Malangatana Ngwenya

Mozambique’s best known visual artist, the charismatic Malangatana Ngwenya (Mah-LANG-gah-tah-nah en-GWEN-yah),  known by his first name and named UNESCO Artist for Peace in 1997, died last Wednesday, January 5th, 2011, in The Pedro Hispano Hospital in Matosinhos, Portugal, after a prolonged illness. Portugal’s President Anibal Cavaco Silva paid tribute to Ngwenya’s “role in the fight for democracy and the improvement of the living conditions of the Mozambican people.”

Malangatana was born in 1936 in Matalana village, southern Mozambique, near Marracuene. Malangatana ‘s early years were spent attending mission schools and helping at his mother’s farm. At the age of 12 he went to Maputo (then Lourenzo Marques) to work as empregado (house help). In 1953 was employed at the tennis club as a ball boy. This enabled him to resume his education, attending classes at night, and it was at this time that his artistic talents were recognized. Tennis club member Augusto Cabral gave him materials and helped him sell his work. In 1958 Malangatana attended activities of the artists’ organization Nucleo de Arte, and he received support from the painter Zé Júlio. In 1959 his work was exhibited publicly for the first time as part of a group exhibition, and two years later Malangatana held his first solo exhibition at the age of 25. In 1963 his poetry was published in the journal Black Orpheus and the anthology Modern Poetry from Africa. In 1964 Malangatana was detained by the Portuguese secret police (PIDE) and spent 18 months in jail. In 1971 he received a grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation and studied engraving and ceramics. Since 1981 Malangatana has worked full-time as an artist.

National Museum of Art (Museu Nacional De Arte), Maputo, Mozambique

Among his achievements Malangatana has been awarded the Nachingwea Medal for Contribution to Mozambican Culture, and has been pronounced Grande Oficial da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique’. He has exhibited in Angola, Portugal, India, Nigeria, Chile and Zimbabwe, and his work is in collections in Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Switzerland, USA, Uruguay, India, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Portugal. He has also been commissioned for several public art works, including murals for Frelimo and UNESCO. Recognition of his stature is implicit in the statement made by UNESCO’s Director-General Federico Mayor when he presented the UNESCO award. Mayor noted that Malangatana is “much more than a creator, much more than an artist – someone who demonstrates that there is a universal language, the language of art, which allows us to communicate a message of peace, of refusal of war.” Malangatana has also been active in establishing cultural institutions including the National Museum of Art; the Centre for Cultural Studies; the Centre for the Arts; a youth skills training centre in Maputo; and he was also one of the founders of the Mozambican Peace Movement. Ngwenya was a Mozambican lawmaker from 1990-1994.

Jorge Dias, a close friend of Ngwenya, and former curator of the National Museum of Art in Maputo, remembers Ngwenya as a great storyteller. “He had a massive collection of stories about Mozambican history. I learned a lot of our history from him,” Dias told The Associated Press from Maputo. Inspired by Mozambican culture and history, as well as his own personal life, Ngwenya was not only an artist, but also a musician and philosopher, Dias said.

“Nka” is an Igbo word for artistry. It’s literary translation is “of art”. It is also an Akan word that implies “may be”. Furthermore, in Akan, “nká” means “ancient”. All that quite clearly suggest that activity of the arts is the most ancient human activity which have much more practical purpose than we tend to assign to it. Accordingly, the traditional role of African artists goes beyond the intellectual pursue of concepts and ideas and remains rooted in a social, political, philosophical and spiritual experience of a creator.  That role maybe also a key and underestimated instrument of any tangible positive change.  Malangatana lived by those principles. Africa needs Malangatanas of the new generations. They must  be welcomed as a necessary tool of change.

The word ART is therefore only a classic term. When we Africans speak of Art, therefore, we are thinking of its manifestations from the Western view. We are not thinking of NKA, and what it includes. NKA, which is an Ibo word, satisfies the African meaning and the purpose of ART.

…

It is to be regretted that the African painter and sculptor today are not facing the realities of the African situation in their artistic expressions. While they must derive inspiration from the old art or NKA, they must also make use of the inner knowledge so as to arrive at the meeting point between inspiration and ideas. They should neither imitate western Art, nor copy their old Art.

—African Artists Blog (source “The African View of Art and Some Problems Facing the African Artist.” by Ben Enwonwu, 1968; Editions Presence Africaine (Paris).

Assembled by Mark Bajkowski

Mark, born in Poland, is a Jack of all trades, master of none, who lives in New York since 1979. Mark has an unusually wide range of interests and is known to relate well to the people half of his age. Since his early childhood, he felt a curious relation to Africa, which unavoidably brings up the controversial subject of multiple-life experiences.

Both the public bus company TPM, and the privately-owned minibuses known as “chapas” were providing passenger transport, and Maputo residents attempted to catch up on the shopping they had been unable to do over the previous three days.

Most of the city’s shops and markets, which had closed for fear of looting when the riots broke out on Wednesday 8th September, have now reopened.

The barricades which rioters had placed on the main roads in Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola have been removed. Troops were called in to help in the clear-up in Matola, particularly along the motorway to South Africa. Not only were the remnants of the barricades removed, but the troops collected old tyres lying by the roadside, so that they could not be used in any future disturbances.

One of the rioters’ complaints was the rise in the price of bread. But in fact, prices now differ wildly from bakery to bakery. Comparing notes on Saturday morning, AIM reporters confirmed that in some places, shopkeepers had practiced speculative prices for bread, while elsewhere there had been no increase at all in the price of a loaf.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mozambican women are faced with with a rising cost of living as they work to provide for their families.

Meanwhile the Political Commission of the ruling Frelimo Party has condemned the riots. In a statement issued on Friday, Frelimo warned that violence and destruction “drag the country backwards, and are contrary to the national efforts in the struggle against poverty”.

It claimed that the culture of hard work, dialogue and peace is fundamental in order to increase production and productivity in order to minimize the effects of the international financial crisis, and the increase in world food prices.

A former journalist, Maxelomus who is a member of a good governance think-thank, The Center for Public Integrity praised what it called the “speedy intervention” of the forces of law and order – although in reality the riots took the police by surprise, and the police failed in their key task of defending the city against disturbances.

“We have found out that during the popular protest ,the police were ill-prepared ,they have used violent means and even live bullets against the crowd.
The police are there to protect the citizens and certainly when people are already running risks by taking to the streets”.
Maxelomus,Center for Public Integrity

Written by Alex Ampadu Oware
Audio files supported by Radio Netherlands Worldwide link up between African in the Diaspora and Africans in Africa

“There will come a time we believe

When the shape of the planet

and the divisions of the land

Will be less important;

We will be caught in a glow of friendship

a red star of hope

will illuminate our lives

A star of hope

A star of joy

A star of freedom”

Dennis Brutus, “There will come a time”

World-renowned political organizer and one of Africa’s most celebrated poets, Dennis Brutus, died early on December 26 in Cape Town, in his sleep, aged 85.  He was an outstanding reader of his own work and a passionate, forceful advocate and activist to the very end.  Brutus’ political activity initially included extensive journalistic reporting, organizing and, after being banned in SA,  he fled to Mozambique but was captured and deported to Johannesburg. There, in 1963, he was shot in the back while attempting to escape police custody memorably in front of Anglo American Corporation headquarters where he nearly died while awaiting an ambulance reserved for blacks. While recovering, he was held in the Johannesburg Fort Prison and later transferred to Robben Island where he was jailed in the cell next to Nelson Mandela. Later, forced into exile, Brutus resumed simultaneous careers as a poet and anti-apartheid campaigner in London and then in the US.  Following the political transition in the SA, Brutus resumed activities with grassroots social movements there.

“Most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,

rendered unlovely and unlovable;

sundered are we and all our passionate surrender

but somehow tenderness survives.”

Dennis Brutus, in a poem from “Sirens, Knuckles, Boots,”

Vincent Moloi

Excellent 50-minute documentary I Am a Rebel, that can be viewed below, is produced by Vincent Moloi,  South African filmmaker who is a part of a new breed of filmmakers exploring new styles in his medium. His work is stamped with his signature – a youthful, adventurous and yet concise attitude.

Written by Mark Bajkowski.
Mark, born in Poland, is a Jack of all trades, master of none, who lives in New York since 1979. Mark has an unusually wide range of interests and is known to relate well to the people half of his age. Since his early childhood, he felt a curious relation to Africa, which unavoidably brings up the controversial subject of multiple life experiences.

The above principle reoccurred to me when, a couple of days ago, I watched Damned By Debt Relief by Worldwrite featured on Current TV. This short documentary piece deals with side-effects of lending to the African developing countries and illustrates how an intended remedy may turn into a fatal problem with no easy solution in sight to deal with it.

The main players related to the Current TV piece are the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They were created in the aftermath of World War II: WB to direct investments to the neediest countries of the world, and the IMF to ensure international monetary cooperation. These International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have changed their roles over the last few decades, becoming international advocates and, recently, became a source of controversial economic policies in the developing countries. Those include an initiative concerning some of heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs), that are just barely coming out of the previous debt crisis, incorporating conditional debt remedies and bogus debt cancellations.

At first, while researching basics of the sub-prime lending boom, I came across the below graph with blue bars indicating the yearly volume of subprime loans.

Then, researching the basic trend of funding to the developing countries, I came across the graph, in “Financial Flows to Developing Countries: Recent Trends and Prospects” report by the World Bank, with orange bars indicating the yearly volume of funding flow into the developing countries.

To my surprise, both graphs showed unprecedented surge in their related volumes that are almost identical in the scale and timing: sometime in 2001~2002 period both financial activities took off. They both, after being heralded as remedies for the masses, turned into unmanageable burden for millions of people just a couple years later. Also, I started asking myself an obvious general question: how it is possible that financial an economic experts can be so fundamentally wrong in predicting, controlling and preventing suffering of millions of people? An another obvious question followed: how much suffering is needed to trigger practical and lasting solutions for those who suffer most?

The answers came quite quick.

Until the financial boom of predatory subprime mortgage lending turned into a national and international nightmare, the few people, who tried to warn federal banking officials, might as well stay home. For one, Edward M. Gramlich, a former Federal Reserve governor clearly warned in 2002 in his remarks, you can read here, that:

…the ability to refinance mortgages allows borrowers to take advantage of lower mortgage rates, but sometimes easy refinancing invites loan flipping, which generates high loan fees and unnecessary credit costs. And again, credit life insurance is often desirable, but sometimes the insurance is unnecessary, and at times borrowers pay hefty up-front premiums as their loans are flipped.

But when Mr. Gramlich started to urge Fed examiners to investigate mortgage lenders affiliated with national banks, he was rebuffed by Alan Greenspan, then all-knowing Fed chairman. And there were others.