A dozen singers belt out Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle in a classroom at the Pedagogical University in Mozambique. The country has just two professional opera singers; this year, the duo are training young Mozambicans to perform a new show based on a book by the country’s most prominent author.
International opera performers Stella Mendonça and Sonia Mocumbi, the daughter of former prime minister Pascoal Mocumbi, have returned from careers abroad to teach Mozambicans from all walks of life how to sing.
Leaving her home in Africa to study in Europe at 15 was difficult for Mendonça, but in Mozambique at the time an aspiring classical musician’s only option was to go abroad. When she studied at a conservatory in Lyon, one of the directors insisted she could not sing opera because the shape of black Africans’ heads affected resonance.
“I was very happy to prove him wrong,” Mendonça says. Her outrage at his comments pushed her to work even harder.
After 30 years in Europe studying then performing across the continent, Mendonça returned to Mozambique to share her skills at home. Last year she launched the Musiarte music school in Maputo. In addition to offering classes in piano, violin and guitar for children and adults, the school is training a choir to perform Terra Sonâmbula, a new production based on the book by Mozambican novelist Mia Couto.
The dozen or so singers come from a variety of professional backgrounds. Those who can’t afford to join pay a token fee for vocal lessons and instruction in music theory.
Mendonça is a commanding figure in front of her students, and she conducts the choir with panache.
“My big preoccupation was that I don’t want to keep this for me,” she said of her skills. “I have a responsibility to be a mirror for young people here.”
Gizela Mangaze joined the choir in July 2013 after learning of Mendonça’s return to Mozambique. “We heard Stella Mendonça was putting a choir together. She’s quite famous among the music scene.”
Mangaze says the choir mixes formal technical coaching with traditional Mozambican styles, producing a unique sound that differs from European operas. “We love rhythm and our voices are stronger and have more body. It sounds different,” she adds.
Terra Sonâmbula – translated as Sleepingwalking Land – is required reading in Mozambican schools. The novel chronicles the journey of an orphan and an old man during Mozambique’s civil war and illustrates themes such as the discovery of national identity and making the best of a bad situation. One day it occurred to Couto and Mendonça that the book title sounded like an Italian opera, and they enlisted the Swedish writer Henning Mankell, the creator of the Kurt Wallander series of mystery novels, to transform Mozambique’s most famous novel into the country’s first libretto.
Mendonça believes nurturing music and the arts is essential for Mozambique’s future. The country became independent from Portugal in 1975 and plunged into civil war after just two years. It emerged 15 years later as one of the poorest countries in the world. Today the economy is booming thanks to the recent discovery of gas fields in the north, but the growth has benefited only a small section of the population and underscored social inequality.
“I think none of the country can develop without developing the culture here,” Mendonça says.
The choir’s repertoire extends beyond the Italian classics. In addition to staging shows at the end of each trimester, they have performed the German national anthem for German Unity Day, and sung at a farewell for the ambassador of Switzerland.
Production has hit a few snags so far. The global financial crisis and Mozambique’s presidential elections this year sapped resources from potential sponsors.
In spring 2010, Mankell lost the only copy of the Terra Sonâmbula libretto when he was arrested aboard the Gaza flotilla. “That libretto is still in the hands of the Israelis,” Mendonça said. “He had to rewrite it.”
Opera is a far stretch from popular entertainment for most Mozambicans, but Mendonça insists the combination of two favourite national pastimes – storytelling and music – will ensure its public appeal.
Twenty-year-old Suneida Gizela Maquito was one of the original members of the choir, in which she learned to read music. She is optimistic that opera will gain popularity as a genre in Mozambique. Her dream is to perform in the United States, perhaps even for Barack Obama. “I want to show them that even in Mozambique we have beautiful things. There is something good, and there are talented people coming from Africa.”
Social media is rallying behind an alternative to Bob Geldof’s Band Aid 30, which champions advice and solidarity over scenes of desperation designed to tug at the heart and purse strings of the general public.
Africa Stop Ebola was recorded before the release of Geldof’s third rehash of the charity singleDo They Know It’s Christmas?, and includes well-known African musicians such as Tiken Jah Fakoly from Côte d’Ivoire and Malian artists Amadou and Mariam, Salif Keita and Oumou Sangare.
The #AfricaStopEbola hashtag is being used to share and discuss the alternative charity single, which has seen an increase in support since Band Aid 30 launched on Sunday.
The lyrics capture the collective sadness felt in countries most badly hit by the disease: “Africa is full of sadness, to see our families die … everyone is in danger … we must act”, attempts to tackle the broader issues around the disease and shares practical medical advice, like the verse sang by Fakoly:
The official YouTube video has been watched nearly 200 000 times and it is currently at number 78 on the iTunes download charts. BandAid 30 is at number one. All profits of the song will go to Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors without Borders, who are working to treat the virus in the region.
Africa Stop Ebola is a radical departure from Band Aid, whose tactic has been to scramble together the biggest pop stars in the world – from One Direction to Bono – and encourage the western public to dig deep with emotive lyrics.
Maeve Shearlaw for the Guardian Africa Network. Read the full story here.
In 2012, as civil war loomed – and with just a quarter of the South Sudan’s population able to read and write – Awak Bior’s decision to found a bookshop may have seemed risky. But for Bior it was a necessity.
“Literacy rates are very low in South Sudan,” she says, sitting on a wooden bench at Leaves bookshop in the capital Juba. “It’s to create a way for people to see that reading is a pleasurable thing; it’s something that can give you some advantage personally and professionally.”
Bior had been a frequent traveller between South Sudan and the UK, where she grew up, with her bags stuffed full of books. Her own love of reading was nurtured by regular visits to her local library with her parents. Now, aided by a small but enthusiastic team, she runs South Sudan’s leading bookshop.
The country’s few other book stores mainly sell religious books or textbooks; Leaves’ wooden bookcases are lined with the latest novels and non-fiction from the UK, east Africa and elsewhere, while also promoting a culture of reading through public debates and book launches.
The small bookshop with big ambitions has already attracted devoted customers. Dhieu Williams, a radio presenter, is a regular visitor. He recently picked up a copy of Fidel Castro’s autobiography, My Life. “It’s not only me reading the books I buy, it’s my cousins and brothers as well,” he says.
Peter Biar is an even greater advocate for reading, a passion he traces back to stumbling across a quote by Cicero – “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” Biar, like many young men in South Sudan, was a child soldier “educated in the struggle”. Now he treasures every book he owns.
Leaves has more male customers than female, a reflection of the fact that only 16% of women can read and write, and even fewer have the kind of income which allow them to buy books, which can cost over 100 South Sudanese pounds, around £13.
Women with their faces painted with the South Sudanese flag pose during celebrations marking three years of independence in Juba on July 9,2014.
In December 2013, civil war broke out once again in South Sudan. Thousands have been killed and nearly two million displaced. This makes Leaves even more relevant, the bookshop’s manager, Yohanis Riek, believes.
Speaking to a local radio station, he says that “now more than ever we need books. Self development is key to resolving the South Sudan crisis.” The fighting, largely carried out by young, illiterate soldiers, has also pushed South Sudanese citizens from every walk of life to consider what sort of state they wish to live in.
The rebel leader, Riek Machar, prominently displayed a copy of Why Nations Fail, by political scientists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, in his bush headquarters. Machar and other politicians have been calling for federalism, and there is increased public criticism about the political failures that led to war.
“We have more South Sudanese customers now than we did during the time of stability,” Leaves’ manager Riek says. “Maybe they are interested in knowing more about politics, and how they can live together.”
The government, led by Salva Kiir, is also being accused of clamping down on dissent, at one point indicating there should be no open public discussions of federalism. So far, Leaves’ public debates have not been affected.
Founder Bior says freedom of expression is vital for South Sudan’s future. “What we are trying to encourage is an environment where people can exchange ideas, debate and be able to come to solutions together. I think when you look at different countries that are successful, one of the things they have in common is that you can access information. If censorship starts to become more common in South Sudan, that would be a disaster, because it would hinder development and social improvement.”
Bior says the next goal is to move out of the current small premises into a bigger bookshop, to create a refuge for readers. “Most people do not read even if they want to read, because their houses are crowded, they don’t have private space.
“Electricity is another issue. In Juba in the evenings, children gather around security guard compounds just so they can read and study. We’d love to be able to fill that gap in providing a place for people to read, whether for pleasure or for study.”
Famine has been staved off for now by the efforts of many agencies and the biggest ever UN humanitarian operation in one country. (AFP)
Water bottle in hand and rucksack on back, his grey trousers rolled up to reveal spindly legs, 12-year-old Gatwech boarded the first flight of his life. His ear protectors dwarfed his head as he gazed wide-eyed through the window of the Russian-built UN helicopter that lifted into the sky, sweeping over lush plains and thick forests.
Gatwech crossed the invisible frontlines separating government and rebel forces in South Sudan’s civil war. Finally, the aircraft came in to land on a ringfenced field in the village of Akobo, deep in opposition territory, and the boy strained to look at the excited crowd waiting under trees. He was about to be reunited with his family for the first time after nine arduous months in a displacement camp.
His best friend beamed, his aunt sang and wept and spat as a blessing, and his uncle gave him a rather formal pat on the head. Gatwech was safe at last. But in the world’s newest and hungriest country, every gain is tentative and every haven fragile. Three days later, there was chaos outside the hospital in Akobo when a cattle thief was bound, chased and whipped by a lynch mob of soldiers, police and vigilantes, including rifle-toting children.
The febrile atmosphere is a sign that the rainy season is coming to an end in South Sudan, raising the prospect of renewed fighting. Aid is working here but diplomacy is not.
Famine has been staved off, at least for now, by the efforts of numerous agencies and the UN’s biggest ever humanitarian operation in one country. Yet bad-tempered peace talks between the warring parties have stalled, agreements have proved hollow and the international community has failed to apply the requisite pressure. The intransigence of two men, President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar, is seen by many here as dragging the country towards the abyss.
Thousands have been killed and nearly two million have fled their homes since their war broke out last December. Oxfam and other agencies have warned that an expected upsurge in violence could wipe out recent gains in food security and push the number of severely hungry people up by a million in the first three months of 2015. Describing it as a shift from crisis to catastrophe, they say parts of the country could slide into man-made famine early next year.
A dangerous life
Children, who make up half the population, suffer the most. When the war started, Gatwech – not his real name – ran for his life after government forces attacked the town where his close family was staying. He was carrying a pair of shoes. “I thought my parents were also running,” he recalled, speaking Nuer through an interpreter. “But when I reached the UN camp, they were not there and I thought maybe they were killed. I was very afraid because I heard a lot of gunshots and artillery.”
Nearly 100 000 people are crammed into UN compounds across the country for their own protection, often in inhumane and unsanitary conditions. Gatwech found himself sleeping on a mat on the floor. “I didn’t have anything to do. It was boring. The day was very long,” he said. The boy, who hopes to become a doctor one day, also witnessed attacks on the camp from government troops. “It was a dangerous life. I saw a lot of dead bodies.”
But months later came the news that Gatwech’s parents had been located in Akobo by a family tracing and reunification programme coordinated by Save the Children. It is long, complicated and logistically difficult work: at present 5 660 children have been registered as missing in South Sudan and only 393 reunited with their families. “It’s a needle in a haystack,” one aid worker said.
When Gatwech landed in Akobo last week, his friend Isaac was there to greet him in a crowd of villagers and wandering cows. The 13-year-old said: “I was very happy. I missed him. We weren’t optimistic because we thought in the long run the only way he would come is when there is peace in South Sudan.”
And peace remains a distant prospect, with Kiir and Machar seemingly hellbent on a military solution. Kiir told the UN general assembly last month: “The conflict in South Sudan is purely a political struggle for power, not an ethnic conflict as reported.” Yet violence has broken out along ethnic lines in many parts of the country, pitting forces loyal to Kiir, a Dinka, against those of his former deputy Machar, a Nuer.
Economic self-interest is also fuelling the conflict. A report last month by the Enough Project noted: “The country’s competing privileged elites are sacrificing their own people’s lives to secure the political and economic benefits – including massive state-corroding corruption – derived from control of the state.”
Political and military leaders maintain “lavish homes” in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Africa and Australia, the report continued. “Families of the leaders of South Sudan’s warring parties are living in neighbouring countries and their children are attending the finest schools available. Meanwhile, the education system back in South Sudan has collapsed.”
Ammunition sources
The Enough Project said the South Sudanese government had received $38-million in weapons and ammunition from China since the start of the civil war, while there is evidence that opposition forces may have been resupplied with ammunition by Sudan, from which the country gained independence in 2011.
Akobo, a remote cluster of tukuls, or mud huts, in Jonglei state, near the Ethiopian border, was the scene of an infamous massacre in 1983. Last December young Nuer men stormed a UN base looking for Dinka civilians sheltering inside and killed two Indian peacekeepers. Since then the village has been overwhelmed by displaced people, putting pressure on food, schools and hospitals, and driving market prices up. Mobile phone networks have been cut off by the government.
Akobo is now firmly controlled by the rebels, who include large chunks of what used to be the national army, and in the central market there is a sense of something approaching normality. But few expect it to last. Koang Rambang, the county commissioner, predicts famine and even genocide. “Akobo is the first town the government are targeting because they consider it a supply route and escape route for the community,” he said. “We’ll do our best to make sure citizens are aware of the threats they are facing.”
Talking into a satellite phone and flanked by soldiers wielding guns, Rambang is now firmly in Machar’s camp because, he says, it is the pragmatic choice. “People call us the rebels but this is the resistance movement to the onslaught, the killings by Salva Kiir. I have no interest in rebelling to go running in the bush for no reason. But if someone wants to kill me because I am Nuer, then I have no choice. I am ready for peaceful solution but if people choose to go forcefully, I am also ready for that.”
In predominantly Dinka areas of South Sudan there are similar accounts of brutal treatment at the hands of the Nuers and hostility towards Machar. In Akobo, it is the Dinka president who is deeply unpopular. Rambang said, “The communities have no trust in Salva Kiir’s leadership. The solution to this crisis is to have Kiir step aside and let some change happen. The other party might want Machar to step aside. I’m sure Machar will compromise because I have spoken to him several times.”
The war has caused a surge in child brides, according to Rambang, with families pushing girls as young as 13 into marriage so they will receive a cattle dowry. But the biggest crisis in Akobo, he says, is food security. Harvests, markets and trade routes have been disrupted. One in three children are acutely malnourished, with consequences including increased vulnerability to malaria and failure to attend school.
Outpatient centres
The village borders a river where children splash and play and climb trees, exotic blue-and-red birds swoop low and lone canoeists gently push through a surface almost as smooth as glass. It takes 45 minutes on a motorboat to reach the village of Dangjok. Here soldiers stand guard, bullet belts around their shoulders, the Nuer initiation pattern of six parallel horizontal scars on their foreheads. The local chief works at a desk in a gloomy corrugated shed where rocket-propelled grenades litter the floor and bats hang from the wood beams.
Save the Children and a local NGO, Nile Hope, are running an outpatient therapeutic centre where, in a modest building of mud walls and thatched roof, malnourished babies are registered, weighed, measured for height and arm circumference and given the peanut-based paste Plumpy’Nut or, in severe cases, referred to hospital for urgent treatment. Right now the preventative measure appears to be working, with hospital admissions down to single figures.
Nellie James, assistant nutrition coordinator at Nile Hope, said some mothers carry their children for two hours to be here. “None of them give up. These mothers are very strong and very determined. Here in Akobo people value children more. A mother can go two days without eating but the child has to eat.”
Among more than 30 mothers waiting their turn last week was Nyanhial Ruot, who fled the city of Malakal nine months ago. She was on the main street when government tanks opened fire. “Children were crying,” she recalled, wearing a rainbow coloured dress, sandals and yellow headscarf patterned with a red rose. “I’ve seen people dying in front of me. Most of them were mothers and children who were not able to run. We turned left and that’s why we’re alive. Those running in front were killed.”
Ruot, 25, and her family trekked for two months to reach Dangjok, but now her four-year-old daughter and two-year-old son are suffering vomiting and diarrhoea. “I’m worried about my children’s lives,” she said. “Before the crisis we got medicine in the market. Now there is none or the prices have gone up.”
A small paracetamol tablet has risen in price from 10 to 25 South Sudanese pounds (roughly $3 to $8), she complained. Food is also scarce. “We have planted some sorghum and maize but there is not enough for the children. In the dry season we collect fruits, grasses and leaves.”
That Ruot and hundreds of mothers like her are receiving help, and that South Sudan is not yet officially in famine is a notable victory for the aid agencies. Ultimately, however, it is only a sticking plaster. One in seven people are still at food crisis or emergency level and 50 000 children could die by the end of the year. All the good work could be undone if Kiir and Machar fail to make peace, or are not compelled to do so. The Enough Project has called for punitive measures including seizing the homes, bank accounts and shell companies of anyone undermining the peace process.
Tariq Reibl, head of Oxfam’s programme in South Sudan, said: “If famine comes to South Sudan it will come through the barrel of a gun. This is a man-made crisis, not one caused by the vagaries of the weather, and though humanitarian aid is vital it cannot fix a political problem.
“The international community is much better at saving lives than it is at helping solve the political problems that put lives in peril. Nine months of the softly-softly approach to peace negotiations has failed. If the international community really wants to avert a famine then it has to make bold diplomatic efforts to bring both sides to end the fighting.”
When the news media turns a penetrating gaze on Africa, Botswana rarely makes headlines. The southern African nation is best known for diamonds, heart-stopping natural beauty and inoffensive politics. It ranks second behind Mauritius in the latest Ibrahim Index of African Governance.
But there is trouble in paradise. So far this month an editor has been arrested and a reporter has fled, triggering a diplomatic spat with the US, while a South African politician has been barred from entering the country and there are concerns over its use of the death penalty.
The editor who published the story, Outsa Mokone of the Sunday Standard, was arrested and charged with sedition. “I would rather spend 100 years in their prisons rather than be a prisoner of guilty conscience,” he said upon his release.
Police raided the offices of Sunday Standard and seized documents and computer equipment. Mokone’s colleague, journalist Edgar Tsimane, fled to neighbouring South Africa where he applied for asylum. In an interview with that country’s eNews Channel Africa (eNCA), he painted a highly unflattering picture of a country that many revere as a beacon of democratic progress for the continent.
“There was information from my sources that my life was in danger,” said Tsimane, explaining his decision to leave Botswana, which he went on to describe as increasingly repressive.
“I think it’s been a gradual process. It’s now becoming more and more visible. I can tell you that we’ve been experiencing extra-judicial killings in the country. The public is losing confidence in the government of the day.”
He cited the case of a petty criminal shot dead by military intelligence, who riddled his body with 10 bullets. “How can you kill a man without subjecting him to the court of the law?”
Former army general Khama’s Botswana Democratic Party has ruled for nearly half a century. Tsimane added: “The president is just too powerful. He’s using all the powers in the constitution to govern himself. Even if he can do any wrong, because he knows he cannot be prosecuted.”
The media crackdown caused shock and disappointment. Sue Valentine, Africa programme co-ordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said: “These events tarnish Botswana’s reputation for good governance and media freedom in southern Africa. It can be restored by allowing a free flow of news and opinion.”
America joined the condemnation. The state department said Mokone’s arrest is “inconsistent with… fundamental freedoms and at odds with Botswana’s strong tradition of democratic governance”.
That provoked a backlash from Botswana’s government spokesperson Jeff Ramsay, who said he noted the US reaction with “dismay” and suggested the American government “might wish to put its own house in order before rushing to hastily comment on the judicial affairs of others”.
Ramsay added: “We find it unfortunate… that a foreign government, much less one that professes to be a friend and partner of Botswana, should issue such a statement about an ongoing judicial process in our country.”
Meanwhile firebrand politician Julius Malema, from South Africa, was denied a visa to visit Botswana because of apparent security concerns. Malema has previously called for the overthrow of the government, claiming that Khama is a western stooge.
Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters party reacted angrily, condemning Botswana’s “autocratic military government”. It said: “There are absolutely no grounds for a so-called democratic country to refuse a person a visa merely on the basis that he holds a different political view to that of the government.”
Edwin Samotse, however, did make the journey from South Africa to Botswana, his home country, where he is to stand trial for murder. Human rights lawyers says they are worried that South Africa ignored its own constitutional court by deporting Samotse without receiving an assurance he will not face the death penalty.
