‘our Reality Is Illusion’, 2011

Ensemble de coiffe d'initiés Ekonda, (début 20ème) ethnie Sengele, RDC, exposition “Élévations” coll. Bruno Decharme et Antoine de Galbert.

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Religion and its reflective properties

A re-working of the eponymous T.Rex glam rock anthem into an isiXhosa protest song. The track was rearranged in collaboration with composer and choir leader Bongani Magatyana, and is here presented in speaker cabinets visually quoting the Intonarumori noise-generating machines of the...

“I speak on behalf of the millions of human beings who are in ghettos because they have black skin or because they come from different cultures, and who enjoy status barely above that of an animal.

I suffer on behalf of the Indians who have been massacred, crushed, humiliated, and confined for centuries on reservations in order to prevent them from aspiring to any rights and to prevent them from enriching their culture through joyful union with other cultures, including the culture of the invader.

I cry out on behalf of those thrown out of work by a system that is structurally unjust and periodically unhinged, who are reduced to only glimpsing in life a reflection of the lives of the affluent.

I speak on behalf of women the world over, who suffer from a male-imposed system of exploitation. As far as we’re concerned, we are ready to welcome suggestions from anywhere in the world that enable us to achieve the total fulfillment of Burkinabè women. In exchange, we offer to share with all countries the positive experience we have begun, with women now present at every level of the state apparatus and social life in Burkina Faso. Women who struggle and who proclaim with us that the slave who is not able to take charge of his own revolt deserves no pity for his lot. This harbors illusions in the dubious generosity of a master pretending to set him free. Freedom can be won only through struggle, and we call on all our sisters of all races to go on the offensive to conquer their rights.

I speak on behalf of the mothers of our destitute countries who watch their children die of malaria or diarrhea, unaware that simple means to save them exist. The science of the multinationals does not offer them these means, preferring to invest in cosmetics laboratories and plastic surgery to satisfy the whims of a few women or men whose smart appearance is threatened by too many calories in their overly rich meals, the regularity of which would make you—or rather us from the Sahel—dizzy. We have decided to adopt and popularize these simple means, recommended by the WHO and UNICEF.

I speak, too, on behalf of the child. The child of a poor man who is hungry and who furtively eyes the accumulation of abundance in a store for the rich. The store protected by  a thick plate glass window. The window protected by impregnable shutters. The shutters guarded by a policeman with a helmet, gloves, and armed with a billy club. The policeman posted there by the father of another child, who will come and serve himself—or rather be served—because he offers guarantees of representing the capitalistic norms of the system, which he corresponds to.

I speak on behalf of artists—poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, and actors—good men who see their art prostituted by the alchemy of show-business tricks.

I cry out on behalf of journalists who are either reduced to silence or to lies in order to not suffer the harsh low of unemployment.

I protest on behalf of the athletes of the entire world whose muscles are exploited by political systems or by modern-day slave merchants.

My country is brimming with all the misfortunes of the people of the world, a painful synthesis of all humanity’s suffering, but also—and above all—of the promise of our struggles. This is why my heart beats naturally on behalf of the sick who anxiously scan the horizons of science monopolized by arms merchants.

My thoughts go out to all of those affected by the destruction of nature and to those 30 million who will die as they do each year, struck down by the formidable weapon of hunger. As a military man, I cannot forget the soldier who is obeying orders, his finger on the trigger, who knows the bullet being fired bears only the message of death.

Finally, it fills me with indignation to think of the Palestinians, who an inhuman humanity has decided to replace with another people—a people martyred only yesterday. I think of this valiant Palestinian people, that is, these shattered families wandering across the world in search of refuge. Courageous, determined, stoic, and untiring, the Palestinians remind every human conscience of the moral necessity and obligation to respect the rights of a people. Along with their Jewish brothers, they are anti-Zionist.

At the side of my brother soldiers of Iran and Iraq who are dying in a fratricidal and suicidal war, I wish also to feel close to my comrades of Nicaragua, whose harbors are mined, whose villages are bombed, and who, despite everything, face their destiny with courage and clear-headedness. I suffer with all those in Latin America who suffer from the stranglehold of imperialism.

I wish to stand on the side of the Afghan and Irish peoples, on the side of the peoples of Granada and East Timor, each of whom is searching for happiness based on their dignity and the laws of their own culture.

I protest on behalf of all those who vainly seek a forum in this world where they can make their voice heard and have it genuinely taken into consideration. Many have preceded me at this podium and others will follow. But only a few will make the decisions. Yet we are officially presented as being equals. Well, I am acting as spokesperson for all those who vainly see a forum in this world where they can make themselves heard. So yes, I wish to speak on behalf of all “those left behind,” for “I am human, nothing that is human is alien to me.”

Our revolution in Burkina Faso embraces misfortunes of all peoples. It also draws inspiration from all of man’s experiences since his first breath. We wish to be the heirs of all the world’s revolutions and all the liberation struggles of the peoples of the Third World. Our eyes are on the profound upheavals that have transformed the world. We draw the lessons of the American Revolution, the lessons of its victory over colonial domination and the consequences of that victory. We adopt as our own the affirmation of the Doctrine whereby Europeans must not intervene in American affairs, nor Americans in European affairs. Just as Monroe proclaimed “America to the Americans” in 1823, we echo this today by saying “Africa to the Africans,” “Burkina to the Burkinabè.”“

| Thomas Sankara

[excerpt from his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on October 4th, 1984]

The Powers of Mourning

"I have tried to suggest that precarity is the condition against which several new social movements struggle. Such movements do not seek to overcome interdependency or even vulnerability as they struggle against precarity; rather, they seek to produce the conditions under which vulnerability and interdependency become liveable. This is a politics in which performative action takes bodily and plural form, drawing critical attention to the conditions of bodily survival, persistence and flourishing within the framework of radical democracy. If I am to lead a good life, it will be a life lived with others, a live that is no life without those others. I will not lose this I that I am; whoever I am will be transformed by my connections with others, since my dependency on another, and my dependability, are necessary in order to live and to live well. Our shared exposure to precarity is but one ground of our potential equality and our reciprocal obligations to produce together conditions of liveable life. In avowing the need we have for one another, we avow as well basic principles that inform the social, democratic conditions of what we might still call ‘the good life’. These are critical conditions of democratic life in the sense that they are part of an ongoing crisis, but also because they belong to a form of thinking and acting that responds to the urgencies of our time."

"Can one lead a good life in a bad life?" Judith Butler, Adorno Prize Lecture.

Space and Modernism in Ghanaian Architecture

Space and Modernism in Ghanaian Architecture

Commissioned work by South African freelance photographer Alexia Webster. This particular series is spellbounding in the way that it captures public spaces in Urban Africa.  The series provokes the viewer to reinterpret architectural structures and you feel as though you are caught in between the present, past and future where the objects in the photos appear to be both geometrically ordered and…

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21st Century Sangoma

Dineo’s small arms are heavy with a multitude of red and white beads wound tightly around her wrists. Above them, ispandla made of goat’s hide. She pulls a Jenni Button jacket over her petite frame and heads to the Golf Gti parked in the basement of the Upper East Side Hotel. Onlookers, passer-bys and acquaintances who share the odd polite conversation would never know that she is a Sangoma.There’s a reddish-brown bible on her bookshelf. It props up a year’s worth ofGlamour and Elle magazines; and in the corner of her studio apartment, next to the sliding door that looks out onto the mountain, a sacred shrine on an ox-blood red mat with candles, imphepho (incense), and a spear. There is a perceived clash here. Her apartment holds all the accepted hallmarks of an upwardly mobile modern woman. The greys, the matt blacks and the shiny silvers of post-modernism juxtapose jarringly with the bright crimson spirituality.

She speaks of being a sangoma nonchalantly, absent of the usual over-gesturing and pantomiming that usually accompanies conversations of this nature. She’s more comfortable with her calling now; shedding the long sleeves, high necks and head scarves she wore to hide the chains, beads and shells that signified her reluctant mission. A calling conveyed to her through a series of recurring dreams. In one dream, Dineo would see herself speaking to a woman in an indeterminable language. The woman would respond in her mother-tongue, telling her she has to thwasa. Breezing through my barrage of ignorant questions, she pauses often to explain to me the duality of being a 21st century sangoma. To her, there is no clash, and becoming a sangoma required little adjustment. She attributes this to having a very tolerant dlozi (ancestor).

“Some people’s ancestors are very harsh and strict. They aren’t allowed to wear shoes, they have to look and dress a certain way. Some aren’t allowed to work or go to school. They have to devote themselves fully to healing others. For some, the dlozi must evidence itself physically. If your ancestor walked with a limp, you will begin to walk with a limp. Your voice will change. Your tastes and preferences are altered. One girl who was at training with me, would be left in excrutiating pain when her ancestors entered or left her body. So painful that she would faint. My life however, hasn’t changed much. Every morning and evening, I burn imphepho to cleanse my spirit and my surroundings. I’m not allowed to eat pork and certain parts of an animal, and I have to introduce my partner to my dlozi to bless the union. On the face of it though, I am still very much the same person.”

A beaded white chain hangs off her neck, where a rosary used to be.

Somewhere in the bible, someone warns against the worshipping of false-idols, a prophet warns against false messiahs; but somewhere else in the sacred, ancient texts a holy spirit is sent to live amongst man. A burning bush conveys a command. An angel visits a virgin and tells her she is carrying the child of God. Refiloe Lerumo, a 23 year old business woman and sangoma, claims her ancestors are angels. To her they are medium used by god to convey messages and healing. She is another link in the chain, bringing the ancestral and godly gifts to the masses.

It is difficult to not be cynical of something that superficially, seems so ethereal. Religion and spirituality are often viewed by today’s thinkers as child-like, unrefined solaces for people who lack the ability to deal with the everyday oddities of life. Science is the new God. Science makes sense.

Weekly, The Daily Sun “investigates” laughable tales of withcraft. “Man buys lightning bolt to kill ex-wife”. Monthly, chilling stories about muti murders and suspected witches being burnt or bludgeoned to death make their way to News24. Daily, A8 sized flyers are forced into my hand. Generally Powerpoint productions that fade from blue to a deep purple as they outline, in fractured English, a myriad of ills and spiritual ailments that Gogo so-and-so claims to be able to cure. “Do you have low sex man power? Do you need amagundwane (mice) for riches? Do want to run away court case? Do you want to reduce vagina?” Unfortunately, there is no quality control in the spirit world. No checks and balances exist to distinguish charlatans from bonafide Sangomas, and get-rich-quick scammers who prey on desperation and, sometimes, ignorance. How then do you verify cause and claim in a space where a headache is most likely going to be seen as curse or a spiritual ailment, rather than a physical one?

According to South Africalogue, over 200 000 Sangoma’s practice in South Africa, and over 80% of the population use their services. With consultations ranging anywhere from R50 to R5000, being a Sangoma is serious business. No real barriers to entry + no regulations + no ceiling on fees or medicine prices = opportunistic swindler’s wet dream.

Then there’s the more baleful side. Muti-murders and witchcraft. Potions that rob people of free-will. Suspected witches being bludgeoned and burnt to death. The genitalia of young girls are used to concoct fertility medicine. Wise men are decapitated, and their brains brewed to make potions for increased intelligence. Human blood is consumed to strengthen health, and extend life spans. This is the side that no-one wants to talk about. Veiled in secrecy, the community of traditional healers is happy to leave the sinister aspects to speculation. Refiloe confirms that the use of powers and trade of human body parts is real. “Some people use their gifts to cause to cause harm, but it always catches up with them eventually. The ancestors cannot be abused.” Still, the practise continues, and with no open dialogue, very little can be done to eradicate it.

The Traditional Healers Organisation aims to provide some legitimacy. They train and certify traditional healers, but their attempts to lend them any credibility is undermined by their own administrational failures. None of the sangomas I spoke to were registered with them, and all emails and phonecalls directed to the organisation went unanswered. Suffice to say then, their fancy website aside, they will not be the new age bridge between traditional healers and western civilisation.

Refiloe is what I’ve termed a Cyber Sangoma. On her website, she offers online readings and consultations. Another opportunity to be sceptical. She says reason behind the website is to provide clients with convenient access to her, but however noble its intentions are, one can’t help but sartorially picture her dumping her bag of bones and die onto the keypad of a Mac computer. Without physical contact, how is Refiloe able to connect to some else’s ancestors? Are the ancestors at peace with their gifts being used in this somewhat impersonal manner? Is my inability to grasp this just another indication of my ignorance, and complete lack understanding?

Where white is the colour of peace and tolerance, harsh shades of red are the colours of being a Sangoma. Forceful and unrepentant, it burns brazen with the colour of passion and heat, defiant of whether or not it is legitimised in an increasingly critical world. But there is a lot of grey scattered amongst the red. Questions that cannot be answered. Conversations that will not be held. The murkiness of the unknown, the unquantifiable. And while there is no method to prove the unproveable, the industry continues to grow, raking in millions of Rands a year. This faith-based contract is built on cultural legacy and funded by today’s money; but despite its popularity and profitability, it is still largely unrecognised by both the lawmakers and practitioners of modern medicine.

We’re reluctant to openly embrace it, and yet we’ve included alternative eastern practise as part of modern life. Yoga in the morning, acupuncture for healing; what is it about sangomas that discomforts us so? Is it because it represents a part of us that was meant to have died a long time ago? A backward notion held by the natives who refuse to be integrated into a globalised South Africa? Or is our reluctance to recognise it actually a fear? A phobia brought about our uneasy relationship with the great “unknown”. Do we need Madonna to do for it what she did for Kabbalah? Maybe get Mandoza to jump up and down on Noeleen’s couch before we pay it any heed? Perhaps what we need to be doing, is accepting Traditional Healers as a relevant part of South Africa, and not a relic of the dark days. Because one thing is certain, our denialiasm will not deter its prevalence

**This article was written by Lindokuhle Nkosi and initially published on Mahala. (http://www.mahala.co.za/)

Paul Strand, Anna Attinga Frafra, Accra, Ghana, 1964

The Snake dress Iris Van Herpen, Voltage, 2013, japanese microfiber polyester and laser cut mat polyester-film, credits: M. Zoeter x Iris van Herpen