Africa Is a Country

The Wedding

The Wedding

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsG49zXF8xk&w=500&h=307&rel=0]

Driving in Soweto, film maker Dumisani Phakathi reflects on next month’s World Cup:

[The World Cup] is like a wedding … You organize the wedding between you and your partner. The event is amazing, the photographs get taken. Everybody remembers the day. But the trick is about what happens after. What do you carry with from that day of the wedding into your life with your partner? Because if you don’t, that was just for show, the wedding just a spectacle. We can’t afford for this World Cup to be a spectacle.

Phakathi also talks about the connections between the 1970s American professional soccer league and professional football in South Africa:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-QOxgRGWMQ&w=500&h=307&rel=0]

Via ThisIsAmericanSoccer (h/t Chimurenga.co.za)

Further Reading

Not exactly at arm’s length

Despite South Africa’s ban on arms exports to Israel and its condemnation of Israel’s actions in Palestine, local arms companies continue to send weapons to Israel’s allies and its major arms suppliers.

Ruto’s Kenya

Since June’s anti-finance bill protests, dozens of people remain unaccounted for—a stark reminder of the Kenyan state’s long history of abductions and assassinations.

Between Harlem and home

African postcolonial cinema serves as a mirror, revealing the limits of escape—whether through migration or personal defiance—and exposing the tensions between dreams and reality.

The real Rwanda

The world is slowly opening its eyes to how Paul Kagame’s regime abuses human rights, suppresses dissent, and exploits neighboring countries.

In the shadow of Mondlane

After a historic election and on the eve of celebrating fifty years of independence, Mozambicans need to ask whether the values, symbols, and institutions created to give shape to “national unity” are still legitimate today.

À sombra de Mondlane

Depois de uma eleição histórica e em vésperas de celebrar os 50 anos de independência, os moçambicanos precisam de perguntar se os valores, símbolos e instituições criados para dar forma à “unidade nacional” ainda são legítimos hoje.