Botswana’s President Ian Khama has received two stitches in his face after being clawed by a cheetah, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
The incident occurred at a Botswana Defence Force barracks last week, Jeff Ramsay told AFP.
“He was scratched by a cheetah last week but not really attacked per se,” Ramsay said.
The cheetah was being fed in an enclosure close to where Khama was standing, became excited and somehow managed to get its claw across the president’s face.
Khama (60) was not admitted to hospital, but did receive treatment.
He was seen last week with a plaster on his face.
(Pic: AFP)
Ramsay said there were no security implications and added that because of the minor nature of the injuries the government had initially decided not to issue a public statement.
Cheetahs, the fastest land mammals, are one of the few large cats not to have fully retractable claws. Far from being razor sharp the claws are more akin to those of a dog than a lion.
A 2007 study by a conservation group found there were about 1 700 cheetah in Botswana, a country framed for wildlife and its national parks which take in swathes of the Kalahari desert and the Okavango Delta.
Khama, a former lieutenant general who was trained at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England and has been in power for five years, is known as something of an outdoorsman.
But he is better known for his patronage of conservation organisations rather than daredevil antics like his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who was once photographed with a tiger. – AFP
Urban music has always been a tool for political expression in Angola. Even before the country’s independence, musicians like Carlitos Vieira Dias, David Zé, and the iconic group N’gola Ritmos offered musical resistance to the colonial regime. Some were even arrested and sent to prison camps by the Portuguese.
Today, the most well known form of Angolan urban music is the ever more popular kuduro. Pulsating and powerful, kudurois primarily associated with Luanda’s ubiquitous musseques, the teeming slums that house the city’s poorest residents. It’s blasted from candongueiros, the bright blue and white Toyota Hiace minivans that are the form of transport for the vast majority of Luandans, played in seemingly every party and pumped in Luanda’s clubs. Despite its rather middle-class roots, kuduro singers tend to belong to the lower classes and their lyrics cover a wide range of topics, from artists’ feuds to daily hardships.
Kuduro used to be the type of music that your parents would label as trash and tell you not to listen to – many of them still do. But remarkably, and perhaps due to its appeal across broad sectors of Angolan society, the genre has exploded to become a national phenomenon and a source of national pride. Bands like Buraka Som Sistema have helped internationalise kuduro through sold-out concerts around the world.
The proliferation of kuduro didn’t go unnoticed by the political establishment. Keen and adept at controlling all aspects of civil society, the regime saw in kuduro the perfect vehicle with which to reach the masses. Kuduro concerts are now standard fare in political rallies – politicians will actually use wildly popular kuduro artists as a way to get more people to attend their usually stale public events.
Kudurofever even reached the presidential palace – by 2011, Coreón Dú, one of President José Eduardo Dos Santos’s sons, became one the biggest promoters of kuduro on the national and international stage. He even released a track of his own (I wouldn’t recommend it):
A singer, TV producer (his media and TV production company receives funds directly from the national budget) and the brains behind the annual “I Love Kuduro” festival in Luanda and abroad, Dú funds and promotes a kuduro troupe appropriately named Os Kuduristas. Last year they embarked on a grand, deep-pocketed world tour, performing extensively in Europe and the US. They were expertly represented by some of the best PR firms in the music industry and even offered workshops in the cities they visited.
Although the government was able to effectively appropriate kuduro for its own purposes, it has been much less successful with the other popular form of Angolan urban music: hip-hop. The youth movement protesting against the Angolan regime and President Dos Santos’s 33 years in power has numerous underground rap musicians among its ranks, including Ikonoklasta (Luaty Beirão) and Carbono Casimiro. Interestingly, Luaty also belongs to the kuduro group Batida, which dabbles in political themes. It doesn’t receive state funding and is not invited to kuduro festivals in the country.
Unlike kuduro, hip-hop is a form of urban music that the establishment has not been able to breach. The most popular Angolan rappers are the most critical of the regime, and yet they continue to sell out shows and sell out CDs. MCK, the sharp-tongue rapper from the Chabá slums of Luanda, is the most prominent example of this reality. He’s been offered half a million dollars to stop bad-mouthing government and faced death threats, but this doesn’t phase him.
What the government can’t do by peaceful means, it’ll do through coercion, intimidation, and outright sabotage. Last month, Família Eterna, an organisation of rappers from Lobito, a small city in Benguela province, wanted to celebrate their 10-year anniversary. They invited numerous artists, including MCK. Família Eterna followed every possible legal obligation and submitted a total of five different stamped documents (two of which explicitly stated MCK’s name) that gave them government permission to stage the concert.
It was to no avail. Having caught wind that MCK was due to make an appearance in Lobito, the central government began a chilling campaign of intimidation and coercion to force the organisers to cancel the show. According to Família Eterna, the organisers began receiving threatening phone calls in the days leading up to the show; undercover agents dressed in civilian clothes would come to the venue and inquire about the preparations, all the while threatening and intimidating workers.
On the day of the show, the ministry of culture frantically called the organisers in a last ditch attempt to have them cancel; the state-owned electricity company even shut down power to the venue. In the end, MCK still performed, to a much smaller but still energetic crowd.
When compared to kuduro, the disparate treatment of underground rap is evident. What is also evident is that politics will continue to play a role in urban Angolan music, and the regime will continue to interfere as they see fit. But it is comforting to see that even with these abuses against freedom of expression, urban Angolan music continues to impact the establishment. Through music, the disenfranchised continue to have a voice and a vehicle in which to air their grievances, much like their brethren David Zé and N’gola Ritmos did 38 years ago.
Claudio Silva is an Angolan living in New York City. He has also spent time in Washington DC, Lisbon, Reading (UK) and attended university in Boston. In 2009, he started Caipirinha Lounge, a music blog dedicated to Lusophone music. Claudio contributes to several other blogs including Africa is a Country and Central Angola 7311. Connect with him on Twitter.
Egyptian graffiti artists are doing more than just painting art on street walls. They’re creating social awareness campaigns against corruption, media brainwashing, poverty and sexual harassment, and also using graffiti to beautify slum areas of Cairo to restore a sense of pride, ownership and hope to residents.
Nazeer and Zeft have launched a new awareness campaign called #ColoringThruCorruption, where they paint walls, water pipes and other public surfaces to raise awareness about corruption and how the Egyptian government is stealing money from its citizens. As Nazeer explains:
We’re not painting to make life pretty – on the contrary, this is our way of drawing your attention to the reality of the situation: the government is stealing your money, the taxes you pay every year to renew your car license, pay your traffic tickets, pay for the roads, bridges and highways to be maintained, pay for your water/gas/electricity bills and so on. This money goes into the personal accounts of the governors and the local councils. In the end, you find the roads ruined and full of holes that damage your cars. So many homes without access to water or electricity or gas. This is the devastating reality. We’re painting corruption to draw people’s attention and then tell them our message. This time we were ten people painting. Next time we’ll be twenty, forty, sixty, a hundred with God’s will. We will paint the slum areas. The biggest proof of corruption is when one man lives in a palace and across the road, another man lives in a slum.
Street artists painting Maadi bridge. (Pic: Nazeer)Water pipes painted to raise awareness about public corruption. (Pic: Nazeer)
Zeft’s previous campaigns include his Nefertiti mask graffiti, which was endorsed by anti-sexual harassment campaigns and spread to protests around the world in support of Egyptian women.
Zeft’s Nefertiti mask. (Pic: Ahmed Hayman)
Nazeer’s previous campaigns include graffiti calling for a return to protests in Tahrir during 2011, and his graffiti of 16-year-old Iman Salama, who was shot dead in September 2012. Nazeer made the stencil for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, an NGO that wanted to draw attention to Iman’s murder, which had received little media coverage.
Nazeer’s graffiti of Iman Salama. (Pic: Nazeer)
Nemo is a street artist in Mansoura who has made graffiti that raises awareness about street children, homeless people, poverty and sexual harassment. He is one of the most diligent street artists in Egypt and has dedicated pretty much every single graffito he’s made to honouring martyrs, advocating the revolution and drawing attention to the impoverished and disenfranchised millions of Egyptians. He is featured in the upcoming documentary In the Midst of Crowds, and all his images can be viewed on his Facebook page.
“You who are sleeping under mountains of money ask about the bridges under which the children sleep” (Pic: Facebook.com/egynemo)“I am hungry” (Pic: Facebook.com/egynemo)
In his latest campaign, he plasters sliced photographs of Egyptian faces on the iron walls of Gamaa Bridge in Mansoura. This one below is my favourite. It’s of Abo El Thowar, who has become an icon of the Tahrir protests for his resilience and poetic protest posters.
(Pic: Facebook.com/egynemo)
Then there’s the Mona Lisa Brigades, who created the great ‘I want to be’ project. The artists painted on the walls of people’s homes in the Cairo slum of Ard al-Lewa. The children of the neighbourhood were photographed and their images made into graffiti on the walls of the narrow, grim alleyways.
Such a simple gesture can bring so much hope and joy to an otherwise neglected neighbourhood. Using graffiti to beautify an area has an effect on the entire neighbourhood because it restores a sense of pride and ownership. The project is a great example of using street art to help a community.
(Pic: Mona Lisa Brigades)
“After doing a great deal of research in Ard al-Lewa, we discovered there were thousands of children who have had almost no voice or representation throughout this movement, Mohamed Ismail, one of the founding members, told Egypt Independent. “We sprayed stencils of their faces along the walls. Under each image, we included the child’s dream. This way, whenever those kids walk by their faces on the wall, they will never forget their dreams.”
All of these initiatives are good examples of putting street art to good use, diverting it from its usual political course to spread positive messages, educate, raise awareness and help others that are completely ignored by the state. These artists are great people and deserve credit and recognition for their hard work. I hope they get it.
Soraya Morayef is a journalist and writer in Cairo. She blogs at suzeeinthecity.wordpress.com, where this post was first published. All pics above have been sourced by her. Connect with her on Twitter.
I have just read the proposed anti-pornography Bill that is currently before the Ugandan Parliament. This Bill was brought soon after MPs stifled debate on the Marriage and Divorce Bill, which tackles the ambiguity of existing laws on women owning property.
Ethics and integrity minister Simon Lokodo’s anti-pornography Bill however doesn’t just threaten women; it attacks press freedom too. The media is portraying the Bill as a miniskirt law but if passed it will have far-reaching consequences on press freedom, freedom of expression, internet freedom, and the right to privacy and culture.
According to the Bill:
Pornography means any cultural practice, radio or television programme, writing, publication, advertisement, broadcast, upload on internet, display, entertainment, music, dance, picture, audio, video recording, show, exhibition or any combination of the preceeding that depicts [for now I concentrate on just this clause] sexual parts of a person such as breasts, thighs, buttocks and genitalia.
I am also angered and saddened by the comments Lokodo made. He said:
Any attire which exposes intimate parts of the human body, especially areas that are of erotic function, are outlawed. Anything above the knee is outlawed. If a woman wears a miniskirt, we will arrest her.
And:
Men are normally not the object of attraction; they are the ones who are provoked. They can go bare-chested on the beach, but would you allow your daughter to go bare-chested?
His comments cannot be understood in any way other than being an outright attack on women and their sexuality, their freedom of expression and their right to live the way the wish. Lokodo permits attacks on women and blames sexual violence on women victims. His comments are part of wide efforts to politicise women’s dressing and add to the obsession with women’s sexuality.
According to the Bill, “Pornography fuels sexual crimes against women and children.”
I am moved to ask why do we have incidents of rape even in the most remote corners of our country? Did the Ugandan army watch porn before they raped several women and men during the northern Uganda war? Do all men that defile more than 600 children a year in Uganda watch pornography? Do all of the more than 500 women who report being raped to the police every year wear miniskirts? Do hundreds of uncles and fathers that molest young girls in their families watch pornography? This is just insulting the dignity of victims of sexual violence.
We have more urgent, pressing needs: young Ugandans need jobs; 16 women die everyday in my country due to preventable pregnancy-related complications; Lokodo and his fellow ministers every day dig deeper into our pockets, stealing our hard-earned money. Thousands of girls do not complete primary education even with the faulty UPE system in place. But Lokodo and the regime he represents won’t tackle these challenges. What is more immoral than distracting our country from debating these issues?
It is ironic that this is a Bill proposed by a minister who hails from Karamoja, a region where people are free in their nakedness. The pastoralist communities are known to roam wearing as little clothing as possible. They are free in their culture. His proposed Bill would be an indictment to such ethnic groups.
If Lokodo gets his way in Parliament, photos like mine below could earn a person who publishes them imprisonment not exceeding 10 years or a fine of 10-million shillings, or both. This is pornography according to Lokodo:
And if you viewed these “pornographic” photos, you too could be imprisoned.
Rosebell Kagumire is a Ugandan multimedia journalist working on media, women, peace and conflict issues. She is co-ordinator of Africans Act For Africa. Visit her blog and connect with her on Twitter.
Sought-after residential neighbourhoods have developed in Accra in the last ten years, some with sophisticated names like Manet Cottage, Manet Ville, Trasacco Valley, Taysec Gardens and Ballon Court. They offer the ultimate suburban lifestyle: beautiful homes, pools, security guards and location. Trasacco Valley, for example, looks like a neighbourhood the desperate housewives of Wisteria Lane could live in.
A street in Trasacco Valley. (Flickr/Talata M)One of the houses in Trasacco Valley. (Flickr/Talata M)
Lavender Hill sounds like one of these posh gated communities, but it’s not. Despite its pretty name, it stinks. This site is where liquid waste from the city is dumped into the sea daily, and residents and road users have been complaining of the stench and health hazards for years. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has been promising to shut down Lavender Hill since 2010, but the dumping continues daily.
I recently took a taxi from the CBD in Accra to Lavender Hill, a mere ten-minute drive. The taxi driver offered some advice on the way there: “My brother, you might throw up by the time we reach the end of [Accra Beach Road]. Even with the windows closed, you’ll still get the stench.”
We passed some houses when we reached Lavender Hill, and I stopped to chat to some of the residents.
Unlike me, Nancy Awuah wasn’t showing any discomfort with the foul smell in the air, and I did not want to show any disrespect by covering my nose. She and her husband moved to the neighbourhood from Maprobi since it was closer to where he works. “The smell was tough in the beginning but we have gotten used to it … other people live with other smells around them. In some parts of the country that l have lived in, the people have to smell cocoa waste all their lives and so [this] is the same,” Nancy told me.
I asked her about the health hazards of living near a highly polluted site. “We only smell the stench, what about those of you who eat the fish that feed on the human waste?” She had a point – most of the fish sold in the markets around Accra are sourced from the James Town fishing community.
James Mensah, who has lived here for ten years, gave me a short history of Lavender Hill. “At first it didn’t have a name because it was not part of any of the city’s suburbs and no one wanted to live here because it was a waste dumping site. But by the middle of the 90s, with the high demand for accommodation in the city, some smart people thought of making money by encroaching on the land around the place and built houses for rent. Desperate people who could not afford the high rent in the city moved in gradually and before we all knew what was happening, it had become a township and given an exotic name.”
City officials agree Lavender Hill is not fit for human habitation because of the environmental pollution that is caused by the dumping of human waste. “Once in a while, we hear that the city engineers department wants to build a modern waste facility here but it has taken years for the project to happen. We have come to see these city officials as people who only talk and do nothing,” James said.
The most recent promise came three weeks ago when the mayor of Accra, Alfred Nii Okoe Vanderpuije, gave citizens the assurance that Lavender Hill will be eliminated by June 2013. In its place, the AMA is building a scientific liquid waste plant that will recycle waste into organic material and biofuels for further use.
James and Nancy are sceptical about whether government will fulfill its promise this time. Until it does, Lavender Hill remains a blot on the nation’s pride. For the residents who live here, life is anything but sweet-smelling.
Francis Kokutse is a freelance journalist based in Accra. He writes for the Associated Press, Nation Media Group of Kenya and the Indo Asian News Service.
