Set in the fictional and reluctantly bilingual land of Mimbo in contemporary Africa, A Nose for Money, the latest novel by Francis Nyamnjoh, revolves around the tragedy of Prospère, a semi-literate Mimbolander searching for the finer things in life. It offers a graphic depiction of the inevitable frustration of a society that places wealth above love. The author interweaves traditional African culture and modern politics to capture the urban African pysche in a compelling and heart-rendingstyle. This cautionary tale may shock the reader, but the haunting character of Prospère is a masterpiece.

Kenyan Indian poet and spoken word artist Shailja Patel caught up with Faustin Linyekula, Congolese Dancer and Choreographer, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. This is a compilation of the conversation.

Faustin Linyekula: My name is Kabako. Kabako is my name. Once Kabako, forever Kabako. I have a story to tell.

I came to dancing late, over 20. I grew up dancing like most people dance, because in my country, we have sound everywhere. But for many years I could not call myself a dancer. Because I believe in rituals, and I had not gone through the rituals, the training, to be a dancer. I was an actor using his body. So I began by deconstructing movement – line and point.

Shailja Patel: Why did you go back to Congo?

FL: Because I was tired of being a stranger. The most painful was to be a stranger in Kenya – in another African country. I spent 6 years as a tourist in Kenya. I could not get papers. Every year, I crossed the border into Uganda for one day, then came back in, so I got a tourist visa stamp in my passport.

For many years in exile, I thought: Perhaps my only true country is my body.

Theater is, first of all, a body in front of other bodies. Not light, text, or story.

SP: Why do you stay in the Congo, despite all the difficulties?

I was born and raised in a land where there was never any room for an individual. No one had a right to think.

I have inherited a pile of ruins. What can I do to make it a space where I can continue dreaming? Is it possible to continue dreaming without running away? I create using all these things which are collapsing around me which are all I have.

I was born in a country called Zaire. On 16th May 1997, I was still a Zairean. On the 17th of May, 1997, I woke up to be told I was Congolese. That my name was Faustin.

My name is everything that makes me.

Under Mobutu Sese Seko, it was illegal to have a name that was not Zairean. Whoever had a foreign name was kicked out. Whoever wore a tie was put in jail.

Every morning in school for the “revolutionary half-hour”, we sang the glories of Papa Mobutu. I studied Latin for 6 years in school.

When I perform from ritual – like something my grandmother taught me – it’s not ritual any more. On stage, under lights, it becomes something else. Performance.

Between 1998 and 2003, over 5 years, 3.3 million people were killed in my country.

Is it really possible to tell these stories, so far outside reality, and make them comprehensible?

My work is people-specific. A series of solo journeys for each performer.

Leaving it open for each one to tell their own stories, because I feel powerless.

In developing each individual’s journey, I could never think of what will come out.

There is never a sense of a given. In movement, nothing is given. Everything has to be found.

We had a female dancer in the company. She left to live in Europe, do other things. We did not replace her. People are not interchangeable. For us, from inside, we know there is a hole in the wall, and it is important to remember the hole in the wall. But we hope it is not seen from outside.

A theater venue in Kinshasa: a piece of land. A fence around. Concrete block in the middle. Open air.
8 power cans. 8 switches. When there is a performance, people bring chairs, and sit.

When I work in these circumstances, I redefine theater. Is it a building, or a relationship between performer and audience?

You always have malaria at one point or another.
The rice we eat is 16th grade rice from Thailand.
We eat frozen fish from Namibia, yet we have deep rivers and lakes. For many years the country has produced nothing for its own people.

The country is very rich.
The leaders are very rich.
They make sure we know how rich they are.
The people are very poor.
Even those who pray all night
still starve.

In our minds, we are still, to date, colonial subjects.
Legitimacy, in any African country, still comes from outside. Your own people may hate you. But if America, Britain or France like you you will stay leader.

SP: How do you balance making art with all you need to do to support your art – travel, fundraising, marketing, etc.?

FL: There is no balance. You just go. You just move.
We, the privileged, why should we complain or run away?

Maybe we don’t care about arts. We just need to believe in something where no one believes in anything anymore.
We just need a space to keep dreaming.

SP: Can you talk about your next work?

FL: My next work is called Festival of Lies. There is a two-hour version and a 6-hour version. Because you need time to talk about history. We are collecting stories, but we only tell lies, about ourselves and the country. At the end, we see who is winner.

Question (from audience member): What happened to the pygmies, with their rich culture and polytonal music, during the war?

FL: It’s very interesting that you ask about pygmies. The pygmies were eaten. Literally eaten, during the war. There was this belief that eating human flesh confers special powers.

But there are still some left?

FL: The average life expectancy for a Congolese is 41.
The average life expectancy for a pygmy is 29.

Kabako is my name. I had a story to tell you. But there was so much noise in my head that I forgot it. I am sorry. My dance is nothing but an attempt to remember my name.

For more about Linyekula, go to www.kabako.org
For more about Patel, go to www.shailja.com

The question is so blunt and large, I don't know what to reply. But there's a mic in my face, a TV camera running, a journalist from Citizen TV waiting for my response. We're on the staircase leading up to Nairobi's Club Soundd. Above us, the final open mic poets are sharing their work in a space crammed with 300 people. The air crackles with the electricity of Nairobi's just-concluded first-ever poetry slam.

I say: "We just saw, upstairs, in the last 2 hours, what poetry can do. Poetry lets us see and feel what we numb ourselves against in everyday life. The full spectrum of being human – from ecstatic joy to burning rage to acute grief. Poetry allows us to break silence around what scares us most – whether it's HIV, or poverty, or political repression, or being left by our lover. Poetry moves us from paralysis into action. Poetry connects us to each other, invites us into each other's reality, makes us larger, more alive, in the world."

Club Soundd is one of Nairobi's newer bar/restaurant/nightclub venues, opened six months ago by Luai, charming entrepreneur of Lebanese heritage. His dream is to create a space that nurtures arts and culture, while it draws people in to kick back with a beer in front of the large-screen TVs. He generously hosts the monthly open mic readings of Kwani, Nairobi's explosive literary organization, and hangs the red walls with original work from local artists. On the TV screens tonight, Ivory Coast plays Nigeria in the semi-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations. Tough act for poets to compete with.

"Get Ready To Slam", said Kenya's Daily Nation 3 days ago. "Poetry Slam at Club Soundd" trumpeted another article. Journalists love the word "slam". It's short, punchy, visceral, action-packed. Yet of the 300 people who showed up at Club Soundd, perhaps only half-a-dozen had any idea what they were in for. The rest were there because of the buzz, word-of-mouth and media-generated, that something exciting was going to happen tonight.

"What is Slam Poetry?" I was asked in interview after interview. "What is Spoken Word? How is it different from normal poetry?"

"Spoken word and slam poetry are NOT different from ‘regular’ poetry," I insisted. "They simply reclaim poetry as an oral tradition, communicated live, through the voice and the body. Africa is where spoken word, the oral tradition, began. A poetry slam is a game, a device, to get people interested in poetry. Human beings love competitions. Slam began in a bar in Chicago, in the US, and spread like wildfire, regenerating poetry as a vital, explosive, grassroots arts movement that everyone could be a part of. In a slam, poets perform their original work, without props, costumes or accompaniment, to a 3-minute time limit. Judges are selected from the audience, and they score the poets, Olympic-style, from 1-10, based on content and performance. The top-scoring poet at the end of the night is the winner."

When Kwani first invited me to feature at their open mic on my upcoming trip to Nairobi, I threw out the idea of hosting a poetry slam. They leapt on it eagerly, and before I knew it, we were planning Nairobi's First Ever Poetry Slam. I was initially wary about how it would go down – was it an appropriate form for the Nairobi scene? Would the competition intimidate rather than encourage, new voices?

"Your job," I told the poets who'd signed up to compete, "is to have the best time of your life. Don't get hung up on the scores, or the audience response. The moment you get on the stage, you've already won. Just by being there. By showing everyone in the room that they too, can share their creative voice with the world."

At the start of the night, we're worried that we only have three people signed up to slam. And we're concerned about the turnout; my performance at the Carnivore, four days ago, drew a disappointingly small audience. We're hoping the city centre location, low cover charge of Ksh. 50, and press coverage in the last few days, will bring people in tonight.

By 8pm, when we close the slam list, there are 13 poets on it. Several more arrive in the next few minutes, too late to add to the list, but we promise them a place in the open mic reading. People are pouring in; all the seats are taken. They are sitting on the floor, on the edge of the stage, on each other's laps, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the bar at the back. I have never seen this in Kenya before – a space filled with people of every ethnicity, generation, socioeconomic background, hungry for something new, something they can't get from TV, video, surfing the web, something that feeds their souls and imaginations.

If we needed confirmation that we're breaking new ground here, the media presence supplies it. There are two TV crews in the house – from KTN and Citizen TV. Journalists from the Daily Nation, the Kenya Times, BBC Africa. After the slam, when they interview me, almost all of them will tell me that they, too, write poems. A couple will show me their work. Share the secret longing to be heard. Tell me they thought about signing up for the slam, but weren't quite ready. Next time, however…

The slam begins. We hear love poems. Break-up poems. Political poems. A poem that explores the meaning of manhood. A rhythmic tribute to the heroes of Kenya's war of independence. A scathing indictment of poetry as useless – in the form of a poem! One poet comes out as HIV-positive, to a room of 300 strangers, in a poignant letter to his parents, infused with love and regret. Another does a hilarious improvised riff on the Ivory Coast – Nigeria football match, still running on the TV screen in the bar. I am especially happy that over 50% of the poets are women. I've been told by dozens of women in the US that they would love to perform their work, but are intimidated by their male-dominated local slams.

The audience is beside itself. They yell, cheer, clap, howl for their favourite poets, boo the judges when the scores are low. No football crowd, no rock concert crowd, could be more engaged, more enthusiastic.

One of my old friends, who stood in the back all night because the place was so jammed, sends me an SMS that night: "I was amazed and enlightened. I never knew poetry could be like that. To me, ‘poetry’ was what we studied in school."

The word I hear most often afterwards is: Inspired.

"I was so inspired."
"That was so inspiring."
"I want to be in the next slam."
"I want to bring everyone I know to the next slam."

The poet who read about being HIV-positive comes up to take my hand. We both have tears in our eyes, a silent tribute to the power of what happened tonight. Another man tells me he wanted to sign up for the slam, but was afraid:

"I am Ugandan. I was scared to speak in a room full of Kenyans. When I heard your poems about being Indian, I thought: Next time, I will do it."

Kwani sells out of copies of its latest issue. Luai, the Club Soundd owner, says to me: "I am so happy. This crowd is what Kwani has been working for, what they deserve."

It's only the beginning. What can poetry do, right now, in Kenya? Create community. Break open deathly silences. Give people a platform to share their deepest joys and fears. Open a space for dissent, debate, discussion, education, around everything from safe sex to constitutional reform. Make us larger, braver, more joyful, more contentious. Push us to engage with the world around us, capture it in language, work that language to its most beautiful and powerful distillation, pour it out like water for the thirsty. Inspire us to trust our own intelligence and passion, our hunger for art that is real and hard and truthful; messy and complex and bloody. Above all, art that is ours. Trust that our own voices are the thick grain, the juicy greens, we have been hungry for.

* Kenyan poet, Shailja Patel, is a US Lambda Poetry Slam champion, and has competed in two US national Poetry Slam Championships. She is currently developing a one-woman spoken-word theatre show, Migritude, which she looks forward to presenting in Kenya soon. Visit her at www.shailja.com

A well-received Zimbabwean play has challenged how a woman should react in situations of adultery. Despite a widely-held view in the country that wives should accept that their husbands will stray, expectations are beginning to change. Hot Water Bottle is a one-woman performance featuring Tinopona Katsande, a television soap opera star with a raunchy image. Twenty shows were held over two weeks at Harare's Theatre In The Park, and the content drew strong reactions from those who watched.

Southern African International Film and Television Festival and Market (Sithengi) may have been started in 1996 by a group of Zimbabweans and South Africans, but the initiative is now fanning out to the rest of Africa. During the official opening of 10th Sithengi in November 2005, the board of directors was expanded, bringing in Nigeria and Francophone Africa. Making the announcement, outgoing chairman, Eddie Mbalo, said this was necessary to make Sithengi a truly African continental film organisation. Nigeria is represented by Afolabi Adesanya, the managing director of Nigerian Film Corporation while Mauritanian filmmaker, Abderrhamane Cissako, represents French-speaking Africa. Other members will be drawn from the South African film industry and organisations giving money to Sithengi.

African Medical Research Foundation, AMREF, is creating 21st century ‘Black Pinocchios’ from the street urchins of Nairobi. Wanjiru Kinyanjui caught up with one of them and reports on his life. The boys are all stiffly lying on the hard concrete floor. One by one, they ‘wriggle’ out of their comatose positions, stand up, ease up, wave their passports to the audience and announce their names. The 20 young men have been transformed from disobedient wooden puppets into real boys as butterflies metamorphose from caterpillars.

The 1994 Rwandan Genocide left the country nearly 70 percent female, handing Rwanda’s women an extraordinary burden and an unprecedented opportunity. An inspiring story of loss and redemption 'God Sleeps in Rwanda' captures the spirit of five courageous women as they rebuild their lives, redefining women’s roles in Rwandan society and bringing hope to a wounded nation.

By highlighting the positive power of sport, The Homeless World Cup seeks to inspire and address homeless people and people in poverty around the world through in-person sporting events, a website, and mass media coverage. An annual street soccer (football) tournament unites teams of homeless people around the world; the goal is to raise awareness about their experiences, generate a sense of community strength, and foster a new social impact for a marginalised group. The 2006 competition (Sept. 21-30, Cape Town, South Africa) is expected to involve 45 teams with players from 35 countries, at least 50,000 spectators, and global media coverage.

The music over the PA system, when I arrive at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, is relentlessly American. Kenny Rogers, Whitney Houston, muzak you can’t name but you’ve heard a hundred times before in a hundred generic interchangeable locations. It sounds especially ironic to me this time, given the purpose of my trip.

16 hours ago, in the UK, I posted the following entry on my blog:

“Migritude and I are going home. To an audience that may love us or loathe us, but cannot possibly be bored or indifferent. An audience more intimately connected to what we have to say than any other in the world.

The novelist May Sarton has a line in one of her books: ‘Perhaps, in the end, this is why one is a poet. So that once in a lifetime, one can say the right words, to the right person, at the right time.’

Almost 3am now. 6am in Nairobi - sunrise, and trees erupting into bird chatter. On Kenya Airways flights, Local Time At Destination is rendered in Kiswahili as Saa Ya Kinyumbani Ya Mwisho Wa Safari.

Literal translation: Time of the home at the end of the journey.”

I grew up in Kenya during the Moi years. When those who spoke out were routinely arrested, detained without trial, beaten, tortured, exiled, killed. We read daily news stories about journalists, activists, even students, jailed for “sedition.” Every so often, our literature teacher would tell us that such-and-such a poet had been “banned” – and we dutifully crossed out their name and poems in our school text-books.

We were taught that Kenya attained independence peacefully. Without bloodshed. The slaughter of over 300,000 Kenyans in the war of independence, the subsequent betrayal of the country by the establishment of one-party rule, was never mentioned.

I grew up in a world where brown-skinned Kenyans were “the Asians” - their Kenyan citizenship and nationality subject to constant question and attack. Black-skinned Kenyans were “Africans” – the real Kenyans. Africans of other nationalities – Ugandans, Somalis, Congolese – were suspect and unwelcome refugees, invisible in public life.

Now I’m going home to do excerpts from my one-woman spoken-word theatre show, Migritude, in which I unfold voices of Kenyan women telling of rape and torture in British concentration camps during the Mau Mau years. Speak the pain of growing up brown in black-majority post-colonial East Africa. Reclaim and celebrate the dignity outsider status. Do not disguise my radical queer politics. I am terrified. I don’t yet trust that we can speak of these things, even in the new multiparty Kenya, without consequences.

And beyond that, I have no idea how Nairobi will take to spoken-word theatre. Or slam poetry. Who will come out to hear my work? June Wainaina, PR and Marketing Manager of Kwani?, the groundbreaking Kenyan literary organization that is presenting me in Nairobi, tells me: “People here have never seen anything like you. We expect to sell out your show at the Carnivore.”

When Youssou N’Dour sang at Nairobi’s legendary Carnivore restaurant in 2005, he drew a capacity crowd of 4,500. We draw slightly less. A lot less, in fact. Only 59 tickets sold (we’d projected 200). Not even enough to recoup Kwani’s costs – or pay my artist’s fee. Most glaring, and personally disappointing, is the absence of my own Asian African community, aside from a few progressive activists, journalists, and friends. We learn important lessons from this about PR, community outreach, marketing, and choice of venue. But the press is there in force. KTN, the national TV network, films the entire show. Journalists from Kenya’s two national dailies bombard me with questions after the performance. Features on me and Migritude run in the papers every day for the next four days.

And the response to Migritude from those 59 people there is nothing short of electric. They surround me on stage afterwards, almost overwhelm me with eagerness, appreciation, thoughts, questions. I am amazed at how my work has sliced through ethnic and socio-economic boundaries. Some of the most enthusiastic responses and persistent questions come from a group of MCs and b-boys, who, I am later told, were all street children until a few years ago. One of them tells me how powerfully affected he was by the integration of history, politics, economics, into my poetry. He asks: “What obstacles will I face in writing like this?”

Someone else, Asian African, tells me he was moved to tears by Shilling Love, a piece about my parents’ sacrifices. He was embarrassed by his emotion, until he looked around and saw another listener, Black African, also crying. “I have never had this experience before,” he says, “of Asian and African sharing the same tear.”

In subsequent days I do back-to-back meetings, interviews, radio spots. I am asked repeatedly for my thoughts on “Indians in Kenya.” My recurring response is: “I don’t really have any knowledge about Indians in Kenya. But I have a lot to say about Kenyans of South Asian heritage.” I watch the eyes of Black Kenyan journalists widen with sudden understanding, and it affirms my faith in the vital importance of words. I am a poet because I believe that language shapes the reality we inhabit. When we reclaim and reinvent the language used to define us, we also claim the space and power to act politically.

Some journalists tell me that they have never heard South Asian Kenyans voice the radical politics they hear in my work. I point out that just as Black Kenyans who challenged the ruling powers post-independence were exiled, imprisoned, or killed, so also were dissenting Asian Kenyans silenced – through assassination, deportation, removal of citizenship.

On the night of the show, the TV crew tells us they will run segments of Migritude on KTN’s Art Scene program the following week. Later, we hear that the director of the show was concerned about the political content. Rather than cutting it, however, she chose to delay screening until her superiors approved it. Self-censorship? Over-cautiousness? What elements of the content caused the concern? All part of the ongoing conversation about saa ya kinyumbani. What time is it right now in Kenya’s history? Has the time finally arrived when we can have these conversations?

* Kenyan Indian poet and spoken word artist Shailja Patel has featured at New York's Lincoln Center, and venues across the US. She has drawn standing ovations in London, Glasgow, and Nairobi. Excerpts from her one-woman spoken-word theater show, Migritude, have aired on BBC radio, NPR, the National Radio Project, and Pacifica Radio, generating responses worldwide. Migritude was recently selected for the International Women Art Festival in Vienna in 2006. (http://www.shailja.com/)

* Please send comments to [email protected]

When Zimbabwean artist Josiah Bob Taundi grew up in the townships of Harare he saw bulldozers as emblems of construction - machines that came to clear land for building houses and roads. But last year all this changed. Bulldozers came back to the townships and razed the very same houses that they had constructed. The Zimbabwean government called this "clean up", Murambatsvina (Operation Restore Order). While the urban demolitions were in full swing across the country, Zimbabwean artist, Josiah Taundi could not help but see the agony and pain reflected in the eyes of those that had been affected by Murambatsvina. In an effort to depict their plight he began to vividly re-construct Harare’s urban destruction.

In cooperation with partners, the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal will be opening thematic research projects on 'Economic Justice' in 2006. We will launch this theme by reviewing some of the finest traditions of South African, regional and international political-economic theory and contemporary analysis, and invite you to join us. We are mainly concerned with market-nonmarket interactions and new forms of 'primitive accumulation'.

An exhibition of works of some 13 Cameroonian artists is underway in Cairo. On the sidelines of the 25th African Cup of Nations, an exhibition of Cameroonian contemporary plastic arts is underway in Cairo. Some 27 works by 13 artists are in display in the exhibition at Saad Zaghloul hall, Cairo. It is organized by the Cameroon cultural delegation in Egypt. Last Sunday (February 5) evening, the head of the delegation, Minister Philippe Mbarga Mboa, launched the exhibition in the presence of authorities of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and a host of Egyptians. It was an occasion to inform the Egyptian press on the raison-d'etre of the exhibition - expose the rich cultural potential of Cameroon.

This lush and intimate book explores the coming-of-age of three sisters in post Idi Amin Uganda. Each chapter in this collection of linked short stories develops the theme of exploration and discovery as the sisters mature and their interior and exterior lives expand. We meet Christine, the youngest sister, as a girl learning of the bittersweet dynamics of her parents' marriage through exploring her mother's jewellery drawer. She later learns her own lessons about relationships, including her relationship with herself, which becomes more complex when she moves to the United States. Christine's quiet, uptight sister Patti suffers humiliation at boarding school and finds her peace in religion, while her oldest sister, Rosa, is an adventurous and sexually precocious teenager with a feisty personality. In the final story, Christine returns home to Uganda, in a journey that has come full circle, but not with all the ends tied up. This is a subtle, powerful book about growing up as an African woman and it heralds the arrival of a remarkably gifted writer.

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) is organising a training workshop, entitled "Media and Building Diversity and Democratic Culture in Sudan." The training will be held in Khartoum in the period from 5th to 11th of February 2006. It is organized in cooperation with the Sudanese Radio and Television Association and supported by the European Commission, with the participation of approximately 35 journalists working in the Sudanese Radio and television. A group of media and Human Rights experts from Sudan, Egypt and Canada will participate in the workshop.

Realizing Hope is about envisioning and winning a better world. Noam Chomsky from the U.S. says about Realizing Hope: “In many earlier studies, Michael Albert has carried out careful in-depth inquiries into systems of participatory economics (parecon), analyzing in detail how they can function justly, equitably, and efficiently, and how they can overcome many of the criminal features of current social and economic arrangements. This new and very ambitious study casts the net far more widely, extending to just about every major domain of human concern and mode of human interaction, and investigating with care and insight how, in these domains, parecon-like principles could lead to a far more desirable society than anything that exists, and also how these goals can be constructively approached. It is another very valuable and provocative contribution to the quest for a world of much greater freedom and justice."

Sutton Publishing, 2005. 256 pp. GBP 11.00

It is estimated that in the 100 years between 1700 and 1810 some three million African were transported across the Atlantic by British Merchants. The Great Abolition Sham is an expose of the myths surrounding the abolition of the British slave trade. Jordan focuses on examining the role played by abolitionists and in particular that of William Wilberforce who has been accredited with leading the campaign but which Jordan insists is one of the myths.

Jordan traces the origins and development of the Anti-slavery movement and in doing so reveals the “false heroes and untruths” which have been part of the revisionist writings on the abolition. He does this by naming those involved such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson and examining their real contributions and level of effectiveness. In this way Jordan is able to expose the “emissions and discrepancies in the both literature and historical accounts of the process and event. For example even after the Abolition Act was passed in 1807 the transportation and use of slaves continue often with not only the explicit knowledge of the British Government but with their participation through the forced unpaid enlistment into military service.

Jordan also addresses the issue of why the abolitionist movement started in the first place and what was the impetus behind it and why at that particular time. He examines the two opposing arguments; that abolition was borne out of a moral sense that slavery was wrong and the economic imperative that slavery was no longer economically viable. The latter because slave uprisings in the Caribbean were becoming increasingly regular and the policing of the slaves was increasingly difficult and costly. The Anglican Church was another sector of British establishment whose position was not united in opposition to slavery. It too played a game “that was as devious as any engaged in by secular members of the establishment”.

He concludes that by 1814 there were over 200 local anti-slavery groups in Britain with the number rising to some 1,300 by at the “climax of emancipation fever” in 1832. However he writes that petitioning itself hardly contributed to the passing of the Act and that by 1831 the British government so emancipation as “inevitable” with the threat of violence spreading across the Caribbean Islands. The Act of 1833 was passed after the third reading and Slavery was to be replaced by a system of apprenticeship “the conditions of which were hardly generous”

Jordan presents a strong alternative account to the traditional one which tended to elevate the myth of Britain taking the moral high ground and which presented the anti-abolitionists especially Wilberforce as laudable moral guardians of the movement to end slavery. The book is informative and well researched and one that is much needed to provide a balanced account of what really took place.

Although Jordan includes a Note on Terminology, in particular the use of the word “Negro” which he uses occasionally, there is a section in the “The Three Concerned Trade” where he discusses the differences between Africans and AmerIndians, why one group was more easily enslaved than the other and their respective reactions to slavery. It is not quite clear why he feels it necessary to go into so much detail on this matter as it doesn’t really add to the focus of the book which is they “Abolition Sham”.

Nevertheless Jordan presents an account of the Abolition Movement and the factors leading to the Emancipation Act of 1833 which is credible and worthwhile contribution to the literature.

Reviewed by Sokari Ekine

Publishers: Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers, Dar es Salaam
DISTRIBUTORS: Africa Books Collective PRICE: £20.95 or $34.95

Jacques Depelchin's book, 'Silences in African History' was becoming the victim of a reviewer's silence. What you are going to read is but an initial reaction to reading this book of many parts, that reminded me of the lyrics 'coat of many colours that my mama sewed for me'. It is a very engaging book. Many readers may understand and sympathise with me, if I plead to having been very busy; leading to a pile up of must read books, journals and papers.

That's partly the reason why it took some time to get around to reviewing this book, but the main reason is that Jacques is a complex writer, who writes in the fast disappearing cross-disciplinary radical scholarship. This is from an era when intellectuals had the guts to call imperialism its real name, instead of the understated notion of 'globalisation' that is used these days.

Oppressors and exploiters were called their real names instead of the dubious notion of 'partners in development' that is foistered on us today. The book may be inaccessible to the faint hearted as it traverses history, philosophy, literature, social sciences, humanities, cultural studies, traditions, spirituality ,religion, economics, history of science and science of history, the historical method, the dialectical method. It is both about the methodology of history and the history of methodology.

In 10 chapters, written with economy of language but full of so much information that betrays the long period of gestation of the book, it is both a critique of received wisdom and contemporary practice not only about the history of Africa but the knowledge of and about Africa. While applauding the pioneering nationalist African historians of the postcolonial period for challenging colonialist constructs and exposing imperialism packaged as knowledge, Depelchin also confronts most scathingly the reversal of the nationalist gains in contemporary times, where the pro/reproduction of knowledge about Africa has again transferred back to the metropolis and predominantly non African scholars who call themselves Africanists. They are largely outside of Africa, in western and predominantly North American universities.

They are also cohabiting with an exponentially increasing number of African scholars from Africa. The contemporary African Diaspora of technicians of knowledge in these countries is beginning to dwarf that of any single African country, including Nigeria. For instance it will be interesting to compare the ratio of African professors per head within 100 kilometres of New York to those in a similar radius of Lagos, Pretoria, Nairobi or Dar Es Salaam. It is not just the big names of our intelligentsia that have emigrated, but several generations after them - and even now future generations are aspiring to jump ship.

Historical silences meet existential silences with the same outcome: transfer of power over our history to extra continental individuals and institutions. We have to wonder what will become of peoples whose cream of intelligentsia are removed from the social base of their knowledge production.

‘Silences’ is such a wonderful cocktail of gems around so many issues and concerns across so many disciplines that one is frustrated that Depelchin has written several books in one without completing any of them. It is the kind of book that a lazy student can struggle to read and get a general grasp of many issues and bamboozle his way around term essays.

But in the hands of an inquisitive and enthusiastic reader it is both humbling and inspiring. It makes one wonder how little one knows but also challenges one to want to read more. But the theme of ‘Silences’ runs through all the chapters and gives it a coherence that its vast spectrum could have denied it. It is about how what we know is shaped by the methodology we deploy, but this methodology itself is not neutral but shaped by class and ideological interests of those in control of our lives and societies.

Intellectuals fancy themselves as being 'objective', others even see themselves as being above society, but Depelchin demystifies these fantasies in the Cabralist sense of posing the class interests that inform scholarship and how intellectuals are themselves part of the struggles they are interpreting. As partisans they make choices that determine what they see and what they refuse to see. Sometimes what they did not write about is more important than what they have written.

This book deserves wider reading. It is part of the power dynamics of scholarship about Africa that to be read and be popular, African authors or authors on Africa have to be published outside Africa and mostly in Europe and the USA. The publishers of this book, Mkuki Na Nyota, based in Dar Es Salaam, once a centre for radical scholarship and emancipatorary politics of the nationalist-developmental state, are one of the more veteran core of African publishers determined against all odds to publish about Africa in Africa, creating a space for African intellectual, cultural and political ownership of Africa.

The Director, Walter Bugoya, comes from the nationalist and liberationist tradition that have refused to surrender. If we do not patronise our own institutions and entrepreneurs how do we expect them to develop and compete favourably with the rest of the world? Depelchin has chosen not to be silenced by writing this book and he has also refused to allow African publishing to be silenced by choosing to publish in Dar Es Salaam even though he could have taken the easier option of publishing from the US where he is now based. In life there are always alternatives.

The organic intellectual in Africa or of Africa has to make the choice. The choice is either to continue to perpetuate the silencing of Africa and Africans, by only researching and publishing what is acceptable to the powers that be in academia and the ruling establishments generally or making a choice in favour of liberation scholarship.

Depelchin lays it out starkly: the choice is yours, but there is a price for standing up to tell truth to power even among academics.

* Reviewed by Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

Excerpts from Migritude have aired on BBC radio, NPR, the National Radio Project, and Pacifica Radio, generating responses worldwide. Migritude was recently selected for the International Women Art Festival in Vienna in 2006. “Migritude explores global themes - heritage, war, freedom - by making intimate family treasures public. Similarly, it expresses universal experiences of colonised peoples through the journeys of my own diasporic Indian family. The sequence maps my personal transitions as a migrant: from survival to self-expression, invisibility to activism, model minority to radical artist," says Shailja. The show will be held at Carnivore's Simba Saloon on February 2 at 8pm. Shailja will also host Kenya's first ever Poetry Slam on Tuesday February 7 at Club Soundd, venue for Kwani? magazine popular Open Mic sessions.

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This full colour, densely illustrated publication is a celebration of popular urban music in Zimbabwe, traditional and new, by Joyce Jenye Makwenda. Tracing the evolution of township music from the 1930s, the author provides an overview of this always avant-garde urban musical phenomenon, which today finds its place in the mainstream culture. She considers the traditional, contemporary and western influences which have moulded the township music of today, typified by such variants as kwela, tsabatsaba, marabi and afro-jazz.