Jacob's Ladder.
Jacob Zuma is a former goatherd, a master of traditional Zulu stick-fighting, a resistance hero, a one-time spymaster, a graceful dancer, and the father of some 20 children. He has been tried for rape and indicted for corruption, racketeering, and fraud. He has been called the next Mandela and the next Mugabe, a black Jesus and a crass rube. A profile of South Africa's recently elected president.
posted by lullaby
on Jun 3, 2009 -
22 comments
William Kentridge creates animation by working into charcoal drawings; drawing, erasing, redrawing, layering, to create stories that frequently link the intensely intimate with the politics of his native South Africa.
Johannesburgh -1989 introduces characters that recur through many of his films.
[more inside]
posted by louche mustachio
on May 6, 2009 -
5 comments
The Zine Library has
hundreds of zines in pdf format for your perusal. They are organized into categories ranging from the common political (
anarchism,
political prisoners &
animal liberation) and identity based zines (
indigenous,
race &
gender) to the more esoteric (
anarchist history,
primitivism &
theory) as well as the useful (
cooking,
DIY &
organizing manuals) and arty (
art,
comics &
music). Now, zines are by their very nature hit and miss but there are some real treasures to be found. I recommend these three:
[all links pdf] The Rebel's Dark Laughter - The Writings of Bruno Filippi,
Barefoot in the Kitchen and
Delivery from Below, Resistance from Above - Electricity and the Politics of Struggle in Tembisa, South Africa. Note: Many if not most zines are set up to be printed out and bound together in chapbooks. That requires a bit of going back and forth when reading in pdf-format, but they wouldn't be real zines if they were straightforward to read ;) Don't know what a zine is? A pretty good overview is provided by zine librarian Jenna Freedman in
Zines Are Not Blogs: A Not Unbiased Analysis.
[This site has been posted previously but was buried deep in the weeds of more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 10, 2009 -
16 comments
A recent series of posts on the web site of First Things magazine looks at what could be described as a reactionary moment on the part of some folk and roots musicians in Québec and around the world... and we're not talking
The Goldwaters (
Wikipedia).
[more inside]
posted by Jahaza
on Jan 7, 2009 -
10 comments
African Swim is the newest free album being offered by Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. This time the album features South African hip hop groups.
posted by drezdn
on Oct 21, 2008 -
12 comments
First, a bit of an
introduction to the game of
Cricket (youtube) for those of us who may not be
familiar with the
sport. Next, a few
clips (1, 2, 3, 4) on how
awesome the
Gentleman's Game can be (and you thought we didn't do anything but roam around in our white pants and cotton shirts...). But, if that wasn't enough for you, then here's a taste of
Twenty20 Cricket (the
fast,
fast paced version of the game), and the new
DLF Indian (pdf) Premier League. (This is in addition to the
One Day Matches, which were instituted to bring in a bit more excitement into the game during the 1970's, prior to which the match only consisted of
Tests. However, some purists still maintain that the game would've been better served had it not been
commercalized to the extent that it has, and still prefer the leisurely pace of the original format to its current incarnation.)
[more inside]
posted by hadjiboy
on Mar 20, 2008 -
56 comments
Nuclear Facility in South Africa attacked by armed intruders. According to the Pretoria News, four armed men broke into the control room of the
Pelindaba Nuclear Research Center, shooting "a senior emergency officer" in the process. The government nuclear agency Necsa has told the paper that publishing the story would be a violation of the National Keypoints Act. The facility seems to be part of South Africa's nuclear weapons program.
posted by Kirth Gerson
on Nov 11, 2007 -
18 comments
Ready or Not. "South Africa is a great place to have a party, and people are incredibly generous of spirit. What we should be doing is trying to make the World Cup experience uniquely African: where the bus comes 10 minutes late but nobody gives a toss because they are having such a good time. Instead, the organisers seem to want to try to run the World Cup as efficiently as the Germans did. What a load of bull. The Germans could invade Poland in three days. We could not invade Swaziland in three months." Article in today's Observer about preparations in South Africa for the
soccer World Cup in 2010.
posted by hydatius
on Jun 3, 2007 -
17 comments
I've long felt that the U.S. of A. "jumped the shark" as a country when we rejected the Metric System. The price of gasoline would still be under a dollar (per liter). Yet, we'd drive less because a short 20 mile trip would become a long 32 km trip. Then there's
the most important measurement of all [maybe NSFW animated graph], providing us with the joy of 12.9(!) while we try to ignore that Japan is .1 ahead of us and France is .1 more than
South Africa. (And is that Korean average North or South?)
posted by wendell
on Aug 14, 2006 -
65 comments
Mind Over Matter: South African Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy site. Bound by the code of conduct of the South African Association of Hypnotherapists
("1.17 Practitioners must not practice dentistry unless they hold an appropriate qualification. 1.18 Patients suffering from AIDS may be treated at the discretion of the practitioner"). Possibly associated with
these folks; I'm certainly inspired to put my subconscious in the glittery hands of
this guy.
P.S.: The female orgasm is 100% Purely Mental.
posted by Gator
on Feb 14, 2006 -
7 comments
Last week, the Guardian posted a
three-part special report by their Middle East correspondent (and former South African correspondent) Chris McGreal on the similarities between the current situation in Israel and the South African Apartheid regime. The report provoked many heated responses,
a selection of which is reproduced here and
here. The Guardian responded by inviting Benjamin Pogrund, former deputy editor of the famously anti-Apartheid Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, author of a
number of books on South Africa and founder of Yakar, a Jerusalem center for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue to
weigh in with a response.
posted by ori
on Feb 13, 2006 -
20 comments
In the August edition of Outside Magazine, Tim Zimmerman chronicles the story of divers Deon Dreyer and Dave Shaw. Dreyer, a 20-year-old experienced diver, died in 1994 while exploring Bushman's Cave in Boesmansgat, South Africa, the third deepest cave in the world. In October 2004, Dave Shaw, while diving to the bottom of Bushman's Cave, discovered the body of Deon Dreyer and, tying a line to him, promised to recover the body for Dreyer's family. A few months later, in January 2005,
Shaw died in the attempt, unintentionally
filming his own death. Both bodies have since been recovered.
posted by Moral Animal
on Aug 3, 2005 -
20 comments
Why Does Archbishop Desmond Tutu Hate Our Christian Moral Values? In an interview with MSNBC, the nobel prize winner slams George Bush. "I had naively believed all these many years that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there that when you made an utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White House was saying, then they attacked you. For a South African the déjà vu was frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to happen here [during apartheid]—vilifying those who are putting forward a slightly different view."
posted by expriest
on Dec 30, 2004 -
95 comments
Apartheid Dies Second Death A South African court has declared marriage discrimination to be unconstitutional, and has registered the union of Marie Fourie and Cecelia Bonthuys. Henceforth, marriage in South Africa will be defined as "the union of two persons to the exclusion of all others for life."
posted by expriest
on Nov 30, 2004 -
37 comments
The Ethnographic Lens: Images from the Realm of a Rain Queen. Between 1936 and 1938 social anthropologists Eileen and Jack Krige undertook intensive fieldwork in the north-eastern regions of South Africa among the Lobedu people whose chief Modjadji was widely acclaimed as a rainmaker.'
'In 1943 their book 'The Realm of a Rain Queen' was published and has remained in print ever since. Some of the photographs taken by the Kriges were used as illustrations in the book but many remained unpublished and little known ...' Via
this
collection of archaeological and anthropological resources from the
South African Museum.
Princess Makobo Modjadji of the Bolobedu has just been crowned as the new
Rain Queen, Modjadji VI.
A light
drizzle greeted the inauguration, which may be
a good sign.
The Rain Queen was the inspiration for H. Rider Haggard's
'She Who Must Be Obeyed'.
More on the world of the Rain Queen - including biographical details on the last Rain Queen, and her relationships with politicians such as Nelson Mandela in a changine South Africa -
here.
posted by plep
on Apr 12, 2003 -
5 comments
Just Nuisance, Able Seaman. The only canine enlisted in the Royal Navy, Just Nuisance served from 1939 to 1944 in Simon's Town, South Africa (on his papers his occupation was listed as '
Bone Crusher' and his religion '
Canine Divinity League [Anti-Vivisection]'). Providing a great source of morale to sailors stationed there he would escort them on train trips and make sure they made it back to base after a night on the town. Of course being a sailor himself he was privy to a few brushes with the law as well by traveling on the railways without a pass (punishment: Confined to the banks of Froggy Pond, Lily Pool, with all lamp posts removed) or sleeping on an Officer's bed (punishment: Deprived of bones for seven days.). Married, and survived by five children, on his death he was afforded a funeral with full military colours. You can read his
biography (which spawned a television series), or merely pay respects at his
statue next time you're in Simon's Town.
posted by PenDevil
on Mar 19, 2003 -
3 comments
"35,000". The South African president
Thabo Mbeki is failing to deal with his nation's unbelievable AIDS epidemic.
Here are the opinions of his chief advisor on the disease. For balance,
here is the opinion of the UK government.
Do you agree with me that Mbeki is a dangerous man, and is a terrible choice to follow his
predecessor?
posted by Pretty_Generic
on Dec 1, 2002 -
6 comments
Venda Girls' Initiation Schools is a fascinating collection of material from the observation of the Initiation of Venda girls in South Africa in the 1950's by ethnomusicologist
John Blacking. Included are
songs,
virtual divination dice, video, and mostly collected descriptions and local interpretations of the various stages and rituals of the schools with a primary emphasis on music in this context. Quite a bit here for a mostly linear navigation architecture, but it's the results of some very interesting work available on the web just the same.
posted by mblandi
on Nov 16, 2002 -
1 comment
