Category Archives: Africa

Lacklustre

Posted on May 14, 2018 by clivedav184z

Ladysmith Black Mambazo seem to be stuck in a rut. From my review of their Bath Festival concert: There’s no question that Ladysmith Black Mambazo are a force for good; they are, after all, the singers who provided the soundtrack … Continue reading →

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Notebook

Posted on March 12, 2018 by clivedav184z

“What’s going on?” my mom said. “Oh, Nombuyiselo,” she said. “Trevor is so naughty. He’s the naughtiest child I’ve ever come across in my life.” “Then you should hit him.” “I can’t hit him.” “Why not?” “Because I don’t know … Continue reading →

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A new voice

Posted on October 24, 2017 by clivedav184z

Meeting Elida Almeida was one of the highlights of my trip to Cape Verde earlier this year. You can hear more from her on “Kebrada”, my world music album of the week in the Sunday Times.  

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Family portrait, Pietermaritzberg

Posted on June 21, 2016 by clivedav184z

“In one portrait, everyone is dressed in Western clothes except for two young women, who are, by Zulu custom, bare from the waste up, indicating that they’re still single.” Photos lost and found from a neighbourhood studio. [HT @newyorker via … Continue reading →

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Les Blancs – too black & white

Posted on April 14, 2016 by clivedav184z

I don’t mind admitting that, until Lorraine Hansberry’s play “Les Blancs” opened at the National this month, I’d never even heard of it. After sitting through Yaël Farber’s production last night, I don’t feel quite so guilty. The London critics greeted this … Continue reading →

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Notebook

Posted on March 7, 2016 by clivedav184z

From Nigeria, he flew to Accra, Ghana, which boasted a small, vocal colony of black American expatriates that included Shirley Graham DuBois, W.E.B. DuBois’s widow, and authors Maya Angelou and Julian Mayfield. Banding together into an ad hoc “Malcolm X … Continue reading →

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Sundries

Posted on February 6, 2016 by clivedav184z

The FT’s correspondent interviews South Africa’s most notorious revolutionary over lunch and gets a surprise at the end: I shake his hand in the routine English way, apologising that I don’t know the elaborate South African variation, which involves three different … Continue reading →

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Notebook

Posted on December 22, 2015 by clivedav184z

The defining feature of the GIA’s [Groupe Islamiste Armé] war was its ultra-violent methods. The terrorists did not simply kill people but turned the murders into a form of performance or ritual. As in the original War of Independence, throats … Continue reading →

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Genre

Posted on October 29, 2014 by clivedav184z

From a  series on “romance novelists in Northern Nigeria” at the Lagos Photo Festival.

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Facing Ebola in Liberia

Posted on October 16, 2014 by clivedav184z

“I tell them, “Don’t be afraid.’” An ambulance nurse goes about his daily work in Monrovia. An extraordinary, humbling video dispatch from The New York Times.

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