17/06/2024
The story of the Goodman Gallery and black South African artists
The story of the Goodman Gallery and its South African artists, with Neil Dundas, senior curator, and Sam Nhlengethwa, a set designer, collage artist, and painter, who has received longstanding support from the forward-thinking gallery, and is now one of the country's most recognised visual artists.
A longer version...
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Stories of cultural activism, then and now
Latest post on my Substack Newsletter:
Stories of cultural activism, then and now
From the fight against apartheid to the toppling of colonial statues and demands for reparations, the struggle isn't over.
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Dear readers,
Sorry for posting twice in one week, but the world is in turmoil, and news is moving fast…
I’m just keen to add my little contributions.
Ten years ago, I came back from a war zone, from a country wrecked by colonialism, and most of the people I know in France didn’t want to hear about it.
To fight this indifference, I decided to focus on activism, and especially cultural activism.
I had so much hope then… I went back to England, and had a few wonderful months.
In the same way, when the pandemic stroke, I focus on possible positive change, activism from grassroots campaigners and from a few artists.
A few months later, I covered the protests denouncing the killing of George Floyd in the USA, while, in Bristol, in West England, and focused on answers to injustices, and thus learned so much on the issues of reparations.
Being based between England and France, the issue of reparations has been pushed forwards in the former then backwards in the latter… And I’m not always so hopeful.
Cultural activism these days is not very prominent in the western world. But grassroots activists are still doing an amazing job.
This week, I decided to speak again about the issue of reparations, in my podcast, produced for RFI.
Demands for reparations
PODCAST - SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICA
Global South amplifies calls for compensation for historical injustices
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South Africa's cultural resistance
All my stories on our website here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/author/melissa-chemam/
And on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXE4ofFjz0lsRzemjdmFf7w
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La France, Empire
par Nicolas Lambert
Until 27/06/24 in Paris’ Theatre de Belleville:
https://www.theatredebelleville.com/fr/la-france-empire
In Avignon, Theatre 11:
https://www.festivaloffavignon.com/spectacles/4131-la-france-empire
“Nicolas Lambert debunks the preconceived ideas of our past, our colonial present. Personal memories and national romance collide. A facetious storyteller, he throws fuel on the fire with the desire to convey the complexity of the story, to track down the unsaid things that we carry together like cumbersome family secrets. And if laughter is never far away, the question remains: can we write a future on the rubble of a distorted past?”
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Read here:
Stories of cultural activism, then and now
16/06/2024
Paris demonstration against fascism and the far right - 15 June 2024
Hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Paris against fascism and the far right on Saturday 15 June 2024, after far-right parties reached over 32 percent at the European elections six days prior...
Paris demonstration against fascism
and the far right - 15 June 2024
Can I call demos my calling, my life, my passion, or my hobby...?
A powerful story of cultural resistance with the South African jazzman Sipho "Hotstix" Mabuse
My latest article for RFI, part of a series of two, and last from my work in Johannesburg:
Johannesburg, South Africa – Thirty years after the end of apartheid in South Africa, the cultural resistance artists waged against white minority rule continues to inspire new generations of creators.
"Nelson Mandela himself always said that the struggle against apartheid was a collective effort," Tshepo Moloi, history lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, told RFI.
"People who were not in leadership had a great role too: the labourers, the workers and the cultural activists – people who sang, poets, painters, sculptors," said Moloi, a specialist on the liberation struggle.
"They played an important role for the international community to know what was happening in South Africa."
Thirty years after the long fight led South Africans to freedom, that cultural resistance has become part of the country's essence, inspiring new generations of artists.
Johannesburg, a hotbed of resistance
"Some people would easily understand the speeches by leaders like Oliver Tambo, who went around the world informing about the brutal system of apartheid, but some people would sympathise through music or poetry with what was happening inside the country," Moloi says.
The African National Congress, the liberation movement that has since become South Africa's ruling party, even had its own performing group, he says. Named the Amandla Cultural Ensemble after a local word for "power", it toured the world promoting the anti-apartheid cause.
But back in segregated South Africa, just making music as a black artist could be an act of defiance in itself.
"Music was segregated. Apartheid affected every life in South Africa, even work," says Sipho "Hotstix" Mabuse, a jazz musician who played with some of South Africa's finest.
"We were not allowed to perform at some of the best venues in town."
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Read the whole story here:
The sound of struggle: South Africa's lasting legacy of cultural resistance
14/06/2024
South Africa's ANC and DA agree on deal for a coalition government
South Africa's newly-elected parliament met this Friday for the swearing in of the new elected members, and in order to elect the country's President.
Cyril Ramaphosa, expected to be reelected, has announced the formation of an unprecedented coalition government after his ruling ANC cobbled together a coalition deal.
For 30 years, electing its president by the parliament was like a formality for the African National Congress (ANC).
The ANC has been in power since the 1994 elections that marked the end of apartheid, but it lost its majority for the first time in the 29 May vote.
It keeps 159 elected parliamentarians over the 400 MPs in the National Assembly, which is seated in a convention centre in Cape Town, since the Parliament's permanent complex was badly damaged in a fire in 2022 and not yet reopened.
Friday's session started at 10 am local time (0800 GMT).
The ANC has since been trying to put together a broad-based government of national unity.
On Thursday night, the party announced other parties had agreed to take part, including its largest rival of the pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA), but the precise deal is still in progress.
Details were still being ironed out half an hour before parliament was due to sit, one of the senior DA officials on the party's negotiating team, Helen Zille, said on Friday.
Unity or coalition government?
"The ANC is going into this under the guise of a government of national unity, but really it isn't," political analyst Dr. Hlengiwe Ndlovu of the Wits University School of Governance told AFP. "It's more like coalition talks."
The two major leftist parties shunned the deal.
The radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) refused to join what the ANC still calls a unity government.
Graft-tainted former president Jacob Zuma's new party, the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), has disputed the 29 May election results and warned it would boycott Friday's sitting of the 400-member assembly.
The ANC had been talking to MK, but had not reached agreement.
The government will then "gravitate to the centre", According to ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula, backed by the centre-right DA, the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and several smaller parties.
The DA now has 87 seats in Parliament.
MK 58, and the hard-left EFF 39, and the socially conservative Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) 17, which has its base in the Zulu community.
The IFP was actually the first to confirm it would take part in a unity government with the ANC and the DA.
Final details
"We are finalising the last details this morning because we are determined that we must get our country going," IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa told SABC early on Friday.
"The framework (agreement for a government) is part of discussions. Even overnight it was looked at," he said.
Under South Africa's constitution, the National Assembly must convene within two weeks of legislative elections being declared to elect its speaker, deputy speaker and the country's president.
The new parliament, once every MP is sworn in, will have to elect the President. They are expected to reelect Ramaphosa.
New podcast episode: On reparations...
PODCAST - SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICA
Global South amplifies calls for compensation for historical injustices
Issued on:
This week we are addressing the issue of reparations for historical injustices, incl. slavery, colonial violence, war crimes, with a focus on the Caribbean and Africa...
With Nasim Salad from The Advocacy Team
These reparations could take various forms, primarily financial compensation.
Activists argue that former colonisers should compensate former colonies and that different perpetrators should provide reparations to various victims. This includes compensation for slavery and addressing losses and damages related to climate injustice.
In light of the recent European elections and the upcoming parliamentary elections in France and the UK, these questions could soon be reframed and gain prominence in public debate and international negotiations. Additionally, the African Union has designated reparations as a key issue for 2025.
To learn more about the feasibility and types of reparations being demanded, I spoke with Nasim Salad, a senior associate at The Advocacy Team, a public affairs consultancy.
The group has collaborated with think tanks like The One Campaign and Development Reimagined, and it has recently produced a report to suggest how to come up with concrete financial plans for potential reparations.
Nasim Salad has insight into the different forms of financial plans for reparations.
Episode mixed by Nicolas Doreau.
Spotlight on Africa is a podcast from Radio France Internationale.
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