Libya, and even was left to starve alone in his flat had it not been for a handful of his devoted friends. He died on the 29th of July 1994 while he was being treated in Tunisia.
The Fictitious “Berber Party”:
The story goes that in 1980 forty Berber citizens from Zuwarah, Jado and Yefren were arrested and accused of forming a Berber political party (see Berberism for more on this and for a list of names). There is no doubt that some Berber activists did visit Algeria, France and many other countries to buy forbidden Berber books and music, but there is no evidence that the party had actually existed in the real world. The suspects were brought before a revolutionary government court, charged with “Berber Activism”, and sent to jail in 1981: three were executed, Said Sifaw was proven innocent (of course, after the attempt that sent him to the wheelchair instead), and the rest were sentenced to between ten years and life imprisonment. However, one learns later that this so called “Berber Party” was no more than an invention by Gaddafi’s government to warrant the arrest of some activists, and according to Sifaw, listing his name among the members of the party was no more than a ploy to “justify” the assassination attempt made on his life on the 21st of February 1979. Sifaw spoke of being persecuted for being a “Berber”, and that it was him who requested to be returned from Germany to Libya to face the allegations. He said enlisting his name in a fictitious organisation had nothing to do with the secret service, since from the outset of the “revolutionary thought symposium” the attack on “Berberism” was very clear under the name of “populism” [or “tribalism”], a word which people do not understand, he said; and openly demanded a re-trial in this case that was started in his absence and in which a decision was made in his absence while he was actually present in Libya.
The Berber Academy (L’Académie berbère):
Sifaw seems to know some secrets about the Berber Academy which he explicitly declined to reveal in his letter (in Arabic) that was intended for Gaddafi. The following is my own translation of what he said, according to this letter:
“I know everything about Ait Ahmed despite the fact that I do not know him personally at all, and I know everything about this “Berber Academy” even though I was not one of its members, but all that is behind us now … Perhaps Ait Ahmed and Bosoud Mohamed Aarab (who is responsible for this Academy) know, to exchange “accusations” as usual, but why now? If it was the Libyan Intelligence that accused me of such charge then it is the stupidest secret service in the world. Why? I will not say why, but it is enough to say that Ait Ahmed was finished as a Berber before I was personally born since he is only a Kabylian; and that the charge that I belonged to Ait Ahmed’s party had enabled me to know the exact identity of this person; this person is complicated by his war with his friend Ben Bella, and he did not include Tamazight in his program and his party’s program only after the attempt on my life [in 1979] — he asked for Tamazight to be listed as an official language after the attempt on my life, and therefore the charge ought to be directed at Ait Ahmed who was influenced by what I write in the open in your newspapers and not at myself. I heard he visited you [Gaddafi] last year and so why didn’t you ask him? Regarding the “Berber Academy” I had no need for any academy because I am myself a Berber academy, but on the 18th of April 1985 you spoke about the academy and you said it was France that created the academy, and here on behalf of the “helpless” Bosoud Mohamed Aarab I will defend him and not defend myself. I came to know about this academy through an article by one of Ben Bella’s friends: Mohamed Harbi, which I have read here in “Jeune Afrique”, in 1978. Mohamed Aarab wanted to secure some financial funding from one of the wealthy Kabyles and this Kabyle was an infiltrator working for the Algerian and the French Intelligence at the same time, and when he intimidated him with a pistol one of the French Intelligence agents was ready to confront him, Mohamed Aarab was arrested, and that was the end of everything; and therefore it was surprising for you to go to Jado [Sifaw’s home town in Nafusa Mountain] and lecture the Berbers about being agents of the French Intelligence when it was the French Intelligence that destroyed the alleged Berber Academy that “lived” on begging and donations from Algerian labourers.” End of translation.
Sifaw’s Literary Work
During the period between 1961 and 1966 he wrote a number of works in which he developed his Tamazight identity. His poems and literary works had similar effects in Libya to those produced by the Berber scholar Mouloud Mammeri in Algeria, whom he met in 1971. Sifaw’s work included a number of studies about Tamazight grammar, language, and Berber mythology, especially his “Midnight Voices”, a collection of fifteen Berber myths; in which he said, as I would translate: “How can I rescue and preserve an oral tradition much hated and considered a kind of superstition by its people?” Sifaw spoke of two kinds of colonialism: “modern colonialism” and “ancient colonialism” - but perhaps to this day most people still seemingly unable to grasp the extent of violence in human patriarchal history. His work was circulated (underground) in Libya across the Nafousa Mountain, Zuwarah and Tripoli, while some of it was published in Libyan official newspapers and cultural periodicals during Gaddafi’s government. Fifteen years after Sifaw’s tragic death, the Libyan Government attempted to put pressure on the Moroccan government to block a lecture about one of Sifaw’s books on the 18th of June 2009. Some of Sifaw’s work was badly represented and distributed full of typing, spelling and grammatical mistakes by some Berberists after his death. Some other changes could also reflect dialectical differences, where people copy phrases and then repeat them (or publish them) in their own Berber dialects or languages without paying attention to details — or maybe they had other reasons in mind; who knows? It was also reported that one of his entire works was borrowed by one of his supposed friends whom later turned out to be an agent of the Dictator himself, allegedly to read and maybe report back with some feedback, but instead published it under his name — probably with some modifications to suit the agenda he had in mind.
Football Rebels: Mekhloufi and the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) team
In this second installment of Al Jazeera’s football and politics miniseries, the program looks at the life of Algerian football legend and anti-colonialism political activist Rachid Mekhloufi who left the French national team to play for FLN’s football team in the 1958 World Cup.
The historical formation of the FLN team and their appearance at the World Cup drew a significant amount of attention towards Algeria’s fight for independence against French colonial forces occupying the country.
“I was a bit like the spoilt child of football and of Saint-Etienne. But I saw and heard things. All Algerians, even the most spoilt, in Algeria or in France, had to think of Algeria. Algerians were never thought of as French…” - Mekloufi
NOTABLE AFRICANS: DJAMILA BOUHIRED
Currently in her late 70s, Algerian nationalist, activist and revolutionary Djamila Bouhired is a freedom fighter best known for her contributions to the fight against French colonial rule in Algeria as a member of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN).
Born in 1935 to a middle-class family, Bouhired was educated in French schools. However, the colonial system of education did not have the desired effect on Bouhired as she she joined the anti-colonial revolutionary movement of the FLN working as a student activist and soon began working as a liaison officer and personal assistant to FLN commander Yacef Saadi in Algiers. Her brothers were also involved in the underground struggle.
Due to her good looks and slightly European appearance, Bouhired was able to seamlessly move around the Algiers and pass through road blocks set up by French authorities, which proved to be a critical asset in the militant operations of the FLN. Bouhired was one of three FLN female bombers depicted in the 1966 film The Battle of Algiers, and was also the subject of Egyptian director Youssef Chahine’s 1958 film Jamila the Algerian.
During a raid in June 1957, Bouhired was captured, arrested and accused of planting bombs in French restaurants around the capital, Algiers. Although not much is known about her imprisonment, Bouhired has said that both her and her siblings were subjected to torture under French authorities, claiming also that one of her brothers was tortured in front of their mother.
Bouhired was tried, convicted and sentenced to death by guillotine in July 1957. However, Jacques Vergès, a French lawyer who heard of her case and was against France’s occupation of Algeria waged a public relations campaign that resulted in immense pressure being put on France by international governments and human rights organizations. As a result, Djamila Bouhired was released.
She would eventually go on to marry Vergès with whom she had two children. The couple also established Révolution africaine, a publication that focused on Pan-Africanism and African nationalism movements.
Djamila Bouhired currently resides in Algiers and continues to be an active figure in many human rights and feminist politics in the country.
AFRICANS OF NOTE: Jomo Sono
Known affectionately to South Africans as ‘Jomo Sono’, Ephraim Matsilela Sono is a living legend in the world of South African sports. His nickname ‘Jomo’, which means ‘burning spear’ in Swahili, was given to him by an Orlando Pirates fan, Rocks Mthembu, who saw the same qualities in the footballer as the then president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.
Sono was born and raised in the Gauteng township of Orlando East in Soweto. A few years after his birth in 1955, his father, who played for the Orlando Pirates football team, passed away in a car crash. Following his father’s passing, Sono’s mother abandoned him, leaving him in the care of his ailing grandparents who he supported, at age 10, by selling foodstuffs and football games and train stations. He wouldn’t meet his mother until he was 34, through the help of a newspaper article.
The above commercial shows how fate would have a decisive role in shaping his successful career as a football player when, on his wedding day, he was called to fill in the position of an absent player and ended up making one of the toughest decisions of his life - one that paid off in more ways than one.
In the late 70s, Sono went on to play for the New York Cosmos, Colorado Caribous, Atlanta Chiefs and Toronto Blizzard football teams, before returning to South Africa in the early 80s.
He now owns his own football club named Jomo Cosmos (formerly known as Highland Park) in honor of his New York team, and has coached the South African national football team. Sono is also the longest-serving coach in the South African Premier League and also sits on the board of the Premier Soccer League.
Sono was voted 49th in the Top 100 Great South Africans in 2004, and earlier this year he was awarded the Johnnie Walker Lifetime Achievement Award, becoming the first man from the world of soccer to win the prize.
