Trevor Noah in the US - South Africa's Comedian Connects

Vulindlela - A South African Voice on TV

For the first time, a South African stand up comic appeared on Leno. On Jan. 6, Trevor Noah, a young comedian from Jozi. Come to think of it, he may be the only South African comic to be on any major talk show.

TREVOR NOAH on LENO

Is he what Zulus once called Pal Simon when his Graceland with Ladysmith Black Mombaza broke through musically: vulindlela - opener of the gate?

Noah may be the only comedian in the world who can really make fun of Mandela in front on a American audience, then take on African Americans ("not really African - but we'll play along with that") and then flawlessly switch in and out of their accents.

  

He dresses like a young stockbroker and speaks with a plummy accent that sounds almost midatlantic - vaguely American, vaguely British and occasionally South Efrican.

  

When he does Julius Malema - his Africanisms are uncanny. When he pays Jacob Zuma telling the World Bank that he doesn't have the $150bn he owes them you'll die laughing. "Did you put that money in my hand, no!" When he can't get the IMF off his back ask his assistant for "mashini wami." You might have to explain that to an American friend but somehow they'll be laughing anyway.

  

Noah's story is that his mother is Xhosa and his father Swiss ("you know the Swiss, they like chocolate"). He grew up at the tail end of apartheid where he was technically an outlaw. He is bi-racial but not culturally what South Africans would call "colored."

  

That buys him a lot of license to take on just about anyone - which does with great intelligence and rare mimicry. It also makes him a kind of insider-outsider - rather like Obama who shares a similar characteristic of being bi-racial but not of the traditional African-American community.

  

All this makes Noah the first of his a kind - a biracial African comic that Americans of all races can get their heads around.

  

The question is - will his insight open the lid on South African culture generally? This really is the new Africa and one that American of all races can relate to.

  

I'm guessing that sooner or later his managers will put him in a Mandela shirt or at least stick some type of kente cloth in his breast pocket. But he's the new Africa, so who knows?

  

What I do know is that he is a talent worth watching and he will certainly make American want to know more about the amazing cultures and stories underlying the new South Africa.

Review: Robert Mugabe....What Happened?

The Trillion Dollar Man as the Scar of Africa

by Alan Brody 

   

Mugabe

               

Scar from the Lion King

If you're one of those people with a $100 Trillion Zimbabwe banknote you will definitely wonder what to make of the NY movie premiere of "Mugabe - What Happened?


"So many people flocked to the NY Institute of Technology theater that they had to open a second screening room. The audience response to the panel interview with director, Simon Bright and distinguished Zimbabweans might even have made your head spin.

$100 gone wrong

This documentary chronicled Mugabe's rise from obscurity to his position today with his signature trail of violence, economy-trashing and fine locution in clear, non-judgmental detail with the kind of archival footing only a genuine insider could get.

Bright is a white Zimbabwean film director with impeccable credits as an anti-Rhodesian government activist in pre-independence days and a former official of the Zimbabwean Ministry of Agriculture. He adds current-day interviews with people who grew up or worked with Mugabe to this footage, painting a straight-forward picture of a very smart, determined man who rose to the top of his liberation group, wowing the Western powers as he overthrew Ian Smith's white rule. 

Let's Dance: Thatcher-Kaunda Style

This is an Horatio Alger tale of an impoverished Jesuit-trained Shona boy with a single mother who is educated in Britain as economist and becomes a lecturer in Ghana where he witnesses black Africa's first post-colonial independence. Then it is on to Zambia where their independence means we are treated to the supremely awkward Margaret Thatcher-Kenneth Kaunda waltz (worthy of its own documentary, I would say!). Mugabe gives up academia for the pursuit of self-determination in Rhodesia. First he joins Joshua Nkomo and the Matabele-led party only to drop them for the majority Shona tribe's ZANU Party, which he soon takes over and leads to victory.


So, "what happened?" The young Mugabe comes off as hyperarticulate and forthright in a way that captains of industry once were before lawsuits, PR and TV consultants taught them to act humble. Once in power, Mugabe reaches out to the whites offering them "love." That's when you notice his resemblance to Scar, the evil, throne-stealing uncle from the Lion King. His trademark landing strip version of the Hitler mustache is still an ominous shadow while his deeply furrowed philtrum seems the embodiment of the new Africa's stiff upper lip. His accent and his manner resonate with a dapper Britishness, buttressed by Saville Row suits and a locution that lets him transcend his very un-British rat-pack gatherings with the likes of North Korea's Kim Il Sung, Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat.

Amazingly, peace holds, the old Rhodesian whites settle down and go about their way of living as if nothing had happened. They run their massive tobacco and wheat farms and rest assured that, as the backbone of the economy and employer of a half million Zims, their way of life is secure. Black Zimbabweans see an improvement in their lives, particularly in the form of education and all is seemingly well for 15 years or so.

That should have been the story of Africa's first Mandela and it just may be that the ensuing panel pandemonium took place because so many people want to think of Zimbabwe that way - no matter what. The reality is a little different. The first sign is that right after Mugabe took power in a coalition government with the Matabele, he got wind that his political partners had a cache of weapons. He sicked his ruthless, North Korean trained 5th Brigade unit on them resulting in the brutal ethnic cleansing that took the lives of around 20,000 tribesmen. This campaign even had its own catchy name Gukurahundi, a kind of cleansing 

Since the Matabele are a breakaway from the South African Zulu tribe, they are without support anywhere - neither loved by the Zulus nor the Shona they displaced - and so this genocide was conveniently overlooked by all the powers that be. Do you know a Matabele, anyone?

This brings us back to the night's panel (im)moderated by Douglas Rogers, author of the poignant but hilarious book about his family' survival in Zim, The Last Resort. Just as theywere going back and forth discussing the fine points of the documentary - how did Bright get the footage, was it film or digital, did he get permission to shoot (really?), where will it be playing and so on - the audience began to rumble. They had far more pressing questions in mind as in: "what can we do about it?"

Even that wasn't simple because many non-Zimbabweans, like Mugabe's partymembers, would rather see him as a hero than confront the damage he has caused. Within Zimbabwe, Mugabe isn't exactly a lonely dictator - he has a big party following with plenty of high-fiving military and political cronies, decked in outfits that could have looted from a Gilbert & Sullivan opera. The capital, Harare, is full of Mercs & Beamers that have flowed to insiders and savvy white and Asian businesspeople. It is only the dispossessed in the slums and countryside along with his hapless MDC opponents who experience his wrath and devastation.

The panelists who knew him say he never changed. This is who is always was and the 1980s massacres were an early warning - Mugabe may wear European suites but he plays by old African rules and pity the fools who didn't get that. He may even be the embodiment of an old joke told in emerging-country circles about two smart third world guys who go to the Harvard Business School and promise to reunite after 10 years with whoever's richest being the host. The South Asian guy is the first, inviting his African college pal to his new palatial estate. He is stunned and asks "How did you get so rich?" The Indian guy tells his friend to look at the new superhighway passing in the back. "I raised the money from the IMF and I got a 10% commission." A few years later the African guy sends out his invite. Only this time the palace looks like Versailles with Neuschwanstein thrown in. "How did you get this?" his Indian friend asks. "I raised money for a superhighway too," the African guy says, "look around you." The Indian guy says that he can't see anything. "There's no highway - nothing at all. "Exactly," says the African "and so I got 100%."

With Mugabe, the 100% came not from the IMF but from the War Veterans Benefit fund and may have been for his cronies and not necessarily for him. Once the veterans found out he had a real crisis on his hands if he wanted to stay in power. In any case, unlike the IMF, those guys don't make prissy speeches and cut off your credit cards while you go running to Bono for relief. They know how to fight with guns and bombs and they know exactly where you live. To get them off his back he invited them - with the assistance of his police - to invade the white peoples' farm. Think of Scar from the Lion King - beaming as marvels at this solution.

It may be possible that Britain could have underwritten that loss but Tony Blair had already dropped their land redistribution payments, apparently because he thought it was being looted. The White Farmers could have paid off the veterans or for that matter, Mugabe. But neither of these options came up and one has to conclude from the dazed interviews and the "I built this place" kind of tone, that the white farmers don't normally think that way and just forgot where they really were. Payoffs would not have been very proper and it's adubious whether Mugabe could have been trusted. But, when in Rome.

According to at least half the audience, Mugabe wasn't necessarily to blame. One questioner said that she lived in Zimbabwe at the time and since the rules of the game were written by the IMF in Washington and London, Mugabe was not at fault. Then there were another group, African Americans mostly, who felt that West had done enough of its own mischief from colonization, slavery and the economy that it had no business criticizing Mr. Mugabe.

Mapfumo & Bright

The real fireworks occurred when Thomas Mapfumo, the legendary Zimbabwean

master of chimurenga, that slow-burn, very African style of music full of electronic thumb pianos, marimbas and percussion, who has played with Bob Marley, responded that the US and Europe "must do something." Apparently, he was thinking "Libya-style" but the crowd roared that it wanted an "African solution." Chimurenga is also the name of the liberation struggle.

Unfortunately, they already have an African solution. Zimbabwe is a landlocked country that survives at the mercy of South Africa and no one, not even Mandela - back when he could have - saw any value in taking on Mugabe.

Loser News...

Which brings us to the real message of Mugabe. I'd like whatever he's drinking. Think about it. He's killed tens of thousands, impoverished millions, turned the economy into a joke, beaten back two electoral losses - and by beaten, I mean with sticks, knives and serious guns - and here he is, in his mid-eighties riding as high as ever. Betty White has nothing on this guy! If you don't mind a little violence, he could be the poster boy for the AARP. It's hard out there for tyrant. Dictatoring is not that easy at 50 - but at 88! And he stills sounds about the same. It takes him a moment or two to warm up and the 'stache is getting a little raggedy but this one-man rule is definitely a healthy lifestyle. He laughs off the comparisons to Hitler - as he should - since Hitler, as we all know, was a loser.

The proper way to think about Mugabe is that he is the living "Secret" - Napoleon Hill meets Oprah gone bad. He willed away the great forces of the West, his political rivals, and the pesky farmers who ran the economy. He outlived all the other dictators of his era and just as you think there is no chance for the country to survive under him - he gets lucky! The last

Diamond Mining - Mugabe Style

time they were going broke again and were looking to change their notes from trillions to gazillions, they found diamonds near Mutare. It took about 2 years for all $4 billion of those diamonds to, shall we say, de-carbonize - but it was enough to buy him more years in power and attract Chinese investment. They turned out to be less generous than he hoped, but rumors abound of more diamonds and mineral wealth.

Mugabe has overcome his chief rival, Morgan Tsvangirai twice - even though he lost and the world backed his opponent. Those wacky Westerners allowed Mugabe to create a coalition government which would be something akin to putting your pet dog in cage with a pit bull and saying "nice dog." Better yet, make that a lion cage.

As for Thomas Mapfumo, who now lives in Oregon, and all those Zims, ex-pats and poor people left behind, you can only sympathize. Or not, if you choose. One member of the audience was a freshly arrived college student from Harare who expressed amazement at all these negative stories about their great hero. And she has a point. If Hitler had stuck it out, the Reich would probably seem like an admirable regime today and the 'stache might even be a fashion statement. In a bizarre way, this is almost happening within Zimbabwe.

As for American intervention, it has already happened. The $100 trillion notes have been shelved along with the Zim dollar and now the economy runs on our greenback. It could be worse - it could be the yuan. As for Mugabe, at this point, only the Lion King could take him out. Simba, where are you?

Also reviewed in Afropop.

  

Kony 2012 Tells You What’s Wrong With Americans like Jason Russell

If you ask an African why Jason Russell, Dr. Livingstone avatar and producer of the viral wonder, Kony 2012 which targets the bizarre, child-killing jungle rebel and went bezerk, you will probably get a mysterious smile. His bizarre outbreak of public nakedness and mind-numbing lewdness has been officially described as “a psychotic attack brought on by dehydration and exhaustion.” If only he packed Gatorade and Prozac.

To an African, that looks suspiciously like a witch doctor, a night dancer, traditional sorcerer, inyanga or whatever you choose to call him, put a nasty spell on him. Maybe there was also a little muti thrown into his veggie burger.

(TMZ just published an interview with an African who claims that Kony is a voodoo witch doctor.)

So if you want to call it psychiatry, go ahead. Either way, it worked and Africa finally has a world class technology it can call its own.

So isn’t it about time we let the subcontinent do things their way, because whatever we have done, really hasn’t helped.

84 million people watched the Kony 2012 video on YouTube. Most were appalled and wanted to do something about it. Most were not African or even African American.

In fact, the government of Uganda was so offended it put out its own video criticizing Kony2012. The Africans street either shrugged it off as old news or saw it as an indirect insult. Hence the witch doctor attack.

We may never be able to prove this, of course but witch doctors pervade their consciousness anyway. Traditional healers – the “board certified” version of this kind of profession – are everywhere in Africa. South Africa, arguably the most westernized, has over 65,000 registered traditional healers and many, many are unregistered.

What does it mean when 84 million people think they were doing God’s work while most Ugandans were simply offended? Should it be up to George Clooney to represent the poor people of nearby Darfur and get arrested along with his smiling dad - or should that be Denzell Washington along with Will Smith?

Why is Nick Kristoff touring the battle fields of the Congo decrying the killing of 6 million Africans when Henry Louis Gates would rather talk African Encyclopeadias and disrespectful cops in Massachussetts?

The child killings, rape and torture of Joseph Kony are unquestionably a crime against mankind but there won't be too many African American march about it. On the other hand, a single teenager in the wrong place in Florida who is killed in a controversial killing with a guard will bring on mass demonstrations.

While all this is going on we are losing the true African opportunity of a lifetime – the subcontinent is is getting richer and we really are not part of that.

Since 2000, Chinese interests have poured billions into Africa locking up most of their freshly available resources. They have built no churches, hospitals, clinics or do-gooder foundations of any kind. Their version of Bill Gates would sooner take their money to the gaming tables of Macao than hand it over to starving villagers of Mocambique. The same is true of Middle Eastern money – it flows from Saudi and Dubai.

The effects are rarely reported in the US media but they have altered the landscape in many ways. When civil wars break out both sides are well armed. When a mine is found or a dam is built - usually to power a mining area - China finances it and makes sure the benefits flow mostl to Beijing and to a few lucky politicians.

By way of thank you, when the continent holds its much vaunted conference on racism in the Zulu town of Durban, the Dalai Lama is banned thanks to pressure from China. When the most famous Zulu performers are invited to play in Israel, they join the Palestinian anti-Israel propaganda campaign. The fact that they were discovered and still partly managed by Jews hardly matters.

The net result is we own the guild-ridden poverty stricken part of Africa that we pull in a direction they don’t care about, wasting millions along the way. The East, on the other hand locks in all the resources and taps the emerging middle class billions. You could argue that they are paying off dictators and so on but there is another truth that we have overlooked in our ridiculously moral and guilt-ridden charity dance: they are feeding the desire of the emerging middle class while we are fanning the outrage of the dispossesed.

It is time to let Africa be Africa and let our own African and African-Americans do business the way Africans want us to. Let Al Sharpton do the marching on Africa and if George Clooney wants to get arrested, let him do it in Florida.

This is not mere polemic – it is sound psychology. Every non-profit knows that people either give or avoid giving by virtue of their psychological association with what the charity represents. By putting white people in charge of African charities they accentuate dependence, racial guilt, resentment and very little in the way of self-reliance. At the very least, they should be driven by African Americans.

When you look at the Asian Tigers you see how the revolutions occurred from within. What they needed from Bill Gates at the early days of the computer industry was his business not his charity. They used the home electronics market to launch vast industries with capital and expertise from home and their own diaspora.

African needs to help Africa. Anyone else - including celebrities not genealogically connected to Africa - need to help them by getting out of the limelight.

Advice to George, you want to march in Florida and give your frequent flier miles to Jesse Jackson. Let him take on Darfur. Kony too.

We all stand to gain when that happens.

"Die Antwoord" Snubs Lady Gaga

Did "Die Antwoord" really turn down the chance to open for Lady Gaga?

It sounds like they would. Would Lady Gaga really have put up with them?

There is are some deeper reasons why they didn't do it - but the sparks that would have flown...!

See the Videos

MTV Canada

Zoopy

"White Zulu" & Friends Shake Richmond

If you weren't in Richmond, VA this weekend you missed a heck of a party when "White Zulu", David Jenkins teamed up with other Zulus, Xhosas, Tswanas and Americans at this wonderful festival at Grayhaven Winery.

See for yourself what fun they had. There was singing, dancing and a great finales when just about the entire audience tried their hand at Zulu dancing for the men and the Xhosa version of the Macarena for women.

And don't worry - we're bringing the party to you! We're doing a private, invitation-only Braai at the end of September in Scarsdale and a big show at a New York Club. If you'd like to be on our invite list send us a note at braai@whiteshaka.com.

"Zulu Boy" David Jenkins Wows NY Audience at First US Performance

David Jenkins, the so-called “White Zulu” from KwaZulu-Natal wowed audiences last night at Madiba in Brooklyn with his first U.S. performance.

Singing in English and Zulu he combined traditional maskandi hits from the Zulu heartland with Johnny Clegg standards like “Asimbonango” -the tribute to Nelson Mandela - and his original songs from his (South African Traditional Music Awards) SATMA-nominated album, “Child of Africa”.

The crowd hummed along to the Clegg hits like “Impi” and “The Crossing” while the ended the evening when the crowd called for an encore with a “singalong” - which turned out to be a reprise of the near-anthemic “Asimbonanga” which laments the jailing of Mandela and now serves as a reminder of the anti-apartheid struggle and the accomplishments of the new South Africa.

The 19 year old Jenkins, who combines choir boy looks with a full Zulu regalia of skins and rainbow colors represents a once unthinkable amalgam of cultures – traditional Africa and post-colonial Europe.

Jenkins will be performing at the South African Food Festival near Richmond, VA on Sep. 10-11 and will be returning to New York for additional performances before embarking on a West Coast and Florida tour.




More about David Jenkins.

David Jenkins | Free Music, Tour Dates, Photos, Videos

'New 'White Zulu' in town' about David Jenkins

David Jenkins US tour is produced by Shaka Boy Music.

How Kennedy & Obama Changed Africa

In 1966, the late Robert Kennedy went to South Africa, then at the height of its white supremacy power and mineral wealth. Apartheid was the law of the land, and the leaders thought they held the world hostage to their gold and platinum production. Yet the country was gripped by a looming sense of isolation from the world, compounded by their limited media - no TV, the state owned the radio stations.

The one glimmer of light on was the newspapers which enjoyed a large amount of freedom.

Into this dictatorship of whites over the black majority that outnumbering them 4 to 1 came this charismatic American. He drew crowds by thousands wherever he went – in the dusty forlorn townships and in the marble halls of academe where students hung from trees to listen in.

It is hard to imagine how powerful this was at the time. In America, he was a candidate for president – one of many, in a land cluttered with political contenders. But in South Africa, it was as if he was the only story and the newspapers hummed with Kennedy’s words such as these, made in Cape Town:

“Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power....to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives. Everything that makes man's life worthwhile…..all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people…..not just to those of a particular race, but to all of the people.”

To white and black audiences alike, he spoke openly on these issues of freedom and liberation. Both were inspired - but differently. The whites were uplifted in the same way people listening to a sermon on a Sunday tend to forget about it on Monday. Some even thought the attention brought by the world would help them understand "the situation": that whites were advanced while the blacks were from primitive past where violence ruled – so how else could they run the country?

To the blacks it was a different story altogether. They understood very little of American politics and the cheap global grandstanding our political candidates are wont to do. Instead, they saw a white man from a powerful land that was not a former colonialist, who had a transcendent aura thanks to the Kennedy name. To have this man stare into the eyes of the white oppression that had trapped them in poverty and tell them it was wrong, was more than words. It was a signal that white people outside of this country would actually support them against the white government if as they say, push came to shove.

10 years later, in 1976, the youth of South Africa revolted and the War of liberation began. Push had came to shove.

In 1990, Mandela the head of the black government-in-waiting was released after 27 years in jail and by 1994, the country had become a democracy.

It was Robert Kennedy, as part of his campaign tour, that had set it off.

In 2009 a freshly inducted President Obama went to Egypt to tell the Arab World that he supported their desire for freedom. The speech was couched in a lot of American policy along with a lesson in tolerance for Israel. To us, that speech sounded like an apology for American foreign policy with some high-minded stuff about liberation in a country that had been run but a dictator for close to 40 years.

What Egyptians heard was probably quite different. Here was an American president who looked a lot more them than any other American president before and he came to speak to them publicly about liberation with these words:

“The fourth issue that I will address is democracy.

I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years…..I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere….”

It was a small part of his overall speech and wordier than anything RFK had proclaimed, but that hardly mattered. What they most likely heard was, “I believe in liberation, I’m like you, and I’ve got your back.” Thanks to the Internet and Satellite TV, it took a lot less time for the idea to get around and it took just 2 years for Mubarak to fall.

There’s no point in trying to predict what Obama might do in Libya. If he had to pick one Middle Eastern tyrant to take out that would also get general support in the region, it would certainly be Gaddaffi. But that may not be this president’s style. Words are one thing, actions another.

Yet, at certain inflection points, words matter more than actions because they have the power to set the population in action.

It may be more instructive to ask what inflection point we are facing in the U.S. that could be set of by the words of a significant visitor?

What if Saudi’s King Abdullah, Crown Prince Sultan or his next in line Niyaf, made a tour of the US giving speeches that shook our foundations? Something along the lines of: “Why do you depend on us for energy and put all that pressure on our region when you have your own damn oil, gas, coal, wind, ethanol and cow methane to exploit?

“You say you love the environment and you despise wasters of energy, but who among watched ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in an unconditioned theater? Is your SUV now smaller than the car you drove 20 years ago? Is your house more petite? Are there fewer devices plugged into your wall?

“The truth is you want to import our lifeblood and export your environmental risk and so, we are no longer taking your money…..!”

At that point, the energy-starved, overcharged masses will rally at their local town halls and occupy Congress shouting “we want our gas, we want our drilling, make our trucks use natural gas, get me nuclear energy now! And sure, get us some solar and wind along the way.”

When others look at us, they ask why we don’t take full environmental responsibility for the energy we consume. We look the other way just as other oppressors do. The difference is that our oppressed has no voice – it is our economy and it cries in red ink.

© Alan Brody 2011