Blogging Africa

Review of African Blogs

Sokari Ekine (2007-04-04)

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/40572

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The Other Africa is a new blog from Senegal by Ndeyefatou. Her latest post “Discover Dakar, she posts a photo essay showing places and monuments in the city – one of my favourites is a piece of modern art depicting “Mother Africa”

“The Millenium Door. This was constructed in 2000 on the Corniche of Dakar. It has a door in its middle thats known as the Millenieum door . This door symbolizes the entry to a new century or millenium. At the top of the door there is a statue of a woman named Yaye Boye= Mother in wolof. She symbolizes mother Africa watching over its children.”

Khanya is another new blog this time from South Africa. Referring to the new South African blog aggregator, Amatomu, produced by the Mail & Guardian, Khanya asks “where are all the African bloggers”. Yet again that same question we have heard so many times before both referring to African men and women bloggers.

“Look at South African blog aggregator sites like Amatomu, and the vast majority of the bloggers there are white. And this in spite of the fact that it is run by the Mail & Guardian newspaper, which has several black journalists. So if there are black bloggers out there, why aren’t they showing up on Amatomu?............The disparity not confined to blogging, but is seen in other parts of the Web and in electronic communications generally. In Usenet newsgroups, for example, most of the South African newsgroups are dominated by whites, with a high proportion of whinging whenwes. The soc.culture.south-africa newsgroup did have one very articulate black poster a few years ago, but he was not one to suffer fools gladly, and went off to play golf instead.”

I don’t know why Black bloggers are not showing up on Amatomu but I do know that issues of access to technology exist for the not white population who make up the majority of the poorer sections of SA. With most Black people still living in townships and a further 20% living in shacks it is not surprising that blogging and technology in general is not being taken up. Most Black and people of colour complain about the cost of internet connection at home and lets face it if you have just spent 2 hours struggling to get home the last thing you want to do is go and find an internet café and start blogging.

Sotho is possibly the only blogger to write about the recent elections in Lesotho. Knowing so little about Lesotho and Lesotho politics I welcome this short piece especially as he raises the question will the prime minister, Mosisili be taking after Mugabe?

“On Sunday elections were held in Lesotho. The small southern African “kingdom in the sky” was the continent’s first country to use a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system, in 2002. Sunday’s election was Lesotho’s second under MMP, and as I am not aware of any other African countries having opted for MMP (as opposed to MMM/parallel, which is used by several countries*), it must have been only the second African MMP election……………Lesotho politics is fraught with fallacies. There are even suggestions that the tiny mountain kingdom should be incorporated into South Africa before its tool late. In fact the only hope for the poor country is its big neighbour where there are more than 50 000 Basotho employed in the gold mines. Lately, its educated citizens are leaving in droves for greener pastures in the SA provinces. Is Lesotho becoming the next Zimbabwe? Is prime minister Mosisili taking after pres Mugabe?”

Alt.muslim writes on “the growing acceptance for anti-Arab prejudice and discrimination that remains politically correct in the US and the West”. Alt.Muslim is concerned about what he perceives as a growing anti-Arab movement that separates Arab Muslims from non-Arab Muslims and what that elevates the second group over the first – he uses Malcolm X’s analogy of “house niggers” versus “field niggers” with the Arab Muslims being the latter.

“America's battle for "hearts and minds" in the interest of ending terrorism and the Muslim world's enmity for it will continue to fail as long as such strategies are used. Cultivating "house Negroes" in Indonesia and Turkey to keep down the "field Negroes" in the Arab world will only lead to further anger at the United States for its continued meddling in the domestic politics of, in this case, non-Arab countries…………Finally, Muslims in America and abroad must never succumb to the growing acceptance for anti-Arab prejudice and discrimination that remains politically correct in the US and the West in general, whether it's in stupid jokes or "intellectual" commentary like Kristol's. As our beloved Arab Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him said: "All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood."

Squatter City reports on a court ruling in Joburg that will allow the government to evict squatters.


“The Supreme Court of Appeal decision allows the government to evict approximately 300 people from six buildings in the inner city that it argues are unsafe and unhealthy. The court ruling does, however, require the city to provide temporary relocation housing for the people it evicts”

What Squatter City is reporting on is the move by the Johannesburg government to gentrify downtown Joburg and in the process remove the last remaining black population so that it may refurbish and construct new high rise expensive apartments for wealthy people.

Henry 2015 confirms the above plans in his post, African urbanization: Cities without limits.

“Johannesburg, South Africa's business capital, is facing similar problems. Over 20% of the city's population are thought to live in shacks and the city cannot build cheap houses fast enough. In places like Alexandra, one of the city's townships, shacks have been built dangerously close to the river and people drown when it swells. Plans are under way to move some people to new houses elsewhere. But what happens when the people do not want to move? That is the problem facing the city in the old central business district. For years it has been kicking out poor people who had moved into the many abandoned buildings, claiming that they are unsafe. But now lawyers acting for 300 people fighting eviction argue that the city must provide alternative accommodation, preferably in the same area.”

The movement to kick out the poor in cities such as Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town is a systematic one that has been taking place for years and is a form of apartheid – this time economic which does translate into racial as most poor people are people of colour (in SA terms, Blacks, Indians and coloureds). There are two informal settlements in Durban that are presently fighting the local government against removal after promises to build new houses for them on nearby land was rescinded and sold to local business men for development.

In Black Looks Kameelah questions the way in which we speak about the highly complex situation in Zimbabwe and asks that we do not assume the MDC as the given and best alternative to Mugabe.

“This delicacy in speaking about Zimbabwe does not mean we stay silent—engaging in the quiet diplomacy that South African president Thabo Mbeki has seemed to master; it means that we develop the strategies to speak about Zimbabwe in productive ways.”…………. Granted–any words uttered about the negligence and brutality of specific African governments will be an invitation for the West. If it is not a formal invitation, then it is an instigation of the desire for greater Western involvement in Zimbabwe (and by extension Africa)—a desire that lingered below the surface awaiting the opportunity to exploit—and at the moment Africa has many crisis opportunities to exploit. It is a desire for involvement that can only be staged as legitimate when certain people speak in certain ways. With that said, how do we speak? When? Where? And to whom? Or, do we stay silent? Do we pussy-foot around the crisis at hand to preserve the sanctity of African political leadership? If we choose to speak, how do we speak in a way that does not invite neocolonial intervention, or mimic Western neo-con and neo-liberal narratives?”

Kameelah raises an important point in asking how do we speak of Zimbabwe. We need to be very careful of the kind of language we use and avoid language that is racially loaded and feeds into the West’s vision of Africa as opposed to a progressive vision which seeks a new form of African leadership.

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks, and is Online News Editor of Pambazuka News.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

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