Spoken word

I love the spoken word. I love to see how people perform their poems; using gestures and various expressions on their faces as they use the inflections in their voices to demonstrate how they feel. The beauty of the art of expression. I just cant get over it. Well, while I have been away, I decided to take a walk down memory lane, I must say a really long walk back to the year 1970 when Gil Scott Heron first released his famous poem 'This Revolution will not be Televised'.

The title was actually a slogan in the 1960s used by Black Power Movements and I guess this is what made the poem so popular when it was released as a song on his 1970 album. It basically mentions commercials, tv series and icons as examples of what the revolution would not be. If you're familiar with American history and the civil rights movement, you'll understand how art was used as an expression of defiance.

Now I wasn't born till a few years after its release, but during my childhood, I became familiar with the slogan. I didn't understand what it meant but I knew deep down inside of me, that it must have been significant to the African American population who had over the decades fought against racial discrimination. In the late 80s,  I heard extracts of this poem being used in a popular hip hop song by Public Enemy. The slogan was often repeated in the song but as a teenager, I was a lot more interested in the rhythm; when you were clubbing in the 80s and 90s , it was all about the dance steps, you had to show that you had game, that's what was important : ).

Today, I cant help but feel disillusioned with the art forms that are being used to promote greed and degrade women. The world isnt any better than what it was in the 1970s, we may not have the same problems but we still have problems, really big problems. Where are our artists and artistes? What's happened to the spoken word? Where are the slogans? What's happened to our music?

This is why I took that journey down memory lane, trying to recollect what art was and how we can use it today to give succor to the poor and oppressed, to give strength to those on the battle lines and hope to our brothers and sisters fighting Ebola in West Africa. We must not forget the men and women who never feature in the news or even the soft sell magazines but who continually make a difference in the lives of others; we salute you.

Here's some inspiration:


The hells we have lived through and live through still,
Have sharpened our senses and toughened our will.
The night has been long.
This morning I look through your anguish
Right down to your soul.
I know that with each other we can make ourselves whole.
I look through the posture and past your disguise,
And see your love for family in your big brown eyes.

I say, clap hands and let's come together in this meeting ground,
I say, clap hands and let's deal with each other with love,
I say, clap hands and let us get from the low road of indifference,
Clap hands, let us come together and reveal our hearts,
Let us come together and revise our spirits,
Let us come together and cleanse our souls,
Clap hands, let's leave the preening
And stop impostering our own history.
Clap hands, call the spirits back from the ledge,
Clap hands, let us invite joy into our conversation,
Courtesy into our bedrooms,
Gentleness into our kitchen,
Care into our nursery.

The ancestors remind us, despite the history of pain
We are a going-on people who will rise again

Maya Angelou, The Million Man March

Oppression Can Only Survive Through Silence

     




Unfortunately, oppression does not automatically produce only meaningful struggle. It has the ability to call into being a wide range of responses between partial acceptance and violent rebellion. In between you can have, for instance, a vague, unfocused dissatisfaction; or, worst of all, savage infighting among the oppressed, a fierce love-hate entanglement with one another like crabs inside the fisherman's bucket, which ensures that no crab gets away. This is a serious issue for African-American deliberation.

To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!

Chinua Achebe -The Education of a British Protected Child

A word is enough for the wise

The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation ~ Thomas Alva Edison

'The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical'

When people begin moving beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, as Jesus did, they get in trouble. Once we are actually friends with the folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity. 

One of my friends has a shirt marked with the words of late Catholic bishop Dom Helder Camara: “When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist.” 

Charity wins awards and applause but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for living out of love that disrupts the social order that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them.” ~ Shane Clairborne

Accountability

 











Photo Credit; Foreign Policy Magazine

For the last 5 months, the Ebola virus has infected more than 2000 people according to statistics from the World Health Organisation, the majority of whom are from the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. I have been following the debates online since the first cases were reported in June, I believe. Citizens from these countries particularly from Sierra Leone had expressed concern over their government's reluctance to share information about the true nature of the situation. The government at the time declared that the situation had been contained and there was no need to declare an emergency. Of course the reverse was true as evidenced by the current situation. I will not delve into what should have been done by these governments and why they didnt do it at the time. Instead, I will focus on the big picture. I have been inspired by an article that appeared in the Foreign Policy Magazine on August 14th, 2014 which clearly showed that the problem with Africa's Ebola crisis is not really about a poor health care system but also a crisis in governance. I'm hesitant to use the term 'social contract' so I will keep this rather simple.

Truth is we have no idea what our governments do, how they do it and when they'll do it. Oh yes we hear all the promises no doubt, but we dont hold them to account. The government on the other hand believe that what they do, how they do it and when they'll do it is their own prerogative. They don't need to consult the people.
Let me break it down even further. How many of us have actually attended a budget hearing for our constituency, be it a local government, district, province or even state? If we did attend, did we make any contributions? Most of our governments don't even hold public hearings during the budgetary process so we dont even have a say in what we believe the government should consider as a priority in the next fiscal year, yet we are supposedly the intended beneficiaries. It's revenue derived from or taxes that actually forms a part of that budget.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a situation.

Until we learn to ask our leaders questions, until we learn to persist till we get answers, until we learn to hold them to their word, nothing will change. Our leaders are famous for building structures but not for providing the required services for which the structures were built.

Clearly, we are in a crisis, not just a health crisis but a crisis of leadership. The government is our employee, not our boss. It's time we start to ask some very important questions. Remember the government  can't provide all the solutions; governance is only effective when it's a two way street.

So 4 years later........

I'm ashamed to say that after more than 5 years, I have finally revived this blog. I must confess that when I joined Facebook, I got really distracted and shifted my focus there. I created and joined groups and often engaged in online debate but after all these years, I think I'm becoming bored. *Sighs*. My news feed has become saturated with the same old stories and opinions about what's right or wrong about Africa while others just tell us everything about what's going on in their life. Frankly, it is boring.  So today, I decided to come back home; I actually feel like the prodigal daughter. Thank you Blogger for having me back...I hope I will not run away again. I'm just grateful you aren't a jealous lover... otherwise you would have deleted this blog a long time ago.

Anyways, a lot of things have happened in my life since I stopped blogging. I remember my last post was on the election of the first African American President, Barack Obama...oh the fuss. I must admit that I too became a victim of the Obama mania but that was short lived : ). Thank God.

Well that's not what I want to write about today. I think Obama gets enough attention as it is...I don't need to add to it. I'm not a statistic.

I have semi-retired from the media about two years ago after more than a decade in the field; I say this because I haven't reached retirement age yet : ). I now work in the development sector full time and I must admit, it's been a rather interesting journey of self discovery. I think my world view has even changed...yap...as you will see my posts will be rather different this time.

Stay tuned : )

It gets even better!!

‘Obama’s grandpa was born in Uganda’

Angelo Izama

Kampala

An organisation speaking for the Luo Community has said President-elect Barack Obama’s grandfather was born in Uganda.
They also urged the governments of the East African Community [including Burundi] to designate the day of his inauguration today as the first black president of America- a national holiday.

The statement signed by Nelson Umah Tete and sent to media houses yesterday said the facts about Obama’s ancestry are discussed in a book titled “The Luo” by George William Alenyo.
The book will also be launched today to coincide with Mr Obama’s inauguration.

The organisation, Luo Community [Ugandan Chapter], is however an unregistered entity whose real membership remains unknown.
“By 1926 when Obama’s grandfather Onyango Obama was born in Nyanza province [it] was still part of the Uganda protectorate whose boundary extended up to the Rift Valley in Nakuru” the statement said, adding that the boundaries were only altered in 1926.

Since his campaign for the White House began, Mr Obama’s East African roots have been a source of excitement in the region.
A beer has been named after him, in Kenya where his father was born and worked, as have been children born on the day he won the Presidency. DVD’s with his speeches are selling like blockbusters and his acceptance speech has been turned into a cellular phone ringtone.

While ‘Obamania’ has shown no signs of ebbing, it holds a special significance to ethnic Luo group.
The Luo, whose author is a Ugandan lawyer, will add to this controversial mix of aspects of Mr Obama’s life and history which have been mined by all and sundry for relevance.

The book’s main focus is to trace the origin of the Luo to Sudan and Egypt and profile the commonality between the Luo and the Jews of later- day Israel.

Interpreted liberally, the author is saying Barack Obama is a “black Jew” with origins in East Africa with its messianic connotations.

“To date, traditional religious practices of the Luo are judiac and jewish in origin” the author claims, adding that Luo names like Barak “spelt “Barack” means “blessed” in Hebrew.

Organisers say the book will be launched at the National Theatre Auditorium at midday today, just hours before Obama takes his oath as the 44th President of the United States of America.