May our Gods be angry: Celestial politics in Bas Congo

Unlike in Latin America, where liberation theology was once an influential force, Christians in Africa rarely confront political oppression. On the surface, African Christian institutions claim not to meddle in affairs of the State. These days, ‘conversion of the heathens’ is passé, as Christianity is now a widespread and entrenched belief system. Churches of all denominations offer manifold development initiatives in education, health and agriculture. In many countries where the State has limited reach into rural areas, churches represent the sole link to the outside world for isolated communities.

But it’s only half the story to say that African Christian institutions are above political interests and the establishment of a modern State. Throughout colonial occupation, the Church completed the political and economic triangle that comprised the massive social engineering project of colonialism. Here was a hearts and minds program that worked—colonial control encapsulated Maslow’s entire hierarchy of needs. From material conditions, social space and into the spiritual realm, colonialism repackaged the indigenous African experience and replaced each dimension with a foreign substitute. Little has changed since independence: neither the school curricula nor the political dispensations (despite elections, ‘Big Men’ reign in a colonial style). Formerly vibrant traditional belief systems are now subaltern and syncretistic, fusing in curious ways with imported Christian ideas.

Read the rest here.

Kinshasa in miniature

Stumbled on a wonderful slideshow of Kinshasa street scenes in miniature.

This view is of Boulevard 30 Juin in its former glory. Chinese road crews recently decimated all the trees and green medians to make way for a six-lane downtown thoroughfare.

From Afrikarabia.

Fighting for control in Somalia

Spontaneous and unstaged photos from Mog streets. 'War porn' you might say, but there is virtually no public record of the bowels of hell that is life in Somalia today. Only a few foreign aid workers and intrepid journalists see this madness firsthand. Piracy consumes almost all media coverage, and the plight of the average Somali is eclipsed entirely.

From the Boston Globe:

"While Somalia recently has been in the news for its notorious pirates, back on-shore the country continues to struggle through a years-long war that has intensified lately, and to seek some sort of functional unifying government. Back in January, the Transitional Federal Parliament of Somalia elected moderate Islamist Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as President. Ahmed has gained international backing in his efforts to bring an end to 18 years of civil conflict.

However, hard-line Islamist groups such as al Shabaab, Hezb al-Islamiya and others continue to reject the government and have been attacking its forces and civilians for years now, most of the fighting taking place in the capital city of Mogadishu. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) provides over 3,000 troops to maintain security where it can. Since the start of this insurgency in December 2006, nearly 17,000 civilians have lost their lives." (32 photos total)

Werner Herzog: Man the measure of madness

Herzog explores the complexity of man/nature relations in dozens of films and documentaries; his antipathy towards romanticism and Cinema Verité is well known. To reject both fantasy and empiricism as story telling vehicles, where does that leave a director? Because it blurs fact and fiction, Herzog’s method of documentary cinema is rogue. To contrast his approach with Cinema Verité, in interviews he cites the Heideggerian concept of ‘ecstatic truth’ (remember ‘unconcealment’, fellow philosophers?). The work of the author lies in finding friction between the facts, enough to create light or 'illumination' according to Herzog.

What kind of illumination are we talking about? Behold the classic closing scene from Stroszek, the dancing chicken from Appalachia, a sequence that follows the protagonist ending his life on a vacated ski lift.

Read the rest of this post here.

‘All that is solid melts into air’: the music of Fricke and Scelsi

Haven't had time to write or think lately, but did manage to squeeze this out for my tribe over at 3quarksdaily.

The best thing about long-distance driving is the sonic qualities of the enclosed acoustic chamber that is the car itself. On a recent pre-dawn drive through the eastern lowlands of North Carolina, two recordings kept me present and transfixed. I knew the pieces well, but the striking commonalities of the two artists had never occurred to me. Their sounds and compositional forms differ dramatically, but both share a belief that music exists to reflect basic cosmological principles—from silence comes word, from tone rhythm, from decay renewal, etc. In different ways, their compositions deliver a direct experience of what each believes to be cosmological truths.

Named after the Mayan genesis myth, Popol Vuh is a German progressive (‘prog’) band best known for its soundtracks to Werner Herzog’s early films. Led by Florian Fricke, Popol Vuh flourished for over three decades, leaving a long and varied discography. Originally a classics scholar, Giacinto Scelsi was an Italian composer often associated with the minimalist movement, despite his music being packed with activity. Scelsi studied Berg and Schoenberg but later abandoned western compositional style in favor of powerful, occasionally violent, monotonal variations.

Read the rest of this meditation here.

Guess the dictator!

Think your dictator IQ is high?

Think again as you riddle me this one.



Answer here.

What the meek shall inherit: The case of Guinea

"The natives are restless" -- I used to get indignant when I heard that paternalistic, sometimes cynical phrase. Now I try to smile. For one, I hear it a lot in my line of work, and it gets tiresome to always think ill of someone whose diction deceives her intentions. But mostly I smile because I want the cliché to mean something else, a portent for positive change, the end of calamitous rule, a new era for the meek. So when the meek turn restless, it should mean that justice is around the corner.

With last week's passing of Guinea's senile dictator, Lansana Conté, and the military coup that followed, the country is marking no deviation from a well-rehearsed choreography, enacted repeatedly since independence from the French in 1958. The dance moves are economical, simple for new generations of political elites to learn.

A leader emerges, accedes power bolstered by populist rhetoric, buys off the military, installs single-party rule. Cronyism flourishes, rule of law evaporates, the military shores up the trappings of statehood. Decades pass; the population languishes. Leader then dies, military resumes control until a new leader-puppet is found. For nine million Guineans, the spectacle and squalor continue.

Conté down for the count

Conté belonged to a dwindling species of wizened and paranoid leaders-for-life, whose ranks include Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Omar Bongo of Gabon. Once hailed as liberators and visionaries, they became pathetic parables of 'absolute power corrupting absolutely'. The psychological path from flamboyant liberator to murderous despot is dramatic stuff, and was ably fictionalized in The Last King of Scotland. An excellent non-fiction account of Mobutu Sese Seko’s rise and fall is Mobutu, Roi du Zaire, by Thierry Michel.

Not so for Conté. A diabetic chain-smoker who rarely appeared in public, Conté was a garden-variety despot whose life and career will be quickly forgotten, even by Guineans. In the murky hours after Conté’s death, a military junta declared power. Western powers demanded an immediate return to civilian rule; a rote bit of finger wagging that has surely never produced a single result.

Alluding to the high propensity for carnage in this West African neighborhood, Senegalese President Wade recently appealed for acceptance of Guinea’s new military junta. Although highly predatory and wholly opportunistic, the Guinean national military arguably prevented the country from sliding into the chaos of its neighbors, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, for whom Guinea served for years as a place of refuge.

The intent of Wade’s appeal is ambiguous. Another leader-for-life in the making and no friend of opposition parties or the free press, Wade's point may be that civilian rule and democracy are over-rated, and that in such places security is primordial. He may also be a proponent of 'negative solidarity', as my Burundian friends call it, between African leaders who defend one another till the bitter end. Witness the deafening silence from African leaders regarding Mugabe.

Amazonian propaganda and guided missiles

Still, it is all deeply disappointing and predictable. Decades of syphilitic, jack-booted rule finally falls flat in the dust, and a unified populace stares blankly while an army faction takes control. Is it that foreign occupiers are enough to mobilize popular resistance (e.g., anti-colonialism) but when the oppressor is your brother you sit on your hands?

Compared to the colonial era, today’s absence of constructive, popular political agency in the world’s poorest countries is mystifying and exasperating. Back then, Sekou Toure led Guinea to independence and stood proud on the world stage, with adulation from Kennedy and visits from Castro.

[ST’s political compass is clear in these photos: star worship for Castro and distraction with Kennedy.]



Like Mugabe and other liberators, it didn’t take long for Sekou Toure to relish the pleasures of despotism. Conté took him down in 1984 and lived to repeat the tale. Sekou Toure did leave one legacy of note, a massive musical propaganda machine, similar to that created and cultivated by Mobutu in Zaire. Of the dozens of
propaganda bands still playing in Guinea, most notable are the Amazones de Guinée, an all female troupe pictured here.


A tidy description of all these different bands, with audio/video footage, can be found here.

Today, any damn idiot can fill a political vacuum in a place like Guinea, and there are dozens of Guineas in Africa. Coups flourish, generally over control of resources, led by marginalized power bases organized along ethnic lines. Mr. Bottom Billion, Paul Collier, wrote an op-ed earlier this year “in praise of coups,” suggesting that the West get back to its once successful business of engineering political putsches where it needed an ally. Only this time, Collier argued, we should do it in favor of better governance by capable partners, and put an end to kleptocracies run by mandarins-cum-raving despots.

Responses to the article were predictable: a fantastical notion; there are no such ‘guided missiles’ in politics. As a dream, though, I understand the appeal of Collier’s idea. Social engineering doesn’t sound so evil when the outcome is a guaranteed net gain. And most people grasp that freedom without structure is a desert, so they might welcome the trade-off. For the meek who get nothing and have nothing, I wonder what they might say to Collier, or anyone who just wants Africa to work.

Like me, Joe Plumbers in Africa want little to do with politics; they just want politicians to do their jobs. Their government’s failings are not their own. So when the ship starts sinking, no one’s interested in going down with it. Who would be? That’s when the jack-boots and ammo cartridges are at their most frenzied.