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 All posts originally made by me are credited.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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(As an unemployed media student, all donations go into ensuring my survival in this cruel world and future projects I hope to embark on).
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(since Oct. 21th 2012)
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.
An allowance for life had always been made for really vicious people, who for too long had said the kind of things to helpless people which really applied to their own twisted, perverted hearts.
Those who spat at what they thought was inferior were really the ‘low, filthy people’ of the earth, because decent people cannot behave that way.
Excerpt from Maru by Bessie Head.
This book has been an eye-opener in so many ways, highly recommend it.
In Botswana they say: Zebras, Lions, Buffalo and Bushmen live in the Kalahari Desert. If you can catch a Zebra, you can walk up to it, forcefully open its mouth and examine its teeth. The Zebra is not supposed to mind because it is an animal.
Scientists do the same to Bushmen and they are not supposed to mind, because there is no one they can still round to and say, ‘At least I am not a —-‘.
Of all things that are said of oppressed people, the worst things are said and done to the Bushmen. Ask the scientists. Haven’t the yet written a treatise on how Bushmen are an oddity of the human race, who are half the head of a man and half the body of a donkey?
Because you don’t go poking into the organs of people unless they are animals or dead.
One of Botswana’s most outspoken and prolific writers, Bessie Emery Head was born in on July 6th, 1937, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa to a wealthy South African woman and black male servant at a time when just ten years prior to her birth the government at the time had introduced the Immorality Act which prohibited extramarital sex between white and black people (it was later amended to prohibit sexual relations between whites and non-whites).
In the 1950s and 60s, Head became a teacher and then a journalist for the popular black publication Drum. In 1964, she relocated to neighbouring Botswana as a refugee as she had been involved with Pan-African politics in South Africa with the anti-Apartheid struggle. She settled in the town of Serowe and after 15 years finally gained citizenship in Botswana.
Most of her most important novels are set in Serowe and involve autobiographical elements, such as the novel Maru which centers around the life of an orphaned Masarwa (Bushman) woman who is orphaned as a baby and raised by an Englishwoman, and eventually becomes a teacher.
Her novel, A Question of Power is based partly on the love-hate relationship she is said to have had with her adopted country of Botswana. Whilst living there, some say she remained somewhat of an outsider and at times she suffered mental health problems, perhaps due to her seclusion, amongst other things.
On one occasion Head put up a public notice making allegations about then President Sir Seretse Khama, which led to a period in Lobatse Mental Hospital.
Bessie Head passed away in 1986 at the age of 48, from hepatitis. Her early death came at a time when she was beginning to receive recognition from her works.
In 2003 she was awarded the South African “Order of Ikhamanga in Gold” for her “exceptional contribution to literature and the struggle for social change, freedom and peace. In 2007, her birth city of Pietermaritzburg renamed the city library in her honor.
By that time, Ambi had reached Ilmorog, and Beatrice thought that this would be the answer. Had she not, in Limuru, seen girls blacker than herself transformed overnight from ugly sins into white stars by a touch of skin-lightening creams? And men would ogle them, would even talk with exaggerated pride of their newborn girl-friends.
Men were strange creatures, Beatrice thought in moments of searching analysis. They talked heatedly against Ambi, Butone, Firesnow, Moonsnow, wigs, straightened hair; but they always went for a girl with an Ambi-lightened skin and head covered with a wig made in imitation of European or Indian hair.
Beatrice never tried to find the root cause of this black self-hatred, she simply accepted the contradiction and applied herself to Ambi with a vengeance. She had to rub out her black shame.
Excerpt from Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s ‘Minutes of Glory’, part of a collection of four short stories called ‘To Stir the Heart’, written by him and South African-born Botswana writer Bessie Head (two written separately by each author).
The story is based in the early 1960s during the time of the Mau Mau Uprising and Kenya’s independence from Britain, but in light of the recent reports of the growing trend of skin-lightening in parts of Africa and the stigma around natural Afro hair, this seems all to relevant, disappointingly so.
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Meleko Mokgosi
Born in Francistown, Botswana, Meleko Mokgosi is a Motswana artist whose work revolves around the intersectionality of world politics, such as conflicts within the African continent - from the internal power struggles in Zimbabwe to the cross-border continuous discord between the two Sudans, in order to show and communicate the complexities of these situations as well as create awareness surrounding them.
“The main theme is world politics, because lately I have become disturbed by where humanity is going. Mainly because when I was home for the summer, the media gave a lot of coverage to the Sudan crisis, the situation in Zimbabwe and American foreign policy. I wanted my work to be more confrontational and political, and less self-absorbed. For these works, the theme is about communicating what I see and what I think.”
CURRENT AFRICAN LEADERS: Lieutenant General Seretse Khama Ian Khama
Incumbent President of Botswana, Ian Khama, is not the first in his family to hold such a title. His father, Sir Seretse Khama was the country’s foremost independence leader and served as President from 1966 to 1980. His mother, Ruth Williams Khama, also referred to as Lady Khama, was British and met Sir Khama whilst he was studying law in England.
Their interracial marriage in 1948 provoked discomfort in both South Africa and, initially, Botswana, and they lived as exiles in England until the mid-1950s. In 1956, Seretse and Ruth Khama were allowed to return to Bechuanaland as private citizens, after he had renounced his chieftaincy throne.
Due to their exile, Ian Khama was born to the couple not in Botswana, but in Surrey, England.
Khama has been the President of Botswana since 2008; he is also the Paramount Chief of the Bamangwato tribe. After serving as Commander of the Botswana Defence Force, he entered politics and served as Vice-President of Botswana from 1998 to 2008, then succeeded Festus Mogae as President on 1 April 2008.
President Ian Khama began his first full term in 2009 with a reshuffled Cabinet which saw two women in key positions. However even with few women in primary cabinet positions, the Botswana Democratic Party was able to make a first for Botswana, by electing the first female speaker of Parliament in the form of Ms. Margaret Nasha.
Seen as ‘unusual’ for an African head of state, President Ian Khama has often been referred to as a ‘bachelor President’ due to his unwed marital status.
Various members of the Cowboy Metalhead subculture in Botswana
“Metal is given very extreme respect and great dignity in Botswana,” explains Mosaka. “A metal gig here is like a religious ritual among the metallers, they become very, very delighted or even crazy sometimes whenever there is an upcoming gig. They will spend weeks preparing their leather pants, boots and other metal attire – it’s like they are preparing for war!”
(via VICE)
The Three Dikgosi Monument (also known as the Monument of the Three Chiefs) featuring the statues of Khama III of the Bangwato, Sebele I of Bakwena and Bathoeng I of Bangwaketse, three digkosi, or chiefs, who traveled to Great Britain in order to stop the incorporation of the land that is now Botswana into Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) or the Union of South Africa.
Happy Independence Day to all of our readers from Botswana!
In March 1885, what is now the nation of Botswana was declared a British Protectorate by Royal Decree. It was then known as Bechuanaland and adopted its new name after gaining independence from Britain on September 30th, 1966.
Geographically, the region that Botswana covers was originally home to the San people who were displaced by migrating Tswana during the Bantu expansion in the 17th century.
AFRICA AT THE PARALYMPICS: Tshotlego Morama
Tshotlego Morama, born in Lethakane in 1987, is a Motswana Paralympic sprinter.
Representing Botswana at the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens, she won gold in the women’s 400m sprint in the T46 disability category, setting a new world record in the process, with a time of 55.99.
She remains the only athlete ever to have represented Botswana at the Paralympics.
Morama also won gold at the 2007 All-Africa Games, setting a new African record in the women’s 200 metres.
Morama was due to represent Botswana again at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing,but ultimately did not compete.
Nijel Amos claimed the first London 2012 Olympic medal for Botswana after coming second in the men’s 800m race.
