Year: 2013

Jozi taxi diaries

“God’s case, no appeal” is the name of a long-past-retirement-age taxi in Chinua Achebe’s novel, No Longer at Ease. This pithy aphorism is right up there with “We mend broken hearts” and “Don’t steal, the government hates competition”, as freely dispensed taxi-wisdom goes in many African cities. A fan of most things offside, I feel morally obliged to like “God’s case, no appeal”, which is also a pretty appropriate description of Johannesburg taxi drivers, who are second only to the Gupta family as a law unto themselves.

There are many sins that can be laid upon Johannesburg taxi drivers’ heads. Humour is not one of them. Except for this one driver my friend Vuyo told me about: his taxi had the usual sticker asking passengers to refrain from paying with large notes, but somehow one morning there were lots of R50 and R100 notes on board, which left the passenger seated next to the driver – the fare collector – stuck for change. The taxi driver quietly noted the problem.

A short drive on, he casually turned into a garage, parked, and walked into the express shop with the batch of notes. He emerged with a plastic bag filled with random groceries, which he proceeded to distribute along with the respective change to the passengers, deducting the taxi fare and the cost of whatever random item he had bought them. Exclamations flew around as non-smokers received packs of cigarettes and school children got dish-washing liquid. Two of the luckier passengers received a piece of New Lifebuoy Total and a nondescript packet of condoms, which promised total hygiene and total pleasure respectively. “You must read that sticker,” he said, easing out of the garage.

(Pic: Oupa Nkosi, M&G
(Pic: Oupa Nkosi, M&G)

I suppose taxi commuting would be a lot less stressful if all taxi drivers had this dry sense of humour. Sadly, they don’t, as I once learnt across the road from Luthuli House in Jo’burg.

Its illustrious history as the headquarters of the African National Congress (ANC) aside, Luthuli House’s other claim to fame is that former ANC Youth League president Julius Malema once defended its revolutionary honour with choice expletives – including that classic Malemaism ‘tjatjarag’ – which sent the revolutionary house trending on cyberspace while klevas churned rib-cracking spoofs and soundtracks to Malema’s gallantry on YouTube.

For me though, Luthuli House brings back less-than-revolutionary memories of a taxi ride gone wrong in 2005, which ended with an irate taxi driver screeching to a sudden halt on a street curb near Luthuli House, jumping out and pacing near the taxi as he quarrelled about thieving passengers. I was one of the said thieving passengers. On this day, I learnt the value of one rand. And that a rand is not just a rand.

It was after 11am and I was on a taxi from Soweto to Braamfontein for a noon meeting. As usual, the taxi stopped at edge of the CBD, where Noord Street taxi rank-bound taxis part ways with Bree Street taxi rank-bound taxis. At this point, unless all passengers are going to one taxi rank, taxis generally swap passengers in a loose ‘division of labour’ arrangement to avoid driving to both taxi ranks. So, the Noord Street taxi rank passengers moved to another taxi, while two of us (myself and a middle-aged lady) were joined by several other Bree Street taxi rank passengers from the other taxi. A short ride on, the middle-aged lady asked the taxi driver for her change.

“How much?”

“One rand.”

“Didn’t everyone get back their change?”

“No, I haven’t received my change.”

After repeatedly asking who had the missing rand to no avail, the driver suddenly braked, jumped out and banged the door shut, too angry to drive on. Seemingly, this had happened before and he was simply fed up with this emerging sticky-fingers tendency in his taxi. Some commuters protested about being unfairly delayed, especially as they had switched taxis after the monies had been collected.This left me and the aggrieved passenger as the chief ‘suspects’. Except I was certain I hadn’t handled any change. And the lady was certain she had not received her change. And she wanted her rand back.

As 12pm drew closer, I contemplated getting off the taxi and walking the short distance to Bree Street taxi rank and over Nelson Mandela Bridge to Braamfontein for my meeting. A second thought crossed my mind as the driver ranted about our theft: maybe I should just offer to replace the damned rand. But something stopped me from making either of these faux pas. It occurred to me that, despite their annoyance, none of my fellow passengers was offering to replace the missing rand or take the short walk to Bree. So, I impatiently watched the spectacle of our ‘thieving selves’ packed outside Luthuli House, until the taxi driver – apparently deciding he’d rather be rid of us – got back in the taxi, gave the lady her rand, and drove on, covering the short distance to Bree with an angry rant about cheap passengers who stole one rand. What kind of fourth-rate thieves were we anyway? Serious thieves busied themselves blowing up ATMs and hijacking cash-in-transit vehicles for proper monies, not pinching one rand coins from underpaid taxi drivers.

It later dawned on me that my fellow passengers obviously realised – and respected – the fact that there was more than a rand at stake. This was not about a rand. There was a principle at stake, and the potential corrosion of the implicit trust between a taxi driver and his passengers. This explains why, unlike the Kenyan conductor or the Ghanaian driver’s mate who collects fares, Johannesburg commuters pass on their fares all the way to the passenger seated next to the driver, who in turn processes the change and gives the driver the total collection for the entire taxi load of people. It wasn’t just a rand at stake. This system and its implicit trust were at stake. To date, I still don’t believe it was a case of theft; it was more likely an inadvertent mix-up of change. But in such a well-oiled system, there is no room for inadvertent mistakes. Not even one-rand mistakes.

Naturally, I missed my meeting that day. But I learnt the value of a rand.

Kinshasa’s best-kept music secret

Nathalie is a single mum who struggles to clothe her little boy and pay the rent. She plays the flute and the sax. Josephine gets up at 4.30am every day to sell omelettes at the market. She is in the chorus. Papy is a part-time mechanic who also runs his own pharmacy. He plays the tuba. Josef is a freelance electrician, a kind of African version of the Robert De Niro character in the film Brazil. He also runs his own hair salon and plays the viola.

Nathalie, Josephine, Papy and Josef are adepts of the Congolese art of débrouillardise, a French word that means “making ends meet” or “surviving”. For most of the day, they do whatever they must to hustle their daily bread in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, one of the biggest, noisiest and most dysfunctional cities on earth. In the early evening, they set out on a journey that often takes several hours to rehearse with the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste de Kinshasa (OSK), the only all-black symphony orchestra in the world. There they find release from their daily cares. “When I sing Beethoven’s ninth Symphony, it takes me far away,” says one of the other singers in the choir.

“They come because they’re passionate about music,” says Armand Diangienda, the man who founded the OSK almost 20 years ago. “It gives them something more in terms of confidence, of feeling capable and of being able to contribute to a collective endeavour.”

If the musicians in the OSK are masters of individual survival, the orchestra itself is an epic example of débrouillardise, of thinking the impossible and then just doing it. Diangienda lost his job as a pilot when the Fokker F-27 he used to fly across the Congo crashed into the hills above the town of Goma in 1992, killing all those on board. Luckily – for him – he was on holiday at the time. Finding himself unemployed, he rallied followers of his father’s church, the hugely popular Kimbanguiste church, and created a symphony orchestra, a strange endeavour for a confirmed reggae fan who had only a passing interest in European classical music at the time.

“We told ourselves that creating a symphony orchestra would be great because the church already had a brass band, a flute orchestra, a guitar ensemble and a number of different choirs,” Armand tells me over the phone from Kinshasa. “I couldn’t read music, but driven by my passion, and with help from my friends, I gradually learned.”

In the early days, instruments had to be borrowed or made from scratch by reverse engineering. Violin strings were concocted from bicycle brake wire. Hundreds of scores were copied out by hand, individual parts had to be deciphered by listening to the works on CD, over and over again. Music stands were cobbled together from old pieces of wood.

Despite attracting huge interest locally, the orchestra remained the city’s secret until two German film-makers, Claus Wischmann and Martin Baer, made the 2010 documentary Kinshasa Symphony, one of the most beautiful and honest portrayals of the power of music and the human spirit that I have seen in ages.

Last year, the orchestra travelled outside Africa for the first time, performing at the TED conference in California, and later in Monaco. CBS devoted an hour’s coverage to them and Peter Gabriel joined them for a gala soiree to raise funds for a music school in Kinshasa.

usa2
The Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste de Kinshasa (Pic: oskimbangu.org)

But that’s not all. Diangienda is now on his way to London to become an honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic Society, an accolade previously granted to the likes of Mendelssohn, Rossini, Wagner, Brahms and Stravinsky. “The day I was told, I had tears in my eyes,” he says.

The fact that many Congolese regard Diangienda as something of a living god has no doubt helped him to achieve the seemingly impossible. His grandfather, Simon Kimbangu, was a healer and preacher whose sermons instilled pride and self-belief in ordinary Congolese people and fear in their Belgian colonial masters. He died in 1951 after spending 30 years in prison. One of his most incendiary statements was: “The black man will become white and the white man will become black.”

For Diangienda, however, performing western classical music on the banks of the Congo river has nothing to do with turning his back on his own African culture. “Everything we’re learning by playing classical music will allow us to enrich our own music as well and immortalise it by writing it down,” he says. Diangienda, and the orchestra’s first violinist Heritier Malumbi and bassoonist Balongi, have already composed several symphonic works full of rich Congolese flavours.

“My grandfather claimed that to sing was to pray twice,” Diangienda says. “Music is already a form of spiritual wealth to us, the Kimbanguistes. But what inspires me even more is that my grandfather’s message was a universal one; a message of peace, of love, of reaching out for others and bringing people together.”

It was also a message about work, perseverance and self-respect. The stirring finale of Kinshasa Symphony sees the orchestra performing Orff’s Carmina Burana on a large piece of wasteground in front of an ecstatic local crowd. The beauty, pride and common purpose that oozes from the performance make mincemeat of the cliches of chaos and hopelessness that burden the Congo. A small but growing group of cognoscenti already know that Kinshasa is one of the most culturally dynamic and creative cities on earth. The OSK only reinforces that conviction. – Guardian News and Media 2013

My mother’s songs

My Mother’s Songs is set in an African landscape and examines inter-generational trauma. The film depicts a series of traumatic experiences through the eyes of several young women who are desperately trying to make sense of their existence. Tanzanian writer and director Erick Msumanje, who was recently awarded the highly-competitive Princess Grace Award for filmmaking, has indeed managed to “push the boundaries of cinematography, aesthetics, and storytelling” with his work.

We need to talk about sex in Uganda

I was sexually abused by my aunt as a child. When I tried telling my mother about it, she said that there are some things that people do not speak of, ever. She refused to talk about my experience again.

One day I saw strange blood stains in our toilet and ran to tell her that somebody was horribly hurt. She was embarrassed and told me to shut up. I could not for the life of me imagine why.

Everything fell into place six years later. She called me to her bedroom, locked the door and whispered to me that someday I too would have blood flowing out of my… my … my … you know what! I was horrified that my mother was tackling a topic she had spent her entire life running away from.

My mum always wanted the best for me, but she did not always know what the definition of best entailed. She, like many African women, lived under the heavy yoke of society. She believed every taboo, every norm, and preached it me, her only daughter. To date, she cannot say the word ‘sex’ out loud. I told her I would teach my daughter to call her vagina a vagina and not “susu” or “kuku”, and she retorted that she’d like to put me across her thighs and spank me.

I grew up, finished school and university and fiercely questioned some of her ideas.It helped that I had pursued a degree in law and then chose to to be a journalist. Around this time, I realised that what my aunt did to me was not really my fault. Women’s rights activists I spoke to and admired told me she could still serve jail time for it. I don’t wish for her to go to jail, but I do worry about other children she has contact with. Does she violate them too?

Last year I decided to tell my story while working as a journalist at The Observer, a national paper. It was a difficult decision. I knew it would earn me the wrath of my entire family, who would of course ask: “Why did you choose to tell our private matters to the public?”

I did not have the guts to use my real identity. I told it in third person, changed names and locations and then submitted the piece to my editors who had earlier asked: “Do women actually molest?”

My story caused an uncomfortable stir in the newsroom. People were not comfortable talking about these “issues”. Tempers flared and ideas were rebuffed but I persisted.

My story was a personal, honest account, but I included hard facts: according to various research, women are perpetrators in up to 40% of child molestation cases. I explained that, as is the case with sexual abuse by males, these women are usually trusted adults – teachers, religious leaders, close relatives, nannies who you would trust with your life. And that this betrayal has far-reaching psychological consequences.

Despite this, my colleagues were skeptical. “This story is not credible!” our chief reporter told me. “You have to call the woman who molested you and get her side of the story.”

How was I supposed to call my aunt and ask her: “Is it true you molested me?”

That marked the end of my attempt to tell my story. I simply deleted it and moved on to less daunting assignments. As a reporter interested in sex and sexuality, there was an unimaginable amount of disbelief and misinformation I encountered during my work:  There are no homosexuals, intersex people must have done something to deserve it, a man cannot rape his wife, raped women enjoy it … the rhetoric was and still is endless! It made me think of how many more voices like mine had been silenced – not just by anxious mothers but by political, religious and social institutions more concerned about flimsy moral values than the wellbeing of citizens.

Legislation

Uganda has been in the spotlight recently for two pieces of draft legislation directly affecting women. One, the Marriage and Divorce Bill, first tabled in 1964, sought to give women and men equal rights in marriage. After 49 years of debate, it was shot down in Parliament last month, not for its lack of substance but rather for its apparent disruption of the moral fabric of society. President Museveni wasted no time attacking women groups and civil society, insisting the Bill was disrespectful to our culture.

(Graphic: Kenny Leung)
(Graphic: Kenny Leung)

Moralist and pastor Martin Ssempa, speaking on radio at the peak of marriage Bill debate, said that women who want the legislation passed are merely “angry feminists seeking revenge on men”. He said that these women are falsely accusing men of raping them and causing them to get fistulas; that marriage will be perfect provided Parliament leaves it to God.

Ideas like his were welcomed by politicians only interested in votes, and opposition to the marriage Bill simply gripped the entire nation.

“That Bill should not be passed,” opined my hairdresser. “They want men to stop marrying us for fear that we shall take their property. In fact a law like this will encourage men to become homosexuals.”

Some people say that the Bill failed because it touches on property – men’s property. But the residents of Mpererwe, a low cost suburb I call home, disagree. Here, the men put their wives in rented mizigo (one-room houses with questionable sanitation). Most of the men ride boda bodas owned by rich bosses, others sell in the nearby market or do casual work in town. The Mpererwe woman would ask: “What property are you talking about?”

While history may have blessed some men with real property, the vast majority of Uganda men are poor, struggling alongside their women.

The real cause of the demise of the marriage Bill is not property – it  is the fact that it dares to question a man’s sexual domain.

Moralists want everything sexy covered up. Encouraged by the fall of the marriage Bill, the anti-pornography Bill was recently resurrected after it was first proposed and abandoned in 2011. This time, miniskirt-wearing feminists would be dealt with once and for all; thrown into jail for wearing dresses above their knees.

Judging from the way the populace rejected the marriage Bill, it is easy to see why Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo thinks that his proposed anti-pornography Bill will protect what the marriage Bill sought to disrupt.

Lokodo is a wise man who realises that Uganda is not a good place to simply throw around the sex discourse. President Museveni has declared that he does not hold his wife’s hand or kiss her in public, and that Ugandans should emulate this. The consensus, at least per Lokodo, is that everyone must have sex missionary style with a partner of the opposite sex. Uganda’s leaders know that the only time you should talk about sex in Uganda is when you are telling errant women to cover up their sexiness lest they distract men in their noble quest to save this nation. When it comes to sexual abuse, sex education, girls’ bodily changes, domestic violence, marital rape, contraception and other issues directly affecting the lives of women, the silence is ominous. This needs to change.

Patience Akumu is a features writer at The Observer in Uganda. Her major focus is human rights, particularly LGBTI rights and women’s rights. She is the winner of the 2013 David Astor Journalism Award.

Nigeria’s love of champagne drives sales

The lyrics to Pop Champagne – one of many Nigerian pop songs to pay homage to the ubiquitous French drink – are self explanatory. “We dey pop champagne, pop pop pop pop, pop champagne!” the song goes, as a nightclub jumps with men holding bottles and women glasses full of bubbly.

But Nigerians’ love of champagne is fast becoming fact as well as legend – with new figures forecasting that champagne consumption in the west African country will reach 1.1 million litres by 2017, with 2011 consumption at almost eight billion naira (£31m).

The figures, from research company Euromonitor, found that Nigeria had the fastest growing rate of new champagne consumption in the world, second only to France, and ahead of rapid growth nations Brazil and China, and established markets such as the US and Australia.

“Champagne has its own demographic on the higher end of things – it’s not even about the middle class, it’s about the elite,” said Spiros Malandrakis, a senior analyst at Euromonitor.

“People may find it surprising that Nigeria came second in the rankings, but it has an extremely extravagant elite, with Nollywood and the oil industry.”

Champagne bottles displayed at a roadside shop in Lagos. (AFP)
Champagne bottles displayed at a roadside shop in Lagos. (AFP)

Nigerians’ love of big spending has attracted growing attention in recent months. Last year figures revealed that Nigerian tourists in the UK are the fourth biggest foreign spenders, ringing up an average £500 in each shop where they make purchases – four times what the average UK shopper spends.

“At all the celebrity parties in Lagos, they always have champagne. And it has to be the finest – Cristal, Dom Pérignon or Moet et Chandon rosé – these are the things that are important symbols here,” said Vanessa Walters, the Lagos-based editor of Nigerian women’s magazine Genevieve.

“People say that at every elite event the champagne has to be flowing, and that how much champagne there is is a one-upmanship thing, like showing people that your house is bigger than theirs.”

But not everyone in Nigeria – 63% of whose 160 million population still live on less than $1 a day – is impressed with the extent of Nigerian champagne consumption.

“Nigerians’ unhealthy enthusiasm for anything foreign or imported is a plague that continues to pull the country back into this sort of wasteful expenditure,” said an editorial in Nigerian newspaper the Daily Trust in response to the figures.

“[These figures] reveal the profligacy that is offensive, if not obscene.”