Year: 2014

FiSahara – The world’s most remote film festival

As the great and the good of the world’s film industry prepared to descend on Cannes last week, a very different film festival was coming to a climax deep in the Sahara desert. Far from the red-carpeted Mediterranean opulence of the Croisette, the Sahara International Film Festival – known as FiSahara – took place in a sun-baked refugee camp deep in the Algerian desert. What it may have lacked in glittering VIP premieres and champagne-fuelled yacht parties, FiSahara made up for in spades with dune parties, camel races and multiplex-sized screenings beneath the stars.

Now in its 11th year, the FiSahara film festival attracted over 300 international actors, screenwriters and cinephiles, alongside thousands of Saharawi refugees exiled from their native Western Sahara for nearly four decades. Festival guests flew by chartered plane to the remote desert outpost of Tindouf where they boarded a convoy of buses and 4x4s and drove the dusty 100m to Dakhla refugee camp, in an area known locally as the Devil’s Garden.

The Sahara International Film Festival. (Carlos Cazurro)

There they were met by refugee families, with whom they lived for five days, sleeping in their stucco-and-tented homes and sharing their simple couscous meals and copious glasses of sweet tea. With midday temperatures topping 100 degrees, most activities were scheduled for mornings and late afternoons with screenings taking place after dusk, in makeshift cinemas or projected onto a giant screen attached to the side of an articulated lorry.

Experience of Saharawi students
The festival programme included over 30 films from around the world including documentaries, animations, short films and blockbusters as well as several made by refugees themselves in the newly established refugee camp film school. While some films such as the Oscar-nominated Egyptian film The Square, reflected stories of hope and struggle, others were purely intended to entertain offering the refugees a glimpse of what lies beyond their desiccated desert horizons.

“The cartoon about the boy who plays table football was so funny,” said 12-year old Liman Mohamed referring to the Argentinian 3-D comedy-animation Foosball by Oscar-winning director Juan Jose Campanella, which had filled the desert night with laughter.

The documentary Raíces y Clamor (Roots and Noise), which premiered at the festival explores the heart-wrenching experience of the Saharawi students who move to Spain to get an education. Fati Khadad, a 27-year-old Masters student who appears in the film was at the festival and explained how she was “adopted” by a Spanish family aged 10.

“I am slowly coming to terms with life in exile” she tells me. “Some people say I am lucky to have escaped the refugee camp and got an education but the reality is that I have spent my life apart from the people I love. We all suffer whether in the camps, whether in the occupied territories or whether in exile.”

The festival’s first prize – an actual white camel – was awarded to Legna, an evocative documentary about the traditions of Saharawi poetry. Second prize went to Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, screened as part of this years’ festival tribute to Nelson Mandela. The third prize for the documentary Dirty Wars was collected by the film’s scriptwriter, David Riker who also led a screenwriting workshop for refugee filmmakers.

“I have taught similar workshops for many years in many parts of the world, but I have never had such an exceptional group of students,” Riker said. “I think the reason is simply this – that the Saharawis have an overwhelming need to tell their stories.”

Cultural activities
As well as films and workshops the festival also offered cultural activities, children’s activities led by a team of clowns and evening concerts by renowned world music star Mariem Hassan and legendary musician Jonas Mosa Gwangwa who flew in from South Africa with his nine-piece band.

Gwangwa, who wrote the Oscar-nominated score for Richard David Attenbough’s Cry Freedom, was just one of large South African delegation invited as part of the festival’s tribute to Nelson Mandela. “Culture can replace the gun. It can be much more powerful,” Gwanga told an audience at a roundtable discussion which also included 88-year-old iconic anti-apartheid fighter Andrew Mlangeni, imprisoned with Nelson Mandela for 26 years. Together with Gwangwa, Mlangeni drew parallels with the Saharawi struggle for self-determination and South Africa’s own liberation struggle and highlighted the importance of culture as a weapon in freedom struggle.

“The South African experience is very inspiring and holds many lessons for the Saharawi,” said Jadiya Hamdi, the Saharawi government in exile’s minister of culture. “Creating our own film culture is important in the nation-building process because culture can carry an audience far beyond any political speech.

“The atmosphere in the camp during the week of the film festival is fantastic,” 70-year-old Abaya Ambarak Asalak says despite not having seen any films herself. “Why should I sit on the sand at watch a film when my life has been like a film?” she asks. Abaya has lived in the refugee camp since 1976 after fleeing Western Sahara ahead of the advancing Moroccan troops. “One night a plane dropped bombs from the sky,” she says describing a napalm attack that killed her young son and daughter. “The scars on my body may have faded but the wounds in my heart are still raw.”

And it is stories like these that David Riker feels need to be told. “Film can serve the Saharawi struggle both in helping to express a collective reflection on their circumstances, and by bring their unique story to the world” he says. “Unlike most things planted in the desert, the FiSahara film festival has taken root and continues to grow and flourish” actor said Javier Bardem ahead of this year’s festival. “It is increasingly attracting great films and great film-makers from around the world and in doing it sends a signal to our political leaders that this crisis that can no-longer be ignored and a signal to the Saharawi refugees that despite their isolation, they have not been forgotten.

Stefan Simanowitz is a journalist and the international co-ordinator of FiSahara. This post was first published on the Mail & Guardian Online.

11 years ago

Malawi votes in closely contested election

Malawians voted on Tuesday in the most closely contested election since the end of the one-party state two decades ago, with incumbent Joyce Banda, southern Africa’s first female head of state, facing no fewer than 11 challengers.

In the absence of reliable opinion polls, most analysts rank People’s Party leader Banda as the favourite because of her popularity in rural areas where she has been rolling out development projects and farm subsidies.

Polling stations opened more or less on time at 0400 GMT in the capital, Lilongwe, although logistical problems in the southern commercial hub of Blantyre delayed the start of voting, adding to a tense and acrimonious pre-poll atmosphere.

Many of Banda’s rivals have already cried foul, saying they have unearthed plots to rig the ballot. Diplomats say they have seen no credible evidence of vote-rigging, but delays – for whatever reason – may fuel the sense of unease and distrust.

There were chaotic scenes at a polling centre at a school in a Blantyre township, with hundreds of voters milling around for several hours while officials waited in vain for election materials to arrive.

“There’s no ink. We’re still waiting for the consignment,” one of the officials told the frustrated crowd.

Banda came to power in the landlocked, impoverished nation two years ago after her predecessor, Bingu wa Mutharika, died in office.

President Joyce Banda at the launch of her electoral presidential campaign on March 29 2014 in Lilongwe. (Pic: AFP)

In her first months in power, Banda, who grew up in a village in southern Malawi, enjoyed huge goodwill from many of the country’s 13 million people who had grown to hate Mutharika’s autocratic style.

But she saw her popularity wane after she was forced to impose austerity measures, including a sharp devaluation of the kwacha, to stabilise the economy.

More recently, her administration’s reputation for probity has been hit by a $15 million corruption scandal, dubbed ‘Cashgate‘ after the discovery of large amounts of money in the car of a senior government official, that has soured relations with donors.

More than 80 people have been arrested and a former cabinet minister has been dismissed and put on trial for money laundering and attempted murder but urban voters in particular have criticised Banda’s response as ponderous and ineffectual.

Banda’s main challenger is Lazarus Chakwera, an evangelical pastor who retired from the church last year to lead the Malawi Congress Party, the rejuvenated party of the late Hastings Banda, who ran the former British colony with an iron first in its first three decades of independence.

Read Malawi elections: Big four vie for power

Mutharika’s younger brother Peter is also running as the head of the Democratic Progressive Party. Another prominent contender is Atupele Muluzi, son of former president Bakili Muluzi, who took over from Hastings Banda in 1994.

11 years ago

Sudanese judge orders Christian woman to hang for apostasy

A Sudanese judge on Thursday sentenced a heavily pregnant Christian woman to hang for apostasy, a ruling which Britain denounced as “barbaric” and left the United States “deeply disturbed”.

Born to a Muslim father, the woman was convicted under the Islamic Sharia law that has been in force in Sudan since 1983 and outlaws conversions on pain of death.

Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag (27) is married to a Christian and eight months pregnant, human rights activists say.

“We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged,” Judge Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa told the woman, addressing her by her father’s Muslim name, Adraf Al-Hadi Mohammed Abdullah.

Khalifa also sentenced Ishag to 100 lashes for “adultery”. Under Sudan’s interpretation of Sharia, a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man and any such relationship is regarded as adulterous.

In Washington, the state department said the United States was “deeply disturbed” by the sentence and urged Sudan to protect freedom of religion.

Britain’s Minister for Africa, Mark Simmonds, said he was “truly appalled”.

“This barbaric sentence highlights the stark divide between the practices of the Sudanese courts and the country’s international human rights obligations,” he said in a statement.

Ishag, dressed in traditional Sudanese robes with her head covered, reacted without emotion when the verdict was read out at a court in the Khartoum district of Haj Yousef, where many Christians live.

Earlier in the hearing, an Islamic religious leader spoke with her in the caged dock for about 30 minutes, trying to convince her to change her mind.

But she calmly told the judge: “I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy.”

Sudan has an Islamist government but, other than floggings, extreme Sharia law punishments have been rare.

‘Appalling and abhorrent’
“The fact that a woman has been sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion, is appalling and abhorrent,” said Amnesty International’s Sudan researcher, Manar Idriss.

If the death sentence is carried out, she will be the first person executed for apostasy under the 1991 penal code, said Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a British-based campaign group.

One of Ishag’s lawyers, Mohanad Mustafa, told AFP that they would take the case all the way to Sudan’s top Constitutional Court if necessary to get the verdict overturned.

The defence believes the criminal code prohibition against apostasy violates the constitution, he said.

After the hearing, about 50 people demonstrated against the death sentence.

“No to executing Meriam,” said one of their signs, while another proclaimed: “Religious rights are a constitutional right.”

A smaller group supporting the verdict also arrived but there was no violence.

“This is a decision of the law. Why are you gathered here?” one supporter asked, prompting an activist to retort: “Why do you want to execute Meriam? Why don’t you bring corruptors to the court?”

Sudan is perceived as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, ranked 174th by campaign group Transparency International.

About 100 people, mostly Ishag supporters, were in court to hear the sentence, which was also observed by Western diplomats.

In a joint statement ahead of Thursday’s ruling, the embassies of the United States, Canada, Britain and the Netherlands expressed “deep concern” over her case and urged “justice and compassion”.

She was convicted on Sunday, May 11 but given until Thursday to recant.

Amnesty said Ishag was raised as an Orthodox Christian, her mother’s religion, because her Muslim father was absent.

Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman told AFP earlier that Sudan is not unique in its law against apostasy.

“In Saudi Arabia, in all the Muslim countries, it is not allowed at all for a Muslim to change his religion,” he said.

Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali for AFP

11 years ago

Cairo’s street music mahraganat both divides and unites

Stroll through Egypt’s capital and you can count on hearing two kinds of music. The first has been around for decades: the rich, sedate voice of Egypt’s favourite diva, Umm Kulthum. The second is a more recent phenomenon. A raucous mishmash of auto-tuned rap and pounding drums, this is mahraganat – Egypt’s latest musical genre.

The rise of mahraganat – which translates from the Arabic as “festivals” – has been as relentless as its drumbeats. Its stars have millions of YouTube hits, have appeared at European festivals and at sprawling street weddings, and recently hosted British grime and dubstep DJs for a week of collaboration.

“It’s the ultimate thing in music,” boasts Diesel, AKA 24-year-old Mohamed Saber, one of mahraganat’s most innovative artists. “Everyone listens to it – even those who criticise us.”

Diesel’s words hint at a vexed relationship with some Egyptian listeners. Popular though it is, mahraganat’s roots within Egypt’s underclass mean its artists strive for wider acceptance and a place within Egypt’s formal music industry. Things are changing, butmahraganat musicians often record their music at home, rely on peer-to-peer distribution via the internet or flash drives, and are rarely played on mainstream radio or television. “May God end my life,” winced a representative of Egypt’s musicians’ union after listening to mahraganat last year.

The genre first emerged in 2008 in Madinet al-Salam, or Salam City, a rundown district on the fringes of northern Cairo. Its pioneers began to mess around with drumbeats on basic mixing programs such as FruityLoops – downloaded for free online – and recorded simple auto-tuned vocals. Then some of them began to play their frenetic creations at sprawling street weddings and carnivals – hence its name – and a genre was born.

Mohamed El Deeb, a 28-year-old rap and hip hop singer, poses during the making of his music video, in front of a wall with graffiti near Tahrir square in Cairo June 4 2012. (Reuters)

“People were shocked when it came on,” recalls Sadat – AKA al-Sadat Abdelaziz, 27, one of mahraganat’s trailblazers and probably its biggest star. “But [our] subjects and issues went straight to people – and that’s why it got bigger.”

According to Mahmoud Refaat, the founder of one of Egypt’s most influential contemporary music studios, mahraganat’s lyrical appeal lay in its honesty. Unlike schmaltzy Egyptian music from the 60s and 70s – or the pop artists of the 80s and 90s who “just sang about love and hair” – mahraganat was the first genre to properly deal with issues affecting the poorest Egyptians.

“It’s the very first time, for as long as I’ve heard Egyptian music, that I can say there is truly music for the people – [music] that actually expresses the reality of young people,” says Refaat. “The way these musicians were thinking is very radical and very minimal. They had no shame of dealing with their struggle, using their dialect that they and their friends and the community had developed. And that made it very new.”

British DJs who visited Cairo in March to collaborate with mahraganat artists compared the sound to London’s grime – for both musical and social reasons. “It’s a bit quicker in tempo – grime is about 140 beats-per-minute, and this is around 150bpm or 160bpm – but it’s got the same energy,” says London DJ Faze Miyake, who visited Cairo with the British Council.

Mahraganat stayed largely in Salam City and the surrounding suburbs until 2011, when the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak brought its artists greater exposure. Sadat released a series of songs over the internet that dealt directly with politics. Tracks such as The People and the Government and The People Demand Five Pounds of Phone-Credit (a riff on a revolutionary chant) gave him and his colleagues a prominence far beyond their hometown.

But mahraganat artists resent the oft-made suggestion that theirs is a genre born of the revolution. They started making music long before Mubarak fell. And though their lyrics are often political, Sadat says they feel cut adrift from a national tug-of-war that often ignores the basic needs of struggling communities such as theirs.

“Journalists think everything is related to the revolution. This music has been going on for a while,” says Sadat. “Not all the Egyptians are part of the revolution – the slum areas until now are not interested in anything other than eating. If these masses started to move, it would get messy.”

But for Noov Senarye, who manages a number of mahraganat stars, including Sadat, the more liberal environment created by the 2011 uprising did expose them to bigger and wider audiences. Senarye’s involvement is a case in point. Previously a human rights lawyer, she heard their music by chance in early 2011 – and, inspired, went to Salam City that March to offer to manage them. “In the beginning,” she remembers, “they couldn’t understand why a girl from different community and [social] level came to see them.”

Three years on, most mahraganat artists’ primary source of revenue still comes from playing at sprawling street weddings – thousands crashed Sadat’s own ceremony last year just to see him perform. And they still gauge their popularity not by radio airtime, or album sales, but by how often they hear their music blasting from Cairo’s mopeds and tuk-tuks.

“I know it’s doing well when I’m in the street and I hear it everywhere,” says Diesel. “Some songs will take a week to get to their peak, very few will take more than a month and a half. If they take longer than that – then that’s it.”

But much change has been afoot. For one, says Figo, the DJ known as the movement’s godfather, the music has become more sophisticated. “When it all started the lyrics were meaningless,” says Figo, whose real name is Ahmed Farid. “But now we sing about the revolution, drugs, harassment.”

A song by Sadat that deals with Egypt’s endemic street harassment, “Catcall yes, grope no”, is a much-cited example – even if its condemnation of sexism is only partial. Meanwhile, big companies have tried to co-opt mahraganat’s popularity – with some artists recording tracks for phone, food and Viagra adverts. And as the British collaboration shows, there is a drive to inject the genre with new musical ideas – a move accelerated by younger artists such as Diesel.

“That was the main intention of the studio to work with these musicians – to formalise this as a music genre, not to look at it as wedding-party music,” says Mahmoud Refaat, the studio owner who has taken some mahraganat artists under his wing. But as this evolution gathers pace, some are wary of selling out, of abandoning their roots for international influences. “People like this music as it is. The change and development of this music should be about the way we sing – not to change the core of the genre,” says Sadat. “It’s about what you sing for the people, it’s not about what you sell to the people.”

11 years ago

More support needed for SA’s community food gardens

Community food gardens can provide an important tool for household sustainability in South Africa, where less than half the population is food secure and 12 million people go hungry every day.

“I now have food to put on the table every day of the week,” says Sibongile Sityebi from Cape Town’s Gugulethu township. “I did not have that before. I was unemployed and did not have money to buy healthy food.”

For the past five years, Sityebi has worked at the Asande Food Garden in Gugulethu, an initiative of non-profit organisation Abalimi Bezekhaya. Meaning “Farmers of Home”, this Cape Town-based organisation encourages local township residents to grow their own vegetables. The objective is for these farmers to feed themselves, their families and the community.

Community members pack vegetables at Harvest for Hope community garden. (Pic: Alexandra Farrington)

Food insecurity remains a widespread problem across Cape Town and the rest of South Africa. According to a study by the African Food Security Unit Network at the University of Cape Town (UCT), 12 million South Africans – almost 25% of the population – go hungry on a daily basis. This figure excludes individuals who are at risk of being hungry, which is another 25%. Food security has declined over the past five years, with only 45.4% of South Africans categorised as “food secure” in 2012, compared to 48% in 2008, according to the Human Science Research Council and the Medical Research Council.

Sityebi, who is now leading Asande and managing three other farmers, says community vegetable gardens can bring much-needed relief.

“The gardens of Abalimi make food insecurity in our areas a bit better,” the farmer says. “People here don’t have enough money for healthy food. We at Asande for instance donate part of our produce to soup kitchens and give it away to people who have nothing.”

It is difficult to determine exactly how many South Africans benefit from food gardens, as comprehensive figures are not available. A quick Google search however shows that there are many hundreds of community vegetable initiatives scattered across the country, from Cape Town to Johannesburg, from Bloemfontein to Durban.

Abalimi’s impact is easier to calculate, with 200 food gardens. Each of these are tended by five micro-farmers each supporting between five and seven people – the size of an average household. This means that a minimum of 10 000 people directly benefit from Abalimi gardens, excluding thousands of residents in neighbouring areas who are now able to access affordable and healthy food.

“Twenty-five percent to 50% of Abalimi’s output is consumed locally, by the farmers and their dependents as well as their fellow community members,” says Abalimi co-founder Rob Small, adding that the gardens grow a wide variety of seasonal crops. “These are people whom are most affected by food insecurity. The rest is sold to more affluent consumers as well as some retailers. This is what keeps our operations going.”

The gardens’ impact on farmers’ health has been significant. “The universal response of our farmers is is that they felt desperate and unhealthy when they started and healthy and empowered after being with us for a few months,” Small says. “Our farmers love the food they are eating and the fact they are working outside. People are less sick, and have fewer doctors’ bills. They feel psychologically better and more dignified. Community vegetable gardens, in other words, definitely have a positive impact on food security – and on overall well-being.”

University of the Western Cape graduate Marc Lewis agrees. Last year he did extensive research on the positive impact of urban vegetable gardens and food security in Johannesburg for his master’s degree at the university.

“When initiated and run properly, vegetable gardens can improve food security at household and community level,” he says, adding that the gardens he looked at alleviated food insecurity in two ways: by providing food for the farmers and by selling produce straight to the community at much lower prices than produce available in the shops. “This is where healthy affordable food is needed the most.”

Support from other stakeholders, such as the government, municipalities, corporates and non-governmental organisations, can be a critical success factor for gardens, particularly for access to land and water. International NGO, ONE.org recently launched a new pan-African campaign known as Do Agric, It Pays, calling for more and better investment in agriculture by African governments. ONE.org’s executive director for Africa, Dr Sipho S. Moyo states that better structured support for small holder farmers and their needs, such as irrigation and access to land, is essential not only in combating poverty, but also in assuring sustainable economic development. Such investments could help further transform South Africa’s community gardens and multiply the gains.

“In 2003, African leaders pledged to invest 10% of their national budgets in agriculture – only eight of them have kept that promise. Do Agric, It Pays calls on governments to not only meet this promise, but to implement policies that are targeted towards protecting and promoting small holder farmers, leveling he field for women, and developing the value chain, among others. The private sector cannot do it alone. In countries such as Burkina Faso and Ethiopia, the government has come to the aid of the private sector with targeted investments in agriculture, and the results hav been significant in terms of poverty alleviation, job creation and overall economic development.”

“Some of the gardens I studied had free water access,” Lewis says, adding that good management of gardens and resources is important. He stresses that someone needs to take control to prevent initiatives to become fragmented.

“Lastly, community gardens should be informal market, and not formal market, orientated,” he says. “It is in the communities in which these farms operate where good and healthy food is needed the most. The market is solid.”

Miriam Mannak for ONE.org