Latest posts by Jennifer Brea from October, 2006
Congo-Brazzaville: Should a Colonizer Be Honored Like a Founding Father?
For me, this De Brazza business is like someone telling you: “We got the crap beaten out of us, but at least De Brazza put on some vaseline while the others let our wounds dry. So let's give thanks to De Brazza.” (Fr) – From a reader at Mwinda.org This...
Let's Go Save the Poor Congolese
At his blog, Alain Mabanckou, a Congolese writer living in California, gives a rather comic account of a conversation he had with his landlady after she sees a story on television about “the poor Congolese” (or maybe they were Africans from some other country whose “president has a long name”)...
Tahitian Classic Cinema
Tahiti: Littérature, Musique et… (Fr) offers a primer on classic Tahitian cinema.
Congolese Writer Alain Mabanckou on André Schwarz-Bart
Alain Mabanckou, a novelist and poet from Congo-Brazzaville now living in California, pays tribute (Fr) to Polish-Jewish writer André Schwarz-Bart, author of Le Dernier de justes who passed away last weekend. Schwarz-Bart, who grew up in France during the German occupation, lived in Guadeloupe with his wife, writer Simone Schwarz-Bart.
E-Commerce Comes to Cameroon
Le Blog de PKJ Agency (Fr) writes about a possible new e-commerce business set to launch in Cameroon in the coming months.
Congolese Political Activists Accuses Congolese and Belgium Governments of Wiretapping
At the UDPS Liege blog (Fr), Samy Musampa Batena Babo of the Congolese political party Union for Democracy and Social Progress alledges that the Belgian and Congolese governments have been tapping his phone.
A Groundnut Western?
Senegal is considering building a rail line that would pass through Casamance, inspiring Blog Politique du Senegal (Fr) to imagine a new kind of Western involving a train heist and a wagon car complete with saloon girls, an upright piano, poker and a bar brawl, with the Movement of Democratic...
Congo-Brazzaville: Corruption Wall of Shame
Les Nouveaux Riches Congolais (Fr), part critique, part satire, uses its blog as a wall of shame for those in Congo-Brazzaville who have allegedly gotten rich through unscrupulous or illegal means. The site also includes a creative reinterpration of key articles of the constitution: “ARTICLE 47: Public goods are sacred...
Kangi Alem on American Empire
Togolese writer Kangi Alem discusses (Fr) Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States and the dark side of America's international role. Alem calls the U.S. “a highly original form of democracy that imposes itself with arms, bombs and artillery” and says that “the hegemonic pretentions...
Tahitian Ballet
Part kitsch, part grande spectacle, La danse tahitienne (Fr) calls Tahitian ballet “a cultural revolution somewhere between Bollywood and Cirque du Soleil.”
Congolese Blogger on Darfur
At Forum Realisance (Fr), Congolese blogger Musengeshi Katata takes France, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Christianity, radical Islam and the black African elite to task for the conflict in Darfur: “Darfur is not only a new battlefield between Christianity and Islam; it is also offers a poignant indictment of the black...
Martinique: Aimé Césaire and Franz Fanon
Le Blog de Moi (Fr) describes the debate over after which anticolonialism thinker to name Martinique's international airport: Aimé Césaire or Franz Fanon. Fanon, although born in Martinque, is not well-known there. The balance has tipped in favor of Césaire who, still living, publically refused to meet with French Interior...
DRC: UDPS of Benelux Won't Support Bemba
On their blog, the UDPS of Benelux announces they will not support Jean-Pierre Bemba, incumbent Joseph Kabila's opponent in the October run-off election, even though they are staunchly anti-Kabila.
Cameroon: Government Clamps Down on Separatist Activities
On the anniversary of the reunification of Anglophone and Francophone Cameroon, Fojrega (Fr) remembers Daniel Fonkoua, a member of the SCNC (an anglophone separatist group), who disappeared last September after state security forces raided his house. This anniversary, anglophone separatists hoisted their flag in several villages in the English-speaking region...
Tahiti: Mutiny on the Bounty
At his MySpace site, Jean Marc gives a history of the famous munity on the British ship Bounty (Fr), which took place just after the Bounty left Tahiti. He also has a slide show about the mutiny.
Consumerism in Madagascar
Madagascar Croissance muses on consumerism in Madagascar: “Madagascarans are fond of clothing and hi-tech products…the affluence of Chinese stores in Behoririka and the shopping centers show that despite all the apparent poverty, everyone likes to induldge themselves and hide their misery in a blanket of materialism.”
Biracial in Nazi Germany
Musengeshi Katata writing at the Congolese blog, Forum Realisance (Fr), reviews the film Neger, neger, Schornsteinfeger, an illustration of “racism and its social and ideological absurdity” based on the true story of the son of a German nurse and a Liberian diplomat who grew up in Nazi Germany to become...
Senegal: Illegal Immigration
On illegal African immigration Senegal Diaw (Fr) writes that “the reasons that push young, able men to risk death to come to Europe…are many and complex, and are not necessarily linked to [Senegal's] poverty,” but are rather a product of a country that is not advancing fast enough, whose youth...
Republic of the Congo: In Search of Political Heroes
Congo-Brazzaville is repatriating the remains of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, the French-Italian colonialist, and interring them in a mausoleum built at the government's expense. Togolese blogger, Kangni Alem, rebukes those would defend de Brazza and call him a “good colonizer,” quoting one historian's take on why Brazzaville would decide to...
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