Taxijam :: Simon van Gend

If you think patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time is a piece of cake, there’s a hip Cape Town folkster serving a slice of humble pie called “Blinking and Breathing and Crying.” Simon van Gend is a bespectacled troubadour with a perpetual five o'clock shadow, a dark mane and a name that should be avoided by the eNews Channel weatherman. If he was a gimp, you’d bring him out for sessions of soul-searching, making the contemplative heights of Tafelberg Road at sunset a fitting location for his Taxijam. Accompanied by drummer Ross Campbell on the shakes and vocal harmonies, SVG’s offering is proof that less is more when it comes to catchy songwriting and that clapping and whistling are time-tested techniques to get toes tapping. “Blinking and Breathing and Crying” reminds us that big themes don’t need fancy lyrics and that big brothers should be encouraged to bully their arty siblings in the hopes of planting traumatic memories that will flourish into great music. Putting the inside out there is what Simon van Gend knows best and it does us all some good to join him on the train of introspection. The album Guest of my Feelings (2008) is where to hop on.

► Taxijam :: The Smallest Gig in Town

Future Shorts :: South Africa Launch

Cape Town’s Alliance Française hosted the inaugural gathering of Future Shorts South Africa last month. The UK-based short film label was established in 2003 in the interests of celebrating the form and raising its status. Future Shorts operates in over 50 cities in 15 countries and channels local material to an international hub in London where it’s compiled, distributed and screened elsewhere. As such, the platform treats audiences to independent work from around the globe while providing home-grown filmmakers with the potential to reach wider audiences.

The evening’s programme consisted of eight short films obtained via the Future Shorts network (a showcase representing the US, the UK and France that consisted of work produced between 1989 and 2007). Highlights included “City Paradise” (UK, 2003) by Gaëlle Denis, a whimsical take on London through the eyes of a foreign resident, as well as Jamie Rafn’s reflection on the schizophrenic nature of romantic relationships entitled “She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not” (UK, 2004).

Following a short interval, three South African productions were screened in collaboration with Shortcut Wednesday. The work consisted of a stop-frame styled music video by Terry Westby-Nunn (the Simon van Gend Band’s “Minor Revelation”). This was followed by the recently completed “Epitaph” by Rowan Pybus, an instalment in a series of poetic pieces that combine the artwork of Faith 47 and the music of Inge Beckmann. The screening then closed with Dave Cotton’s low-fi “Hannibal Goes on Holiday,” a story of friendship, betrayal, forgiveness, guilt (and zombies) featuring plastic dolls in the leading roles.

Present at the screening, Cotton participated in a Q&A that focused on his concern for storytelling and his mantra that “content is king.” Cotton encouraged budding filmmakers to simply produce work rather than be hindered by the trappings of high production, saying that imperfections often provide the fresh quality absent in works that are over-produced. Cotton stated that the journey to becoming a filmmaker is an evolutionary process that starts with scripts being turned into tangible works rather than being left to gather dust under a bed. Plans are currently underway for Future Shorts South Africa’s second instalment.

Taxijam :: Illiterate Skillz

If you find yourself in a taxi heading from Gugulethu to Cape Town, you’d better hope that rappers Illiterate Skillz (a.k.a. Ill Skillz) aren’t jamming in the back seat. This Mother City hip hop crew will chew off your ears and stew your brain in a sea of alphabet soup. Unless you can perform the mental gymnastics required to process the stream of consciousness that rattles from their lips (or at least have a strong Arabica piloting your system), it’s likely that their bombardment of rhyming couplets will cause you to blow a fuse. Back in the day, guys like these were heralded for their sophistry and became bosom buddies with the monarchs in the form of court jesters. Times changed and they took to the tour buses as wandering minstrels, or “original backpackers” as Illiterate Skillz like to see themselves. That’s right, these self-proclaimed illiterates have vocabulary skills that don’t bow to the gangster lexicon. They may claim to be bad at reading and writing (and their spelling is admittedly atrocious) but if African storytelling is about oral transmission then Tommy Jinnix and Jimmy Flexx score ten out of ten for the gift of the gab. Look out for the debut album Off the Radar.

► Taxijam :: The Smallest Gig in Town

Taxijam :: The Smallest Gig in Town

They may cut in on you or even run off the road but the minibus taxi, the ubiquitous emblem of South African transport, is no less than a profoundly South African icon. In fact, minibus taxis are moving monuments to South Africa’s entrepreneurial spirit. Deregulation wrenched transport from government hands in the late 80s and unleashed a minibus tsunami that surged through the Madiba Years and now sees privateers pocketing the fares of over 60% of South Africa’s commuters. In a country characterised by great diversity, a ride in a minibus taxi may just be the national experience that most of us have in common.

Taxijam is what happens when you mix a minibus commute with music and slap it onto a new media platform. The “smallest gig in town,” it’s a website that features performances by South African artists shot in the back of taxis. If new media is about mobility, Taxijam is creating content that mimics the way we consume it. The site showcases seamless slices of musical art that have shed the shackles of high production and been posited into the realm of the mundane. The effect is strangely paradoxical: a private performance in an intimate location that everybody with an Internet connection is invited to experience.

There’s also something of an unplugged ethic informing Taxijam. The empty minibus is a democratic stage and performers have only their charm and raw talent to draw on. As such, Taxijam provides the opportunity to see different artists in the same naked context. Such is the platform that new dimensions of the musicians are revealed and familiar songs are bathed in compelling unfamiliarity. As the camera pans away from a performance, catching glimpses of motorists and pedestrians through the taxi windows, we’re reminded that that life goes on when music happens. Bands aren’t just totems that live out our fantasies on stage and in music videos but rather a part of everyday life. Taxijam proves that artists inhabit the same stinky spaces that we do.

The best thing about Taxijam is that the project is born out of an uncomplicated interest in music and a desire to provide an alternate platform for recognised as well as fresh talent in all shapes and styles. Taxijam producers, cousins Richard and Simon Wall, describe the project as a labour of love and tip their hats to London’s pioneering Black Cab Sessions. They’ve unpacked the project in Cape Town but are interested in collaborating with production teams as far and wide as Joburg and Dubai. “We’ll shoot artists, musicians, poets, performers and anyone who blows us away,” says Simon, “Anyone can hop on board.”

District 9 :: Spacism in the Kasi

There is a raw and maverick quality to the short film Alive in Joburg. Ever seen a prawn Poleepkwa in a bio-suit toss a casspir at a pair of pestering soldiers? Not only did the 2005 project showcase some slick computer-generated imagery but it also put a curious spin on the theme of discrimination by dropping found-footage from the Apartheid era into a story about intolerance towards stranded aliens. South Africa’s subsequent xenophobic attacks bathed the piece in a glow of surrealism and made it even more clever than it was intended to be. The compelling stylistic amalgam earned director Neill Blomkamp a string of jobs to promote the release of Halo 3 and got him earmarked to direct a feature based on the Halo franchise. When the project fell through, Peter Jackson came to the rescue by offering to produce a feature-length re-working of Alive in Joburg. Jackson stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out US$30 million in loose change. Blomkamp went to the kasi and came back with District 9.

Technically a product of New Zealand and the United States, District 9 is set in South Africa in the late twentieth century and features live action shot on location in the townships of Johannesburg. What makes it different to other international productions that exploit South African themes and stories (i.e. Invictus) is that it is directed by someone who grew up in South Africa and features South Africans in the lead roles. The fact that Blomkamp is an ex-South African is significant insomuch as he uses the long arm of science fiction as a tool to engage the Apartheid experience. What else but Blomkamp’s displacement from life in South Africa as well as his need as an immigrant to resolve his South African identity could result in such a schizophrenic rendering of the social and political environment he grew up in?

District 9 has exposure to the SABC of the 1980s written all over it. The mock news footage in the film speaks to white South Africa’s mediated experience of the realities of township life and reminds us that our contemporary understanding of Apartheid “unrest” is predominantly televisual. We tend to forget that township tours in the 80s were restricted to gun-wielding security forces, meaning that life in the slums was imaginary for those who had never been there. The mystery of life in urban squalor has since spawned a genre of films that brings the experience of township life into vivid existence for the international bourgeoisie. While “slumsploitation” has been delivered in racy packages likes City of God, Tsotsi and Slumdog Millionaire, District 9 is by far the most radical township fantasy the world has ever seen.

In a nutshell, District 9 uses a documentary framework (i.e. Carte Blache) to tell the story of a man’s strange biological metamorphosis (i.e. The Fly) and how it facilitates solidarity with a homesick alien (i.e. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial). Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is reminiscent of fictional Afrikaans forebears like the quirky, pathos-driven characters of Leon Schuster and the stammering biologist played by Marius Weyers in South Africa’s most famous contribution to world cinema to date. In fact, District 9 is probably the most profoundly South African film since The Gods Must Be Crazy. Both films use political incorrectness to mock prejudice and both are hinged on novel, captivating premises. However, after an inspired opening sequence that satirises modern life, The Gods Must Be Crazy descends into slapstick banality (albeit great entertainment). Similarly, everything conceptually brilliant about District 9 is told in the six minutes of Alive in Joburg. The allegorical spear at the centre of the feature does deliver some sharp thrusts but can’t support the narrative it’s yoked to and promptly self-destructs. Nevertheless, we do get to see guns that turn people into pasta sauce (which is what most people came for in the first place).

Xenophobia :: Fear of Zen

The word “xenophobia” is fraught with contradiction. It has kidnapped Zen from the realm of enlightenment and tossed it into a world of fear. A word that belongs to the shortest chapter in the dictionary, xenophobia is not only directed toward minorities but is a minority itself. Moreover, when pinned to the atrocities committed by South Africans in May 2008, the word slides from the tongue with clinical detachment.

Xenophobia seems to suggest that a combination of quantifiable conditions can account for violence and murder and evokes a less passionate outcry than the word “racism.” In contrast with racism, xenophobia is seen as an unfortunate result of complex socio-economic influences. In contrast with xenophobia, racism is considered an ethical perversion. Both acts are equally abhorrent yet one term is considerably “sexier” from an editorial point of view than the other.

Xenophobia is far more than the fear of strangers its etymology implies, far more sinister than unflattering assumptions about individuals based on their nationality or physical appearance, far more unfathomable than an innate collective mechanism designed to protect resources. The word is a linguistic cop-out designed to prevent reality from annihilating sanity. As long as we fail to see it as such, this strange brand of indiscriminate targeted violence will continue to elicit a cursory public response.

A little over a week ago, seven Zimbabwe nationals died in a fire in a township near Worcester. Less than seven lines were dedicated to the story on IOL on Monday 23 February. The shack was “allegedly set alight” according to the report. The story reappears on Tuesday 24 February with the announcement of a murder probe via Sapa as well as a xenophobia probe according to an IOL writer.

On Wednesday 25 February, IOL posts a Cape Argus report that states that a suspect is to appear in court and mentions witnesses describing that “youngsters surrounded the shack, armed with knobkerries and sticks.” According to the residents, the uninvited guests “attacked the occupants, locked them in the shack and left them to die in the fire.” Despite the nationality of the victims and evidence of mob violence, police “ruled out xenophobia as the motive behind the attack.”

The latest and most comprehensive online report following the incident appears on a Zimbabwean site on Thursday 26 February. The ZBC News article reports a bungled robbery attempt on two Zimbabwe nationals who sought refuge in “a shack belonging to their compatriots.” The robbers then assembled “a reinforced group of about 10 to 15 people” who “doused the shack with an inflammable liquid that looked like fuel and set it alight.”

The fact that this mysterious story has created such a marginal blip in South Africa’s mediascape is worrisome. Given what occurred in South Africa last year, news like this demands adequate public response and debate. South Africans can’t afford to let even an alleged case of xenophobia escape scrutiny let alone the strange tale recounted above. If what it takes is a new word that strikes real fear into heart of the population, our scribes need to come up with something fast.

Zapiro :: Will Z News Survive?

The evolution of democracy is hinged on people’s ability to shake the cage and when it comes sticking it to the zookeepers, few are as elegantly insubordinate as Jonathan Shapiro. Political cartoonist for the Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times, Zapiro has been in the game for over twenty years. It was during Nelson Mandela’s presidency that he injected himself into the national consciousness with flattering depictions of Madiba. In recent years, however, he has found a nemesis in the form of Jacob Zuma, creating iconic renderings of the President of the ANC with a showerhead protruding from his oddly-shaped cranium.

Last year, Zapiro collaborated on a television concept that has transformed his caricatures into puppets for a mock current affairs show entitled Z News. The idea was given legs at the SABC but has since been mysteriously paralyzed. Some suggest that the show’s uncertain future stems from attempts to censor its political content while others say that it simply lacks broad appeal. Nevertheless, fragments of a pilot episode have generated viral interest on the Internet. Queue Thabo Mbeki performing “I Will Survive” in drag on Idols.

Z News describes itself as “the most fun you can have with latex with your clothes on.” Although it is populated with profoundly South African characters like Godzille, it is by no means an original idea. Britain’s Spitting Image is its key ancestor and, given the fact that the godfather of the genre has spawned so many similar shows internationally, it’s hard to imagine that South Africa’s biggest audiences aren’t ready to exercise their right to mock political authority.

Julius Malema :: DIY Album Covers

“Thought leader” Khaya Dlanga has produced a series of profoundly South African album covers. Julius Malema’s Greatest Hits feature the miscalculated blunders of the President of the ANC Youth League pasted onto COPE election flyers. Albeit work of viral campaigning genius, these randomly snatched quotes do little to concretise the vision of a party that magically materialised no more than four months ago. Instead, COPE is positioned as the party to vote for in order not to vote for the ANC.

COPE can’t have expected to enter the national consciousness on its own two feet. With such little time on its hands, the fledgling party’s campaigning strategy can do little more than brandish an opposition flag and count on novelty appeal. Naturally, hinging its identity on the ANC is what it will take to carve out a piece of South Africa’s political pie. As such, COPE is raking in educated voters who are alienated by what Dlanga describes as Malema’s aptitude for eloquent buffoonery.

Malema certainly does have a knack for lending ammunition to the ANC’s opponents. His skills are such a conspiracy theorist might suggest that he is a COPE mole. If you examine the howler above, a little bit of deconstructive linguistics has a lot to say. Malema employs the zero conditional to express certainty. Put bluntly, the condition is that Zuma is corrupt and the result is that we want him. In a single sentence, Malema maligns Zuma, himself, the ANC and its constituency. Is this an act of suicide or is Malema on a quest to bring down the ANC from within?

Jo Ractliffe | David Goldblatt :: Preoccupied Terrain

Should photography draw attention to a specific space and time or is seeking to capture universality a more venerable undertaking? A conversation between esteemed South African photographers Jo Ractliffe and David Goldblatt (held at the National Gallery in Cape Town on Wednesday 25 February 09) was inadvertently hinged on this question. Goldblatt played the role of interlocutor and described the discussion as a “regression.” The process saw him interrogating the trajectory of Ractliffe’s career from past to present and culminated in an introduction to her recently published book.

Entitled Terreno Ocupado, Ractliffe’s most recent body of work assembles emblematic photographs of contemporary Luanda. Nevertheless, she explained that the images aspire to something transcendental. By way of example, she drew a connection between the overalls she photographed on an Angolan roadside and T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” In contrast, Goldblatt was more concerned with the work’s response to the particular social reality it depicted. The sample of work exhibited at the event (which included the ironically-named “Shack on the Boa Vista Cliff”) portrayed crumbling makeshift dwellings in Luanda’s slums.

What makes Ractliffe’s work interesting is the fact that both hard reality as well as universal aesthetics are at play. What’s more, given the subject matter of her recent work, this dichotomy is fiercely conflictive and far more profound than the difference of opinions that was at the centre of the conversation. Ractliffe’s slumscapes are framed in a way that brings aesthetic balance to what in reality is a horrific environment. From a distance, these black and white images are beautifully textured while up close we can identify offensive piles of rubbish. The experience raises the more significant question of how misery can be pleasing to the eye.

Barrack Obama :: Get Ahead Man

As the world grows more accustomed to the face at the helm of the United States, the phrase “first black president” is being less frequently tagged to the name Barack Obama. Given the history of discrimination in the United States, Obama’s achievement lent itself to being branded as symbolic of America’s progressive attitude towards race. The media, however, has all but exhausted this angle, providing an opportunity for free thinkers to reflect on what has really happened.

Naturally, President Obama’s physical appearance does have historical significance. In this respect, Obama’s inauguration provided an opportunity to reflect on America’s extraordinary Civil Rights Movement and the contributions of key African American figures to shifting the consciousness of the Unites States.

Nevertheless, by blindly dubbing Obama as “black,” the media has brought into play an old-school method of considering the slippery notion of race. Barack Obama is a person of dark-skinned Kenyan and light-skinned Hawaiian parentage. Describing him as “black” reflects a strain of binary mentality that harks back to America’s One-Drop Rule or South Africa’s profound Pencil Test.

What makes Barack Obama a really progressive choice from the perspective of race is that the fact that he is a figure who resists a simple racial tag. Ambiguity does a good job of dismantling categorical thinking. In reality, the concentration of melanin in Obama’s skin had as much to do with his success in the elections as the fact that his first name rhymes with Osama and his middle name is Hussein. For starters, he put together a much stronger campaign.

If American liberals insist on patting themselves on the back for breaking the mould, let them take pride in contributing to bringing about neoconservative regime change. As for the world’s most significant “first black president,” this title belongs to South Africa. Nevertheless, South Africa’s new national consciousness has yet to deal with prospect of a presidential candidate with a light complexion. Inconceivable? As a person of light-skinned Scottish and dark-skinned Jamaican parentage once said, “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery.”