Texts’ Bones
‘When I was young I thought that words meant something; now it seems that meaning is the last things words are required to do; semantics getting in the way of honest, playful textual decoration – and here is me without overalls or wallpaper table to hand.’
Twelve short stories inside The Facebook of Dr Caligari has just been published by SKREV PRESS thanks to the sweat, blood and caffeine intake of editor and also poet, Daithidh MacEochaidh. If you want to buy the book, drop Daithidh an email, details on the SKREV site. One of those short stories is mine, and first came to life via Barbara Campbell’s 1001 nights arts project. Thanks to Dai Vaughan whose interview at Ready Steady Book led me to Daithidh’s work and on to SKREV. I’ve recently read Vaughan’s Germs, which I loved, and was recently given his latest novel, The Treason of Sparrows, which has a splendid first line: I’m an old man and I want to scream. Shame I missed the launch here.
Israel & Angola
I’ve only just found this, having entered into conversations with the author, an interesting journalist by the name of Yotam Feldman who works for Haaretz. It’s a nice piece, and I hope he writes more. I hope, in particular, that an Israeli journalist might find out for us whether it really was the Israelis who killed Jonas Malheiro Savimbi. How I wish I’d met him. How I wish. I remember feeling sick with regret the day I heard he died. I was in Lisbon, interviewing Unita members, when the news came through that he had been killed. We turned on the television and watched the images of this extraordinary rebel leader, his heavy bullet-holed corpse being dragged and dropped infront of the cameras in eastern Angola. I felt sick for all the Angolans who’d been killed in the war for it to end with such a pathetic sight. A vacuum suddenly sucked through decades of lives and history and memories. Just for this. Shot dead to nothing. It was a tragic and awful day. Not tragic for Savimbi’s loss of life but for so much loss of life that ended in one miserable body being pushed about the floor for the cameras. Oh my god, I felt sick. And I saw grown men in Lisbon weeping and collapsing to the floor, unable to contain the years of waiting for the war to end, for a better Angola, only for it to end like this.
walthamstow
‘Nah, I live in Chingford now.’
‘Oh right. I’m not far from you then. Walthamstow.’
‘My mum was born in Walthamstow, and drives the buses there now. Teenagers are awful.’
‘Which buses?’
‘Well, mainly coaches now.’
‘And my dad’s on the underground.’
‘Do you like Walthamstow?’
‘Nah. I hate it.’
‘What? Even the market?’
‘Especially the market. Bunch of pervs eyeing you up all the time. Forget it.’
‘What like?’
‘Saying pervy things.’
‘They don’t say pervy things to me. But that’s the great advantage of getting older: men stop seeing you as a body.’
*
Others might be leaving, but we’re here to stay.
Turks & Caicos, and the BBC
If a government buys ‘a fleet’ of Land Rovers for its ministers, does that amount to corruption? If the leader of a country has a bullet-proof car, does that amount to exuberant extravagance? If a prime minister has a private jet – don’t they all? – is that really enough to destroy an island economy? A few parties for celebrities? Is that enough for our government – that’s the British government – to decide that enough is enough and these little children need to be put back in their box so that we can take over and show them how to run a country properly? I’m thinking multi-million houses in Mayfair. I’m thinking tens of thousands of pounds on PM’s wives’ hairdressers. I’m thinking BAE systems, a story that the BBC itself has reported at some length, if not enough.
Apparently the former premier of Turks & Caicos, Galmore Williams, lied to the people of the islands about money and parties and a few other things. But as far as I know, old Galmore did not lie about going to war in Iraq, he didn’t fiddle a report that has since contributed directly to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the Middle East. He didn’t fix his eldest son up with an internship in the US Republican party, or buy flats to rent out in Bristol. He didn’t believe he was the voice of the son of God, and insist that war was a Christian endeavour that would save the lives of millions and make the world a better place. No. Galmore Williams bought some Land Rovers (I wonder who was behind that deal), sat in the back of a bullet-proof car (even I’ve done that), and had himself a private jet and a few celeb friends. Isn’t that standard behaviour for many British bankers, the accountants who work in The City, a chunk of British businessmen, lots of grade C celebrities in the UK, let alone the grade As and Bs, and our delightfully superior prime minister and ministers?
The BBC Today programme ran what you could hardly describe as a report on the Turks & Caicos, this morning, three months after the Queen’s men decided to take it back. Mike Thomson, who seems to report on any country between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, made no reference to the outstanding hypocrisy of our tiny island lording it over even tinier islands. The Queen’s Governor, pink-cheeked Gordon Wetherell (he looks more like a turnip farmer than a diplomat, but still…) told a local news agency on his arrival, ‘Right now I’m the Governor of the TCI and very glad to be here.’ You bet he is. He has an entire island to himself, according to the BBC report, which the BBC reporter had to fly to in a plane (in a BBC private jet? how much did it cost to send Mike Thomson there? presumably T&C don’t have decent local journos as well as no decent local premiers…) to meet him.
Listen out, if you can, for more reports on the T&C; and listen out for the extraordinary failures of BBC reporting. The line, I think, that made me laugh (or was it swear?) most was when Thomson suggested to a local politician that ‘high-level corruption’ had destroyed Turks & Caicos economy entirely. And yet, according to the BBC website’s own material, the Turks & Caicos economy comprises no less than a little lobster and conch exports. No irony here, Mike? Reporting as a Brit about ruined economies and corruption and lying? It seems it bypassed the man. And, of course, it bypassed the self-satisfied unbearably smug Justin Webb, the latest white male to join the Today team. He made what I can only describe as a chirpy grunt off the back of Thomson’s report, which ended with a local T&C man insisting that direct rule from London had pushed local people back to slavery. Absolutely hilarious, Justin.
Rafeef Ziadah
Palestinian poetry. The spoken word. This woman is kicking up a small storm in Canada, and hoping to go further with this, her new album, of poetry. It’s good although there is something in the rhythm, the tone, a familiarity that slightly lessens the impact on my mind. Perhaps I need to listen some more and listen more carefully. I certainly like the fact she’s making this stuff and that it is here for us to hear. Go Rafeef. And thanks JP in Toronto for the tip off.
Buhari’s silk
Buhari came to me in the night. Yes, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, the man who has been both the head of the state of Nigeria and the failed head of state. He came to me in the night with his hands full. He stood beside me and opened his palms, releasing hundreds of weaver birds into my bedroom. From beneath his golden boubou, he pulled out a roll of scroll which he unfurled in his heavy fingers until it was stretched flat to the length of his upper body. Read this, he said. And I read. Silk scarves for sale woven by the weaver birds that were now weaving nests in my ceiling and my bookshelves. There were a wide range of prices, from fifty-nine ninety-nine to one-hundred-and-sixty-nine ninety-nine, depending on the size and the design. The most expensive were those that portrayed Buhari’s beautiful face. I couldn’t remember, though, whether weaver birds can spin silk and weave silk. I lay asleep unable to resolve this puzzle. And then Buhari vanished. I spent the night trying to call Adewale, to ask him whether weaver birds weave silk or whether Buhari was lying. But I couldn’t get through.
Perhaps Michael Peel is to blame. His book, A Swamp Full of Dollars, has been on my mind. Good old Michael: he has been shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. And you can read a chapter here. I highly recommend it: Michael challenges our complacency and challenges the judgements we, up here in the north, make of governments and peoples in the south. Well done Peely. But perhaps Adewale is the one to blame, and that is why I was trying to call him. I’ve just started reading his Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays (which you can buy signed copies of by emailing adewale@thenewgong.com for just a tenner!), which should be read by anyone who has a serious interest in Saro-Wiwa and what really went on back then. And I keep thinking about the other book he’s writing now about a man who has pepper in his name, which I really want to get my hands on.
In the meantime, I want to read this: The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand.
racist stereotyping on channel four
These people don’t want to look white. They don’t want to look Western. They want to look like photoshopped pictures that appear in magazines. It’s an outrage that Channel Four could present a documentary that is absent of any serious analysis or reflection about race, but also about consumerism and perfection. We all live amidst the pressure to look like botox beings, regardless of colour. White people aren’t the only people who have long legs. Lots of white people are short and fat or knock-kneed. White people don’t all have chiselled chins and jaws and noses. A growing number of white westerners are obese. And there’s no such thing as an African look or an African body. It’s nonsense. Have none of these people been to Ethiopia?
There is real racism in this country. Of course there is. But the people in these programmes want to look like animated stars on computer games. Their desire to be white is a desire to look like an image in a magazine or an advert, a faked image. And Channel Four is, for some bizarre reason, promoting the idea that white equals Angelina Jolie. (Where did she get those lips?) Scream it: a defined jaw is not mainstream!
Wee bit sinister: isn’t that man doing the skin lightening a South African? Or is that just me?
Angola
Congo, Colombia, China, Hackney, Ghana, Gambia, Jamaica, Japan, Nigeria, England, Ivory Coast, France, Congo, England, Ghana, Hackney.
‘The Kingsmead Estate, home to many of the pupils, is recognised as among the highest 4% for deprivation in the UK. The estate has suffered from a negative reputation in the past . . . ‘
up in arms II
A couple of thoughts have come in on the Angola-arms-Falcone post, including one from dear Rafael Marques de Morais who wrote the Guardian report. He writes:
‘The day after Falcone’s conviction for arms trafficking to Angola, there was quite some commotion outside his luxurious residential compound in Luanda’s exclusive neighbourhood of Talatona. The “Ouro Verde” condominium, as it is known, became the quiet symbol of a parallel structure of power and of private indirect government, unbeknown to even most government officials. In this condominium of some eight residences, Falcone entertained and handled state affairs with the high and mighty of the presidential inner circle, particularly the top intelligence officers, for whom a house was permanently assigned. Very few people are aware that, besides the hundreds of millions of dollars Falcone amassed from illegal arms trade with Angola, he has also become a prominent player in oil deals, including fingers in several Chinese ventures in Angola. On some of the Chinese multibillion dollars’ projects in Angola, like housing, Falcone is earning a modicum of 5% of the total funds involved, as a middleman. His arrest is widely felt with relief among several presidential and government circles for his undue influence on the President of the Republic, José Eduardo dos Santos, and the way he continues to milk the Angolan state for no good reason other than being a master of corruption.’
Leon Kukkuk, who has worked for the UN, among others, in Luanda, writes:
up in arms
Something that made me smile this weekend was this piece printed in Guardian Cif, a fine example of the excellent and tireless work of my friend, Rafael Marques de Morais. Here you have a journalist from Angola, who taught himself English, writing in English for a British paper, including the kind of details – e.g. Marcolino Moco’s humiliating period as PM – that would rarely be provided by a foreign journalist. For me, it provides yet more proof that what will change Angola for the better are the acts of the people of Angola, not the work or interference or sympathy or meddling of outsiders. Bravo Rafael, I salute you (once again).
There is only one small hair-splitting quibble I have with the piece: the question of the UN arms embargo on Angola. It is widely stated that the embargo was placed on both the government and the rebels. In fact, studying the small print, the UN arms embargo allowed for weapons to be sold to the government under certain contradictory conditions. Whilst the 1991 Bicesse Accords prohibited both sides from acquiring new weapons, the UN arms embargo was only imposed on UNITA. Later, the Lusaka Accords of 1994 did not prohibit the importing of weapons but prohibited the resupplying of military forces with any so-called lethal or similar military equipment. Yes, makes complete sense doesn’t it! Specifically, the UN Security Council resolution 864 stated that the government could import arms on condition that they entered through named points in the country that must be listed by the government and notified to the UN! The UN called on the government to plough its resources into humanitarian as opposed to military requirements: but it did not try and force it to do so (and could not have done anyway). So, in effect, the government was regularly accused of breaking the spirit of the various accords, but not actually breaking the embargo. Moreover, even the very members of the Troika (the USA, Russia and Portugal) were themselves busy selling weaponry to the government or supplying military expertise, and yet the Troika was there to oversee the, er, peace process! Such is the hypocrisy of war and peace etc etc etc.
Meanwhile, I keep laughing about the analysis of Prince Charles’ preference for Camilla over Diana told to me by a very funny man I met last night: “As we say in Dominica,” he said, “a new broom sweeps clean but an old broom gets in to the corners.”
