Ruinas da Se' Catedral de Mbanza Kongo
O Museu do Zaire, que se encontra fechado ao público há mais de 10 anos, vai reabrir as suas portas em Janeiro de 2007, depois de um processo de reabilitação financiado pelo governo local. A informação foi prestada em Luanda, pelo director do Instituto Nacional do Património Cultural, Xavier Yambo.
A reinauguração desta instituição cultural acontece no âmbito da jornada comemorativa do 08 de Janeiro, data em que se celebra o Dia da Cultura Nacional e cujo acto central tem lugar na província do Zaire. Segundo Xavier Yambo, o museu vai numa primeira fase albergar uma exposição itinerante sobre a escravatura já, que se registam actualmente algumas dificuldades em reunir o seu acervo permanente.
"Muitas das peças que fazem parte do acervo do museu estão dispersas e em mãos de pessoas estranhas e reside aí a grande dificuldade da direcção da Cultura em abri-lo com uma exposição permanente"- reforçou o entrevistado. Adiantou que, em colaboração com o governo do Zaire, estão a ser envidados esforços no sentido de se recuperar as peças roubadas no período do conflito armado, mais precisamente na década de 1990.
"Depois de algum trabalho de investigação conseguiu-se localizar o paradeiro de algumas peças, tendo-se recuperado, nesta altura, algumas e as demais podem regressar brevemente a posse do Governo se as pessoas que as têm as devolverem. Estas pessoas apossaram-se das peças de forma ilegal"- frisou. Quanto a salas de exposição, o responsável informou estarem à disposição cinco salas.
Museu dos reis do Kongo, denominação que é dada ao Museu do Zaire, instituição criada e inaugurada em 1982 tem objectivos educativos, formativos informativos, tendo em vista trabalhos de investigação, recolha, inventariação, classificação, preservação e divulgação do património cultural do antigo Reino do Kongo (que se localizava na zona central do continente africano).
Por altura da sua abertura, a instituição albergava objectos pessoais dos soberanos do Kongo, documentação do reino do Kongo e outras peças de valor incalculável de um dos maiores reinos que surgiu entre os séculos XIII e XV.
Fonte: Angop
Sunday, 31 December 2006
BOAS NOVAS PARA 2007!
MUSEU DO ZAIRE SERA'
REINAUGURADO EM JANEIRO
Saturday, 30 December 2006
SADDAM EXECUTED...
UM FIM MERECIDO OU O FIM DE UMA LONGA FARSA?Talvez ambas as coisas, ou... nem uma coisa nem outra! A noticia acaba de ser confirmada e comeca neste momento a ser divulgada por todas as networks internacionais.
Confesso que ha muito venho sofrendo de "Iraq and Saddam fatigue"... pelo que ja poucas, ou nenhumas, emocoes me movem em face desta noticia que me surge assim abruptamente, quando ainda ontem, perante a reiteracao do governo Britanico, face a sentenca, da sua oposicao a pena de morte, ainda alimentei a esperanca de que talvez a vida do 'Homem de Bagdad' fosse poupada... Entretanto, quer o governo Britanico, quer a administracao Americana dizem que nada teem a ver com a sentenca, nem com a sua execucao... que tudo e' do "livre arbitrio" dos Iraquianos... e entre estes ha varios sectores que predizem um aumento da instabilidade e violencia no pais e na regiao... Resta-me apenas o desejo possivel: que Saddam encontre na morte a paz que nao teve, nem promoveu, em vida!
Friday, 29 December 2006
GRANDE PREMIO DE ESCULTURA ENSARTE 2006
"NOVA ESCULTURA ANGOLANA" DE MAYEMBE (SOYO) (FOTOS DE JOSÉ ALÇADA)
Segundo o juri do premio, "A escultura do artista João Domingos Mabuaka "Mayembe", elaborada em talha sobre madeira, vale pela sincronização de um imaginável movimento giratório em espiral, cuja sustentação física do corpo volúmico levou o artista ao domínio do exercício de cálculo, apontando caminhos para uma estatueta moderna. A obra, entitulada "Vuata N`Kampa ku Makaya Katekela", representa uma figura humana que reflecte o mundo actual girando em torno do vento da globalização, sendo necessário conservar e preservar as identidades culturais de cada povo."
ADENDA:O Mayembe, natural do Soyo, que no ano passado ganhou o 1º Prémio da ENSA, esculpe sempre em madeira Agora prepara uma exposição individual para Julho, para a qual está a fazer peças em madeira e bronze. Precisou de dinheiro, por causa da empresa que lhe está a fazer as partes em bronze e veio vender-me uma escultura mediante a promessa de a emprestar para a exposição. É em pau preto e conforme o ângulo em que se olha vê-se um corpo feminino, um corpo masculino, uma mulher a parir, etc. A base são folhas de Welwitschia Mirabilis, que fazem as respectivas pernas e sexos. O titulo - O Sonho da Welwitschia. (José Alçada, a.k.a. “N'kissi Yangue”, 04.02.07).
(Ver Slideshow Aqui)
Thursday, 28 December 2006
OXALA CRESCAM PITANGAS
Bom, este documentario ja' nao e' propriamente noticia, mas acredito que tal como eu, que apenas hoje recebi informacao sobre ele do meu amigo Luis Silva, havera mais quem ainda nao tenha sabido dele. Portanto, aqui vai...
“Oxalá Cresçam Pitangas” revela a realidade por detrás da permanente fantasia luandense. 10 vozes vão expondo com ritmo, dignidade e coerência, um espaço ocupado por várias gerações e dinâmicas sociais complexas. Luanda ainda não havia sido filmada sob esta perspectiva realista e humana: conflitos entre a população e a esfera política, a proliferação do sector informal, as desilusões e as aspirações, o questionamento do espaço urbano e do futuro de uma Angola em acelerado crescimento.
Os 10 personagens falam também das suas vidas, do seu modo de agir sobre a realidade, da música que não pode parar. Aparece uma Luanda onde a imaginação e a felicidade defrontam as manobras de sobrevivência. Onde a Língua é mexida para se adaptar às necessidades criativas de tantas pessoas e tantas linguagens.
Este é um filme sobre uma Luanda que recria constantemente a sua identidade: os dias, as noites e todos os ritmos da cidade que não sabe adormecer. Luanda mistura fenómenos urbanos e rurais. O sector informal, sendo a grande alternativa, agita o país e dinamiza as relações. Os jovens colocam diariamente a imaginação ao serviço da sobrevivência e da felicidade, inventando formas de viver e sobreviver – por necessidade e pelo gosto de se sentirem vivos.
Palco de arte, festa e alegria, em Luanda a tristeza e a felicidade convivem com a euforia. Os casamentos são sempre festivos; os funerais nem sempre são tristes. Há um substracto intencional de felicidade nas acções e intenções dos luandenses.
A linguagem falada traduz um modo de pensar mais local e típico. Num português carregado de calões e de adaptações, reflecte-se o modo interventivo de as pessoas agirem sobre a realidade. Nos gestos e nas falas, aparece, pois, a fantasia que acompanha os ritmos do quotidiano. Acidade vive, noite e dia, com música nos lares, nas viaturas, nas ruas. É possível ter uma vivência rítmica do quotidiano pela importância que se dá à música e ao convívio. Com uma visão que acentua a esperança no futuro, Oxalá Cresçam Pitangas é uma viagem pelas pessoas, pelas ruas e pelas histórias de Luanda.
Dividindo a produção e a realização do projecto, Ondjaki e Kiluanje Liberdade, nascidos depois da independência de Angola, decidiram juntar preocupações sociais a uma visão estética própria.
Se o filme nasce do desejo de questionar Luanda na sua modernidade, há uma busca ainda mais profunda: o que desejam os luandenses para o seu futuro? Que cidade sonham habitar e construir? Como incorporam as adversidades sem perder o sorriso?
Partindo das ocupações e das histórias dos personagens, falando do campo prático, ocupacional, mas passando por memórias e experiências, os realizadores mergulharam nas ambiências positivas de Luanda, deixando a fantasia sobrepôr-se ao sofrimento, sem fugir às verdades sociais. Filmando Luanda a partir de dentro: abordando a vivência, o olhar e a voz daqueles que a frequentam.
Para inventar uma conversa sobre a cidade. Para que novas vozes estéticas, angolanas, possam reinventar e modificar Luanda, Angola.
Intervalo com jindungu kabombo
(intervalo o tempo com palavras IN CULTAS génese de saber
OCULTO, cultivo amor (com/sem) culpa formal, forma-se a
alma, desespiritualiza-se a material, oxalá cresçam pitangas no papel!)
Antonio Domingos Goncalves
Encontre mais detalhes aqui.
“Oxalá Cresçam Pitangas” revela a realidade por detrás da permanente fantasia luandense. 10 vozes vão expondo com ritmo, dignidade e coerência, um espaço ocupado por várias gerações e dinâmicas sociais complexas. Luanda ainda não havia sido filmada sob esta perspectiva realista e humana: conflitos entre a população e a esfera política, a proliferação do sector informal, as desilusões e as aspirações, o questionamento do espaço urbano e do futuro de uma Angola em acelerado crescimento.Os 10 personagens falam também das suas vidas, do seu modo de agir sobre a realidade, da música que não pode parar. Aparece uma Luanda onde a imaginação e a felicidade defrontam as manobras de sobrevivência. Onde a Língua é mexida para se adaptar às necessidades criativas de tantas pessoas e tantas linguagens.
Este é um filme sobre uma Luanda que recria constantemente a sua identidade: os dias, as noites e todos os ritmos da cidade que não sabe adormecer. Luanda mistura fenómenos urbanos e rurais. O sector informal, sendo a grande alternativa, agita o país e dinamiza as relações. Os jovens colocam diariamente a imaginação ao serviço da sobrevivência e da felicidade, inventando formas de viver e sobreviver – por necessidade e pelo gosto de se sentirem vivos.
Palco de arte, festa e alegria, em Luanda a tristeza e a felicidade convivem com a euforia. Os casamentos são sempre festivos; os funerais nem sempre são tristes. Há um substracto intencional de felicidade nas acções e intenções dos luandenses.
A linguagem falada traduz um modo de pensar mais local e típico. Num português carregado de calões e de adaptações, reflecte-se o modo interventivo de as pessoas agirem sobre a realidade. Nos gestos e nas falas, aparece, pois, a fantasia que acompanha os ritmos do quotidiano. Acidade vive, noite e dia, com música nos lares, nas viaturas, nas ruas. É possível ter uma vivência rítmica do quotidiano pela importância que se dá à música e ao convívio. Com uma visão que acentua a esperança no futuro, Oxalá Cresçam Pitangas é uma viagem pelas pessoas, pelas ruas e pelas histórias de Luanda.
Dividindo a produção e a realização do projecto, Ondjaki e Kiluanje Liberdade, nascidos depois da independência de Angola, decidiram juntar preocupações sociais a uma visão estética própria.
Se o filme nasce do desejo de questionar Luanda na sua modernidade, há uma busca ainda mais profunda: o que desejam os luandenses para o seu futuro? Que cidade sonham habitar e construir? Como incorporam as adversidades sem perder o sorriso?
Partindo das ocupações e das histórias dos personagens, falando do campo prático, ocupacional, mas passando por memórias e experiências, os realizadores mergulharam nas ambiências positivas de Luanda, deixando a fantasia sobrepôr-se ao sofrimento, sem fugir às verdades sociais. Filmando Luanda a partir de dentro: abordando a vivência, o olhar e a voz daqueles que a frequentam.
Para inventar uma conversa sobre a cidade. Para que novas vozes estéticas, angolanas, possam reinventar e modificar Luanda, Angola.
Intervalo com jindungu kabombo
(intervalo o tempo com palavras IN CULTAS génese de saber
OCULTO, cultivo amor (com/sem) culpa formal, forma-se a
alma, desespiritualiza-se a material, oxalá cresçam pitangas no papel!)
Antonio Domingos Goncalves
Encontre mais detalhes aqui.
Wednesday, 27 December 2006
RECENTES PUBLICACOES SOBRE A AFRICA LUSOFONA
ALMEIDA SANTOS, António de - QUASE MEMÓRIAS - Do
Colonialismo e da Descolonização II – Da
Descolonização de cada Território em Particular.
Lisboa, Casa das Letras, 2006, 2 Vols. de 619+466p.,
Ilustr. ISBN 972-46-1665-7 / 972-46-1671-1 (As
minister of Interterritorial Coordination Mr. Almeida
Santos participated in the independence negotiations
with the liberation movements in the then Portuguese
colonies in 1974)
BAÊNA, Luís Sanches de - FUZILEIROS - Vol. I –
Factos e Feitos na Guerra de África. 1961-1974, 300
págs. ilustr. a cores e negro, ISBN 972-797-132-6.
Vol. II – Crónicas dos Feitos de Angola 1961-1974 –
245 págs. ilustr. a cores e a negro. ISBN
972-797-133-4. Vol. III - Crónicas dos Feitos da
Guiné 1961-1974, 380 págs. ilustr. a cores e a negro,
ISBN 972-797-134-2. Vol. IV - Crónica dos Feitos
de Moçambique 1961-1974, 246 págs. ilustr. a cores e a
negro, ISBN 972-797-135-0. Lisboa, Com. Cultural da
Marinha, Ed. Inapa, Medial., 2006.
BRANQUINHO, Alberto - CAMBANÇA - Passagens da
Morte e da Vida em Maré Baixa. Histórias em Tempo de
Guerra Colonial na Guiné. Lisboa, Setecaminhos,
2006, 127p., ISBN 989-602-066-3, Sod.
M’ BOKOLO, Elikia - ÁFRICA NEGRA - História e
Civilização. Tomo I até ao Séc. XVIII Lisboa,
Vulgata, 2006, 584p., ISBN 972-8427-27-1.
BRITO-SEMEDO, Manuel – A CONSTRUÇÂO DA IDENTIDADE
NACIONAL [em Cabo Verde]. Análise da Imprensa entre
1975 e 1977. Praia, Instituto de Biblioteca Nacional e
do Livro, 2006, 421p.
GONÇALVES, Carlos Filipe - KAP VERD BAND. Praia,
Instituto do Arquivo Histórico Nacional, 2006, 276p.
MATEUS, Dalila Cabrita - MEMÓRIAS DO COLONIALISMO E
DA GUERRA - Porto, Asa, 2006, 669p., Ilustr., ISBN
972-41-4879-3.
MIRA, Júlio - ÉRAMOS TODOS BONS RAPAZES -
(Guerra de Angola). Lisboa, Indícios de Oiro, 2006,
88p., ISBN 972994658-2.
OS NOVOS DESCOBRIMENTOS - Do Império à CPLP:
Ensaios sobre a História, Política, Economia e Cultura
Lusófonas por Luís Ferreira Lopes – Octávio dos
Santos. Pref. de J. Durão Barroso, Presidente da
Comissão Europeia. Coimbra, Almedina, 2006, 207p.,
ISBN 972-40-2866-6.
PEREIRA, Dulce - CRIOULOS DE BASE PORTUGUESA -
Lisboa, Caminho, 2006, 131p. Col. Essencial sobre
Língua Portuguesa, ISBN 972-21-1822-6.
ReVistaCientífico. Revista de Estudos Cabo-verdianos.
Universidade de Cabo Verde. Publicação Trimestral. N.º
3/4, Novembro de 2006, 292p.
RODRIGUES, Cristina Udelsman - O TRABALHO DIGNIFICA
O HOMEM - Estratégias de Sobrevivência em Luanda.
Pref. de Yves-A. Fauré - Lisboa, Colibri, 2006,
281p., ISBN 972-772-629-1.
RODRIGUES, Luís - A ÚLTIMA JÓIA - A História de
Angola que ainda ninguém escreveu. Loures, (Paralelo),
2006, 351 págs. ilustr., ISBN 972-760-499-9.
RODRIGUES, Luís - A ÚLTIMA JÓIA - A História de
Angola que ainda ninguém escreveu. Loures, (Paralelo),
2006, 351 págs. ilustr., ISBN 972-760-499-9.
SALVADOR, Paulo - RECORDAR ANGOLA 2.º Vol. -
Fotos e Gentes de Cabinda ao Cunene - Lisboa,
Quetzal, 2006, 278p., Ilustr., Enc., 24x29.ISBN
972-569-671-1.
TRABALHO FORÇADO AFRICANO - Experiências coloniais
comparadas – O Tráfico de Escravos . Problemáticas da
Escravatura no Brasil . Heranças Culturais da
Escravatura Africana. Coord. Centro de Estudos
Africanos da Univ. Porto.Lisboa, C. Letras, 2006,
575p., ISBN 989-625-091-91x
Compilação de Gerhard Seibert
Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (IICT)
Ilustração: "Encyclopedia of Pleasure" (Ghada Amer, Egipto)
Colonialismo e da Descolonização II – Da
Descolonização de cada Território em Particular.
Lisboa, Casa das Letras, 2006, 2 Vols. de 619+466p.,
Ilustr. ISBN 972-46-1665-7 / 972-46-1671-1 (As
minister of Interterritorial Coordination Mr. Almeida
Santos participated in the independence negotiations
with the liberation movements in the then Portuguese
colonies in 1974)
BAÊNA, Luís Sanches de - FUZILEIROS - Vol. I –
Factos e Feitos na Guerra de África. 1961-1974, 300
págs. ilustr. a cores e negro, ISBN 972-797-132-6.
Vol. II – Crónicas dos Feitos de Angola 1961-1974 –
245 págs. ilustr. a cores e a negro. ISBN
972-797-133-4. Vol. III - Crónicas dos Feitos da
Guiné 1961-1974, 380 págs. ilustr. a cores e a negro,
ISBN 972-797-134-2. Vol. IV - Crónica dos Feitos
de Moçambique 1961-1974, 246 págs. ilustr. a cores e a
negro, ISBN 972-797-135-0. Lisboa, Com. Cultural da
Marinha, Ed. Inapa, Medial., 2006.
BRANQUINHO, Alberto - CAMBANÇA - Passagens da
Morte e da Vida em Maré Baixa. Histórias em Tempo de
Guerra Colonial na Guiné. Lisboa, Setecaminhos,
2006, 127p., ISBN 989-602-066-3, Sod.
M’ BOKOLO, Elikia - ÁFRICA NEGRA - História e
Civilização. Tomo I até ao Séc. XVIII Lisboa,
Vulgata, 2006, 584p., ISBN 972-8427-27-1.
BRITO-SEMEDO, Manuel – A CONSTRUÇÂO DA IDENTIDADE
NACIONAL [em Cabo Verde]. Análise da Imprensa entre
1975 e 1977. Praia, Instituto de Biblioteca Nacional e
do Livro, 2006, 421p.
GONÇALVES, Carlos Filipe - KAP VERD BAND. Praia,
Instituto do Arquivo Histórico Nacional, 2006, 276p.
MATEUS, Dalila Cabrita - MEMÓRIAS DO COLONIALISMO E
DA GUERRA - Porto, Asa, 2006, 669p., Ilustr., ISBN
972-41-4879-3.
MIRA, Júlio - ÉRAMOS TODOS BONS RAPAZES -
(Guerra de Angola). Lisboa, Indícios de Oiro, 2006,
88p., ISBN 972994658-2.
OS NOVOS DESCOBRIMENTOS - Do Império à CPLP:
Ensaios sobre a História, Política, Economia e Cultura
Lusófonas por Luís Ferreira Lopes – Octávio dos
Santos. Pref. de J. Durão Barroso, Presidente da
Comissão Europeia. Coimbra, Almedina, 2006, 207p.,
ISBN 972-40-2866-6.
PEREIRA, Dulce - CRIOULOS DE BASE PORTUGUESA -
Lisboa, Caminho, 2006, 131p. Col. Essencial sobre
Língua Portuguesa, ISBN 972-21-1822-6.
ReVistaCientífico. Revista de Estudos Cabo-verdianos.
Universidade de Cabo Verde. Publicação Trimestral. N.º
3/4, Novembro de 2006, 292p.
RODRIGUES, Cristina Udelsman - O TRABALHO DIGNIFICA
O HOMEM - Estratégias de Sobrevivência em Luanda.
Pref. de Yves-A. Fauré - Lisboa, Colibri, 2006,
281p., ISBN 972-772-629-1.
RODRIGUES, Luís - A ÚLTIMA JÓIA - A História de
Angola que ainda ninguém escreveu. Loures, (Paralelo),
2006, 351 págs. ilustr., ISBN 972-760-499-9.
RODRIGUES, Luís - A ÚLTIMA JÓIA - A História de
Angola que ainda ninguém escreveu. Loures, (Paralelo),
2006, 351 págs. ilustr., ISBN 972-760-499-9.
SALVADOR, Paulo - RECORDAR ANGOLA 2.º Vol. -
Fotos e Gentes de Cabinda ao Cunene - Lisboa,
Quetzal, 2006, 278p., Ilustr., Enc., 24x29.ISBN
972-569-671-1.
TRABALHO FORÇADO AFRICANO - Experiências coloniais
comparadas – O Tráfico de Escravos . Problemáticas da
Escravatura no Brasil . Heranças Culturais da
Escravatura Africana. Coord. Centro de Estudos
Africanos da Univ. Porto.Lisboa, C. Letras, 2006,
575p., ISBN 989-625-091-91x
Compilação de Gerhard Seibert
Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical (IICT)
Ilustração: "Encyclopedia of Pleasure" (Ghada Amer, Egipto)
Tuesday, 26 December 2006
THE GODFATHER OF SOUL 'IS NO MORE'...
When you hate you blind yourself, and with hate you can’t communicate
(James Brown, 1933-2006)
Pois e'... James Brown, o "Padrinho da Musica Soul", resolveu deixar-nos neste dia de Natal...
Como todos os personagens que conseguem, por forca do seu carisma e personalidade, atingir o estatuto de 'icons' enquanto vivos, JB deixa-nos o legado de uma vida cheia de... vida!
No seu balanco de activos e passivos, estes sao, senao eclipsados, pelo menos facilmente esquecidos perante aqueles...
JB teve uma infancia desprotegida (na nossa Luanda de hoje, ele seria um "menino de rua") e uma vida adulta bastante conturbada... Talvez por isso mesmo, deixou registado o seguinte:
"I would like to pass on the want to do something. The need is there. Good lyrics are good things, but I would like to pass on that drive, that invigorous undying determination... Funky' is about the injustices, the things that go wrong, the hungry kids going to school trying to learn. 'Funky' is about what it takes to make people move - take it from the gospel, from the jazz... Thank God that I had the ability to understand that I had a different beat and that I was a drummer... Do your hair in different styles, make people notice... Die on your feet, don't live on your knees... I'll never forget who I am, where I came from, where I am today, and who put me here: YOU... Killing's out and school's in and we're in bad shape... We need to protect the kids by giving them something to do. (It's about) making them interested, making them love mom and dad more, love the family more, love themselves more and love their school. So there won't have to be killing in school... We need (people) to come forward to save our country and our kids. I could care less about the record. If you say you're already into that, you can throw the record away. But we've got to save these children. That's what's important."
Nas contas da minha vida, o JB figura em algumas gratas memorias, tais como, ainda adolescente, dancar no quintal do Ti Gusto em Luanda ao som do "Sex Machine" e do "It's a Man's Man's Man's World..." sem fazer a minima ideia do significado das letras...
... de ter engrossado o coro dos espectadores ao som do "Living in America" durante um show ao vivo que ele deu em Cascais num qualquer ano da decada de 80...
...de cantar o "I Feel Good" com uma familia amiga durante um passeio de carro pelas ruas de Luanda (com o condutor a marcar o compasso da musica com os travoes...) nas ferias de Natal de 2001...
... enfim, so boas memorias!
JAMES BROWN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE GODFATHER OF SOUL!
Como todos os personagens que conseguem, por forca do seu carisma e personalidade, atingir o estatuto de 'icons' enquanto vivos, JB deixa-nos o legado de uma vida cheia de... vida!
No seu balanco de activos e passivos, estes sao, senao eclipsados, pelo menos facilmente esquecidos perante aqueles...
JB teve uma infancia desprotegida (na nossa Luanda de hoje, ele seria um "menino de rua") e uma vida adulta bastante conturbada... Talvez por isso mesmo, deixou registado o seguinte:
"I would like to pass on the want to do something. The need is there. Good lyrics are good things, but I would like to pass on that drive, that invigorous undying determination... Funky' is about the injustices, the things that go wrong, the hungry kids going to school trying to learn. 'Funky' is about what it takes to make people move - take it from the gospel, from the jazz... Thank God that I had the ability to understand that I had a different beat and that I was a drummer... Do your hair in different styles, make people notice... Die on your feet, don't live on your knees... I'll never forget who I am, where I came from, where I am today, and who put me here: YOU... Killing's out and school's in and we're in bad shape... We need to protect the kids by giving them something to do. (It's about) making them interested, making them love mom and dad more, love the family more, love themselves more and love their school. So there won't have to be killing in school... We need (people) to come forward to save our country and our kids. I could care less about the record. If you say you're already into that, you can throw the record away. But we've got to save these children. That's what's important."
Nas contas da minha vida, o JB figura em algumas gratas memorias, tais como, ainda adolescente, dancar no quintal do Ti Gusto em Luanda ao som do "Sex Machine" e do "It's a Man's Man's Man's World..." sem fazer a minima ideia do significado das letras...
... de ter engrossado o coro dos espectadores ao som do "Living in America" durante um show ao vivo que ele deu em Cascais num qualquer ano da decada de 80...
...de cantar o "I Feel Good" com uma familia amiga durante um passeio de carro pelas ruas de Luanda (com o condutor a marcar o compasso da musica com os travoes...) nas ferias de Natal de 2001...
... enfim, so boas memorias!
JAMES BROWN IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE GODFATHER OF SOUL!
Sunday, 24 December 2006
FOOD FOR THOUGHT AT A TIME OF GIVING...
Mirages of International Aid
David Sogge
Le Monde Diplomatique, September 2004
Foreign aid is a huge industry. Its annual turnover exceeds sixty billion Euros and its global workforce totals more than half a million. It generates a continual stream of ideas about how non-Western societies should develop. Rich and poor states use it to manage relations with each other. Both givers and receivers, at least in public utterance, applaud foreign aid as a good thing that should continue. Yet something is the matter with foreign aid. Where it dominates, pride and ambition have given way to dependence and deference, poverty and inequality have worsened, and insecurity prevails. The paradoxes can be grotesque. In recent decades the foreign aid industry has presided over societies toppling into criminal disorder and violence. Austerity conditions tied to aid loans after 1989 helped tear apart Yugoslavia. Aid helped polarize Rwanda, nudging it closer to abyss of genocide. Yet it rolls on, untroubled. For the captains of the aid industry are themselves never exposed to the risks their ideas impose on others; indeed as long as aid continues to fail, their jobs will be secure.
A Tale of Two Aid Initiatives
Foreign aid did not begin this way. Indeed its first major initiative, the Marshall Plan for post-war Western Europe, was hugely successful. It operated under recipient-friendly terms. Power over many things, from aid distribution to monitoring, was in European hands. Moreover, the Americans did not insist that Europe weaken protection of its industries, deregulate capital flows, and promptly repay debts. As a result, Europe's economies could grow and diversify. Both giver and receiver agreed that public oversight was a good thing, and indeed the Marshall Plan worked because it was a plan, inspired by Keynesian thinking, to revive and reform European capitalism through public regulation and social investment.
That success, and a few others such as South Korea, have yet to be repeated. On the contrary, foreign aid's recent history has been shadowed by failure. Consider the case of Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union. Around 1989 those places began to get full attention from aid system's commanding heights in Washington DC - the US Treasury, the IMF, the World Bank and USAID. Their mission was not "development", let alone poverty reduction. Rather, according to the US economist Jeffrey Sachs, a chief architect of aid-driven "reforms", the purpose was to conclude the Cold War agenda and finish off the state socialism. The aid system's creed was Market Fundamentalism; its method was 'shock therapy': a coercive and intrusive set of austerity measures for ordinary citizens and generous promotion of so-called entrepreneurs. There was no recipient control, no public accountability, no support to socially valued institutions. Western consulting firms creamed off much of the aid. Some of the rest departed as capital flight. There were a few winners -- gangsters, rich oligarchs and technocrats -- and many losers, mostly wage-earning citizens. In the Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asian republics there came spasms of bloodletting in civil wars. Today, in almost all countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union majorities now endure precarious lives.
Some observers hold that aid engineers and their fundamentalist orthodoxies were not to blame for this catastrophe. But for Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, a senior policymaker in Washington throughout the 1990s, they were chief agents of change. Their approach was 'like using a flame-thrower to burn off an old coat of house paint, and then lamenting that you couldn't finish the new paint job because the house burned down.'
That success, and a few others such as South Korea, have yet to be repeated. On the contrary, foreign aid's recent history has been shadowed by failure. Consider the case of Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union. Around 1989 those places began to get full attention from aid system's commanding heights in Washington DC - the US Treasury, the IMF, the World Bank and USAID. Their mission was not "development", let alone poverty reduction. Rather, according to the US economist Jeffrey Sachs, a chief architect of aid-driven "reforms", the purpose was to conclude the Cold War agenda and finish off the state socialism. The aid system's creed was Market Fundamentalism; its method was 'shock therapy': a coercive and intrusive set of austerity measures for ordinary citizens and generous promotion of so-called entrepreneurs. There was no recipient control, no public accountability, no support to socially valued institutions. Western consulting firms creamed off much of the aid. Some of the rest departed as capital flight. There were a few winners -- gangsters, rich oligarchs and technocrats -- and many losers, mostly wage-earning citizens. In the Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asian republics there came spasms of bloodletting in civil wars. Today, in almost all countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union majorities now endure precarious lives.
Some observers hold that aid engineers and their fundamentalist orthodoxies were not to blame for this catastrophe. But for Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, a senior policymaker in Washington throughout the 1990s, they were chief agents of change. Their approach was 'like using a flame-thrower to burn off an old coat of house paint, and then lamenting that you couldn't finish the new paint job because the house burned down.'
A Problem Posing as a Solution?
Big, dubious ideas have blanketed the aid system from its beginnings in the 1950s. For example, aid economists and managers have long portrayed social inequality as an inevitable, and probably even necessary condition of growth. Proposals to redistribute land and income could therefore be swept aside as not only unworkable, but stupid. Growth must begin from the top and trickle down from there. From Malawi to Mali, aid policy followed suit; if there was to be re-distribution, it would be upward and outward. Today, however, this old paradigm has been exposed as bogus. Indeed, research suggests that inequality is an obstacle to growth, and to the reduction of poverty . Broadly shared prosperity and public action against poverty therefore have both pragmatic and ethical arguments on their side.
Reducing poverty became the aid industry's formal raison d'être only in the late 1990s. Is it up to the job? After fifty years of serving other purposes with noticeable effect, namely anti-communism and the opening tropical markets for Western goods and investors, there are reasons to query its qualifications. It is true that, when combined with other measures, aid has sometimes had emancipatory effects: vaccination programmes combined with reinforced public health systems, as in south Asia and parts of Africa; breaking the power of landlords combined with inward investment and education for all, as in Taiwan. Aid from Scandinavia, and later from the EU, helped an anti-apartheid movement triumph in South Africa. As a catalyst of reconstruction or stimulus to fresh ideas it can help foster growth with equity. But when guided by what might be termed Market Leninism - coercive imposition of a polarizing experiment under a fog of Orwellian propaganda - foreign aid becomes a problem posing as a solution.
Reducing poverty became the aid industry's formal raison d'être only in the late 1990s. Is it up to the job? After fifty years of serving other purposes with noticeable effect, namely anti-communism and the opening tropical markets for Western goods and investors, there are reasons to query its qualifications. It is true that, when combined with other measures, aid has sometimes had emancipatory effects: vaccination programmes combined with reinforced public health systems, as in south Asia and parts of Africa; breaking the power of landlords combined with inward investment and education for all, as in Taiwan. Aid from Scandinavia, and later from the EU, helped an anti-apartheid movement triumph in South Africa. As a catalyst of reconstruction or stimulus to fresh ideas it can help foster growth with equity. But when guided by what might be termed Market Leninism - coercive imposition of a polarizing experiment under a fog of Orwellian propaganda - foreign aid becomes a problem posing as a solution.
Contexts and Contradictions
Aid has roots in colonialism. The British justified their rule in Africa according to a Dual Mandate. They assigned themselves two tasks: political trusteeship, to protect, guide and discipline subject peoples; and economic development, to draw surpluses from countries subordinated in a world division of labour. Something like that dual mandate has guided foreign aid up to today. The result is towering paradoxes: external control of economic policy in the name of "local ownership", outwardly-oriented economies in the name of internal development; active encouragement to go into debt in the name of self-sustaining growth; dependence in the name of self-reliance: loss of sovereignty in the name of national self-determination.
The aid industry itself is a place of paradoxes and illusions. Transfers from rich to poor are in fact far smaller than official data would suggest. Most aid money is spent in, or flows back to, donor/lender countries. Terms attached to many "soft" loans are in fact harder than those of commercial banks. At no risk to themselves, aid lenders have made healthy profits from cash-strapped countries like Turkey, Peru, Romania and Argentina. Moreover, aid is dwarfed by flows in the other direction: debt repayment, capital flight, legal and illicit transfers of profits and fees, and the drain of educated people to the West and its institutions. In 2001, the aid system allocated US$ 29 billion in grants for developing countries; in the same year, the net flow of debt furnished creditors with US $ 138 billion from developing countries . Defectors from the mainstream such as Stiglitz and financier-philanthropist George Soros today acknowledge that it is the poor who aid the rich. What the rich take from poorer regions far surpasses what they give. This contributes to levels of consumption in the United States -- the stingiest provider of aid - that are far higher than its domestic production would otherwise permit. The aid industry distracts attention from such sobering realities.
Power and Incoherence
Today's aid system is a quasi-monopoly that admits no competitors. Despite ritual hand-wringing about lack of donor coordination, most agencies march in step to the beat of Washington DC's drums. The parade masters, the IMF and World Bank, answer formally to Western ministries of finance, chiefly to the US Treasury, backed by Wall Street. In the 1970s a caucus of Scandinavian, Canadian and Dutch aid ministries argued that aid should go mainly to states showing respect for human rights, especially social and economic rights. But these dissenters were soon quashed. By the late 1980s all national and United Nations aid agencies had fallen into the mainstream, whose motto was that the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering, and that there is no alternative to the Washington Consensus. Dissent within the industry was, and still is punished - as demonstrated by Stiglitz's exit from the World Bank at the behest of the U.S. Treasury.
Mercantile and geo-political interests have never been far from the surface of humanitarian and development discourse in which aid is packaged.
Mercantile and geo-political interests have never been far from the surface of humanitarian and development discourse in which aid is packaged.
But the mix of motives is also complex at receiving ends, where elites have learned how to join the parade. Most will jump, shrewdly and never unconditionally, onto whatever aid policy bandwagon is passing at the moment: "balanced growth", basic needs, "getting prices right", good governance, anti-poverty … As the band plays these different tunes, African leaders from Mobutu to Moi have shown particular sure-footed in their ritual dances with donors. They make sure that the donors' latest nostrum appear in national policy papers and public utterances. They agree to, but then often fail to carry out, hundreds of policy conditions secure in the knowledge that threats to cut off aid are about as credible as threats in geo-politics to use an atomic bomb.
But "passive resistance" to aid system diktats does not explain failure. Aid is commonly a side show, and a distraction from more important forces. Proxy wars against left-nationalist regimes or opium and coca growers have laid waste to places that aid was at the same time supposed to be helping. The dumping of Western grain, meat, textiles and used clothing has eroded if not destroyed producer incentives, thus voiding aid efforts to promote such production. Low-income countries are supposed to gain 'human capital' via scholarship programs funded by Western aid; yet the same Western governments actively help recruit health workers, engineers, and computer technicians away from such countries. And the mother of all incoherencies stems from the aid system's complicity in imposing market fundamentalism - a school of economics that has been likened to voodoo and astrology. In Latin America, Africa and the ex-Soviet Union its effects include slow growth, impoverished public goods and services, social exclusion and political instability - conditions that leave most aid projects shipwrecked.
Democratic Deficits
But "passive resistance" to aid system diktats does not explain failure. Aid is commonly a side show, and a distraction from more important forces. Proxy wars against left-nationalist regimes or opium and coca growers have laid waste to places that aid was at the same time supposed to be helping. The dumping of Western grain, meat, textiles and used clothing has eroded if not destroyed producer incentives, thus voiding aid efforts to promote such production. Low-income countries are supposed to gain 'human capital' via scholarship programs funded by Western aid; yet the same Western governments actively help recruit health workers, engineers, and computer technicians away from such countries. And the mother of all incoherencies stems from the aid system's complicity in imposing market fundamentalism - a school of economics that has been likened to voodoo and astrology. In Latin America, Africa and the ex-Soviet Union its effects include slow growth, impoverished public goods and services, social exclusion and political instability - conditions that leave most aid projects shipwrecked.
Democratic Deficits
Aid-speak is saturated with terms like 'citizen participation' and 'local ownership of policies'. Yet most aid thinking, planning and managing continue to be the prerogatives of outsiders. And even where foreign agencies are not calling the shots, their western-educated counterparts - the "Chicago Boys" in Latin America, the "Berkeley Mafia" in Indonesia - will enthusiastically promote the same policies, working from strategic positions inside finance ministries and central banks.
For much of the past two decades, aid systems have not only helped shatter sovereignty, but also helped shrink and de-legitimize the state and its services. This is evident in the ways aid is commonly managed. Donors prefer to channel aid through chains of consulting firms, nonprofits, and special project units. These usually by-pass national governments (though recruiting some of the best staff away from public service) and avoid public oversight. National authorities account upward to donors/lenders rather than downward to citizens. In the end this hollows out both the state and politics.
Depoliticised and disempowered, the public in many aid-affected countries has seen basic services -- schooling, health care, policing -- deteriorate. The non-transparent transfer of public assets to domestic and foreign interests has created new monied strata and fuelled public cynicism. From Chad to Bolivia, such measures have driven wedges between citizens and government. Tax effort collapses and public order has become fragile. Liberia and Somalia were once big aid recipients; they are now states of disorder.
However, by the mid-1990s, faced with risks of collapse, non-compliance with aid conditions and non-repayment of debt, aid industry policy toward the state took a u-turn. Aid began to be conditioned on "good governance" -- to repair crumbling state institutions, stem corruption, increase tax effort, make public revenue management more transparent and allow critical voices to be heard in the press and in civil society. Such reforms are valid and needed. Yet many see the aid system's new-found concern for "democratization" as a gimmick to continue the pursuit of unpopular austerity measures. And what will motivate those charged with promoting 'good governance'? Aid's legacy includes privileged technocrats, political classes and institutions like finance ministries schooled in beliefs that greed is good and that politics is, as an ironist once remarked, the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. Democratic deficits may no longer be shrugged off as unfortunate side effects of aid practice, but they remain deep and wide.
For much of the past two decades, aid systems have not only helped shatter sovereignty, but also helped shrink and de-legitimize the state and its services. This is evident in the ways aid is commonly managed. Donors prefer to channel aid through chains of consulting firms, nonprofits, and special project units. These usually by-pass national governments (though recruiting some of the best staff away from public service) and avoid public oversight. National authorities account upward to donors/lenders rather than downward to citizens. In the end this hollows out both the state and politics.
Depoliticised and disempowered, the public in many aid-affected countries has seen basic services -- schooling, health care, policing -- deteriorate. The non-transparent transfer of public assets to domestic and foreign interests has created new monied strata and fuelled public cynicism. From Chad to Bolivia, such measures have driven wedges between citizens and government. Tax effort collapses and public order has become fragile. Liberia and Somalia were once big aid recipients; they are now states of disorder.
However, by the mid-1990s, faced with risks of collapse, non-compliance with aid conditions and non-repayment of debt, aid industry policy toward the state took a u-turn. Aid began to be conditioned on "good governance" -- to repair crumbling state institutions, stem corruption, increase tax effort, make public revenue management more transparent and allow critical voices to be heard in the press and in civil society. Such reforms are valid and needed. Yet many see the aid system's new-found concern for "democratization" as a gimmick to continue the pursuit of unpopular austerity measures. And what will motivate those charged with promoting 'good governance'? Aid's legacy includes privileged technocrats, political classes and institutions like finance ministries schooled in beliefs that greed is good and that politics is, as an ironist once remarked, the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. Democratic deficits may no longer be shrugged off as unfortunate side effects of aid practice, but they remain deep and wide.
Winds of Change?
Yet pressures for change are mounting. Some policy activist NGOs, academics, and research units under United Nations auspices have refused to be over-awed by claims of intellectual invincibility, and the massive power of institutions like the World Bank to bankroll and disseminate its ideas. Indeed insurgent outsiders who've done their homework have exposed World Bank and IMF claims to know 'good policy' and 'good practice' as largely humbug. In aid-targeted countries like India and Brazil, public protest about aid projects that destroy eco-systems or loans that bleed public treasuries have since the late 1990s led to a few modest reforms, such as internal inspection panels and prior study of aid impacts on the poor. Pressure on international bodies is anything but radical or punitive; they are merely being asked to behave as any national public authority would be expected to behave in a democracy.
Prospects
Will regulatory reforms democratise the aid encounter, making it accountable and responsive to the public? Some hold that today's aid system is beyond repair and should be scrapped, with the exception of aid for emergency relief of suffering. Yet there may be other ways forward, drawing on principles of public action. Aid could be replaced by a much larger, regular system of statutory bloc entitlements, paid out to reduce polarized growth and improve social cohesion. Such "equalization" or "solidarity" transfers are routine among countries of the European Union and between richer and poorer regions in countries like Canada and Spain. Responsive to recipients rather than funding authorities, they have helped build national and international public goods and have helped reduce pockets of poverty. The EU's neighbors in Eastern Europe are already negotiating something like bloc funding. Such systems work better where the political space is wide enough for citizens and media to follow the money and results, and call the authorities to account if things go wrong. Public action aid can reinforce that public space. If, as we should, set out to dismantle and replace today's long, wasteful and undemocratic chains of aid, we might begin by looking at models of public redistribution already at work.
David Sogge
Le Monde Diplomatique, September 2004
Foreign aid is a huge industry. Its annual turnover exceeds sixty billion Euros and its global workforce totals more than half a million. It generates a continual stream of ideas about how non-Western societies should develop. Rich and poor states use it to manage relations with each other. Both givers and receivers, at least in public utterance, applaud foreign aid as a good thing that should continue. Yet something is the matter with foreign aid. Where it dominates, pride and ambition have given way to dependence and deference, poverty and inequality have worsened, and insecurity prevails. The paradoxes can be grotesque. In recent decades the foreign aid industry has presided over societies toppling into criminal disorder and violence. Austerity conditions tied to aid loans after 1989 helped tear apart Yugoslavia. Aid helped polarize Rwanda, nudging it closer to abyss of genocide. Yet it rolls on, untroubled. For the captains of the aid industry are themselves never exposed to the risks their ideas impose on others; indeed as long as aid continues to fail, their jobs will be secure.
A Tale of Two Aid Initiatives
Foreign aid did not begin this way. Indeed its first major initiative, the Marshall Plan for post-war Western Europe, was hugely successful. It operated under recipient-friendly terms. Power over many things, from aid distribution to monitoring, was in European hands. Moreover, the Americans did not insist that Europe weaken protection of its industries, deregulate capital flows, and promptly repay debts. As a result, Europe's economies could grow and diversify. Both giver and receiver agreed that public oversight was a good thing, and indeed the Marshall Plan worked because it was a plan, inspired by Keynesian thinking, to revive and reform European capitalism through public regulation and social investment.
That success, and a few others such as South Korea, have yet to be repeated. On the contrary, foreign aid's recent history has been shadowed by failure. Consider the case of Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union. Around 1989 those places began to get full attention from aid system's commanding heights in Washington DC - the US Treasury, the IMF, the World Bank and USAID. Their mission was not "development", let alone poverty reduction. Rather, according to the US economist Jeffrey Sachs, a chief architect of aid-driven "reforms", the purpose was to conclude the Cold War agenda and finish off the state socialism. The aid system's creed was Market Fundamentalism; its method was 'shock therapy': a coercive and intrusive set of austerity measures for ordinary citizens and generous promotion of so-called entrepreneurs. There was no recipient control, no public accountability, no support to socially valued institutions. Western consulting firms creamed off much of the aid. Some of the rest departed as capital flight. There were a few winners -- gangsters, rich oligarchs and technocrats -- and many losers, mostly wage-earning citizens. In the Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asian republics there came spasms of bloodletting in civil wars. Today, in almost all countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union majorities now endure precarious lives.
Some observers hold that aid engineers and their fundamentalist orthodoxies were not to blame for this catastrophe. But for Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, a senior policymaker in Washington throughout the 1990s, they were chief agents of change. Their approach was 'like using a flame-thrower to burn off an old coat of house paint, and then lamenting that you couldn't finish the new paint job because the house burned down.'
That success, and a few others such as South Korea, have yet to be repeated. On the contrary, foreign aid's recent history has been shadowed by failure. Consider the case of Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union. Around 1989 those places began to get full attention from aid system's commanding heights in Washington DC - the US Treasury, the IMF, the World Bank and USAID. Their mission was not "development", let alone poverty reduction. Rather, according to the US economist Jeffrey Sachs, a chief architect of aid-driven "reforms", the purpose was to conclude the Cold War agenda and finish off the state socialism. The aid system's creed was Market Fundamentalism; its method was 'shock therapy': a coercive and intrusive set of austerity measures for ordinary citizens and generous promotion of so-called entrepreneurs. There was no recipient control, no public accountability, no support to socially valued institutions. Western consulting firms creamed off much of the aid. Some of the rest departed as capital flight. There were a few winners -- gangsters, rich oligarchs and technocrats -- and many losers, mostly wage-earning citizens. In the Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asian republics there came spasms of bloodletting in civil wars. Today, in almost all countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union majorities now endure precarious lives.
Some observers hold that aid engineers and their fundamentalist orthodoxies were not to blame for this catastrophe. But for Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, a senior policymaker in Washington throughout the 1990s, they were chief agents of change. Their approach was 'like using a flame-thrower to burn off an old coat of house paint, and then lamenting that you couldn't finish the new paint job because the house burned down.'
A Problem Posing as a Solution?
Big, dubious ideas have blanketed the aid system from its beginnings in the 1950s. For example, aid economists and managers have long portrayed social inequality as an inevitable, and probably even necessary condition of growth. Proposals to redistribute land and income could therefore be swept aside as not only unworkable, but stupid. Growth must begin from the top and trickle down from there. From Malawi to Mali, aid policy followed suit; if there was to be re-distribution, it would be upward and outward. Today, however, this old paradigm has been exposed as bogus. Indeed, research suggests that inequality is an obstacle to growth, and to the reduction of poverty . Broadly shared prosperity and public action against poverty therefore have both pragmatic and ethical arguments on their side.
Reducing poverty became the aid industry's formal raison d'être only in the late 1990s. Is it up to the job? After fifty years of serving other purposes with noticeable effect, namely anti-communism and the opening tropical markets for Western goods and investors, there are reasons to query its qualifications. It is true that, when combined with other measures, aid has sometimes had emancipatory effects: vaccination programmes combined with reinforced public health systems, as in south Asia and parts of Africa; breaking the power of landlords combined with inward investment and education for all, as in Taiwan. Aid from Scandinavia, and later from the EU, helped an anti-apartheid movement triumph in South Africa. As a catalyst of reconstruction or stimulus to fresh ideas it can help foster growth with equity. But when guided by what might be termed Market Leninism - coercive imposition of a polarizing experiment under a fog of Orwellian propaganda - foreign aid becomes a problem posing as a solution.
Reducing poverty became the aid industry's formal raison d'être only in the late 1990s. Is it up to the job? After fifty years of serving other purposes with noticeable effect, namely anti-communism and the opening tropical markets for Western goods and investors, there are reasons to query its qualifications. It is true that, when combined with other measures, aid has sometimes had emancipatory effects: vaccination programmes combined with reinforced public health systems, as in south Asia and parts of Africa; breaking the power of landlords combined with inward investment and education for all, as in Taiwan. Aid from Scandinavia, and later from the EU, helped an anti-apartheid movement triumph in South Africa. As a catalyst of reconstruction or stimulus to fresh ideas it can help foster growth with equity. But when guided by what might be termed Market Leninism - coercive imposition of a polarizing experiment under a fog of Orwellian propaganda - foreign aid becomes a problem posing as a solution.
Contexts and Contradictions
Aid has roots in colonialism. The British justified their rule in Africa according to a Dual Mandate. They assigned themselves two tasks: political trusteeship, to protect, guide and discipline subject peoples; and economic development, to draw surpluses from countries subordinated in a world division of labour. Something like that dual mandate has guided foreign aid up to today. The result is towering paradoxes: external control of economic policy in the name of "local ownership", outwardly-oriented economies in the name of internal development; active encouragement to go into debt in the name of self-sustaining growth; dependence in the name of self-reliance: loss of sovereignty in the name of national self-determination.
The aid industry itself is a place of paradoxes and illusions. Transfers from rich to poor are in fact far smaller than official data would suggest. Most aid money is spent in, or flows back to, donor/lender countries. Terms attached to many "soft" loans are in fact harder than those of commercial banks. At no risk to themselves, aid lenders have made healthy profits from cash-strapped countries like Turkey, Peru, Romania and Argentina. Moreover, aid is dwarfed by flows in the other direction: debt repayment, capital flight, legal and illicit transfers of profits and fees, and the drain of educated people to the West and its institutions. In 2001, the aid system allocated US$ 29 billion in grants for developing countries; in the same year, the net flow of debt furnished creditors with US $ 138 billion from developing countries . Defectors from the mainstream such as Stiglitz and financier-philanthropist George Soros today acknowledge that it is the poor who aid the rich. What the rich take from poorer regions far surpasses what they give. This contributes to levels of consumption in the United States -- the stingiest provider of aid - that are far higher than its domestic production would otherwise permit. The aid industry distracts attention from such sobering realities.
Power and Incoherence
Today's aid system is a quasi-monopoly that admits no competitors. Despite ritual hand-wringing about lack of donor coordination, most agencies march in step to the beat of Washington DC's drums. The parade masters, the IMF and World Bank, answer formally to Western ministries of finance, chiefly to the US Treasury, backed by Wall Street. In the 1970s a caucus of Scandinavian, Canadian and Dutch aid ministries argued that aid should go mainly to states showing respect for human rights, especially social and economic rights. But these dissenters were soon quashed. By the late 1980s all national and United Nations aid agencies had fallen into the mainstream, whose motto was that the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering, and that there is no alternative to the Washington Consensus. Dissent within the industry was, and still is punished - as demonstrated by Stiglitz's exit from the World Bank at the behest of the U.S. Treasury.
Mercantile and geo-political interests have never been far from the surface of humanitarian and development discourse in which aid is packaged.
Mercantile and geo-political interests have never been far from the surface of humanitarian and development discourse in which aid is packaged.
But the mix of motives is also complex at receiving ends, where elites have learned how to join the parade. Most will jump, shrewdly and never unconditionally, onto whatever aid policy bandwagon is passing at the moment: "balanced growth", basic needs, "getting prices right", good governance, anti-poverty … As the band plays these different tunes, African leaders from Mobutu to Moi have shown particular sure-footed in their ritual dances with donors. They make sure that the donors' latest nostrum appear in national policy papers and public utterances. They agree to, but then often fail to carry out, hundreds of policy conditions secure in the knowledge that threats to cut off aid are about as credible as threats in geo-politics to use an atomic bomb.
But "passive resistance" to aid system diktats does not explain failure. Aid is commonly a side show, and a distraction from more important forces. Proxy wars against left-nationalist regimes or opium and coca growers have laid waste to places that aid was at the same time supposed to be helping. The dumping of Western grain, meat, textiles and used clothing has eroded if not destroyed producer incentives, thus voiding aid efforts to promote such production. Low-income countries are supposed to gain 'human capital' via scholarship programs funded by Western aid; yet the same Western governments actively help recruit health workers, engineers, and computer technicians away from such countries. And the mother of all incoherencies stems from the aid system's complicity in imposing market fundamentalism - a school of economics that has been likened to voodoo and astrology. In Latin America, Africa and the ex-Soviet Union its effects include slow growth, impoverished public goods and services, social exclusion and political instability - conditions that leave most aid projects shipwrecked.
Democratic Deficits
But "passive resistance" to aid system diktats does not explain failure. Aid is commonly a side show, and a distraction from more important forces. Proxy wars against left-nationalist regimes or opium and coca growers have laid waste to places that aid was at the same time supposed to be helping. The dumping of Western grain, meat, textiles and used clothing has eroded if not destroyed producer incentives, thus voiding aid efforts to promote such production. Low-income countries are supposed to gain 'human capital' via scholarship programs funded by Western aid; yet the same Western governments actively help recruit health workers, engineers, and computer technicians away from such countries. And the mother of all incoherencies stems from the aid system's complicity in imposing market fundamentalism - a school of economics that has been likened to voodoo and astrology. In Latin America, Africa and the ex-Soviet Union its effects include slow growth, impoverished public goods and services, social exclusion and political instability - conditions that leave most aid projects shipwrecked.
Democratic Deficits
Aid-speak is saturated with terms like 'citizen participation' and 'local ownership of policies'. Yet most aid thinking, planning and managing continue to be the prerogatives of outsiders. And even where foreign agencies are not calling the shots, their western-educated counterparts - the "Chicago Boys" in Latin America, the "Berkeley Mafia" in Indonesia - will enthusiastically promote the same policies, working from strategic positions inside finance ministries and central banks.
For much of the past two decades, aid systems have not only helped shatter sovereignty, but also helped shrink and de-legitimize the state and its services. This is evident in the ways aid is commonly managed. Donors prefer to channel aid through chains of consulting firms, nonprofits, and special project units. These usually by-pass national governments (though recruiting some of the best staff away from public service) and avoid public oversight. National authorities account upward to donors/lenders rather than downward to citizens. In the end this hollows out both the state and politics.
Depoliticised and disempowered, the public in many aid-affected countries has seen basic services -- schooling, health care, policing -- deteriorate. The non-transparent transfer of public assets to domestic and foreign interests has created new monied strata and fuelled public cynicism. From Chad to Bolivia, such measures have driven wedges between citizens and government. Tax effort collapses and public order has become fragile. Liberia and Somalia were once big aid recipients; they are now states of disorder.
However, by the mid-1990s, faced with risks of collapse, non-compliance with aid conditions and non-repayment of debt, aid industry policy toward the state took a u-turn. Aid began to be conditioned on "good governance" -- to repair crumbling state institutions, stem corruption, increase tax effort, make public revenue management more transparent and allow critical voices to be heard in the press and in civil society. Such reforms are valid and needed. Yet many see the aid system's new-found concern for "democratization" as a gimmick to continue the pursuit of unpopular austerity measures. And what will motivate those charged with promoting 'good governance'? Aid's legacy includes privileged technocrats, political classes and institutions like finance ministries schooled in beliefs that greed is good and that politics is, as an ironist once remarked, the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. Democratic deficits may no longer be shrugged off as unfortunate side effects of aid practice, but they remain deep and wide.
For much of the past two decades, aid systems have not only helped shatter sovereignty, but also helped shrink and de-legitimize the state and its services. This is evident in the ways aid is commonly managed. Donors prefer to channel aid through chains of consulting firms, nonprofits, and special project units. These usually by-pass national governments (though recruiting some of the best staff away from public service) and avoid public oversight. National authorities account upward to donors/lenders rather than downward to citizens. In the end this hollows out both the state and politics.
Depoliticised and disempowered, the public in many aid-affected countries has seen basic services -- schooling, health care, policing -- deteriorate. The non-transparent transfer of public assets to domestic and foreign interests has created new monied strata and fuelled public cynicism. From Chad to Bolivia, such measures have driven wedges between citizens and government. Tax effort collapses and public order has become fragile. Liberia and Somalia were once big aid recipients; they are now states of disorder.
However, by the mid-1990s, faced with risks of collapse, non-compliance with aid conditions and non-repayment of debt, aid industry policy toward the state took a u-turn. Aid began to be conditioned on "good governance" -- to repair crumbling state institutions, stem corruption, increase tax effort, make public revenue management more transparent and allow critical voices to be heard in the press and in civil society. Such reforms are valid and needed. Yet many see the aid system's new-found concern for "democratization" as a gimmick to continue the pursuit of unpopular austerity measures. And what will motivate those charged with promoting 'good governance'? Aid's legacy includes privileged technocrats, political classes and institutions like finance ministries schooled in beliefs that greed is good and that politics is, as an ironist once remarked, the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. Democratic deficits may no longer be shrugged off as unfortunate side effects of aid practice, but they remain deep and wide.
Winds of Change?
Yet pressures for change are mounting. Some policy activist NGOs, academics, and research units under United Nations auspices have refused to be over-awed by claims of intellectual invincibility, and the massive power of institutions like the World Bank to bankroll and disseminate its ideas. Indeed insurgent outsiders who've done their homework have exposed World Bank and IMF claims to know 'good policy' and 'good practice' as largely humbug. In aid-targeted countries like India and Brazil, public protest about aid projects that destroy eco-systems or loans that bleed public treasuries have since the late 1990s led to a few modest reforms, such as internal inspection panels and prior study of aid impacts on the poor. Pressure on international bodies is anything but radical or punitive; they are merely being asked to behave as any national public authority would be expected to behave in a democracy.
Prospects
Will regulatory reforms democratise the aid encounter, making it accountable and responsive to the public? Some hold that today's aid system is beyond repair and should be scrapped, with the exception of aid for emergency relief of suffering. Yet there may be other ways forward, drawing on principles of public action. Aid could be replaced by a much larger, regular system of statutory bloc entitlements, paid out to reduce polarized growth and improve social cohesion. Such "equalization" or "solidarity" transfers are routine among countries of the European Union and between richer and poorer regions in countries like Canada and Spain. Responsive to recipients rather than funding authorities, they have helped build national and international public goods and have helped reduce pockets of poverty. The EU's neighbors in Eastern Europe are already negotiating something like bloc funding. Such systems work better where the political space is wide enough for citizens and media to follow the money and results, and call the authorities to account if things go wrong. Public action aid can reinforce that public space. If, as we should, set out to dismantle and replace today's long, wasteful and undemocratic chains of aid, we might begin by looking at models of public redistribution already at work.
Friday, 22 December 2006
MAKAS NA SANZALA (I)
Voltando a receita para um “jet-set” nacional (Angolano ou Mocambicano): Uma Segunda Leitura, Um Olhar Diferente…
5. Rappers give a voice to Angola's cry for democracy
(Thursday, June 17, 2004 )
Angola, a melting-pot of African, Portuguese and foreign musical influences, abounds in locally produced pop music. Much of it is recorded non-commercially and sold by street vendors. Most of it is cheerfully apolitical. But rap music is emerging as a medium of protest. In many nations rap is viewed with suspicion by the authorities as subversive and anti-establishment. This is no different in Angola - but in this southern African country, the "subversive" message of rappers is criticism of the country's lack of democracy.
There is already a small but vocal political opposition to the government, which last week joined forces at a pro-democracy forum to press President Jose Eduardo dos Santos to call new elections. Angola also has an outspoken independent press, but newspapers are little read outside elite urban circles. The spoken word - and in particular the growing number of songs from political rappers - therefore have great power in a country where fewer than half of all adults can read. Compact discs and tapes by political rappers such as MCK and Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes (Brigadier Ten Packets) are copied privately and eagerly passed from hand to hand. MCK, an underground rapper formerly unknown outside hip-hop circles, sprang to unexpected notoriety last November.
Several of President Dos Santos's guards allegedly killed a man for singing anti-government lyrics from MCK's song, "The Technique, the Causes and the Consequences". Eyewitnesses say the enraged men beat, dragged and drowned the victim, a car-washer at Mussulo quay, at a departure point for ferries to Luanda's beaches. A criminal investigation was launched, but no charges have yet been brought against the men. "The song cost this guy his life because it reflects Angolan reality and strikes at the people in power," says the rapper. "We still have a government that doesn't allow freedom of expression."
Two years after the end of their nearly three-decade civil war, some young Angolans such as MCK (pronouncedEmcee Kappa in Portuguese) are beginning to demand greater accountability from their leaders. President Dos Santos's MPLA party rules in a government of national unity with Unita, its former guerrilla foes. The government's political opponents and Angola's foreign partners, led by the US, have been pushing the president to call elections. Pressure is also growing for greater transparency in the management of Angola's abundant oil and other resources, which could help stimulate growth in this poor country. "Each discovery of an oil well widens the gap between those who have and those who do not," MCK says. "Unfortunately, oil shines for just a few." The 23-year-old rapper - a university student of philosophy by day - declines to give his real name for fear of reprisals. He says he has received threats, and commercial stations will not play his music. He lives in Luanda's working-class Chaba neighbourhood, where open sewers run down mud alleys between a labyrinth of cramped houses.
Malaria, spread by uncollected rubbish and stagnant water, is common in Chaba, as in Luanda's other poor quarters. The son of a driver and a retired charwoman, he began singing in 1995. "I come from a family that's typically religious and self-examining," he says. "I was lucky to live with siblings who were in the habit of asking questions." By the subversive, even violent standards of much US rap and hip-hop, MCK's lyrics are mild. "We have more firearms than dolls, fewer universities than discos, and more bars than libraries," the song that sparked November's alleged murder claims.
Friends of the victim, Arsenio Sebastiao, draped another MCK lyric over his coffin: "Who speaks the truth ends up in a coffin/ What sort of democracy is this?" Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes's lyrics are more militant, alleging that Mr Dos Santos is corrupt and calling for his overthrow. A full-time rapper and inhabitant of Luanda's squalid Hojy ya Henda quarter, like MCK he sells CDs by word of mouth. "The government plays a different tune and song/ But people no longer want to dance or smile/ We are fed up with the situation," his best-known song goes. It has become an anthem of Luanda's working poor, often heard in minibus commuter taxis. Recently in Huambo, a provincial inland city, Angolans listening to a recording by the rapper on a street turned it down as a group of strangers approached.
Source: Financial Times
More articles on this and related issues can be found, among other places, here, here and here.
Angola, a melting-pot of African, Portuguese and foreign musical influences, abounds in locally produced pop music. Much of it is recorded non-commercially and sold by street vendors. Most of it is cheerfully apolitical. But rap music is emerging as a medium of protest. In many nations rap is viewed with suspicion by the authorities as subversive and anti-establishment. This is no different in Angola - but in this southern African country, the "subversive" message of rappers is criticism of the country's lack of democracy.
There is already a small but vocal political opposition to the government, which last week joined forces at a pro-democracy forum to press President Jose Eduardo dos Santos to call new elections. Angola also has an outspoken independent press, but newspapers are little read outside elite urban circles. The spoken word - and in particular the growing number of songs from political rappers - therefore have great power in a country where fewer than half of all adults can read. Compact discs and tapes by political rappers such as MCK and Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes (Brigadier Ten Packets) are copied privately and eagerly passed from hand to hand. MCK, an underground rapper formerly unknown outside hip-hop circles, sprang to unexpected notoriety last November.
Several of President Dos Santos's guards allegedly killed a man for singing anti-government lyrics from MCK's song, "The Technique, the Causes and the Consequences". Eyewitnesses say the enraged men beat, dragged and drowned the victim, a car-washer at Mussulo quay, at a departure point for ferries to Luanda's beaches. A criminal investigation was launched, but no charges have yet been brought against the men. "The song cost this guy his life because it reflects Angolan reality and strikes at the people in power," says the rapper. "We still have a government that doesn't allow freedom of expression."
Two years after the end of their nearly three-decade civil war, some young Angolans such as MCK (pronouncedEmcee Kappa in Portuguese) are beginning to demand greater accountability from their leaders. President Dos Santos's MPLA party rules in a government of national unity with Unita, its former guerrilla foes. The government's political opponents and Angola's foreign partners, led by the US, have been pushing the president to call elections. Pressure is also growing for greater transparency in the management of Angola's abundant oil and other resources, which could help stimulate growth in this poor country. "Each discovery of an oil well widens the gap between those who have and those who do not," MCK says. "Unfortunately, oil shines for just a few." The 23-year-old rapper - a university student of philosophy by day - declines to give his real name for fear of reprisals. He says he has received threats, and commercial stations will not play his music. He lives in Luanda's working-class Chaba neighbourhood, where open sewers run down mud alleys between a labyrinth of cramped houses.
Malaria, spread by uncollected rubbish and stagnant water, is common in Chaba, as in Luanda's other poor quarters. The son of a driver and a retired charwoman, he began singing in 1995. "I come from a family that's typically religious and self-examining," he says. "I was lucky to live with siblings who were in the habit of asking questions." By the subversive, even violent standards of much US rap and hip-hop, MCK's lyrics are mild. "We have more firearms than dolls, fewer universities than discos, and more bars than libraries," the song that sparked November's alleged murder claims.
Friends of the victim, Arsenio Sebastiao, draped another MCK lyric over his coffin: "Who speaks the truth ends up in a coffin/ What sort of democracy is this?" Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes's lyrics are more militant, alleging that Mr Dos Santos is corrupt and calling for his overthrow. A full-time rapper and inhabitant of Luanda's squalid Hojy ya Henda quarter, like MCK he sells CDs by word of mouth. "The government plays a different tune and song/ But people no longer want to dance or smile/ We are fed up with the situation," his best-known song goes. It has become an anthem of Luanda's working poor, often heard in minibus commuter taxis. Recently in Huambo, a provincial inland city, Angolans listening to a recording by the rapper on a street turned it down as a group of strangers approached.
Source: Financial Times
More articles on this and related issues can be found, among other places, here, here and here.
MAKAS NA SANZALA (I)
Voltando a receita para um “jet-set” nacional (Angolano ou Mocambicano): Uma Segunda Leitura, Um Olhar Diferente…
4. O facto de o artigo original do Mia Couto ter sido publicado ha dois anos atras, levou-me a ir repescar alguns artigos publicados por aquela altura, em 2004...
Angola: Quando o Silêncio do Povo Fala
Rafael Marques, 17 Janeiro 2004
(Parte II)
Frantz Fanon alertara os políticos africanos sobre a politização das massas. Não é nem pode ser através de um discurso político: "Politizar é abrir o espírito, é despertar o espírito, dar luz ao espírito". Nos musseques, onde se encontram as massas - a maioria absoluta - o silêncio do povo deixou-se estar embarrado pela miséria, tolhido pela guerra e pela repressão. A faixa 11, "Ekos de Revolta", desperta o tal espírito adormecido - balumuka. É uma análise sobre "um povo que sofre nas mãos dos governantes". Disseca a importação de disfarces ocidentais por parte da classe política que saqueia os recursos do povo e retribui com "discursos bonitinhos". "Ekos de revolta" apela aos cidadãos para que "estejam preparados/ o silêncio do povo fala/ a passividade do povo rebenta o balão". A rima resume a mensagem sobre e para o povo:
"Nós somos politicamente domesticados
Economicamente colonizados
Culturalmente estagnados
Socialmente atrasados/ (...)"
Donde provém essa consciência crítica? MCK indica a vida ao seu redor. Terminou o curso médio de Gestão e não tem acesso à universidade pública nem fundos para ingressar nas privadas. "Viver no musseque é ser herói". Miséria, insalubridade... Todavia, essa consciência é fruto de um processo de absorção das conquistas da liberdade de imprensa. O cantor tem, debaixo da cama, uma grande colecção de recortes de imprensa, onde abundam casos de corrupção, desgoverno e sei lá o quê! "Compomos as nossas letras com base no que captamos também da imprensa e da Rádio Ecclésia". Apesar da sua circulação pouco expressiva, em média total 30,000 exemplares/ semana para mais de 3,5 milhões de habitantes em Luanda, a imprensa independente tem sido o verdadeiro motor da consciência democrática que se vai impondo. Numa dinâmica espontânea e retro-alimentar, a faixa 6 do "Trincheira de Ideias", "Topikos p'ro artigo" é um tributo à imprensa independente - que a inspira - e uma paródia ao embelezamento oficial da realidade. Tem a participação do Brigadeiro Mata-Fracos, Iconoclasta, Kua Kubanza e Mil & Segundo. O tema explora, com positivismo forçado, o que mudou e o que está na mesma e vai constatando que "o salão de beleza da polícia tem novos penteados/ (...) o Parlamento, afinal, é uma comédia/ e quem pode fazer algo não liga/ (...) os jovens estão perdidos no deserto como camelos (...).
E a conversa continua no local do crime, no embarcadouro do Mussulo, onde a guarda do Senhorio, ao meio-dia e em praça pública, torturou e afogou o Cherokee. Ali onde a elite se refastela e goza os privilégios de uma Angola só para poucos. Naquele cemitério da verdade, onde o silêncio do povo é festejado com risos de escárnio. Faz parte do processo. "Os nossos corações estão arreados", lamenta um lavador de carros pela perda do colega e amigo. Em voz alta descarrega a sua raiva. "As autoridades que tinham vontade de matar, deviam apanhar o MCK e não um inocente. Querem ver-nos a viver como mudos".
MCK baixa a cara, coça os chinelos gastos pelas andanças e suspira. Não é inocente. O lavador de carros não o conhece. Este continua a falar, a dizer que não se deve tocar mais no assunto para não aborrecer os homens da presidência e da DNIC que por lá "andam a rondar". Quanto mais fala no medo menos amedrontado parece. Prefere, talvez, o discurso indirecto, manter a capa do medo. Outros lavadores juntam-se-lhe para confirmar o medo e as pressões a que estão sujeitos, enquanto desprezam o tal medo e dizem o que têm a dizer. Gostam e identificam-se com o "Sei lá o quê uáué". Talvez se sentissem honrados em saber que o MCK está no meio deles. A pesar as causas e consequências do seu exercício de cidadania.
Não faz parte dos cálculos e cenários elaborados a intromissão da música nos meandros da política. Sobretudo desse rap inventado no princípio dos anos 70 nos ghettos de Bronx, Nova Iorque, por marginais com muita imaginação, que fundiam ritmos e melodias de músicas conhecidas com poesia cáustica sobre a vida nos ghettos. Sem aproximação (…) qual será o desfecho em relação ao abismo que separa o poder, a oposição, os centros urbanos, os musseques de Luanda, os antigos combatentes, os palácios dos governadores e o resto do país?
MAKAS NA SANZALA (I)
Voltando a "Receita para um jet-set nacional" (Angolano ou Mocambicano): Uma Segunda Leitura, Um Olhar Diferente
3. O facto de o artigo original do Mia Couto ter sido publicado ha dois anos atras, levou-me a ir repescar alguns artigos publicados por aquela altura, em 2004, e decidi postar aqui dois deles, um em Portugues e outro em Ingles. Aqui vai o primeiro:
Angola: Quando o Silêncio do Povo Fala
Rafael Marques, 17 Janeiro 2004
"Rap é falar em rima ao ritmo de uma batida", Kurtis Blow
(Parte I)
Pelos labirínticos becos, que retalham a encosta do Margoso, serpenteiam imparáveis cursos de águas fétidas. Por aí passam e habitam, de olfacto habituado, gerações de cidadãos, entregues ao esquecimento. É por esses caminhos, por esses musseques politicamente abandonados, que uma geração de jovens, excluídos e ressentidos, engendra uma nova revolução política, através do rap e acumuladas frustrações de uma cidadania roubada.
MCK, 22 anos, ganhou notoriedade. (...) A 26 de Novembro de 2003, Arsénio Sebastião "Cherokee", 27 anos, foi morto por cantar "A téknica, as kausas e as konsekuências" de MCK, também conhecida como o "Sei lá o quê, uáué". Por sua vez, Cherokee tornou-se num símbolo da injustiça em Angola(...). Esse facto trouxe à tona a insustentável leveza do poder. Uma ditadura de mais de um quarto de século estremece ao som improvisado da verdade. A estrofe "quem fala a verdade vai p'ro caixão", acabou por ser o único elo de entendimento entre o cantor, a vítima e os carrascos (o poder).
Ao descer por aqueles becos, a caminho da sua casa, MCK goza com o seu estatuto social sobretudo quando, às manhãs, dedica-se a acarretar água para casa, com o bidão às costas, ao ombro ou à mão conforme der mais jeito e o número de viagens. "Sou o caçula de casa e tenho de acarretar água todos os dias," conta. O seu quarto é demasiado apertado, mesmo para uma pessoa. Em tempo de chuvas as rezas ajudam a manter a casa e a fé. Nesse espaço de sobrevivência, encontram-se outros activistas do rap. Furacão e o Keyta Mayanda. Faltou o Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes, encarregue de organizar a missa do 30º dia em memória de Cherokee.
O cenário de indignação exibido nos rostos e nos cartazes que perfilam o beco do Marçal, onde o malogrado habitava, é uma demonstração de maturidade e de tomada de consciência sobre a realidade no relacionamento entre o poder e o povo.
Num país onde a solidariedade e o espírito de açambarcamento uniram-se em comunhão de bens, os rappers conseguiram, por sua iniciativa, angariar perto de mil dólares para entregar à família da vítima. Um valor incomparável à fuba e ao feijão depositados pela guarda presidencial em casa do malogrado. Mais, MCK assumiu o compromisso pela escolarização dos dois órfãos de Cherokee. Faz a venda directa dos seus discos e os magros proventos junta-os para a causa a que se propôs. Essa é a revolução. "Temos de promover uma revolução mental para corrigir o que se passou em 1975. Mudou-se o colono, mas manteve-se o sistema. Nós não somos ninguém no nosso próprio país," afirma Keyta Mayanda. "Apertaste no play e caíste numa trincheira de ideias", avisa a música introdutória do CD de MCK, com 13 faixas, com o sugestivo título de "Trincheira de Ideias". Esse álbum e outros de teor mais radical como "Conheça a verdade e a verdade te libertará", do Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes, são gravados e reproduzidos em estúdios improvisados como munições para alimentar frentes específicas.
Voluntariosos taxistas, os indispensáveis candongueiros, transportadores das massas, encontram-se entre os propagadores desse despertar de consciências, essa politização das massas. Põem a tocar, nos seus veículos cheios de passageiros, esse tipo de música contestária e censurada, cuja qualidade vale pelo conteúdo e até mesmo pela batida. "Governo toca mais uma guitarra", do Brigadeiro 10 Pacotes, é o som mais controverso e escutado nesse circuito de distribuição . É uma afronta em discurso directo contra o Soba Grande.
Thursday, 21 December 2006
Africa at large: The assault on African education (comment)
The assault on the developmentalist university came from the new global development bureaucracy, particularly the Bretton Woods institutions. They were home to a radically different developmentalism. To understand the difference, we need to take two factors into account.
For a start, think of the end of colonialism, a development that left a large number of colonial bureaucrats unemployed. Many were seconded to the bureaucracies of the new multilateral institutions. I have no idea of how many, if any, came to staff the Commonwealth Secretariat. But I have in mind the World Bank.
The World Bank began with a frontal assault on African universities at a conference of vice-chancellors of African universities that it called in Harare in 1986. There, it advised the VCs that it would make economic sense to close universities in independent Africa and have its human resource needs trained in universities in the West. Unable to convince the VCs to do themselves out of a job, the bank changed tack, and followed with a different strategy, that of conditional aid.
The second line of attack took the form of “technical assistance”, leading to the inflow of expatriate staff from donor countries as technical experts, their salaries and perks paid from the component of “aid” known as “technical assistance”. The counterpart of this was what we call the “brain drain”, the outflow of national intellectuals, most taking up jobs in the West.
Do excuse me one bit of speculation here. Given the obvious difference between incoming expatriates, who were securing jobs under monopolistic conditions, and nationals, who had to compete in open markets, economists are likely to tell us that those who succeed under free market skies are likely to be of a superior quality than those who shelter under monopolies. If so, then the quality of intellectuals Africa lost in the period after independence was surely much higher than that of the technical experts it welcomes as part of “technical aid”. The World Bank estimated recently that roughly half of university graduates of universities in independent Africa have left for overseas since independence. Sandwiched between international donors and critical intellectuals at home, national governments sadly acquiesced in the marginalisation of national intellectuals.
The World Bank developed a substantial critique of the developmentalist university. To take it seriously, we need to disaggregate it so we can distinguish the positive from the negative. The positive part resonated with wider audiences and earned the bank much support during its initial call for market-oriented reform of universities. The first part of the bank’s critique was that the developmentalist university was duplicating an expensive colonial model for training a narrow and privileged elite. Other parts talked of the need for greater university autonomy, and for a much-needed broadening of the financial base for higher education.
Then there was the negative side, which in many ways summed up the core of the bank’s agenda, and had a deadly effect on the future of higher education in middle Africa. Bank studies claimed to show that the rate of return on investment in higher education was much lower than in secondary or primary education, and the benefit was mainly private. Thus the bank argued that beneficiaries should share a significant part of the cost. It thus called for a reduction of state funding to higher education ...
It may be that only those countries with a dense network of higher education institutions, like South Africa and Nigeria in this continent, can afford to have a national research university. But, even in the small country context, one needs to think of a decent liberal arts college with a decent general education that responds to both a changing global environment and to local histories and contexts — a site for general education that can produce a generation of leaders with a shared understanding of the local context and an opportunity to forge a vision of how to transform it. None of this can be left to the market.
By Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman professor of government at Columbia University in New York City. This is an edited extract of his December 12/2006 speech to the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Cape Town. (in Mail & Guardian, South Africa, 12.19.2006)
For a start, think of the end of colonialism, a development that left a large number of colonial bureaucrats unemployed. Many were seconded to the bureaucracies of the new multilateral institutions. I have no idea of how many, if any, came to staff the Commonwealth Secretariat. But I have in mind the World Bank.
The World Bank began with a frontal assault on African universities at a conference of vice-chancellors of African universities that it called in Harare in 1986. There, it advised the VCs that it would make economic sense to close universities in independent Africa and have its human resource needs trained in universities in the West. Unable to convince the VCs to do themselves out of a job, the bank changed tack, and followed with a different strategy, that of conditional aid.
The second line of attack took the form of “technical assistance”, leading to the inflow of expatriate staff from donor countries as technical experts, their salaries and perks paid from the component of “aid” known as “technical assistance”. The counterpart of this was what we call the “brain drain”, the outflow of national intellectuals, most taking up jobs in the West.
Do excuse me one bit of speculation here. Given the obvious difference between incoming expatriates, who were securing jobs under monopolistic conditions, and nationals, who had to compete in open markets, economists are likely to tell us that those who succeed under free market skies are likely to be of a superior quality than those who shelter under monopolies. If so, then the quality of intellectuals Africa lost in the period after independence was surely much higher than that of the technical experts it welcomes as part of “technical aid”. The World Bank estimated recently that roughly half of university graduates of universities in independent Africa have left for overseas since independence. Sandwiched between international donors and critical intellectuals at home, national governments sadly acquiesced in the marginalisation of national intellectuals.
The World Bank developed a substantial critique of the developmentalist university. To take it seriously, we need to disaggregate it so we can distinguish the positive from the negative. The positive part resonated with wider audiences and earned the bank much support during its initial call for market-oriented reform of universities. The first part of the bank’s critique was that the developmentalist university was duplicating an expensive colonial model for training a narrow and privileged elite. Other parts talked of the need for greater university autonomy, and for a much-needed broadening of the financial base for higher education.
Then there was the negative side, which in many ways summed up the core of the bank’s agenda, and had a deadly effect on the future of higher education in middle Africa. Bank studies claimed to show that the rate of return on investment in higher education was much lower than in secondary or primary education, and the benefit was mainly private. Thus the bank argued that beneficiaries should share a significant part of the cost. It thus called for a reduction of state funding to higher education ...
It may be that only those countries with a dense network of higher education institutions, like South Africa and Nigeria in this continent, can afford to have a national research university. But, even in the small country context, one needs to think of a decent liberal arts college with a decent general education that responds to both a changing global environment and to local histories and contexts — a site for general education that can produce a generation of leaders with a shared understanding of the local context and an opportunity to forge a vision of how to transform it. None of this can be left to the market.
By Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman professor of government at Columbia University in New York City. This is an edited extract of his December 12/2006 speech to the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Cape Town. (in Mail & Guardian, South Africa, 12.19.2006)
Photo: My son, Paulo, on Graduation Day at the Barbican (London, 2004)
África do Sul: Tropas que lutaram na Namíbia e Angola são excluídos de memorial
Pretória, 20/12 - Os soldados sul-africanos que perderam a vida em combate em Angola e na Namíbia ao serviço do regime minoritário branco de Pretória não serão mencionados no memorial inaugurado no Parque da Liberdade, fez saber terça-feira o director-executivo do novo mausoléu.Em declarações ao jornal de língua afrikaans "Beeld", Mongane Wally Serote esclareceu que os criadores e gestores do Parque da Liberdade consideram que os cubanos que morreram em combate ao serviço de Angola têm o direito a ter os seus nomes inscritos no memorial à liberdade, mas que todos que combateram contra cubanos e angolanos nos territórios de Angola ou do antigo Sudoeste Africano (hoje Namíbia) não merecem tal honra.Para Serote, os que serviram o regime do "apartheid" nos conflitos dos anos 70 e 80 nas fronteiras regionais "não serviram a liberdade nem a dignidade humana". "Não ignoramos o papel que desempenharam e permitiremos que o nosso povo debata a questão. Em última análise serão os sul-africanos a decidir se esses soldados merecem ser honrados", referiu o director-executivo do Parque da Liberdade, admitindo não ter dúvidas de que os cubanos que combateram na região desempenharam um papel importante na derrota do "apartheid" e que, por isso, merecem ser recordados. "Nunca foi nossa intenção honrar aqueles que se opuseram à liberdade e à dignidade humana", concluíu Wally Serote. O Parque da Liberdade, em Pretória, foi inaugurado pelo presidente Thabo Mbeki no passado sábado. No acto solene da inauguração, que contou com a presença, para além do Chefe do Estado, de membros do Governo, diplomatas e outros altos dignitários africanos e europeus, o presidente da Câmara de Tshwane (a área metropolitana de Pretória), Gwen Ramakgopa, referiu que o parque e o seu mausoléu são um tributo a todos aqueles, brancos e negros, que pagaram com o sacrifício supremo a sua participação na luta pela liberdade. "Isikhumbutu (o nome dado ao mausoléu) faz-nos a todos sentir que caminhamos com dignidade à medida que construímos uma Nação com uma visão comum", afirmou na ocasião Ramakgopa. O presidente Mbeki acendeu no local a "chama eterna", que simboliza a constante luta pelos ideais da justiça e liberdade. De acordo ainda com a Lusa, foram muitos os portugueses que, antes e depois das independências de Angola e Moçambique, se alistaram nas forças armadas sul-africanas e combateram contra os movimentos de libertação sul-africanos e os exércitos angolano e cubano que os apoiavam.
Fonte: Angop/Lusa
Tuesday, 19 December 2006
MAKAS NA SANZALA (I)
Voltando a receita para um “jet-set” nacional (Angolano ou Mocambicano): Uma Segunda Leitura, Um Olhar Diferente…
2. Ora, voltando ao nosso mundo angolano/mocambicano (e, mais geralmente, africano e mundial) o facto e’ que, pondo de parte a certamente reprovavel poluicao sonora das “emissoes generosas a partir do automovel para toda a cidade”, no texto do Mia as “hipopadas” e “rapadas” aparecem com uma carga implacavelmente negativa, nao deixando qualquer margem de tolerancia para, ou conciliacao com, o lado criativo e progressivo desse genero musical que ha muito deixou de ser uma forma de expressao exclusiva dos ‘gangsta rappers’ dos ghettos americanos, ou sequer apenas das comunidades negras, e hoje nao so’ se situa e reina firmemente no universo da musica popular a nivel global (sendo, notavelmente, a forma previligiada de veiculacao do protesto social na nossa era…) como se vai adicionando de ingredientes, temperos e sabores locais um pouco por todos os cantos da terra. Ai estao, por exemplo, o kwaito Sul-Africano e tambem os emergentes hip-hop Angolano e Mocambicano para o provar… A este proposito, descobri ontem uma ‘hip-hopista/rapper’ angolana, que da pelo nome de Adrenalina (na foto), cujo tema 'SOS', que aparentemente esta a fazer altas ondas na Africa do Sul e faz lembrar um pouco a Lauryn Hill, demonstra que vale bem a pena prestar um pouco mais de atencao a essa que e’ apenas, mais uma, quica a mais versatil, adaptavel e diversificante, das formas de expressao cultural da era moderna. Ainda nao me e' possivel tecnicamente coloca-lo aqui no blog, mas podem ouvir o 'SOS' da Adrenalina aqui.
2. Ora, voltando ao nosso mundo angolano/mocambicano (e, mais geralmente, africano e mundial) o facto e’ que, pondo de parte a certamente reprovavel poluicao sonora das “emissoes generosas a partir do automovel para toda a cidade”, no texto do Mia as “hipopadas” e “rapadas” aparecem com uma carga implacavelmente negativa, nao deixando qualquer margem de tolerancia para, ou conciliacao com, o lado criativo e progressivo desse genero musical que ha muito deixou de ser uma forma de expressao exclusiva dos ‘gangsta rappers’ dos ghettos americanos, ou sequer apenas das comunidades negras, e hoje nao so’ se situa e reina firmemente no universo da musica popular a nivel global (sendo, notavelmente, a forma previligiada de veiculacao do protesto social na nossa era…) como se vai adicionando de ingredientes, temperos e sabores locais um pouco por todos os cantos da terra. Ai estao, por exemplo, o kwaito Sul-Africano e tambem os emergentes hip-hop Angolano e Mocambicano para o provar… A este proposito, descobri ontem uma ‘hip-hopista/rapper’ angolana, que da pelo nome de Adrenalina (na foto), cujo tema 'SOS', que aparentemente esta a fazer altas ondas na Africa do Sul e faz lembrar um pouco a Lauryn Hill, demonstra que vale bem a pena prestar um pouco mais de atencao a essa que e’ apenas, mais uma, quica a mais versatil, adaptavel e diversificante, das formas de expressao cultural da era moderna. Ainda nao me e' possivel tecnicamente coloca-lo aqui no blog, mas podem ouvir o 'SOS' da Adrenalina aqui.
MAKAS NA SANZALA (I)
Voltando a receita para um “jet-set” nacional (Angolano ou Mocambicano): Uma Segunda Leitura, Um Olhar Diferente…
1. Confesso que postei aqui aquele texto do Mia Couto com “segundas intencoes” (nao más intencoes… apenas segundas). Desde que o li pela primeira vez, quando incialmente foi circulado ha cerca de 2 anos, me tem apetecido temperar as suas receitas com outros ingredientes a ver no que da’… mas, bom ou mau, espero que o prato final seja de um sabor diferente, idealmente para melhor. Tentarei “conspurcar” as receitas uma a uma e, como tenho que comecar por alguma, comecarei pelo que ele diz sobre as “rapadas” e “hipopadas” no que toca a Cultura:“(...) a única música que (o jet-setista) escuta são umas 'rapadas e hip-hopadas' que ele generosamente emite da aparelhagem do automóvel para toda a cidade.”
Pois bem, ha uma maka a correr neste momento na sanzala dos EUA entre a Oprah Winfrey e o artista de hip-hop Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. 50 Cent (entre outros, como o rapper/actor Ludacris, a.k.a. Chris Bridges). A maka resume-se ao seguinte: a Oprah critica a atitude misogena de uma certa musica hip-hop e o 50 Cent acusou-a por isso de ser uma “negra com mentalidade branca” ou, na tipificacao do cada vez mais sofisticado ‘black community lingo’, de ser uma “coconut”. Pelo meio, ambas as partes foram arregimentando adeptos das suas respectivas posicoes um pouco por todo o lado, inclusive na comunidade hip-hop. Do lado do 50 Cent houve um intelectual que se interrogou “como e’ que a Oprah se sentia na posicao de critica de um genero musical que e' essencialmente de sensibilidade negra”… Do lado da Oprah ha varias posicoes, incluindo a minha, que apesar de ja ter sido mais radical (nos tempos em que talvez me tenha parecido muito com os pais, ocidentais ou ocidentalizados um pouco por todo o mundo, dos anos 50/60 que viam no ‘rock and roll’ - que pouco mais e' do que um "derivado" do blues afro-americano - a maior ameaca ao mundo tal como o conheciam e em que o meu filho me ensinou que nao era ‘hi-p – ho-p’, como se estivesse com soluços... que se pronunciava mas sim straight ‘hipop’ e me fez interessar e, aos poucos, ir compreendendo melhor personagens, infelizmente tragicos, como o Tupac Shakur, por exemplo…), continuo a nao encontrar qualquer racionalidade na forma degradante como as mulheres sao geralmente retratadas, quer nas letras, quer nos videos desse genero musical...
1. Confesso que postei aqui aquele texto do Mia Couto com “segundas intencoes” (nao más intencoes… apenas segundas). Desde que o li pela primeira vez, quando incialmente foi circulado ha cerca de 2 anos, me tem apetecido temperar as suas receitas com outros ingredientes a ver no que da’… mas, bom ou mau, espero que o prato final seja de um sabor diferente, idealmente para melhor. Tentarei “conspurcar” as receitas uma a uma e, como tenho que comecar por alguma, comecarei pelo que ele diz sobre as “rapadas” e “hipopadas” no que toca a Cultura:“(...) a única música que (o jet-setista) escuta são umas 'rapadas e hip-hopadas' que ele generosamente emite da aparelhagem do automóvel para toda a cidade.”
Pois bem, ha uma maka a correr neste momento na sanzala dos EUA entre a Oprah Winfrey e o artista de hip-hop Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. 50 Cent (entre outros, como o rapper/actor Ludacris, a.k.a. Chris Bridges). A maka resume-se ao seguinte: a Oprah critica a atitude misogena de uma certa musica hip-hop e o 50 Cent acusou-a por isso de ser uma “negra com mentalidade branca” ou, na tipificacao do cada vez mais sofisticado ‘black community lingo’, de ser uma “coconut”. Pelo meio, ambas as partes foram arregimentando adeptos das suas respectivas posicoes um pouco por todo o lado, inclusive na comunidade hip-hop. Do lado do 50 Cent houve um intelectual que se interrogou “como e’ que a Oprah se sentia na posicao de critica de um genero musical que e' essencialmente de sensibilidade negra”… Do lado da Oprah ha varias posicoes, incluindo a minha, que apesar de ja ter sido mais radical (nos tempos em que talvez me tenha parecido muito com os pais, ocidentais ou ocidentalizados um pouco por todo o mundo, dos anos 50/60 que viam no ‘rock and roll’ - que pouco mais e' do que um "derivado" do blues afro-americano - a maior ameaca ao mundo tal como o conheciam e em que o meu filho me ensinou que nao era ‘hi-p – ho-p’, como se estivesse com soluços... que se pronunciava mas sim straight ‘hipop’ e me fez interessar e, aos poucos, ir compreendendo melhor personagens, infelizmente tragicos, como o Tupac Shakur, por exemplo…), continuo a nao encontrar qualquer racionalidade na forma degradante como as mulheres sao geralmente retratadas, quer nas letras, quer nos videos desse genero musical...
PIEDS-BLANCS, HOUDA ROUANE
Vinha hoje a tarde a folhear uma revista de bordo da Air France no regresso de Tunis e deparei-me com esta breve descricao deste livro: “Pieds-Blancs – In this debut novel, Houda Rouane forges a brilliant synthesis of the atmosphere of the poor suburbs of Paris, her own literary aspirations and her life as a Frenchwoman of immigrant origin. Through the hectic daily life of her narrator, a supervisor in a secondary school, Rouane examines the social problems that plague modern-day France, putting them into perspective and repudiating the uncompromising ideologies that cloud people’s judgement. She is living proof that society needs women whose dual backgrounds give them a particular sensitivity and sensibility.”
Apesar de, obviamente, ainda nao o ter lido, decidi traze-lo direitinho aqui ao Books of Life (que nao pretende propriamente fazer critica literaria, mas apenas anotar o que torna os livros aqui listados particularmente significativos para a minha propria vida), quanto mais nao seja pela mencao ao the a la menthe (..."Amer et doux comme un the a la menthe"... os acentos ficaram em Gammarth).
Pela tematica multicultural e ate pela ‘semelhanca’ dos titulos e a idade das autoras por altura dos respectivos primeiros lancamentos, 24/25 anos (… idade em que tambem me ‘atrevi’ a lancar um livro…), parece-me que esta Houda Rouane com o seu ‘Pieds-Blancs’ (designacao dada aos 'magrhebinos' nascidos em Franca) sera uma especie de versao francesa da britanica Zadie Smith com o seu ‘White Teeth’ (2000). Veremos.
PS: Ironicamente, combinados, estes dois titulos parecem sugerir que cada vez menos ha uma "cultura exclusivamente branca" dos dentes aos pes...
Monday, 18 December 2006
TUNISIA BLUES
II. Azure in White + Blue in Green = Kind of Blue
or All Blues...
... Acabei por mudar de hotel a meio da minha estadia. Troquei o imponente Corinthia Khamsa com as suas 5 estrelas, higiene e servico pouco recomendaveis pelo bastante mais aprazivel, limpo e simpatico Phebus, tambem em Gammarth, com as suas 4 estrelas e um quarto com uma soberba vista total para o mar...
or All Blues...
... Acabei por mudar de hotel a meio da minha estadia. Troquei o imponente Corinthia Khamsa com as suas 5 estrelas, higiene e servico pouco recomendaveis pelo bastante mais aprazivel, limpo e simpatico Phebus, tambem em Gammarth, com as suas 4 estrelas e um quarto com uma soberba vista total para o mar...
All Blues (Miles Davis)
... Na verdade, depois daquela inicial "sneak preview" das anunciadas "pristine beaches" ao redor do hotel, acabei por descobrir que num troco de cerca de 3/4 km da praia era tudo pouco mais do que desolacao, degradacao, falta de manutencao e montes de bosta de camelo na areia, apesar do azure do mar mais do que compensar tudo isso...
Blue In Green (Miles Davis)
Blue In Green (Miles Davis)
... Nao fossem as minhas digressoes por Khartago (Patrimonio Cultural Mundial, onde visitei ruinas Punicas, Romanas e Bizantinas suficientes para o resto da minha vida...), Sidi Bou Said (uma verdadeira rapsodia em azul e branco...) e o meu primeiro passeio de camelo (alias, duas dromedarias muito refilonas, mas obedientes, chamadas respectivamente Shakira e Aisha...), teria saido da Tunisia com uma pessima impressao daquele que e', afinal, um dos mais belos e culturalmente ricos paises que ja visitei.
Wednesday, 13 December 2006
Receita para um "jet-set" nacional - Mia Couto (com acrescento da mais-valia angolana)
Maputo - Já vimos que, em Moçambique (em Angola é pior), não é preciso ser rico. O essencial é parecer rico. Entre parecer e ser vai menos que um passo, a diferença entre um tropeço e uma trapaça. No nosso caso, a aparência é que faz a essência.
Daí que a empresa comece pela fachada, o empresário de sucesso comece pelo sucesso da sua viatura, a felicidade do casamento se faça pela dimensão da festa (em Angola, para além de um convite “de luxo”, cada vez mais sofisticado, para um lugar cada vez mais “chique”, acrescenta-se uma lista obrigatória de lojas – as mais caras de preferência – com as prendas devidamente referenciadas). A ocasião, diz-se, é que faz o negócio. E é aqui que entra o cenário dos ricos e candidatos a ricos: a encenação do nosso "jet-set".
O "jet-set" como todos sabem é algo que ninguém sabe o que é. Mas reúne a gente de luxo, a gente vazia que enche de vazio as colunas sociais (a revista ”Caras” é o nosso protótipo). O jet-set moçambicano está ainda no início. Aqui seguem umas dicas que, durante o próximo ano, ajudarão qualquer pelintra a candidatar-se a um jet-setista. Haja democracia! As sugestões são gratuitas e estão dispostas na forma de um pequeno manual por desordem alfabética:
Anéis - São imprescindíveis. Fazem parte da montra. O princípio é: quem tem boa aparência é bem aparentado. E quem tem bom parente está a meio caminho para passar dos anéis do senhor à categoria de Senhor dos Anéis. O jet-setista nacional deve assemelhar-se a um verdadeiro Saturno, tais os anéis que rodeiam os seus dedos. A ideia é que quem passe nunca confunda o jet-setista com um magaíça, um pobre, um coitado. Deve-se usar jóias do tipo matacão, ouros e pedras preciosas tão grandes que se poderiam chamar de penedos preciosos. A acompanhar a anelagem deve exibir-se um cordão de ouro, bem visível entre a camisa desabotoada.
Boas maneiras - Não se devem ter. Nem pensar. O bom estilo é agressivo, o arranhão, o grosseiro. Um tipo simpático, de modos afáveis e que se preocupa com os outros? Isso, só uma pessoa que necessita de aprovação da sociedade. O jet-setista nacional não precisa de aprovação de ninguém, já nasceu aprovado. Daí os seus ares de chefe, de gajo mandão, que olha o mundo inteiro com superioridade de patrão. Pára o carro no meio da estrada atrapalhando o trânsito, fura a bicha, passa à frente, pisa o cidadão anónimo. Onde os outros devem esperar, o jet-setista aproveita para exibir a sua condição de criatura especial. O jet-setista não espera: telefona. E manda. Quando não desmanda.
Cabelo - O nosso jet-setista anda a reboque das modas dos outros. O que vem dos americanos: isso é que é bom. Espreita a MTV e fica deleitado com uns moços cuja única tarefa na vida é fazer de conta que cantam. Os tipos são fantásticos, nesses video-clips: nunca se lhes viu ligação alguma com o trabalho, circulam com viaturas a abarrotar de miúdas descascadas. A vida é fácil para esses meninos. De onde lhes virá o sustento? Pois esses queridos fazem questão em rapar o cabelo à moda militar, para demonstrar a sua agressividade contra um mundo que os excluiu mas que, ao que parece, lhes abriu a porta para uns tantos luxos. E esses andam de cabelo rapado. Por enquanto.
Cerveja - A solidez do nosso matreco vem dos líquidos. O nosso candidato a jet-setista não simplesmente bebe. Ele tem de mostrar que bebe. Parece um reclame publicitário ambulante. Encontramos o nosso matreco de cerveja na mão em casa, na rua, no automóvel, na casa de banho. As obsessões do matreco nacional variam entre o copo e o corpo (os tipos ginasticam-se bem). Vazam copos e enchem os corpos (de musculaças). As garrafas ou latas vazias são deitadas para o meio da rua. Deitar a lata no depósito do lixo é uma coisa demasiado "educadinha". Boa educação é para os pobres. Bons modos são para quem trabalha. Porque a malta da pesada não precisa de maneiras. Precisa de gangs. Respeito? Isso o dinheiro não compra. Antes vale que os outros tenham medo.
Chapéu - É fundamental. Mas o verdadeiro jet-setista não usa chapéu quando todos os outros usam: ao sol. Eis a criatividade do matreco nacional: chapéu ele usa na sombra, no interior das viaturas e sob o tecto das casas. Deve ser um chapéu que dê nas vistas. Muitoaconselhável é o chapéu de cowboy, àla Texana. Para mostrar a familiaridade do nosso matreco com a rudeza dos domadores de cavalos. Com os que põe o planeta na ordem. Na sua ordem.(Aqui até pegou na classe dirigente do país…)
Cultura - O jet-setista não lê, não vai ao teatro. A única coisa que ele lê são os rótulos de uísque. A única música que escuta são umas "rapadas e hip-hopadas" que ele generosamente emite da aparelhagem do automóvel para toda a cidade. Os tipos da cultura são, no entender do matreco nacional, uns desgraçados que nunca ficarão ricos.
O segredo é o seguinte: o jet-setista nem precisa de estudar. Nem de ter Curriculum Vitae. Para quê? Ele não vai concorrer, os concursos é que vão ter com ele. E para abrir portas basta-lhe o nome. O nome da família, entenda-se. (E quando finge estudar, não esconde os seus dotes de “cabulador” ou de “corruptor”, que lhe permitem terminar o curso e apresentar um pomposo cartão de visita de “Mestre, Doutor, Professor João das Garotas”).
Carros - O matreco nacional fica maluquinho com viaturas de luxo. É quase uma tara sexual, uma espécie de droga legalmente autorizada. O carro não é para o nosso jet-setista um instrumento, um objecto. É uma divindade, um meio de afirmação. Se pudesse o matreco levava o automóvel para a cama. E, de facto, o sonho mais erótico do nosso jet-setista não é com uma Mercedes. É, com um Mercedes.
Fatos - Têm de ser de Itália. Para não correr o risco do investimento ser em vão, aconselha-se a usar o casaco com os rótulos de fora, não vá a origem da roupa passar despercebida. Um lencinho pode espreitar do bolso, a sugerir que outras coisas podem de lá sair.
Óculos escuros - Essenciais, haja ou não haja claridade. O style - ou em português, o estilo - assim o exige. Devem ser usados em casa, no cinema, enfim, em tudo o que não bate o sol directo. O matreco deve dar a entender que há uma luz especial que lhe vem de dentro da cabeça. Essa a razão do chapéu, mesmo na maior obscuridade.
Simplicidade - A simplicidade é um pecado mortal para a nossa matrecagem. Sobretudo, se se é filho de gente grande. Nesse caso, deve-se gastar à larga e mostrar que isso de país pobre é para os outros. Porque eles (os meninos de boas famílias) exibem mais ostentação que os filhos dos verdadeiros ricos dos países verdadeiramente ricos. Afinal, ficamos independentes para quê?
Telemóvel - Ui, ui, ui! O celular ou telemóvel já faz parte do braço do matreco, é a sua mais superior extremidade inferior. A marca, o modelo, as luzinhas que acendem, os brilhantes, tudo isso conta. Mas importa, sobretudo, que o toque do celular seja audível a mais de 200 metros . Quem disse que o jet-setista não tem relação com a música clássica? Volume no máximo, pelo aparelho passam os mais cultos trechos: Fur Elise de Beethoven, a Rapsódia Húngara de Franz Liszt, o Danúbio Azul de Strauss.No entanto, a melodia mais adequada para as condições higiénicas de Maputo é o Voo do Moscardo. Última sugestão : nunca desligue o telemóvel! O que em outro lugar é uma prova de boa educação pode, em Moçambique, ser interpretado como um sinal de fraqueza. Em Conselho de Ministros, na confissão da Igreja, no funeral do avô: mostre que nada é mais importante que as suas inadiáveis comunicações. Você é que é o centro do universo!
Daí que a empresa comece pela fachada, o empresário de sucesso comece pelo sucesso da sua viatura, a felicidade do casamento se faça pela dimensão da festa (em Angola, para além de um convite “de luxo”, cada vez mais sofisticado, para um lugar cada vez mais “chique”, acrescenta-se uma lista obrigatória de lojas – as mais caras de preferência – com as prendas devidamente referenciadas). A ocasião, diz-se, é que faz o negócio. E é aqui que entra o cenário dos ricos e candidatos a ricos: a encenação do nosso "jet-set".
O "jet-set" como todos sabem é algo que ninguém sabe o que é. Mas reúne a gente de luxo, a gente vazia que enche de vazio as colunas sociais (a revista ”Caras” é o nosso protótipo). O jet-set moçambicano está ainda no início. Aqui seguem umas dicas que, durante o próximo ano, ajudarão qualquer pelintra a candidatar-se a um jet-setista. Haja democracia! As sugestões são gratuitas e estão dispostas na forma de um pequeno manual por desordem alfabética:
Anéis - São imprescindíveis. Fazem parte da montra. O princípio é: quem tem boa aparência é bem aparentado. E quem tem bom parente está a meio caminho para passar dos anéis do senhor à categoria de Senhor dos Anéis. O jet-setista nacional deve assemelhar-se a um verdadeiro Saturno, tais os anéis que rodeiam os seus dedos. A ideia é que quem passe nunca confunda o jet-setista com um magaíça, um pobre, um coitado. Deve-se usar jóias do tipo matacão, ouros e pedras preciosas tão grandes que se poderiam chamar de penedos preciosos. A acompanhar a anelagem deve exibir-se um cordão de ouro, bem visível entre a camisa desabotoada.
Boas maneiras - Não se devem ter. Nem pensar. O bom estilo é agressivo, o arranhão, o grosseiro. Um tipo simpático, de modos afáveis e que se preocupa com os outros? Isso, só uma pessoa que necessita de aprovação da sociedade. O jet-setista nacional não precisa de aprovação de ninguém, já nasceu aprovado. Daí os seus ares de chefe, de gajo mandão, que olha o mundo inteiro com superioridade de patrão. Pára o carro no meio da estrada atrapalhando o trânsito, fura a bicha, passa à frente, pisa o cidadão anónimo. Onde os outros devem esperar, o jet-setista aproveita para exibir a sua condição de criatura especial. O jet-setista não espera: telefona. E manda. Quando não desmanda.
Cabelo - O nosso jet-setista anda a reboque das modas dos outros. O que vem dos americanos: isso é que é bom. Espreita a MTV e fica deleitado com uns moços cuja única tarefa na vida é fazer de conta que cantam. Os tipos são fantásticos, nesses video-clips: nunca se lhes viu ligação alguma com o trabalho, circulam com viaturas a abarrotar de miúdas descascadas. A vida é fácil para esses meninos. De onde lhes virá o sustento? Pois esses queridos fazem questão em rapar o cabelo à moda militar, para demonstrar a sua agressividade contra um mundo que os excluiu mas que, ao que parece, lhes abriu a porta para uns tantos luxos. E esses andam de cabelo rapado. Por enquanto.
Cerveja - A solidez do nosso matreco vem dos líquidos. O nosso candidato a jet-setista não simplesmente bebe. Ele tem de mostrar que bebe. Parece um reclame publicitário ambulante. Encontramos o nosso matreco de cerveja na mão em casa, na rua, no automóvel, na casa de banho. As obsessões do matreco nacional variam entre o copo e o corpo (os tipos ginasticam-se bem). Vazam copos e enchem os corpos (de musculaças). As garrafas ou latas vazias são deitadas para o meio da rua. Deitar a lata no depósito do lixo é uma coisa demasiado "educadinha". Boa educação é para os pobres. Bons modos são para quem trabalha. Porque a malta da pesada não precisa de maneiras. Precisa de gangs. Respeito? Isso o dinheiro não compra. Antes vale que os outros tenham medo.
Chapéu - É fundamental. Mas o verdadeiro jet-setista não usa chapéu quando todos os outros usam: ao sol. Eis a criatividade do matreco nacional: chapéu ele usa na sombra, no interior das viaturas e sob o tecto das casas. Deve ser um chapéu que dê nas vistas. Muitoaconselhável é o chapéu de cowboy, àla Texana. Para mostrar a familiaridade do nosso matreco com a rudeza dos domadores de cavalos. Com os que põe o planeta na ordem. Na sua ordem.(Aqui até pegou na classe dirigente do país…)
Cultura - O jet-setista não lê, não vai ao teatro. A única coisa que ele lê são os rótulos de uísque. A única música que escuta são umas "rapadas e hip-hopadas" que ele generosamente emite da aparelhagem do automóvel para toda a cidade. Os tipos da cultura são, no entender do matreco nacional, uns desgraçados que nunca ficarão ricos.
O segredo é o seguinte: o jet-setista nem precisa de estudar. Nem de ter Curriculum Vitae. Para quê? Ele não vai concorrer, os concursos é que vão ter com ele. E para abrir portas basta-lhe o nome. O nome da família, entenda-se. (E quando finge estudar, não esconde os seus dotes de “cabulador” ou de “corruptor”, que lhe permitem terminar o curso e apresentar um pomposo cartão de visita de “Mestre, Doutor, Professor João das Garotas”).
Carros - O matreco nacional fica maluquinho com viaturas de luxo. É quase uma tara sexual, uma espécie de droga legalmente autorizada. O carro não é para o nosso jet-setista um instrumento, um objecto. É uma divindade, um meio de afirmação. Se pudesse o matreco levava o automóvel para a cama. E, de facto, o sonho mais erótico do nosso jet-setista não é com uma Mercedes. É, com um Mercedes.
Fatos - Têm de ser de Itália. Para não correr o risco do investimento ser em vão, aconselha-se a usar o casaco com os rótulos de fora, não vá a origem da roupa passar despercebida. Um lencinho pode espreitar do bolso, a sugerir que outras coisas podem de lá sair.
Óculos escuros - Essenciais, haja ou não haja claridade. O style - ou em português, o estilo - assim o exige. Devem ser usados em casa, no cinema, enfim, em tudo o que não bate o sol directo. O matreco deve dar a entender que há uma luz especial que lhe vem de dentro da cabeça. Essa a razão do chapéu, mesmo na maior obscuridade.
Simplicidade - A simplicidade é um pecado mortal para a nossa matrecagem. Sobretudo, se se é filho de gente grande. Nesse caso, deve-se gastar à larga e mostrar que isso de país pobre é para os outros. Porque eles (os meninos de boas famílias) exibem mais ostentação que os filhos dos verdadeiros ricos dos países verdadeiramente ricos. Afinal, ficamos independentes para quê?
Telemóvel - Ui, ui, ui! O celular ou telemóvel já faz parte do braço do matreco, é a sua mais superior extremidade inferior. A marca, o modelo, as luzinhas que acendem, os brilhantes, tudo isso conta. Mas importa, sobretudo, que o toque do celular seja audível a mais de 200 metros . Quem disse que o jet-setista não tem relação com a música clássica? Volume no máximo, pelo aparelho passam os mais cultos trechos: Fur Elise de Beethoven, a Rapsódia Húngara de Franz Liszt, o Danúbio Azul de Strauss.No entanto, a melodia mais adequada para as condições higiénicas de Maputo é o Voo do Moscardo. Última sugestão : nunca desligue o telemóvel! O que em outro lugar é uma prova de boa educação pode, em Moçambique, ser interpretado como um sinal de fraqueza. Em Conselho de Ministros, na confissão da Igreja, no funeral do avô: mostre que nada é mais importante que as suas inadiáveis comunicações. Você é que é o centro do universo!
Tuesday, 12 December 2006
UM EXEMPLO A SEGUIR EM ANGOLA?
In November, Tony Leon, a political veteran and leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), the largest South African party after the ruling African National Congress (ANC), announced he was stepping down. Mr Leon said that after 13 years at the helm, he would not seek re-election at the DA's congress next year. The ANC will also seek a new leader in 2007, ahead of the 2009 presidential election, when Thabo Mbeki, the president, is constitutionally required to step down.Under Mr Leon the DA has transformed from a liberal party favoured by English-speaking whites that scored less than 2% of the vote in the first post-apartheid election in 1994 into the party of choice for most white and “Coloured” (mixed-race) South Africans—it got 16% of votes in the local elections earlier this year. Yet it has failed to attract blacks (80% of South Africans), giving it no real hope of defeating the ANC at the national level in the foreseeable future. Whoever succeeds Mr Leon faces a two-pronged challenge: to retain the DA's disparate base while expanding its appeal to blacks. Such tasks are made enormous by the fact that South African politics are still largely defined by identity rather than policies.
As the Democratic Alliance, it has spread from its white, liberal, mainly English-speaking anti-apartheid roots to embrace white Afrikaners (those of mainly Dutch origin) and Coloureds, as mixed-race South Africans are known. This expansion was partly due to a controversial alliance in the late 1990s with the New National Party, a modernised version of the old apartheid-era ruling party. The marriage was brief: after a few years the New Nationalists decided, in a supremely ironic twist, to join their old ANC foe, which happily gobbled them up. Mr Leon's lot then kept a fair chunk of the old apartheid party's white and Coloured vote.
Besides becoming the biggest opposition party, with a shoal of minnows splashing far behind, Mr Leon argues that the DA's main achievement has been to entrench the idea of opposition in South Africa's political landscape. As in most countries where former liberation movements dominate politics, the idea of legitimate opposition in South Africa is awkward. The country's peaceful transition began, after the first post-apartheid general election of 1994, under a government of national unity. Support for the ANC grew from 63% in that first election to 70% a decade later. Mr Leon remembers how, in 1996, Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first post-apartheid leader, suggested that Mr Leon, “the man who gives me all the trouble”, should join his ANC-led government.
However, the DA's biggest failure has been its inability to get many black South Africans to vote for it. Though blacks make up 80% of the country's 48m-odd people, only a tenth of DA voters are black. Unless the party can attract more of them, it will remain little more than a watchdog—albeit, so far, a fairly effective one.
Source: The Economist
Saturday, 9 December 2006
Planetary triple play on deck Sunday 10 DEC
Stargazers will get a rare triple planetary treat this weekend with Jupiter, Mercury and Mars appearing to nestle together in the predawn skies. About 45 minutes before dawn on Sunday those three planets will be so close that the average person's thumb can obscure all three from view. They will be almost as close together on Saturday and Monday, but Sunday they will be within one degree of each other in the sky. Three planets haven't been that close since 1925, said Miami Space Transit Planetarium director Jack Horkheimer. And it won't happen again until 2053, he said. The planets are actually hundreds of millions of miles apart, but the way the planets orbit the sun make it appear they are neighbors in the east-southeastern skies. They'll be visible in most parts of the world — in the Western Hemisphere, as far south as Buenos Aires and as far north as Juneau, Alaska, Horkheimer said. "It is a lovely demonstration of the celestial ballet that goes on around us, day after day, year after year, millennium after millennium," said Horkheimer. "When I look at something like this, I realize that all the powers on Earth, all the emperors, all the money, cannot change it one iota. We are observers, but the wonderful part of that is that we are the only species on this planet that can observe it and understand it." In ancient times, people thought the close groupings of planets had deep meaning, said Krupp. Now, he said, "it's absolutely something fun to look for." Source: Associated Press
Friday, 8 December 2006
A NIGHT IN TUNISIA...
I. Thé à la menthe…
I arrived in this country for the very first time yesterday night. So, I’ve spent my first night in Tunisia…
I’m not sure that I experienced all the things that Dizzy Gillespie tried to convey in his “Night in Tunisia”, but a relaxed night at the Corinthia Khamsa Hotel where, from the balcony of my room (after a day of the most ghastly weather in London and Paris…) I could enjoy a brilliant starred and bright mooned sky, complemented with a lamb couscous et un thé à la menthe (… well this one only in my unfulfilled wishes, because when I asked for it they said that they only had english tea… which to me would be something like a ‘mint tea’ only without the mint, so I declined it) might have made up for it!
I came for a week, which is to be half work and half pleasure… the work part is to last until Monday, so only after that I’ll be able to fully enjoy Gammarth, where I’m staying and is described in some tourism literature as “Gorgeous Gammarth: poised at the apex of awe-inspiring Carthage and pristine beaches, Gammarth is the perfect starting point at which to explore Tunisia and its myriad attractions that include quaint villages, colourful souks, holy shrines and Roman amphitheatres. With its warm, azure waters and upscale yet laid-back sensibility, you might be tempted to make Gammarth your only destination this trip and in trips to come.” … Well, I’m already gagging for it all!
In fact, today I had a sneak preview of the said warm, azure waters and pristine beaches when I went for a short walk around only to discover that this hotel is actually located by the beach, in fact it has its own beach, which, perhaps because it’s low season, was completely deserted, in spite of the gorgeous sun it made all day today! I hadn’t realised that, because I didn’t know anything about the place beforehand and couldn’t really see much of it yesterday night… a truly breathtaking view!
P.S. 1: I’m taking notice of all the emails from those of you who have taken the time to respond to my message relating to the last post here. Thanks a lot you bunch! I’ll respond as soon as I get some more free time in my hands but, in the meantime, if you don’t terribly mind, could you be so kind as to post your comments directly here in the blog? You can sign in as anonymous if you don’t feel like identifying yourselves, ça va?
Salut et à la prochaine! … Aujourd’hui j’ai eut le plaisir d’enjoyer non seulement un, mais deux (… à ce moment) vrais thés à la menthe tunisiens!!
P.S. 2 : Jà repararam que estou a escrever com acentos, embora esse ùltimo e este também nao sejam os correctos, porque aparentemente nao se usam em Frances, assim como nao se usam tis? Pois é… mas tentem, depois de anos e anos a usar teclados sem acentos, escrever num com caracteres latinos e arabes, para além dos normais… cada tecla tem quatro caracteres e é um verdadeiro quebra cabeças descobrir como é que se consegue usar cada um deles… um verdadeiro caso de 8 ou 80 !!!
Tuesday, 5 December 2006
AFRICAN SYMBOLS AND THEIR MEANINGS
These symbols are used by a number of different cultural groups in Central Africa.------
For the Luba, the three circles represent the Supreme Being, the Sun and the Moon. This combination of circles symbolizes the unfailing continuity of life. It is a common belief that ancient African cultures feared the elements, but in fact African peoples trusted in the continuity of nature, its unchanging cycle of seasons and the succession of day and night.
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The second image symbolizes the union of all creatures, confirming that everything in the universe is connected. Ancient African peoples in particular felt a close affinity to nature.
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The knot, according to the Yaka, is another expression of the unity between the world and all its creatures. In the Yaka culture, this symbol would be used to protect a person's home and land.
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