Black Looks

• Africana Studies: homophobia

  Posted: December 27, 2009, 4:25 pm by Sokari

  Thoughtful insight into “homosexuality as Un-African” by Soul and Power The second point leads into another grievance that I have with several people. Being gay seems to be something that is looked as if it only entails sex. Meaning that the extent of being homosexual is who you have sex with. This could not be farther [...]

• Africana Studies: homophobia

  Posted: December 27, 2009, 4:25 pm by Sokari

  Thoughtful insight into “homosexuality as Un-African” by Soul and Power The second point leads into another grievance that I have with several people. Being gay seems to be something that is looked as if it only entails sex. Meaning that the extent of being homosexual is who you have sex with. This could not be farther [...]

• RIP Dennis Brutus

  Posted: December 26, 2009, 8:51 pm by Rethabile

  Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most influential activists against the apartheid government, has died at the age of 85. [source...] Terrible news has just reached my ears: the lion has died. The lion sleeps tonight. Professor Brutus fought the apartheid regime and helped bring down some of its structures, almost single handedly. He was a poet whose [...]

• RIP Dennis Brutus

  Posted: December 26, 2009, 8:51 pm by Rethabile

  Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most influential activists against the apartheid government, has died at the age of 85. [source...] Terrible news has just reached my ears: the lion has died. The lion sleeps tonight. Professor Brutus fought the apartheid regime and helped bring down some of its structures, almost single handedly. He was a poet whose [...]

• RIP Dennis Brutus

  Posted: December 26, 2009, 8:51 pm by Rethabile

  Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most influential activists against the apartheid government, has died at the age of 85. [source...] Terrible news has just reached my ears: the lion has died. The lion sleeps tonight. Professor Brutus fought the apartheid regime and helped bring down some of its structures, almost single handedly. He was a poet whose [...]

• RIP Dennis Vincent Brutus, 1924-2009

  Posted: December 26, 2009, 7:39 pm by Sokari

  One of Africa’s most celebrated poets and political activists, Dennis Brutus, died early this morning in Cape Town. Throughout his life Dennis spoke against injustice in South Africa and beyond. Below Dennis speaks on reparations from corporations that benefited from Apartheid. In very typical Brutus fashion, he makes the links [...]

• RIP Dennis Vincent Brutus, 1924-2009

  Posted: December 26, 2009, 7:39 pm by Sokari

  One of Africa’s most celebrated poets and political activists, Dennis Brutus, died early this morning in Cape Town. Throughout his life Dennis spoke against injustice in South Africa and beyond. Below Dennis speaks on reparations from corporations that benefited from Apartheid. In very typical Brutus fashion, he makes the links [...]

• Uganda: To live without fear and in peace

  Posted: December 26, 2009, 5:20 pm by Sokari

  Victor Mukasa of SMUG Uganda shares his experience as human rights defender and gives an overview of the criminalisation of LGBTI people across Africa. Finally he calls on everyone where ever they are to publicly denounce the anti-homosexuality bill which is before the Ugandan parliament. There are reports that President Museveni will [...]

• Remembering Busi

  Posted: December 23, 2009, 3:02 pm by Sokari

  Today is Busi’s birthday, she would have been 29 but she died on the 12th March 2007. Busi was 25, a survivor or rape, HIV+ with diabetes and other complications. This photo was taken by me on the 18th February 2007 – one of those happy days of just hanging out with [...]

• Remembering Busi

  Posted: December 23, 2009, 3:02 pm by Sokari

  Today is Busi’s birthday, she would have been 29 but she died on the 12th March 2007. Busi was 25, a survivor or rape, HIV+ with diabetes and other complications. This photo was taken by me on the 18th February 2007 – one of those happy days of just hanging out with [...]

• Remembering Busi

  Posted: December 23, 2009, 3:02 pm by Sokari

  Today is Busi’s birthday, she would have been 29 but she died on the 12th March 2007. Busi was 25, a survivor or rape, HIV+ with diabetes and other complications. This photo was taken by me on the 18th February 2007 – one of those happy days of just hanging out with [...]

• Remembering Busi

  Posted: December 23, 2009, 3:02 pm by Sokari

  Today is Busi’s birthday, she would have been 29 but she died on the 12th March 2007. Busi was 25, a survivor or rape, HIV+ with diabetes and other complications. This photo was taken by me on the 18th February 2007 – one of those happy days of just hanging out with [...]

• Remembering Busi

  Posted: December 23, 2009, 3:02 pm by Sokari

  Today is Busi’s birthday, she would have been 29 but she died on the 12th March 2007. Busi was 25, a survivor or rape, HIV+ with diabetes and other complications. This photo was taken by me on the 18th February 2007 – one of those happy days of just hanging out with [...]

• Remembering Busi

  Posted: December 23, 2009, 3:02 pm by Sokari

  Today is Busi’s birthday, she would have been 29 but she died on the 12th March 2007. Busi was 25, a survivor or rape, HIV+ with diabetes and other complications. This photo was taken by me on the 18th February 2007 – one of those happy days of just hanging out with [...]

• Remembering Busi

  Posted: December 23, 2009, 3:02 pm by Sokari

  Today is Busi’s birthday, she would have been 29 but she died on the 12th March 2007. Busi was 25, a survivor or rape, HIV+ with diabetes and other complications. This photo was taken by me on the 18th February 2007 – one of those happy days of just hanging out with [...]

• Remembering Busi

  Posted: December 23, 2009, 3:02 pm by Sokari

  Today is Busi’s birthday, she would have been 29 but she died on the 12th March 2007. Busi was 25, a survivor or rape, HIV+ with diabetes and other complications. This photo was taken by me on the 18th February 2007 – one of those happy days of just hanging out with [...]

• Providing inclusive HIV prevention

  Posted: December 22, 2009, 3:46 pm by Sokari

  ‘How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in? I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us.’ Kenya’s HIV prevention [...]

• Providing inclusive HIV prevention

  Posted: December 22, 2009, 3:46 pm by Sokari

  ‘How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in? I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us.’ Kenya’s HIV prevention [...]

• Providing inclusive HIV prevention

  Posted: December 22, 2009, 3:46 pm by Sokari

  ‘How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in? I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us.’ Kenya’s HIV prevention [...]

• Providing inclusive HIV prevention

  Posted: December 22, 2009, 3:46 pm by Sokari

  ‘How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in? I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us.’ Kenya’s HIV prevention [...]

• Providing inclusive HIV prevention

  Posted: December 22, 2009, 3:46 pm by Sokari

  ‘How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in? I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us.’ Kenya’s HIV prevention [...]

• Providing inclusive HIV prevention

  Posted: December 22, 2009, 3:46 pm by Sokari

  ‘How do you convince me to come out and say I am a homosexual yet the same government that is asking me to do this criminalizes what I am engaged in? I would rather they offered the services without going into the business of knowing who we are and trying to count us.’ Kenya’s HIV prevention [...]

• Gender Sentencing

  Posted: December 21, 2009, 3:33 pm by Sokari

  On gender sentencing….. ‘Nagging’ is seen as acceptable provocation; years of abuse is not …. A huge shift in thinking is needed, but the court room in particular needs to become more aware of the biases and gendered thinking that occur around cases of violence. Continue Via the F-Word Photo from Reclaim the Night Rome

• London activists protest at Uganda House

  Posted: December 20, 2009, 1:40 am by Sokari

  At the demo against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill outside Uganda House, protesters held up the portraits of transgender African human rights defenders who are amongst those attacked by the Bill. Showing their portraits brought their presence to the demo and it is precisely for this purpose that this exhibition has been created. The ten portraits [...]

• London activists protest at Uganda House

  Posted: December 20, 2009, 1:40 am by Sokari

  At the demo against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill outside Uganda House, protesters held up the portraits of transgender African human rights defenders who are amongst those attacked by the Bill. Showing their portraits brought their presence to the demo and it is precisely for this purpose that this exhibition has been created. The ten portraits [...]

• London activists protest at Uganda House

  Posted: December 20, 2009, 1:40 am by Sokari

  At the demo against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill outside Uganda House, protesters held up the portraits of transgender African human rights defenders who are amongst those attacked by the Bill. Showing their portraits brought their presence to the demo and it is precisely for this purpose that this exhibition has been created. The ten portraits [...]

• London activists protest at Uganda House

  Posted: December 20, 2009, 1:40 am by Sokari

  At the demo against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill outside Uganda House, protesters held up the portraits of transgender African human rights defenders who are amongst those attacked by the Bill. Showing their portraits brought their presence to the demo and it is precisely for this purpose that this exhibition has been created. The ten portraits [...]

• London activists protest at Uganda House

  Posted: December 20, 2009, 1:40 am by Sokari

  At the demo against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill outside Uganda House, protesters held up the portraits of transgender African human rights defenders who are amongst those attacked by the Bill. Showing their portraits brought their presence to the demo and it is precisely for this purpose that this exhibition has been created. The ten portraits [...]

• London activists protest at Uganda House

  Posted: December 20, 2009, 1:40 am by Sokari

  At the demo against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill outside Uganda House, protesters held up the portraits of transgender African human rights defenders who are amongst those attacked by the Bill. Showing their portraits brought their presence to the demo and it is precisely for this purpose that this exhibition has been created. The ten portraits [...]

• Aminatou Haidar

  Posted: December 19, 2009, 9:08 pm by Sokari

  Western Sahara human rights activist Aminatou Haidar ended her 32 day hunger strike after Morocco finally allowed her to return to the capital Laayoune. Aminatou returned to Western Sahara after a trip abroad and insisted on maintaining her nationality as Western Saharan and not Moroccan. The Western Sahara has been under occupation by Morocco for [...]

• They feared you

  Posted: December 18, 2009, 3:59 am by Rethabile

  Dear Stephen You said, “We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from [...]

• They feared you

  Posted: December 18, 2009, 3:59 am by Rethabile

  Dear Stephen You said, “We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from [...]

• They feared you

  Posted: December 18, 2009, 3:59 am by Rethabile

  Dear Stephen You said, “We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from [...]

• Recurring dream

  Posted: December 17, 2009, 12:04 am by Rethabile

  He crosses the faux marbling adapted to the silence of such rooms, thumbs her eyelids shut, turns to look at us, the kids whose mother is a primary-school teacher, and whose life of chalk and blackboard says good morning on it in scribbly writing. Often, when the dream comes back, my mouth dry completely with the light, my heart a tight drum, the hymnal singer sprinkles powder on our souls, before leaving by the secondary door.

• In conversation: Hi Benson, My name is gay Uganda the pervert.

  Posted: December 17, 2009, 7:58 pm by Sokari

  Gay Ugandan has been writing to various Ugandan MPs on the international reaction towards the Ugandan anti-homosexual Bill. He has now chosen to make public the conversation between himself and Benson Obua Ogwal, MP for Moroto. The exchange gives a very clear insight into the mindset of the people behind the Bill [...]

• A 48-hour marathon by the Parliament of Rwanda to criminalize homosexuality is under way.

  Posted: December 16, 2009, 9:53 pm by Sokari

  The latest move to criminalise LGBTI people comes from Rwanda. Below is a call to action and background information on the Bill Background In November 2009, a draft revision on the Penal Code Act of Rwanda was tabled in the Parliament of Rwanda. Article 217 of the draft act would introduce new, oppressive legislation—the [...]

• Yarlswood refuses xmas for imprisoned children

  Posted: December 15, 2009, 2:00 pm by Sokari

  I heard on Sunday morning of an asylum seeker who was picked up yesterday and sent to Yarlswood women and children’s detention center. I have visited and met some of the women in Yarlswood and personally know two women, a young Nigerian lesbian and a young Ugandan woman both deported last year [...]

• The Rock

  Posted: December 15, 2009, 4:58 am by Rethabile

  A stone is the centre of my skull, my head is a tumour. Sprouting from the top: a crop of moss the !Kung left as art, dyed with dry wood-pulp, also used to poison tips for hunting kudu and other game. The crude formation is my nose. The rock is a piano, the hours of my head. Here are my arms, my [...]

• Harare North: the story tellers task

  Posted: December 14, 2009, 4:00 pm by Sokari

  George Orwell and Graham Green both saw the role of the writer as one who questions and critiques the establishment, the State etc – something which Robert McCrum [writing in the Guardian] fears has been lost to mediocrity and market leaving Britain in a state of “creative bankruptcy. The storyteller’s task, Greene declared, was [...]

• Lebogang Mashile: Sisters

  Posted: December 13, 2009, 5:29 pm by Sokari

  I see the wisdom of eternities in ample thighs belying their presence as adornments to the temples of my sisters old souls breath in the comfort of chocolate thickness that suffocates Africa ’s angels who dance to the rhythm of the universe’s womb though they cannot feel its origins in their veins Blessed am I to be love in the temple of my own [...]

• Spreading homophobia

  Posted: December 11, 2009, 12:55 pm by Sokari

  Yesterday was human rights day and the day chosen to hold the second protest against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Unfortunately considering the implications for LGBTI people the turn out was disappointingly low. However the Bill is still being reported in the mainstream media and blogging community though not always in a [...]

• Minaret questions

  Posted: December 11, 2009, 2:01 am by Rethabile

  “The peoples of Europe are welcoming and tolerant: it’s in their nature and in their culture. But they don’t want their way of life, their mode of thinking and their social relations distorted.” French President NICOLAS SARKOZY, defending Switzerland’s ban on building minarets [source...] That’s what president Nicolas Sarkozy said. I say: But the European will distort the [...]

• Women’s Womb Rights

  Posted: December 10, 2009, 4:33 pm by Sokari

  HIV positive women in Namibia are being coercively sterilized at public hospitals. In 2008 the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS [ICW] held a series of workshops with HIV positive women in Namibia in which the women spoke of the practice of coercing women into being sterilised. The practice has been traced [...]

• Dumping death

  Posted: December 10, 2009, 4:00 pm by Sokari

  Bhopal – 23 years on the site has still not been cleaned up. Oil spills in Oloibiri Dumping toxic waste in Nairobi Lesotho – GAP/ Levi factory dumps chemical waste Trafugura dumped on Abidjan

• TEDxEuston

  Posted: December 8, 2009, 12:44 pm by Sokari

  Spoke: Some were bold, some italic, some plain old blank! Audrey Brown, Onyekachi Wambu, Bryan Pearson, Chika Unigwe, Funmi Iyanda, Bola Olabisi, Lawrence Mbugwa, Yvonne Ike, Nasir El Rufai, Segun Aganga, Remi Adeseun, Nuhu Ribadu I am discovering in my old age, albeit reluctantly [not the age, the revelation] that I DO have some [...]

• Happy birthday ntate Sobukwe!

  Posted: December 5, 2009, 3:21 pm by Rethabile

  Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was born on 5 December 1924

• Petina Gappah wins Guardian award

  Posted: December 4, 2009, 2:06 pm by Sokari

  Petina Gappah has won the Guardian First Book award with her collection of short stories on Zimbabwe. Reading the various reports and interviews in the Guardian I see that Gappah is doing her best to distance herself from the usual “naming” what I call the “Africa is a country” syndrome by Western [...]

• Nigerian farmers take Shell to court

  Posted: December 3, 2009, 4:29 pm by Sokari

  Today is the start of a landmark court brought by four farmers from the Niger Delta against Shell Oil. The Nigerian farmers and fishers, who lost their livelihoods after oil from leaking Shell pipelines streamed over their fields and fishing ponds, are claiming compensation from the Anglo-Dutch oil giant. They also want Shell to clean up [...]

• US / Uganda / Rwanda Christian connections

  Posted: December 3, 2009, 2:00 pm by Sokari

  Over the past week there has seen a string of blog posts and news articles criticising the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Below is a roundup of some of the more interesting and useful ones including a video from the October protest outside the London High Commission for Uganda. There will be another protest on [...]

• Hideous photo

  Posted: December 2, 2009, 9:29 pm by Sokari

  I dislike this photo intensely. It looks like something from a jam jar, a hideous caricature of Black women – an act of violence. It comes with this article on gender politics and AIDS. It talks about “cultural taboos” and rape driving AIDS. But it makes no mention of the rape [...]

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes