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South African kwaito group Mafikizolo underscored their comeback this week with the release of the video for "Khona" off their new album, Reunited. The video which also features vocals from Uhuru and Mapiano, takes the group back to the village with brightly colored Ndebele wall paintings, Basotho blankets and flamboyant dancing. Since its debut in [...]
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The Supreme Price is ambitious both in its scope and its intentions: "Following the annulment of her father's -- Moshood Abiola -- victory in Nigeria's 1993 Presidential Election and her mother's - Alhaja Kudirat Abiola -- assassination by agents of the military dictatorship, Hafsat Abiola faces the challenge of transforming a corrupt culture of governance into [...]
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The historian Margery Perham once wrote that "the basic difficulty" with the British colonial technique of indirect rule, of which she was a major architect, was "the great gap between the culture of rulers and ruled." "People do not understand what we want them to do," she wrote, "or, if they understand, do not want [...]
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The business of journalism as we know is in trouble and there's a scramble for a "new journalism model," with VICE.com held up as the latest prototype (see here, here and here). I am not so sure VICE is the new journalism--it's partnership with "old media" (CNN, HBO) is old fashioned, it mostly produces sponsored content (nothing new there), owns an advertising agency and makes nice with Rupert Murdoch. Of course, VICE's style represents something fresh. With its diversity of topics and irreverence, it is a vast improvement on the talking heads of cable news. But, there is also much to dislike about Vice.
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'The Fountain of Love', a painting by Honoré Fragonard, offers a vision of a moment when the aristocratic taste for luxury made revolution immediately necessary. The rococo masterpiece is part of a collection of European art and artefacts collected by Richard Conway-Seymour, the 4th Marquess of Hertford, who spent his inherited fortune - largely based on [...]
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'The Fountain of Love', a painting by Honoré Fragonard, offers a vision of a moment when the aristocratic taste for luxury made revolution immediately necessary. The rococo masterpiece is part of a collection of European art and artefacts collected by Richard Conway-Seymour, the 4th Marquess of Hertford, who spent his inherited fortune - largely based on [...]
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Director Dehanza Rogers's latest short film, "Sweet, Sweet Country" is the winner of the Audience Award at the 2013 Atlanta Film Festival. The film stars Danielle Deadwyler as the 20-year old refugee Ndizeye, whose struggles to care for herself and the family she left behind in Kenya become even more pressing when they literally show [...]
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African airports can't keep up with entertainers (and celebrities) either visiting for big pay days (that's the case especially for rappers and R&B stars, and Kim K), to rehabilitate their images via PR junkets, make appearances in nightclubs, or to connect with themselves. You can create a template it seems for these kinds of visits: "When [...]
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Born in Huambo but raised in Luanda, Rui Sérgio Afonso is one of my favorite Angolan photographers. The man is prolific on Instagram. After working for Angola's biggest communications and marketing group, Grupo Executive de Angola (Executive Center), Sérgio is now a freelance photographer. He's done extensive work with Angolan arts collective Geração 80. Here [...]
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1. The fat lady will sing. The New York Times has now featured two West African marriages in its Sunday "Vows" section in a matter of weeks. The first is of a Nigerian wedding (ceremonies in Abuja and Virginia). It's a union of a very well connected lawyer and an investment banker that makes for, shall [...]
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