Instagag

f(x)=6y+3 walks into a bar.

"Got any sandwiches?" f(x)=6y+3 asks the barman.

"Sorry," he replies. "We don't cater for functions."

[Via Li]

Update

The Path to Enlightenment is
/usr/bin/enlightenment/

[Also via Li, who's clearly having a busy day.]

Burgeoning peasant underclass found

A couple of days ago I received an email from a friend with the following joke in it:
1. Go to www.argos.co.uk , the website of a retail catalogue store
2. Type ‘Chav’ into the search box.
3. See what you get.

What I got was a picture of gold chains and easy chairs.

And I wondered why this was funny.

Seems I’ve been away from Britain far too long. I mean, sure, there are cultural institutions of which I’ve never had much chance of being a part – the British National Party for one (thanks to the Brooke brothers for pointing out this fine googlebomb).

There’s a lively and long lived tradition of class cultural warfare in the UK. Although, for alliterative purposes, it’d be great if it were to be characterised as snobs vs yobs, it’s far more complex. ‘Chav’, apparently, refers to “the burgeoning peasant underclass”, and simultaneously to urban working class women and youth. There’s even a website devoted to hate-filled polemic, which I won’t link to. I've long thought one of the most subtle interventions into this debate has been Kathy Burke's Perry, of Kevin and Perry Go Large fame. Odds of her kind of subversion being replacing the Daily Mail's drivel? Fat chance.

Interesting to see this tension rear its head, with an interesting inversion, in the US. And interesting to see how it’s countered:

The folks at Comedy Central were annoyed when Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly kept referring to "The Daily Show" audience as "stoned slackers."

So they did a little research. And guess whose audience is more educated?

More here.

The Japanese all over Cheney's Sisters

Anirvan has been busy recently. Not only has he recently married the lovely Barnali, but he's been analysing trends in the second-hand book market. From his latest report, we learn:

"In 1981, first-time author Lynne Cheney wrote a novel called Sisters, a bodice-ripper about nineteenth century feminist pioneers in Wyoming, dealing in part with lesbian relationships. Two decades later, the historian and wife of Vice President Dick Cheney is very much in the public eye, and the hard-to-find Sisters is the #1 most sought after fiction title in America. With Cheney's opposition to the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment in the news, readers are looking to the novel to learn more about her views on gay/lesbian issues."

Over a cuppa with my favourite purveyor of second-hand books in Durban, and co-author of a fine book on the politics of cricket, and member of the reserve Bank of South Africa, and my boss, etc, etc, Vishnu Padayachee, I learned that the people to follow in the book market are the Japanese. The community of moneyed bibliophiles there set the trends that the US and Europeans follow, it would seem. So, Anirvan, time to start cracking on enquiries from them .jp domains.

So, farewell then

Graham over at Stet is going on hiatus, possibly permanently. Softly spoken, with blue pencil in hand, I shall miss the many fine gems he posted, and his valuable link to the SciFi world. Without him, for example, I wouldn't have known that the roll of honour at the Hugo awards, gonged at the 62nd World Science Fiction Convention in Boston, included:

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form — Gollum's Acceptance Speech at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards. Available here and well worth a look.

Live long and prosper, Graham.

Cow Talk

In an earlier post I polemicised against the Cow Parade. Almost inevitably, this is something that has already been debated at the Virtual Stoa. Having missed the boat on this so long ago, I thought I'd try to bring something especially juicy to the conversational table

Lucky for me, critic-at-large, articulate authority, and good friend Al Bing (online here soon) agrees that the cows are dung. In her own words:

We can't stop city tourism bureaux from coming up with marketing ploys, but is it too much to ask them to come up with an original idea, or at least not one that's an also-ran 50 times over? And please, don't call it art -- that's just an insult to every last artist in the city in question. Asking a talented local artist to fill in the details on a cow or some other municipal mascot is like giving Picasso a coloring book. As for artists who go along with this ill-conceived scheme: You've been pimped. You've only got yourselves to blame when your viewing public looks at your future efforts to win their attention with a skeptical eye, wondering if there is any inspiration in your work beyond prurient interest.

Let's call these gimmicks what they are: Uninspired photo-op props for tourists that lack artistic merit and have little or no relevance to the artistic and cultural life of a community. Tourists can see similar mascots in cities around the world, so they fail as a tourist attraction as well as a work of art. Tax revenues would be much more profitably directed to local artists and non-profit cultural organizations that celebrate original thinking and cultural traditions, and offer lasting inspiration to locals and tourists alike. And if these mascots are corporate-sponsored, they're little more than corporate logos in a cow costume. Public space should be reserved for the public interest, and public art that actually interests the public.

What a brilliant idea, oh, wait...

Yet again, Robert Mugabe's regime defies all attempts to find anything redeeming about it.

Systemic land reform, including expropriation without compensation for the colonial farmers who've made millions from some of the most fertile land south of the Sahara - that's a fine idea. But only as long as the land goes to the poor, that there are adequate agroecological training, support and extension services, and the displaced farm labourers from surrounding countries are given a good deal in the transition.

Has any of this, other than the expropriation happened? Has it bollocks. Well, okay, let's be fair. Chances are that those who have received land are better off than when they were landless. I know of some families who are in a better position. I know of many who are worse off. And, if we look at the dynamics, it seems as if the peasants who were initially and loudly given the land are now being kicked off it. IOL has a story about Zimbabwean farm evictions which fits a much broader pattern. Industrial agriculture, and commercial agricultural capital, is getting far more support from the state than peasant farmers. And so now:

Hundreds of black peasant farmers were this week forcibly evicted from two formerly white-owned farms that they occupied during the 2000 land invasions, witnesses, civic groups and police said on Friday.

A witness said he saw scores of huts on fire after riot police had ordered all farmers without official permits to settle on the properties to vacate.

Police confirmed they were involved in the exercise to remove the farmers "who had imposed themselves", on the farms situated about 50km north of the capital.

"Yes, we moved in to remove them and some of the houses were burnt in the process," police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said in an interview.

'We moved in to remove them and some of the houses were burnt in the process'
He said the farms were for ranching and not suitable for crop growing, yet all of the farmers who had settled on them had planted the land to maize and other food crops.

"Hundreds of new farmers and their families are stranded at Little England and Inkomo Farms after police torched and destroyed their huts following a government order to evict them," said a coalition of human and civic rights organisations, Crisis in Zimbabwe.

Last week, Mugabe announced that the state was going to seize half of all mining resources in Zimbabwe. What're the chances that mining communities are going to profit from any of this? Compare this to the odds of platinum revenues keeping Cde Mugabe in jet fuel for the next year.

[Via Peter]

Like jokes you tell in your dreams

William Kentridge is, in an opinion I've held long enough and against enough buffeting to feel reasonably confident about, one of South Africa's finest living artists. Yesterday, he attended a rare public showing of his animated work in Durban - he's Johannesburg based, and his art is infused with the sordid patina of that town - and explained how he works. Apparently, there's a big piece of paper on which he has a drawing at one end of his studio. His camera is half a room away. He takes two shots, goes back to the paper, erases the charcoal (imperfectly, always) and redraws. And then walks back to the camera. Takes two more exposures. Goes back. Etc. The ideas for his animations come while he travels between canvas and memory. And he's suspicious of "big ideas... I've always found Big Ideas to be like the jokes you tell in your dreams. They're tremendously funny to you and everyone else, but when you wake up, they're always much more feeble than you'd originally thought."

Every bit as feeble as you originally thought, and I mention this because they were outside the Kentridge exhibition yesterday, are the rebarbative large painted cows from CowParade that have colonised so many urban spaces over the past year. Durban has a bunch of them, as do a frighteningly large number of other towns I've been in this year (San Francisco has hearts, which are little better). These irritating things are the McDonald's of public art: they're bloated, bloating, lacking in substance, overpriced, an eyesore, and their opportunity cost is art that would be better for everyone, and likely raise more cash for art and 'good causes'. If anyone knows of a campaign to disfigure these abominations, do let me know, and put me down for five quid.

The Ironies of Intellectual Property

What's not to like about Anant Singh? Pop on over to Indymedia South Africa, where I rant against intellectual property laws in general, and Singh in particular.

Unions find spine

Just got back from a splendid, militant march in support of public service workers today here in Durban. Mixed race, and with some fairly direct indictments of the ANC from the unions. The usual limp petition was backed up by a far more beligerent promise to strike on Monday and Tuesday next week if demands are not met. Seems like the union movement has found its spine again.

Pictures here, in my first forray into the South African Indymedia world.

Just reading the Mail and Guardian's website, it turns out it was the largest strike in South African history! 700,000 public service workers. A full report from the Mail and Guardian's newswire here. But since they'll probably charge to look at it in a week, here are the good bits:

More than 700 000 public service workers were on strike on Thursday, making this the biggest strike in South Africa's history, the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu) claimed.

"This includes 320 000 educators," Sadtu's secretariat said in a statement on Thursday.

About 200 000 of those striking took part in the 24 marches held across the country, Sadtu said.

"Sadtu hails South Africa's public-service workers in general -- and the educators in particular -- who today in their hundreds of thousands came out on strike to demonstrate to the employer the depth of feeling and their resolve to pursue this just dispute."

Although the teachers' union is committed to negotiations, Sadtu nevertheless said the strike will not be a "one-day affair".

But it added: "We are committed to finding a settlement to the current dispute. We believe that we are so close. We cannot accept a two-year freeze on real wages for 2005 and 2006 -- but on the other areas of difference we believe that we can find each other."

This is so important - it signals an important fissure in the alliance between the ANC, the South African Communist Party (who were vocally in support of the strike) and the Confederation of South African Trade Unions. The ANC will likely surprise us with a clever concession, a smart counter-strike and several smooth words on telly (not that SABC, the state broadcaster, covered any of this... the cameras were told not to turn up). But for today, just for today but not just for today, we won.

What I meant to say was... #1

This is the first is what's likely to be a fairly frequent series of postings, in which it turns out that I was hopelessly wrong, and repent accordingly.

So, remember my initial reaction to Yesterday, the first Zulu language feature film? Well, although I stand by my initial largely vacuuous assessment, I have been made substantially wiser through conversation with my new and excellent comrade Mark Hunter.

The film has a bunch of problems with it which I was too awestruck to think through. First, it portrays Yesterday as passive in her contracting HIV- she gets it from her husband, a mineworker. This mechanism of transmission, while it exists, isn't the main way that rural women get HIV - they're usually more sexually active, and less scandalised at the thought of having sex with someone who's not their husband, than the film lets on. In other words, Yesterday's innocence is a projection not of the reality of most rural women's lives but, at best, one might say of a minority. If one were more unkind, one would say that it was an appropriation, a projection of a fantasy of black rural women. And if one wanted to follow this through, one could find evidence - the fact that the taxis are empty, and wait for you, is wildly unrealistic. Yesterday can't carry a bucket on her head - not a skill she's likely to forget, even if she doesn't have the strength to do it.

So perhaps the film's a fable. But if it is, then that's something that won't be clear in its representation as a black South African film. When Whoopi Goldberg screens a narrative of People living with AIDS her circle of friends, will it be the complex social commentary of the daytime Zulu soaps that they see, or a fabular bambified version, with the hard questions smoothed away by fine photography, that they will believe represents something of the way it is in rural South Africa today?

Although I had the conversation in which Mark persuaded me of the merits of this case a little while ago, I'm only writing it up now because
1. the internet is lousy here and
2. I've developed a profound distaste for the producer of the movie, Anant Singh. More of that in a couple of posts' time.

Update
Well whaddya know. Roger Ebert has decided that "An Entire Continent Speaks for Itself". Bloody Anant Singh.

Raptabate

Busy bees blog badly. I'm waiting for a weekend, or an evening, or morning, or just any time of day where I can sit down and think about what the hell I've been up to over the past few weeks. Need to make time for proper blogging too. In the meantime, here's a small digital dividend from a rather hectic schedule- I've been inducted into a fine new circle of South African iconoclasts at Red. Among the joys to be found there is a rap duel between Anarchists and Trotskyists, a Raptabate, originally, I think, from New York IMC.

Unfortunately, trots can't rap.

MC Trot, for example, fires off this stumbling couple of couplets -

We got weapon of theory, which guides our action
You’ll bow down to us us like J. Atkins did to C. Jackson
And that’s the final word, I do suppose
Now stop being crusty and put on decent clothes.

to which MC Makhno responds with the altogether much more enjoyable

alright, it’s time to put the smack down on you Spartacist suckas....
You try and sweat us with your sectarian ways
NEFAC’s analysis will leave you in a daze
Talkin’ that shit about central committee
We’re Dead Prez while you’re more like P. Diddy
If you try and front on the Red and Black
You’ll find your vanguardist asses under attack
No war between nations,No peace between classes
While we stick our collective foot up your asses
NEFAC’s the bomb, why can’t you suckas see
That we’re taking the shit to the bourgeoisie?

Visit the Raptabate and decide for yoursen. [Via Ahmed]

All Yesterday's Children

Just back from seeing a fantastic film. "Yesterday", the first, long overdue, movie to be filmed in Zulu, tells the story of Yesterday, "named like that by my father. He said things were better yesterday than today", a woman diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. It's a spectacular fable, one that never relents in the physical portrayal of the disease, but pays almost-even-handed attention to the social context of AIDS in rural KwaZulu-Natal. In moments, notably the discussion in which village women debate whether to let their children play near Yesterday's deeply ill HIV+ husband, are moments of triumph, even as they show the triumph of ignorance over compassion. And Lihle Mvelase's portrayal of Yesterday's daughter deserves far wider recognition than she's ever likely to receive. Go see.

If children are the future

why are so many men with guns shooting at them? Right now, we've the high profile hostage drama in Russia.

And then we have a quieted South African story. On Monday, the police shot at 4,000 mainly school-aged children from Bloemfontein, Welkom, Botshabelo and Qwaqwa in Intabezwe, in the Free State. The students were protesting against underdevelopment.

Why no outcry? If this had happened under apartheid, there’d be pickets outside South African embassies, t-shirts and the paraphernalia of protest. But under the ANC, well, the certainties of African misrule are able to lull the outside world into ignoring this outrage.

Imagine what your reaction would have been reading this article, from today's Cape Times, fifteen years ago:

A 17-year-old boy, one of about 24 school children wounded by police during a clash in Harrismith on Monday, has died alone and afraid in a hospital bed.

Teboho Mkhonza was one of two protesters police had said initially were lightly wounded by shotgun fire - one in the hand and the other in the leg.

Later police claimed Teboho had been wounded in the chest by a rubber bullet.

But when reporters visited his heartbroken family on Tuesday, the clothing he had been wearing told a different story: it was riddled with birdshot holes and soaked with blood.

Teboho, a Grade 10 pupil who lived with his adoptive mother, Violet Ngcongwane, in Intabazwe township on the outskirts of this Free State town, had allegedly also been kicked as he was being put in a police van after being shot.

His adoptive sister, Brenda Tsotsetsi, 23, tears streaming down her face, said Teboho had become involved in a protest organised by a body known as The Concerned Group about the poor services provided by the municipality.

"I went to find out what was happening and I saw Tebo there. I begged him not to stand in front as the police were there and I was afraid," Tsotsetsi said.

"One of the members of The Concerned Group claimed they had been waiting peacefully to speak to mayor Eddie Mzangwa 'when the police just started firing at us'.

"I went home and didn't see Tebo after the shooting. Later a boy told me the police had taken Tebo in a van. I went to look for him and passed some police and asked them about my brother, but no one helped."

Eventually Tsotsetsi found Teboho in one of the wards.

"His bed was red with blood, his skin was pale and he was asking for his mother."

Teboho had been wounded "all over" with birdshot and was bleeding severely.
The boy's condition deteriorated and she helped him into an ambulance after a decision was taken to transfer him to Manapo Hospital in nearby QwaQwa.

"He cried and told me the police had kicked him in the ribs when they had put him in their van. He was in a lot of pain."

Teboho's family called Manapo Hospital early on Tuesday and were told that the teenager had slipped into a coma. They were asked to go to the hospital.

"We got there and a cousin came to speak to us. He told us Tebo had passed away," Tsotsetsi said, speaking as her devastated mother threw the dead teenager's bloodsoaked clothes onto the lounge floor.

"This is what we have left of him," the older woman said.

On Monday, Free State police spokesperson Paul Kubheka said police had opened fire after about 4 500 youths forced their way onto the N3 highway. Two youths were hit with shotgun pellets - one in the leg and another in the hand.

But on Tuesday Free State police spokesperson Annelie Wrensch said police had used rubber bullets to disperse the crowd and police believed Teboho had died of internal bleeding.

Members of the Independent Complaints Directorate were on their way to the town to investigate, a spokesperson, Steve Mabona, said.

[Via Salim]