After Zimbabwe’s controversial new Constitution was given the go-ahead in the March 16 referendum, the ruling party has intensified its intimidation campaigns across the country in the lead-up to the elections.
Footage obtained by the Mail & Guardian reveals how Zanu-PF propaganda is being used in public: often through a very visible military presence in urban and rural residential areas, and in party meetings where citizens are admonished for considering voting for any party other than Zanu-PF in the upcoming poll.
Human rights groups including the Zimbabwean Peace Project have noted that fears of violence and intimidation in the country are escalating. Last month, prominent human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa was arrested for allegedly obstructing justice, and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s aides were detained after a raid on Tsvangirai’s communications office in Harare. “What we are seeing are signs of fear,” Tsvangirai said in response. “The targeting of my office is reprehensible and is meant to harass and intimidate the nation ahead of the election, now that we are done with the referendum.”
Abundance Mutori was just 14 when he began playing with the other members of Mokoomba. It was in 2002, when they were at school together at Mosi-Oa-Tunya High in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, and he remembers that their biggest problem was getting hold of instruments. “We didn’t have our own, and even at school when we had a music class we didn’t have any guitars or keyboards,” he says. “But my dad used to play in church and had a bass guitar at home, and he first showed me how to play. From then on, I was practising by myself or jamming with the guys.”
Now, in their mid-20s, Mokoomba are being feted as Africa’s most internationally successful young band after a rise that is as deserved as it has been remarkable. After all, they come from a country with an international musical profile that has sadly declined since the glory days of the 80s, largely because of Aids. Even in Zimbabwe they were initially considered outsiders. They sing in Tonga, a language that most Shona and Ndebele speakers can’t understand, and come from a tourist border town that’s a 12-hour drive from the capital, Harare.
Mokoomba playing in Belgium in June 2012. (Pic: SOFAM Strange Milena/mokoomba.com)
The group are signed to a small Belgian label and were unknown in Britain until their second album, Rising Tide, was released there last August. But by the end of 2012, they were featuring in the annual “Best of” lists in publications from the Guardianto fRoots, and so it is no surprise that they should win Songlinesmagazine’s newcomer award, announced last week. This summer they will be playing at major festivals across Europe, including Womad in Britain.
They succeeded thanks to a mixture of determination, skill and luck. As teenagers, they got most of their experience with the help of a local bandleader, the late Alfred Mjimba, who was “the only guy with musical instruments in the area. You’d go round to see him, and try to play this or that, and if he liked what you did, he’d say: ‘There’s a gig, come and play with us.'” He was no major star, but he played in local hotels and small clubs – though it was initially impossible for Mutori to play in bars because he was the youngest member of the band, under-age, and his parents objected.
The would-be musicians lived in Chinotimba township, a “high-density” area that was first established in the pre-independence zone outside the smarter, affluent one reserved for white people and tourist hotels near the spectacular waterfall. As a border town, close to Zambia, Botswana and Namibia, Victoria Falls was a “melting pot”, according to Mokoomba’s young manager Marcus Gora. “When you were growing up there, you couldn’t escape different cultures, languages and musical influences. There was music from the local Tonga tradition, Congolese rumba and soukous, funk, pop from the Beatles, and even country. That’s what our parents played.”
The band reflects these different cultures. Mutori plays bass, and his bandmates include Trustworth Samende, an excellent guitarist, and the powerful, soulful singer Mathias Muzaza, who travelled widely in southern Africa as a boy with his Angolan and Zambian parents. The band played in restaurants, or busked for tourists, and developed their own distinctive style. “It’s Afro-fusion,” says Mutori. “A mixture of Tonga rhythms, soca, soucous and the other things we listened to growing up.”
Mokoomba broke out of Victoria Falls, and then Zimbabwe, with the help of the non-profit NGO Music Crossroads International, which organises workshops, festivals and competitions in Africa. The band took part in a local competition in 2007, and the following year were invited to the InterRegional festival and contest in Malawi – which they won. Their prize was to record a six-track album, which has not yet been released in Britain, and a European tour.
International success didn’t prove easy at first, but Mokoomba were at least getting noticed. In Malawi they had met Manou Gallo, the bass player and singer from Côte d’Ivoire, best known for her work with Zap Mama. She collaborated with the band at the HIFA Harare arts festival in 2010, then produced last year’s breakthrough Rising Tide. Enthusiastic reviews, and an impressive appearance on Later… with Jools Holland followed.
Now, as the band prepare for a lengthy summer tour, bolstered by their latest award, it seems that Zimbabwean music could enjoy an international renaissance. Of the country’s 1980s heroes, Oliver Mtukudzi is still in excellent form, while Thomas Mapfumo, who lives in the US, returns to Britain next month to play at the Field Day festival. But several of that glorious band the Bhundu Boys have died. “The momentum was lost because of Aids,” says Gora. “A whole generation was decimated, and they were the core of the music industry at the time.”
How do they feel about Robert Mugabe and the political upheavals in Zimbabwe? Gora is diplomatic. “As a band, we have made a conscious decision to build our career outside of politics until a time we are established enough to have an effective voice.”
Mokoomba may be leading the country’s international music campaign, but it has taken time for Harare audiences to appreciate their Tonga-language Afro-fusion, which has little in common with the fashion for the Congolese-influenced Sunguru music of local hero Alick Macheso. But that’s beginning to change, as Mokoomba spend more time living and performing in the capital. “Baaba Maal is appearing with us when we play [at] the Harare festival on May 5,” says Gora. “Mokoomba is becoming a big band.”
Botswana’s President Ian Khama has received two stitches in his face after being clawed by a cheetah, a government spokesperson said on Monday.
The incident occurred at a Botswana Defence Force barracks last week, Jeff Ramsay told AFP.
“He was scratched by a cheetah last week but not really attacked per se,” Ramsay said.
The cheetah was being fed in an enclosure close to where Khama was standing, became excited and somehow managed to get its claw across the president’s face.
Khama (60) was not admitted to hospital, but did receive treatment.
He was seen last week with a plaster on his face.
(Pic: AFP)
Ramsay said there were no security implications and added that because of the minor nature of the injuries the government had initially decided not to issue a public statement.
Cheetahs, the fastest land mammals, are one of the few large cats not to have fully retractable claws. Far from being razor sharp the claws are more akin to those of a dog than a lion.
A 2007 study by a conservation group found there were about 1 700 cheetah in Botswana, a country framed for wildlife and its national parks which take in swathes of the Kalahari desert and the Okavango Delta.
Khama, a former lieutenant general who was trained at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England and has been in power for five years, is known as something of an outdoorsman.
But he is better known for his patronage of conservation organisations rather than daredevil antics like his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who was once photographed with a tiger. – AFP
Urban music has always been a tool for political expression in Angola. Even before the country’s independence, musicians like Carlitos Vieira Dias, David Zé, and the iconic group N’gola Ritmos offered musical resistance to the colonial regime. Some were even arrested and sent to prison camps by the Portuguese.
Today, the most well known form of Angolan urban music is the ever more popular kuduro. Pulsating and powerful, kudurois primarily associated with Luanda’s ubiquitous musseques, the teeming slums that house the city’s poorest residents. It’s blasted from candongueiros, the bright blue and white Toyota Hiace minivans that are the form of transport for the vast majority of Luandans, played in seemingly every party and pumped in Luanda’s clubs. Despite its rather middle-class roots, kuduro singers tend to belong to the lower classes and their lyrics cover a wide range of topics, from artists’ feuds to daily hardships.
Kuduro used to be the type of music that your parents would label as trash and tell you not to listen to – many of them still do. But remarkably, and perhaps due to its appeal across broad sectors of Angolan society, the genre has exploded to become a national phenomenon and a source of national pride. Bands like Buraka Som Sistema have helped internationalise kuduro through sold-out concerts around the world.
The proliferation of kuduro didn’t go unnoticed by the political establishment. Keen and adept at controlling all aspects of civil society, the regime saw in kuduro the perfect vehicle with which to reach the masses. Kuduro concerts are now standard fare in political rallies – politicians will actually use wildly popular kuduro artists as a way to get more people to attend their usually stale public events.
Kudurofever even reached the presidential palace – by 2011, Coreón Dú, one of President José Eduardo Dos Santos’s sons, became one the biggest promoters of kuduro on the national and international stage. He even released a track of his own (I wouldn’t recommend it):
A singer, TV producer (his media and TV production company receives funds directly from the national budget) and the brains behind the annual “I Love Kuduro” festival in Luanda and abroad, Dú funds and promotes a kuduro troupe appropriately named Os Kuduristas. Last year they embarked on a grand, deep-pocketed world tour, performing extensively in Europe and the US. They were expertly represented by some of the best PR firms in the music industry and even offered workshops in the cities they visited.
Although the government was able to effectively appropriate kuduro for its own purposes, it has been much less successful with the other popular form of Angolan urban music: hip-hop. The youth movement protesting against the Angolan regime and President Dos Santos’s 33 years in power has numerous underground rap musicians among its ranks, including Ikonoklasta (Luaty Beirão) and Carbono Casimiro. Interestingly, Luaty also belongs to the kuduro group Batida, which dabbles in political themes. It doesn’t receive state funding and is not invited to kuduro festivals in the country.
Unlike kuduro, hip-hop is a form of urban music that the establishment has not been able to breach. The most popular Angolan rappers are the most critical of the regime, and yet they continue to sell out shows and sell out CDs. MCK, the sharp-tongue rapper from the Chabá slums of Luanda, is the most prominent example of this reality. He’s been offered half a million dollars to stop bad-mouthing government and faced death threats, but this doesn’t phase him.
What the government can’t do by peaceful means, it’ll do through coercion, intimidation, and outright sabotage. Last month, Família Eterna, an organisation of rappers from Lobito, a small city in Benguela province, wanted to celebrate their 10-year anniversary. They invited numerous artists, including MCK. Família Eterna followed every possible legal obligation and submitted a total of five different stamped documents (two of which explicitly stated MCK’s name) that gave them government permission to stage the concert.
It was to no avail. Having caught wind that MCK was due to make an appearance in Lobito, the central government began a chilling campaign of intimidation and coercion to force the organisers to cancel the show. According to Família Eterna, the organisers began receiving threatening phone calls in the days leading up to the show; undercover agents dressed in civilian clothes would come to the venue and inquire about the preparations, all the while threatening and intimidating workers.
On the day of the show, the ministry of culture frantically called the organisers in a last ditch attempt to have them cancel; the state-owned electricity company even shut down power to the venue. In the end, MCK still performed, to a much smaller but still energetic crowd.
When compared to kuduro, the disparate treatment of underground rap is evident. What is also evident is that politics will continue to play a role in urban Angolan music, and the regime will continue to interfere as they see fit. But it is comforting to see that even with these abuses against freedom of expression, urban Angolan music continues to impact the establishment. Through music, the disenfranchised continue to have a voice and a vehicle in which to air their grievances, much like their brethren David Zé and N’gola Ritmos did 38 years ago.
Claudio Silva is an Angolan living in New York City. He has also spent time in Washington DC, Lisbon, Reading (UK) and attended university in Boston. In 2009, he started Caipirinha Lounge, a music blog dedicated to Lusophone music. Claudio contributes to several other blogs including Africa is a Country and Central Angola 7311. Connect with him on Twitter.
Afronauts, based on a true story, is an alternative retelling of the 1960s space race. Science teacher Edward Makuka Nkoloso has established a National Space Academy of Science, Space Research, and Astronomical Research in an old farmhouse outside of Lusaka. As America prepares to send Apollo 11 to the moon, he leads a ragtag group of exiles in the Zambian desert who are trying to beat America to the same destination. Their mission is to get 17-year-old Matha (who is pregnant) and two cats there first. There’s only one problem: the afronauts disappear without a trace.
The Zambian space odyssey inspired Spanish photojournalist Cristina de Middel‘s award-winning photo book, The Afronauts. Watch a slideshow of her images here.
Now filmmaker Frances Bodomo will bring Nkoloso and his team to our screens with her short film. It’s partly funded by a film grant and she created a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to cover production costs. More than $12 000 has been pledged. Her previous short film Boneshaker, starring Quvenzhané Wallis, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
