“You can take the girl out of South Sudan but you can’t take South Sudan out of the girl.”
These were the words of international model Alek Wek when Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week chairperson Dr Precious Moloi-Motsepe described her as a “child of the soil” this past weekend.
“Alek’s story is a story that excites all of us. A girl from the continent who was a refugee that went onto conquer the world,” said Moloi-Motsepe.
Alek Wek speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg on November 2. (Pic: Supplied)
Speaking at a press conference on Saturday afternoon, Wek, who made her modelling debut in 1995, said that African fashion can change the global fashion industry – and the time for this is now.
“Together we can make a profound change. It gives me chills when I think about it.”
“If I can help in terms of wearing these wonderful designs and by connecting designers so that they have the opportunity to be creative and the international market can have the chance to place an order and see how much talent there is on this continent, then I will be happy to,” Wek said. It was no surprise, then, that she was wearing a dress by South African designer Bongiwe Walaza.
Wek is from the Dinka ethnic group in South Sudan but fled the country for Britain along with her family in 1991 to escape the civil war. She later moved to the United States.
Wek admitted that it wasn’t easy breaking into the fashion industry. People constantly referred to her looks as “bizarre, weird and different” while she has never felt anything but normal.
“From a very early age, my mother embedded in us that as a woman it is not the makeup, the dress or the shoes that makes you the woman that you are. It’s truly who you are inside and if I didn’t have that I don’t know if I would have had the capacity to be able to believe in myself and embrace myself.”
Wek said her mother always told her that as women, one has to respect one another because respect is love.
“We all have different qualities and that is what makes us gorgeous as women. In the end, fashion draws so much inspiration from this continent so why not celebrate the women from Africa?” Wek asked.
“Once I was out there spreading my wings and having to make my own decisions, everything my strict mother had taught me started to come into place and make sense.
“And whoever said I was weird I could say to them, ‘You’re weird! You’re bizzare!’ There is room for every kind of woman within the fashion industry.”
During her brief talk, she also touched on the importance of education, saying that every young person, regardless of the field they go into, should educate themselves.
Rhodé Marshall is the Mail & Guardian Online’s project manager and unofficial entertainment reporter. She started as a radio reporter and producer in Cape Town, before jumping into online news. With one hand glued to her phone and the other to a can of Coca-Cola, she is a pop culture junkie. Connect with her on Twitter.
My friend Sedimale recently signed up for Chinese language classes at the University of Botswana, figuring it would be an interesting challenge to add another language to her multilingual ambitions. “I might even wind up as a Mandarin teacher, go on a work exchange programme and move to China and find myself a nice Chinese husband,” she told me half-jokingly. Several lessons later, she seems to be having the time of her life. Apart from the empowering experience of learning a new language, she has made new friends from diverse backgrounds and her world has opened to a different culture.
A decade ago no one would have imagined that Mandarin Chinese would be a popular language to learn in Botswana. Nowadays it is fast gaining popularity in urban areas, with both the young and old vying for a place in the evening and weekend classes at the University of Botswana in Gaborone.
Due to China’s evident growing economic influence and the large number of Chinese in the country, many Batswana are opting to learn more about the country, its culture, history, lifestyle and of course language, especially as there are many opportunities for cross-cultural exchanges.
(Pic: Flickr / ilamont.com)
Botswana and China share good economic ties and a cordial friendship. China is Botswana’s third largest trade partner and one of the country’s big diamond consumers. In 2009, it was an estimated that about 6000 Chinese have made Botswana their home, with most of them settled in urban areas where they operate their businesses from. The Chinese are major players in the local construction, manufacturing and service provision industries. In the past, China, through the local embassy, has constructed two primary schools and a multi-purpose youth centre. Earlier this year, China donated R100-million to Botswana for the implementation of various projects. One of them is the Community Natural Resource Management programme, which offers community-based organisations training, mentoring and coaching on resource management.
But away from official visits and trade agreements, the ties between the locals and the Chinese who live here aren’t that clear. There’s often a communication breakdown as many Batswana are not fluent in English, while the Chinese here only speak Mandarin. The language barriers have made it difficult for both parties to establish friendships and easy relations. Although they are often accused of selling cheap products, most of the Chinese-owned stores target low-income earners, and prices are often linked to the quality of the sold product. Even neighbouring Zimbabweans who work and plight their trade in the country regularly purchase goods from the Chinese stores here to re-sell at home.
There’s no shopping complex or mall in Gaborone that does not have a Chinese store. Most of them sell everything from green tea to hair pieces, clothes, shoes, bags and beauty products. There’s a local joke that the only thing you can’t get from a Chinese store is a baby! The prices are usually low but bargaining is the order of the day. I have often bought my son toy cars and dresses for myself after negotiating a discount of 5 to 10 bucks per item.
The Confucius Institute at the University of Botswana, where Mandarin lessons are taught, opened in 2009. It now has 10 teachers, several volunteers and over 2000 students. To date, it has awarded 60 scholarships and a further 260 are expected to be rolled out between 2013 and 2016. Chen Zhilu, director of the institute, has confirmed the high demand for Chinese language lessons. Chinese is also a language option in the university’s BA Humanities programme and is one of the 25 top-ranked courses.
Learning Chinese in school is also an option – the institute has sites in two revered private schools, Westwood and Maru-a-pula, and there are plans to open sites in public schools too.
I will be taking up Chinese lessons next semester. In the meantime, my friend Sedimale has been teaching me the basics every time we meet. A few days ago, I caught my partner off guard when I clasped my hand to my heart and declared: “Wo ai ni” (“I love you” in Mandarin). He gave me a blank stare but this could all change in the next few months if I can convince him to join me in this linguistic adventure.
Keletso Thobega is a copy editor and features writer based in Gaborone, Botswana.
The Central African Republic is in danger of becoming the world’s latest failed state, with increasing sectarian violence sparking a humanitarian disaster. Médecins Sans Frontières’ Dutch general director, Arjan Hehenkamp, has recently returned from the country. He sent this harrowing report:
I’m just back from Bossangao, a town of 45 000 people 330km northwest of the capital, Bangui. From the air, you can see tin rooftops and big compounds, and it looks like a prosperous and bustling regional centre. But then you start looking for people and you see that there’s no one there – all the houses are deserted. Most of Bossangao’s inhabitants have gathered in a church compound, an area the size of nine football pitches, where 30 000 people are enclosed by their own fear.
The church compound is like an open-air prison. People don’t even dare to go and fetch the wood they need for cooking. They don’t dare to go out of that protected zone back to their houses – where they would have a roof over their heads and some proper facilities – even though their houses are sometimes only a few hundred metres away.
(Pic: Médecins Sans Frontières)
When you walk into the compound, you’re faced by a teeming mass of people, and you have to navigate through all the families that have set themselves up there. They’re living, they’re cooking, they’re defecating, all in the same compound, and they’ve been there for three weeks. They’ve recently got some shelter materials, but otherwise they’re living in the open air, surrounded by mud and garbage.
Our medical teams are working in the compound, and we’ve set up water and sanitation facilities. We’re pulling out all the stops to provide them with basic amenities and medical care, but at the end of the day it’s an untenable situation. It’s just not suitable for a 30 000-strong group of people – the risk of disease outbreaks is too great.
There are 1 000 to 1 500 people, also mostly Christians, staying in another protected zone around the hospital – they have slightly more space, but in essence it’s the same thing. And there’s a 500-strong group of mostly Muslims in a school nearby – testament to the religious divisions that have crept into the conflict.
(Pic: Médecins Sans Frontières)
We are working in the church compound, and also in the hospital, with both international and local staff. The hospital provides inpatient, outpatient and surgical services, and is functioning at a reasonable level, but it needs to be cranked up in order to deal with the numbers of patients we’re seeing and the kinds of injuries they’re arriving with – injuries which are quite horrific and difficult to treat.
One of our patients was a man who had been shot four times in the back, and his head had been partially hacked off by a machete. The surgeon tried to sew it back on and save the patient, but sadly he died.
Another was a child from a village outside Bossangao. His parents had tied him to the house with chains because he had diabetes and was prone to running around and having fits. But they lost the key to the padlock, so when they had to flee into the bush they couldn’t take him with them. When they came back he was still alive, but he had been slashed badly across his arms when he held them up to protect himself.
(Pic: Médecins Sans Frontières)
This is the level of brutality and violence that is affecting people, and we are probably only seeing a part of it. Outside Bossangoa, we know there are troops and local defence groups going around and seeking people out, engaging in targeted killing or small-scale massacres. Our teams have come across sites of executions, and some have actually witnessed executions.
The villages along the road from Bossangao to Bangui are deserted. For 120km, there’s no one there – 100 000 people have disappeared and fled into the bush. We can’t reach them, and they can’t reach our services. This is a major humanitarian and medical concern.
Compared to last year, when there was already a chronic humanitarian crisis in Central African Republic, the crisis has doubled, the capacity of the state has vanished completely, and the humanitarian capacity has halved.
There’s an acute need for aid organisations to deploy themselves with an international presence outside the capital, and in particular for the UN to lead the way in doing so. An international presence has a protective effect – I’m pretty sure that if MSF had not been present in Bossangoa, the level of violence and killings would have been much higher than it was.
Since the armed takeover in March, the violence hasn’t really abated. There have been violent reprisals and counter-reprisals. The violence continues, but now it is just more targeted and out of sight.
It started as a request from my close friend, Awil Abukar, to accompany him as he took his frail mother to their ancestral hometown.
Awil, as he always does, assured me the trip would be smooth.
I should point out that in his world smooth means not getting killed – everything else is caadhi (fine).
Just after 1pm on August 22, our vehicle rattled into Goob Weyn, a sleepy town with more palm trees than people. This picturesque place is about a thirty-minute drive from Kismayo, Somalia’s third biggest city.
Unlike many towns in Somalia, locals here aren’t armed to the teeth. The few hundred of them tend to their farms or fish for half the day, then sleep the rest of the time. The town is peaceful, and is neither in the hands of the government nor al-Shabab.
But sleepy Goob Weyn and its residents were to get a rude awakening that evening when members of al-Shabab, the hardline al-Qaeda-linked rebel group fighting the Somali government, paid them a visit.
Al-Shabab enforces a strict version of Sharia law that prohibits things like music, cigarettes and alcohol in the areas it controls.
That evening, the town was lively. Men in sarongs sat in front of their red mud houses chewing khat – the green narcotic leaves commonly consumed by east Africans – to pass the hours. Garami (soft, melodic music) blasted from their small battery-powered radios.
Women wearing baati, the traditional Somali dress, with the odd baby strapped to their backs cooked dinner of rice and beans on open fires.
Awil, his son and I sat in front of his mum’s house drinking tea made with water from the muddy Jubba River. Local youths gathered around my iPhone to watch and listen to the western music loaded on it.
In short, the evening was a picture of tranquility and I was loving it.
Just before 8pm, a lorry with its headlights turned off rolled into town. It was strange – vehicles don’t come to Goob Weyn that often and definitely not at this time of the night. In fact, Awil’s car was the only vehicle in town until now.
The atmosphere quickly changed. The music stopped. People fell silent.
Then the creaky lorry door opened and a masked man jumped out.
Al-Shabab was here and many of us were in the middle of doing things al-Shabab does not approve of.
Fifteen other masked men jumped out of the lorry and started moving from house to house, asking all the men inside to come out.
I quickly dashed into Awil’s mum’s house and threw on a sarong over my knee-high shorts. A tall man in shorts is a sight al-Shabab sheikhs don’t approve of.
Then I wrapped my iPhone in a waterproof plastic bag and dropped it in the cockroach- and faeces-filled hole in the ground that the family used as a toilet. Given the prized photos, videos, music and texts on my phone I had to hide it by all means. Retrieving and cleaning it would be a minor inconvenience compared to getting lashes from an al-Shabab fighter’s whip.
The women who were busy cooking got busy changing into al-Shabab-compliant clothes. Off went the baati and on came the jilbab – a long, loose garment that covers the whole body.
The men who were religiously chewing khat leaves frantically started brushing their teeth and washing their mouths. They threw the remaining leaves into the open cooking fires, resulting in thick smoke that made those standing nearby cough nonstop.
(Graphic: Kenny Leung)
By then the al-Shabab fighters were busy herding the men of Goob Weyn towards a football field in the centre of the town. The women were instructed to remain in their homes.
As we walked to the field a young man made a dash for it, running down the small moonlit alleyways between the mud houses. He didn’t get far as fighters hiding behind houses, not far away, caught him. He was taken to the lorry and we could hear screams in the distance as he was lashed. I later found out the young man is the local khat dealer and was wanted by al-Shabab for bringing the stimulant drug into the town.
We sat in the centre of the football field under the full moon as more and more of the town’s male residents joined us. There were about 150 of us in total.
Then the shortest of the al-Shabab fighters stepped forward. He was slightly taller than his AK-47 rifle, his skin-and-bones frame was covered in an oversized camouflage uniform. He wore oversized sandals that looked too heavy for his tiny feet. With a stainless steel torch in his left hand, he started collecting everyone’s cellphones. Surprisingly he had a deep chesty voice for someone of such a small frame, which made the orders he was barking sound more serious and threatening.
He passed the phones to his colleagues who went through them one by one to check for music and adult content. Those who had music on their phones received stern warnings and their memory cards were destroyed. One young man had adult material on his phone. He was taken aside and lashed in front of everyone. The al-Shabab guys were very unimpressed when they found out he was married with two wives. You could feel the disappointment behind the masks as they shook their heads and talked between them. They didn’t only destroy the young man’s memory card but his phone too.
One of the fighters realised I had not handed hand my phone over. Shining his torch at me he asked Awil who was seated next to me: “Is this one Somali and where is his phone?”
Awil, ever diplomatic, replied: “He’s Somali, speak to him.”
He looked at me without saying a word, unconvinced, turned his masked face back to Awil and again asked: “Where is this one’s phone?”
“He’s not mute. He can speak. He’s fluent in Somali. He’s not an alien. I swear,” said Awil, sounding slightly impatient.
I sensed my chance and joined the conversation. “Sheikh, I’m a British tourist and your seniors know we are here. You can call your emir [leader] to check. There is no need to keep me and Awil here.”
After three years working in Somalia I’ve managed to interview al-Shabab commanders. Before we made the trip they had assured us we were free to pass through or stay in areas they controlled.
Satisfied, the young al-Shabab fighter moved on.
Like a dentist, the short al-Shabab fighter then started closely inspecting everyone’s teeth for telltale signs of khat. Al-Shabab forbids the chewing of the narcotic leaves. The man pulled me aside, then asked me to open my mouth. Realising that my 6-foot-3 frame was much taller than his, he ordered me to bend down so he could take a closer look. I obliged. He placed his torch so close to my mouth that it touched my bottom lip and I could feel the warmth of the light coming from it. He asked me to move my tongue up, down and side to side.
After staring into my mouth for what seemed like an eternity, he said: “You are missing a tooth.”
Feeling annoyed but staying calm, I replied: “Sheikh, that’s not haram [forbidden].”
Ten men were taken aside by the short al-Shabab fighter. They were the unlucky ones who couldn’t conceal the fact they were chewing khat earlier. The green leaf pigment was either found on their tongue or stuck to their teeth. They were given an Islamic lecture before they each received five lashes.
The short al-Shabab guy wasn’t finished. He frog-marched one of the guys to the local kiosk. Before they reached it, he told the guy to order cigarettes from the female shopkeeper. Thinking that the al-Shabab men had left, she produced one from her secret hiding place. A big mistake. Cigarettes worth more than $200 were confiscated and set alight in front of everyone.
To my surprise she wasn’t flogged like the men who were caught with the khat. She was just given a religious lecture and a final warning.
Before they let us all go back to our homes, the al-Shabab fighters gave us a long lecture about jihad and asked us if anyone wanted to join them and defend the country against the “infidels”.
All I wanted to do was run back and save my phone, which wasn’t insured.
Just past midnight, they finally let us go but they took about a dozen of people with them.
Back at Awil’s mum’s house, a few locals blamed our presence in the town and our car for attracting al-Shabab. We told them we would be happy to leave the next morning.
After a short sleep, we were ready to head back to Mogadishu. A couple of locals asked us for a lift but they first searched the car extensively for explosives before jumping in.
Back in Mogadishu and still feeling disrespected by the short al-Shabab soldier with the torch, I called one of the al-Shabab commanders to relay the events of the previous evening.
He laughed throughout the conversation. Then he quipped: “If you had called me right then, I would’ve told them to fire a few shots inches above your head to welcome you to the Muslim land.”
I should’ve listened to Awil and not called to complain to the commander. What happen was caadhi after all!
As for my iPhone, I managed to retrieve it but it has never fully recovered from that trip down the hole-in-the-ground.
Hamza Mohamed is a British-Somali journalist working for Al Jazeera English. Connect with him on Twitter.
It’s a windy Friday afternoon. I walk through shopping stalls that line a tiny pathway between a fish and chips shop and Woolworths. A kid in a torn T-shirt flashes a 32GB memory stick in my face. I refuse the deal, even before hearing his price. I sink underground in an escalator. At the bottom of it is a man selling newspapers and three women touting various perfumes. A few minutes later, I surface in front of McDonald’s. I dissect the Golden Acre Shopping Centre in half with its walk-through and emerge on the other side that faces Darling Street. Now I’m in front of Jimmy Braye’s Rasta stall. Reggae blares from it; a huge Bob Marley poster flaps in the wind; red, green and yellow clothes are draped everywhere. “Welcome to Jamaica,” it all seems to say, but this is Cape Town.
Jimmy Braye’s stall. (Pic: Dudumalingani Mqombothi)
I start to say sorry for being late but Jimmy quickly stops me. “No need to apologise, my king,” he says. He’s young, loud, big and friendly; Ghanaian but he’s been calling South Africa home since 2003. Before that he spent some time exploring Argentina. “I have been everywhere my king. Singapore, Holland, Togo, Uganda and Australia,” he says proudly.
South Africa beckoned because he saw it as an “economically viable” country. He started out working for Community Peace Project, an NGO based in Observatory, for two years. In 2005, he embraced his passion and opened up his Rasta stall. “I saw a need for it,” he says simply. People come to Jimmy for caps, T-shirts, pants, hoodies, bags, smoking pipes, Rizla and books. He gets his supplies in bulk from Johannesburg.
I ask Jimmy how he finds Cape Town – “It’s beautiful, my king” – and South Africa today. He stares at me for a short while rearranging his thoughts and finding the right words to communicate them. “South Africa is getting there. Its democracy is still young but slowly it is getting there. I hope it does not end up ruined like other African countries. But under the current government, that seems to be happening,” he says. Jimmy tells me he doesn’t follow the news or politics but “South Africa is ready for new leadership. The same thing happening here is happening across the continent. I know this because I’ve been around.”
Jimmy Braye. (Pic: Dudumalingani Mqombothi)
Apart from the shop, Jimmy runs the Marcus Garvey Foundation out of his home in Vredehoek. He started the project to source funding to build homes for homeless kids. This dream is yet to materialise but he remains hopeful that donors will come on board.
During the two hours I spent with Jimmy, tourists, street kids and passersby dropped in often, some to browse, others to say hi, and some after “a spliff to blaze”. Jimmy smokes weed but doesn’t sell it. “The cops come to search for it but they do not find it because I do not sell any dagga,” he says.
Sales aren’t great but he is happy his stall is still operating after nine years. Making a profit is secondary to doing what he loves, he says. You will find Jimmy here from six to six every day except on Sundays, when he goes to church, and Tuesdays, when he goes to the Deer Park with his fellow Rastas to pray and smoke. He spends his free time working on his project for homeless kids.
Jimmy is one of many informal traders in Cape Town but he’s not only here to make a living; he wants to make a difference. We say goodbye, Rastafarian-style. I pound his left fist with mine and touch his open left palm with my own, and then I step out of Jamaica into Cape Town.
Dudumalingani Mqombothi is a film school graduate who loves reading, writing, taking walks and photography. He plans to write a novel when his thoughts stop scaring him.
