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 All posts originally made by me are credited.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)
Zimbabwe: 1980s
Miners from Zimbabwe and their families. From “Family of Miners” series by Milton Rogivin
This series portrays miners in ten nations.
In 1962, Milton and Anne Rogovin traveled to Appalachia for the first of nine visits. Photographs were taken of mountains devastated by mining operations as well as of miners at their work places and in the neighborhoods where they worked. Milton captured the effects of Black Lung disease and unemployment.
In the “Family of Miners” series, workers were photographed with hard hats and lanterns and coal blackened faces, at rest, in below-ground changing rooms, or on elevators descending into the mines. When not at work, they were photographed at festivals, at local pubs, or at home with their families or with their pets.
Saki Mafundikwa is a maverick visionary who left a successful design career in New York to return to his native Zimbabwe and open that country’s first school of graphic design and new media. Mafundikwa is the author of Afrikan Alphabets, a comprehensive review of African writing systems. He has participated in exhibitions and workshops around the world, contributed to a variety of publications and lectured about the globalization of design and the African aesthetic. In going home and opening his school, Mafundikwa’s ambition is nothing less than to jump-start an African renaissance. (aiga.org)
“I returned home last year after an absence that totalled twenty years, going to school and then working in the US. I decided to come back home to start ZIVA, a New Media Arts school. ZIVA, besides being an acronym for Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, is also a Shona word meaning “knowledge.”…
At the heart of ZIVA’s mission is a desire to create a new visual language – a language inspired by history, a language that is informed by but not dictated to or confined by European design, a language that is inspired by all the arts (sculpture, textiles, painting and Afrikan religion), a language whose inspiration is Afrikan. We are at a crossroads in the history of design right now with the young designers of the Western world rejecting the straitjacket confines of what design is and is not.
“African alphabets debunk the myth of the dark continent, they lay to rest the lies born out of ignorance that have been leveled at our beautiful Mama Africa” - Saki Mafundikwa
This less than 6-minute video is packed with so much information and essential knowledge about the history and importance of certain African writing systems and their value. As Saki emphasizes, this sort of information holds an incredible amount of weight in relation to our identities, and retracing these histories is of paramount importance.
The only area that I disagree with him on is when he says that the lies propagated about Africa(ns) were born out of ignorance - I’d be a little more specific and say that they were conceived from a place of hatred. Those who enslaved and colonized us despised us too.
Also, I love his subtle rejection of the word ‘tribe’.
Tsitsi Dangarembga (via b-sama)
This is the truth. I’ll add that now even Black Africans have joined in defending/supporting this false white victim hood.
(via thefemaletyrant)
(via manufactoriel)
MORNING SONG: Thabo & The Real Deal - World War Free
Lead by the deeply hypnotic soulful vocals of Zimbabwean singer Thabo Mkwananzi, this UK-based quartet commands your attention and consciousness in this socio-politcal anthem of our times.
One of our favorite TEDxEuston talks came from Trevor Ncube. His inspirational talk was entitled Embracing Life’s Challenges.
In discussing his own life and the challenges he faced, Ncube reminds us not to underestimate the importance of good teachers’s role as people who believe in young people and raise their self esteem.
He said, “[T]eachers can build or destroy…we all need someone who believes in us, we all need affirmation.”
This is such an important video to watch.
Flame (clip)
The first feature film by Ingrid Sinclair, produced by Joel Phiri and Simon Bright, and the first to be set during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. Shot in Zimbabwe with an entirely Zimbabwean cast, the film is based on the accounts of women who joined the liberation war.
“Flame is undoubtedly a revelation for African film, the continent’s women film-makers, and the task of retelling history with passion rather than plaintiveness that is so often the case with South African film and television.”
24 April 1997 Mail & Guardian
(via blackfilm)
Oliver Mtukudzi & the Black Spirits - GlobalFEST 2013
The shape of a country,
like scars on a body,
is carefully hidden.
In smiles and ease and Americanness.
Because the Zimbabwe in you is a struggle that isn’t over yet.
Your uncles started the war in the 70s,
and your mother fights for you still in her small office in phoenix Harare.They charted your displacement on a map of the world
Happy Independence Day to all Zimbabweans everywhere!
Celebrating the country’s 33rd independence day today, April 18th, 2013, the country formerly colonized by the British in and known as Southern Rhodesia and later simply ‘Rhodesia’, after Cecil Rhodes, the southern African state gained independence in 1980. It had been a British colony since 1889.
At the independence day celebrations in April 1980, held in the capital Salisbury that would later be renamed as Harare in 1982, many foreign signatories were present including President of Botswana Seretse Khama, Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, Nigerian President Shehu Shagari and Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi.
Bob Marley, invited by the government of Zimbabwe headed by President Canaan Banana and Robert Mugabe as Prime Minister, performed a song he’d written for the historic occasion called ‘Zimbabwe’.
President Shagari of Nigeria pledged $15 million at the celebration to train Zimbabweans in Zimbabwe and expatriates in Nigeria.
Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA)
The Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) is a 6-day annual festival that showcases the very best of Zimbabwean, regional and international arts and culture in a comprehensive programme of theatre, dance, music, circus, street performance, spoken word, craft and visual arts. HIFA brings together socially and culturally disparate groups of Zimbabweans to celebrate the healing and constructive capacity of the arts
HIFA 2013 will be the 14th Festival. Since its inception in 1999, the Festival has received recognition for its support of arts and culture in Zimbabwe and is seen as a major contributor to development in this area. HIFA is now the largest cultural event in Zimbabwe and among the eight major festivals in Africa
Africa is that vast stretch of land within my soul
Undefiled by the stride of the colonial lion
Hunting down the gazelle of my being.
It’s the common darkness of our skin,
Night; speckled with dots of light
Different languages, cultures, identities
All beaming around the common moon of
Ubuntu, Chivanhu, Humanity.
It’s this ‘darkness’ which they tried to defile
With their light, borne by Moffat and Livingstone,
Sent to rape our identities in missionary position
Then fail to explain what colour the Father is
If the ‘son is white’, thus Africa
Is that part of me that doesn’t belong to
Jesus of Nazareth, whose holey hands
Have sent more tumbling to the pits of hell
Than they have saved!
Often I say these things and my own people
Get cross and want to crucify me,
They call me sacrilegious ’cause I have the balls
To read the Bible upside-down
And say what it’s saying when it’s saying
What they are not saying it’s saying;
Who’s insane?! Why not call me mean, because I mean
What I say and I say what I mean and what I mean is
Jesus is not the menace, no,
It’s those that used his stripes to bind our eyes,
Aye! Like those powdering the bones
Of Nehanda and Kaguvi to poison our minds:
I’m talking about you Gabriel, Lucifer!
And all you other angels turned demons,
All you fools of empty promises,
Yes you ho smile for the camera and frown
As you toast civil servants baking in the sun
For daily bread.
You see the African I am is not a Google definition,
But how do I wean my siblings off the nipples
On the internet and make them face books
And realise that they are more than just a Facebook profile?
That Africa is not straight caps, baggy jeans and cheap
Fifty cent rhymes, no! It’s the song of Bambatha,
And that beating beast beneath my breast
That bellowed ‘AMANDLA!’
While Desmond was shooting his mouth like a 2-2.
When dubul’ ibhunu was the right thing to say,
Apologies white folks for any ricochet.
Zimbabwean poet Philani Amadeus Nyoni delivers a poignant poem that strikes deep at the heart of one of the most critical periods in recent African history.
Listen to him deliver the poem, “African Thought”, here.
Select artworks by Zimbabwean painter Misheck Msamvu
Born in 1980 in Penhalonga, Zimbabwe, Misheck Masamvu studied art with Helen Lieros at Gallery Delta in Harare and at the Kunstacademie in Munich.
Masamvu’s haunting depictions question the continent’s current trajectory by dramatically exposing psycho-social and political realities.
His work has been shown internationally at Galerie Françoise Heitsch (Munich), Zimbabwe Pavilion at 54th Venice Art Biennale, Influx Contemporary Art (Lisbon), Africa Museum (Arnhem), National Gallery of Zimbabwe (Harare), Gallery Delta (Harare), Dak’Art Biennale 2006 (Dakar) and more.
Misheck Masamvu is represented by Gallery Delta, Harare. His work is also currently available through Galerie Françoise Heitsch, Munich.
