http://youtu.be/5iIFqHMOE1g No it's not a protest. It's PR for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth in South Africa's Eastern Cape. To get you to come and study there. The singers are from the University Choir and it's in that classic new South African public space, a shopping mall. Someone's already conjuring up metaphors about rainbows and how this what Mandela was all about. Calm down people: it's only PR. H/T: Nerina Penzhorn.

http://vimeo.com/16724676 Journalist/photographer Chris Parkinson, who lives in Johannesburg, has shot this short film about car spinning in the city. Invited by a fellow photographer, who is also a spinner, he headed out to Nasrec, a racing track on the edge of Soweto. "What I loved about the event is that it seemed to be completely mixed, racially, both in terms of the drivers and the spectators - this is rare in South Africa where most sports are considered to be either black or white. There was a great atmosphere and everybody was there just to appreciate the cars and the driving," he told me an in email.  Parkinson, born in Britain has been living in South Africa the last 4 years as a cameraman for BBC News.  "I like to think that I came to Africa with an open mind and have really enjoyed travelling widely and meeting so many different people. i wouldn't say that I have a philosophy about how I film and the stories I tell about the continent--I just try to create something interesting to the viewer. I like to do positive stories and to show what a diverse and fascinating continent it is but at the same time it is impossible to hide from the challenges that the people and governments face --those stories must also be covered." You can view his work here.

http://vimeo.com/26538549 The documentary "Dear Mandela," about three young leaders of a shack dwellers movement in Durban, South Africa, is finally here. The film will premiere at Durban International Film Festival--the first screening is on the 26th July. According to filmmakers, Dara Kell and Christopher Nizza, the film will also embark on a national tour in South Africa before screenings here in the US. If the short version of the film is anything to go by, it should be good. In that film, one of the youth leaders, Mnikelo Ndabankulu, speaking after a fire that destroyed 200 shacks in his neighborhood, refers to government supporters, says: “They say, ‘Why are these people marching because these times [of oppression] have gone. We are in a democracy. What are they marching for?’ [However] the real motive behind our struggle is this thing [pointing to conditions in his squatter community]. It is not a matter of fame, it is a not a matter of power hunger. It’s not a matter of disrespecting the authorities. It’s being serious about life. This is not life.” Then, channeling Mandela’ single-mindedness before he was sentence to life in prison in 1964, Ndabankulu says: “You don’t need to be old to be wise. That is why we think we need to show our character while we are still young so that when your life ends, it must not be like a small obituary that said, ‘You were born, you ate, you go to school, you died.’ When you are dying you must die with credibility. People must talk about you saying good things, saying you were a man among men, not just an ordinary man.” More information and future screenings times here.

South Africa's first democratic president is 93 years old today.

The artwork is a collaboration between the two Dutch artists Anton Corbijn and Berend Strik. (Via: ZAM Magazine)

* It would be appropriate to click through to our February 11, 2010 post "Songs for Nelson Mandela" (on the 10th anniversary of Mandela's release of Mandela). Here.

http://vimeo.com/24894177 All that stuff we could not blog--we have real jobs--or were too lazy to put up. First, up a rough cut of "Quel Souvenir," a new film (currently in post-production) about the new Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline is screening on July 27 at the DocuClub in Manhattan. Here is the trailer.  Here's the description by the director, Danya Abt: "... The Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline was the largest investment project ever made in sub-Saharan Africa, a 600 mile pipeline from the oil fields of Southwestern Chad to the beaches of Cameroon.  'Quel Souvenir' follows the pipeline through the the many communities it touches, who ask 'If the land is rich, why are we so poor?' and frames the project withing a larger context of growing oil exploitation in Africa." * I have fond memories of the Africa Center in Covent Garden--a building housing a restaurant, bookstore and basement bar/club--from my short time as a graduate student in London. So I was sad to read in this weekend's The Financial Times it may not be no more, taken over by a property developer "with South African roots" (I can only imagine what that means) who has turned everything else in the neighborhood into "high-end retail shops and restaurants." Anyway there is a last ditch attempt to still keep it open. I doubt the nearby Springbok Bar has difficulties getting patrons or sponsors. More here. * Nuruddin Farrah, the Somali writer who still (?) lives in Cape Town, compares the Mogadishu of his childhood with its violent present. * Meanwhile, here's US public radio service NPR with an interactive map of China's global reach. (Strangely, the data for the map comes from the rightwing Heritage Foundation, which tracks "China's foreign nonbond investments and contracts worth more than $100 million.") Here. * And since we're talking about graphic displays of data. You have to like this Tumblr blog. * The video for "Zef Side" which introduced Die Antwoord to the internets (more than 7 million views at last count) has won its director Sean Metelerkamp a D&AD award. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q77YBmtd2Rw Anyway, where is Die Antwoord? * "Fire in Babylon," the filmic ode to the triumphant West Indies cricket team of the late 1970s through the mid--1990s is playing New York City at a few venues this summer and Fall: At the Rerun Theater (July 22 – 29th) in Dumbo, the Summer African Diaspora International Film Festival (Aug 12 – Aug 22) at Harlem's Riverside Theater and at BAM Cinematek, Brooklyn Sept 17. I rented the film on iTunes. At the heart of the film is an attempt to link the team's growing dominance to black power politics (classic scene is the on-field humiliation of England's South African-born captain Tony Greig on the West Indies' 1975 tour to England after he threatened to make them "grovel"). It also briefly explores the decision by some of the team members to sign for a 2-tour deal to Apartheid South Africa in the early 1980s against the wishes of South Africa's people. Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l7qIFu3YDk * Photographer Simon Weller's "township barbershops and salons" project. Look at it here. * When South Sudan gained its independence earlier this month, The Guardian put up this interactive map charting Africa's history since colonialism to this month. *What the Gates Foundation does when it not trying to destroy public education in the United States.  Read it here. *  Something to look forward to: The South African poet Keorepetse Kgositsile--who gave The Last Poets their name--will be reading stateside next Spring. But he may found that few cares about his achievements other than that he is the father of Earl Sweatshirt of rappers Odd Future. Here's a taste of Kgositsile, accompanied by Tumi & the Volume, paying his respects to Johnny Dyani: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmfnr6_9BMw * CNN on Shangaan Electro taking Europe this summer. * Check out Aaron Leaf's Tumblr and Blog about his travels in West Africa. Here. * And on the streets in Haiti they refer to "mixed-race" Haitians as "Marabou." Buried in a New York Times Magazine piece about the political ambitions of Wyclef Jean. Finally some music to ride the weekend out with: Sexion D'Assaut from Paris (via What's Up Africa) and Ntjapedi from outside Johannesburg. And I've had Blitz the Ambassador's "Native Son" album (link is to full stream) on repeat this week. BTW, Blitz makes a guest turn on L4's "Back to You" with Jon Tarifa. Here's the video shot around tourist landmarks around New York City: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ENyubE_eoI H/T: Bombastic Elements, Sophia Azeb, Tom Devriendt, Neelika Jayawardane, Cassandra Herman,

http://vimeo.com/15422187 Some rural flavor from Hambale, Zambia. Filmed by David Tree. H/T: Adrian Bischoff.

The internets have been rightly outraged at a white couple, "Dave and Chantal," who decided on a "colonial" (and Apartheid) theme at their wedding in South Africa complete with an all-black wait staff in red fezzes. Like it was a scene out of the film "Out of Africa." It turns out the happy couple asked for a recreation of the film. Serious. The wedding was held in Mpumalanga province on the border with Mozambique. The wedding organizers got props - which included "antique travel chests, clocks, globes and binoculars and an awesome Zebra skin" - from a "prop house" in South Africa capital Pretoria. This kind of thing which is apparently the in-thing (i.e. sold as "tradition" and "nostalgia" by events companies and venues), would have passed unnoticed, but for the internets. The couple or the wedding photographer felt pleased enough to post the pictures on a photography site. There it was spotted by the American blog, Jezebel (part of the Gawker empire). Once it became viral (and the couple their photographer and wedding planner were ridiculed) some of the photos (i.e. those with blacks in subservient positions or white people hamming it up in pith helmets) have been taken down. Here's a link to the "cleaned-up" cache-page since the page has been deleted. Luckily for us screen shots of the pictures exist. And the venue still has pictures of guests in pith helmets play acting shoot outs on its website. Of course, not surprisingly, some white South Africans are defending the couple. Although one commenter to the Jezebel post did write the truth: "Most white folks' weddings in [South Africa] are colonial not by design, but by default." Which is why we're surprised so few are asking--as RK points out in a comment on this post below--what makes venues like the Cow Shed (where the wedding was held and events company Pollination, think it is okay to throw colonial/Apartheid throwback weddings for white South African and European couples. By the way, the Cow Shed has since issued a lame press statement to still defend its decision to host the party. At least they can't blame the South African politician, Julius Malema, for this. Some of the photos are on Jezebel's website. More from the big blogs, here and here.

Must be our blog title. Someone named STONE decides to vent on The Hill's Congress Blog about US foreign aid in a piece about policing the already shrinking foreign aid budget that's currently only 1.5% of all federal spending:

It does not matter how little the amount sent to foreign countries, it is the principal of the thing…why send aid to china, a country that continues to grow our debt and buy it up and yet we send them aid? why send aid to africa, we owe that country nothing, just as we owe nothing to every other country..we Americans fought our way out of our own tyranny and yet we did it…they should do the same without our help…we even had less and do less than those countries do now and yet we help them…why?

A few others think so too as we know, old school comedian Drew Carey (in this embarrassing video) and Sarah Palin, for example, have made the same mistake. Though he was not born in Kenya, at least Barack Obama knows it's a continent. H/T: Amanda Makulec

Photographer Liz Johnson Artur, first arrived in Peckham, London, 20 years ago to live. A neighborhood of mostly high rise public housing blocks, Peckham is considered one of the poorest neighborhoods in Britain, is associated with high crime and high unemployment. Liz (who has been featured on AIAC before) writes in an email, that the occasional, mostly sensational, headlines of Peckham, totally misrepresent life as it is for a majority of people there. The people of Peckham "... has treated me well and make it a good place." What Peckham also has is diversity. More than a third of the residents are immigrants from Africa, almost 20% are from the Caribbean. Smaller numbers of whites and South Asians make up the rest. There's also been some gentrifying. The heart of Peckham is Rye Lane, its commercial strip. Liz has been photographing the denizens and visitors of Rye Lane. Here, with her permission, are a selection of her images of Rye Lane. More photographs of Rye Lane on Liz's site, Black Balloon Archive.

I forgot. I wanted to give AIAC's Boima a shoutout for his Ghetto Balms Mix Tape at The Fader. Download here. Now it is officially weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxLVnn7KxfU Some new Ghanaian hiplife from PAPPYKOJO.