Author Archives: Zeefuik
To be young, gifted and watercolored
Yesterday, Premium Times excited my fellow list lovers and me by publishing a teaser of their 2014 list of Most Influential Africans. I’m certain their overview is more impressive than the illustration that ‘graced’ it and I’m sure we’re not even a three digit countdown away from someone who’ll start philosophizing about artistic freedom or an illustrator’s right to abstractions and interpretations but really… what’s up with this colouring? At least six of them are buckets of white lighter than they truly are.
Clockwise, the drawing shows the following icons:
1. Lupita “My Dreams Are Valid” Nyong’o. If it wasn’t for the dress, this could have depicted Halle Berry.
2. Truth be told… I’m not certain about who the lady next to Nyong’o is supposed to represent. If I didn’t know better I would hope that the illustrator saluted South African singer and composer Sathima Bea Benjamin because her influence and artistry remains ever so relevant but I doubt that my jazz heart will be so lucky. Speaking of luck… this isn’t C.A.R.’s interim president Catherine Samba-Panza, is it?
3. Obiageli Ezekwesili (pic), former member of the Nigerian government and one of the Nigerian ladies who spearheaded the #BringbackOurGirls campaign
4. This one made me Google all the names in the text but if my Sherlock senses don’t deceive me, this is Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank and Rwandan economist.
5. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta (pic).
6. Kelvin Doe a.k.a. DJ Focus, 18 year old engineer and innovator.
7. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni
The questions write themselves.
… when yo’ warrior prototype is enuff
– or “Ten speakers you could invite once you graduate from the idea that strategies for successful resistance movements, the deconstruction of eurocentric imagery, mental decolonization and/or knowledge of pre-colonial sub-Sahara Africa are best presented by African-American men.”
Haru Mutasa – journalist, one of the Africa correspondents for Al Jazeera English
Dr. Yaba Blay – professor, producer, and publisher
Reni Eddo-Lodge – journalist
Anne Mazimhaka – co-founder and creative director of Illume
Nnedi Okorafor, PhD – novelist of African-based science fiction, fantasy and magical realism
Sean Jacobs – founder of Africa Is A Country
Cecile Emeke – film director, creator of Ackee & Saltfish and Strolling
Teju Cole – writer, art historian, and photographer
Christina Sharpe – associate prof. of English and Director of American Studies at Tufts University
Ava DuVernay – writer, producer, director and distributor of independent film
Africaphobia: The Mis-Education of Amsterdam’s University of Applied Sciences
In a time when Holland’s most prolific Africaphobes have a ball revisiting their most horrendous statements about sub-Sahara Africa, the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (Amsterdam’s University of Applied Sciences) gave them all a run for their euros. Until further notice the institute that has close ties with the University of Amsterdam prohibits all college and internship trips to Africa. Not the ones to Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Chonakry, Sierra Leone or Liberia because of the Ebola outbreak or Burkina Faso because of the current political uproars. No, no… the entire continent of Africa. Why? Because the school’s Executive Board came to the conclusion that the continent suffers from “Ebola and political instability.”
Suzanne Okkes, HvA’s spokesperson, tried to smother the first breaths of discontent by publically guessing that “it would probably still be possible for a student to go to Cape Town, for example.” It’s no surprise why historically (dare I say, colonially) the Dutch will always love South Africa. Well, that and the fact that on a blank map of Africa the majority of Dutch folks don’t know their Ghanas and Somalias from their Mozambiques and Sudans but a countryname like South Africa doesn’t leave much to the imagination so one can always figure out where it is.
The HvA has seven faculties, including Health Professions and Media Creation & Information. Indeed, the jokes will wrote themselves.
Here’s a link to one of the Dutch articles about HvA’s Africaphobia.
laZeefuik 
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