Tom Phillips in Engenho II, Kalunga Territory
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 August 2010 18.40 BST
When Jorge Moreira de Oliveira’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather arrived in Brazil in the 18th century he was counted off the slave-ship, branded and dispatched to a goldmine deep in the country’s arid mid-west. After years of scrambling for gold that was shipped to Europe, he fled and became one of the founding fathers of the Kalunga quilombo, a remote mountain-top community of runaway slaves.
On Wednesday last week, more than 200 years later, it was Moreira’s turn to be counted – this time not by slavemasters but by Cleber, a chubby census taker who appeared at his home clutching a blue personal digital assistant (PDA).
“I’m Kalunga. A Brazilian Kalunga,” Moreira told his visitor from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, who diligently noted down details about the interviewee’s eight children, monthly income and toilet arrangements.
Such is Brazil’s 2010 census – a gigantic logistical operation that aims to count and analyse the lives of more than 190 million people in one of the most geographically and racially diverse nations on earth.
The scale of the mobilisation is staggering. With a budget of around 1.677bn Brazilian reais (£600m) the census, which began on 1 August, will peer into approximately 58m homes in 5,565 municipalities across 8,514,876 sq km (3.3m sq miles). Between now and the end of October around 190,000 census takers will venture into illegal goldmines, sprawling slums, high-security prisons, indigenous reserves and quilombola communities such as Engenho II, travelling by motorbike, donkey, canoe and plane.
But for people such as Moreira, the census is about more than number-crunching. For the Kalunga, descendants of slaves shipped to Brazil from places such as Angola, Mozambique and Ivory Coast, it is a chance, finally, to be counted, heard and helped by a government that has long ignored them. Continue reading…
The number of white traditional healers, or Sangomas, is on the rise in Azania (South Africa). During Apartheid, the practice was made illegal. But now it’s big business, and some are unhappy that white South Africans are now practicing traditional healing. Al Jazeera’s Rosie Garthwaite reports from Johannesburg.
Al-Jazeera
UPDATED ON:
Thursday, August 26, 2010
19:25 Mecca time, 16:25 GMT
South African civil servants are marching across the country over a wage dispute, with more than one million people expected to participate in strikes. Labour unions planned the action on Thursday as part of continued pressure on the government to agree to improved pay terms and benefits. Around 1.3 million state workers have been on strike since last Wednesday, picketing outside schools, hospitals and government offices. A day after they began, the strikes became violent with police using rubber bullets and water cannons against teachers and other civil servants, who threw stones and bricks at them when trying to enter a hospital in Johannesburg. “So what’s worrying us the most at this particular point in time is the violence that’s characterising the strike. There’s a lot of intimidation of ordinary citizens; a lot of the workers that want to go back to work are being prevented from doing so by this violence.”
Doctors and activists warned on Wednesday that HIV and Aids patients were not receiving treatment because of the nationwide strike. An estimated 5.7 million people are living with HIV and Aids in South Africa, more than any other country. One doctor, Ashraf Coovadia, said that his HIV/Aids clinic at a Johannesburg government hospital is receiving 20 to 30 patients whereas normally the figure would be 60 to 80.
He said that clinic staff have been calling patients to urge them to come in. Patients typically receive three-month batches of drugs. They can develop drug resistance if they miss a few days of medication. Coovadia said that people may fear encountering violence at state hospitals or think that they have been closed by the strikes. He added that he has had to negotiate with strikers and security guards to ensure patients can enter the clinic safely. “The situation is quite volatile,” he said. Continue reading…
Bouncing Cats is the inspiring story of one man’s attempt to create a better life for the children of Uganda using the unlikely tool of hip-hop with a focus on b-boy culture and breakdance. In 2006, Abraham “Abramz” Tekya, a Ugandan b-boy and A.I.D.S. oprhan created Breakdance Project Uganda (B.P.U.). The dream was to establish a free workshop that would empower, rehabilitate and heal the community by teaching youth about b-boy culture.
Congo-Kinshasa: New Evidence Shows U.S. Role in Congo’s Decision to Send Patrice Lumumba to His Death
Stephen R. Weissman 1 August 2010
Fifty years ago, the former Belgian Congo received its independence under the democratically elected government of former prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Less than seven months later, Lumumba and two colleagues were, in the contemporary idiom, “rendered” to their Belgian-backed secessionist enemies, who tortured them before putting them before a firing squad. The Congo would not hold another democratic election for 46 years. In 2002, following an extensive parliamentary inquiry, the Belgian government assumed a portion of responsibility for Lumumba’s murder.
But controversy has continued to swirl over allegations of U.S. government responsibility, as the reception for Raoul Peck’s acclaimed film, “Lumumba,” demonstrated. After all, the U.S. had at least as much, if not more, influence in the Congolese capital as Belgium. It was the major financier and political supporter of the U.N. peacekeeping force that controlled most of the country. According to still classified documents that I first revealed eight years ago, members of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) “Project Wizard” covert action program dominated the post-Lumumba Congolese regime. However, a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation of alleged CIA assassinations concluded that while the CIA had earlier plotted to murder Lumumba, he was eventually killed “by Congolese rivals. It does not appear from the evidence that the United States was in any way involved in the killing.” Continue reading…
BY John Marzulli and Bill Hutchinson
Daily News Staff Writers
Originally Published:Tuesday, July 27th 2010, 6:28 PM
Updated: Tuesday, July 27th 2010, 6:28 PM
The city agreed Tuesday to pay more than $7 million to settle a wrongful death civil suit lodged by the fiancée and pals of Sean Bell, the unarmed black groom gunned down by cops on his wedding day, sources said.
The settlement, approved by a Brooklyn federal magistrate, ends a four-year legal battle by tragic would-be bride Nicole Paultre Bell and two men wounded in a 50-shot barrage that claimed her lover’s life.
Under the agreement, the city will pay $3.25 million to Sean Bell’s family estate, which is controlled by Paultre Bell. Bell’s pals Joseph Guzman, 35, who was shot 11 times in the incident, will receive $3 million and Trent Benefield, 27, who was shot three times, will be granted $900,000.
“I believe the settlement is fair,” said Paultre Bell, the mother of Bell’s two daughters, Jada, 7, and Jordyn, 4. “No amount of money can provide closure for losing Sean. I don’t think there will ever be closure.” Continue reading…
Nearly five years after Hurricane Katrina, federal prosecutors have charged a white man with federal hate crimes for his role in the racially motivated shooting of three black men in the aftermath of the storm. The five-count indictment accuses Roland Bourgeois of plotting to defend his Algiers Point neighborhood in New Orleans from “outsiders” including African Americans and shooting and seriously wounding three men who were walking toward a temporary evacuation center. [includes rush transcript]
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Nearly five years after Hurricane Katrina, federal prosecutors have charged a white man with federal hate crimes for his role in the racially motivated shooting of three black men in the aftermath of the storm. The five-count indictment, unsealed last week, accuses Roland Bourgeois of plotting to defend his Algiers Point neighborhood in New Orleans from, quote, “outsiders,” including African Americans, and shooting and seriously wounding Donnell Herrington, Marcel Alexander and Chris Collins, who were walking toward a temporary evacuation center.
A joint reporting project by the Times-Picayune, ProPublica and PBS Frontline interviewed people this year who implicated Bourgeois in the shooting. Terri Benjamin was an eyewitness to the shooting and told reporter A.C. Thompson what she saw and heard on September 1st of 2005.
A.C. THOMPSON: I want you to tell me about the incident that occurred in your neighborhood a couple days after the storm hit.
TERRI BENJAMIN: I heard the gun, the gunshot, so we started running towards my house, because I had family in the house, and we didn’t know what, you know, that gunshot was all about, if everybody was OK. And we ran up, and my neighbor was jumping up and down, hooting and hollering like he was big game hunting and he got the big one. And all of his friends were rallying him on, and they were cheering. And he screamed, “I got one!” Continue reading…
“A former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting an unarmed man at an Oakland subway station. Johannes Mehserle was found guilty on Thursday in the 2009 killing of 22-year-old Oscar Grant. Involuntary manslaughter carries a sentence of two to four years. Sentencing is slated for Aug. 6. Court spokesperson Alan Parachini said the sentence could be “two, or four or six years in state prison.” Story: Murder trial begins for former BART officer Story: Fatal BART shooting trial moved to L.A. The jury also found true a sentencing-enhancement that Mehserle personally used a handgun in the commission of a crime. The panel included eight women and four men. None listed their race as black. Seven said they were white, three were Latino, and one was Asian-Pacific. One declined to state their race. Mehserle, 28, pleaded not guilty in the fatal New Year’s Day shooting when officers arrived at the Fruitvale station while responding to a fight aboard a train. ” – 7 News
Author:Sobonfu Somé
CSQ Issue:33.1 (Spring 2009) A Celebration of Pacific Culture
I grew up in southwestern Burkina Faso, where the houses are built with mud and nicely polished with cow dung and ash. The children have their own rooms; the women have their rooms; and the men have their room. It is not to promote gender differences or sexism but is a way for men, women, and children to be able to meet their needs. Men and women often come together, but always in a sacred space.
I am from the Dagara tribe, and in my tradition it is customary for pregnant women to go through a hearing ritual. The purpose of a hearing ritual is to listen to the incoming baby; to find out who it is; why it’s coming at this time; what it’s purpose is; what it likes or dislikes; and what the living can do to prepare space for this person. The child’s name is then given based on that information. Four weeks after the birth the naming for a baby girl takes place, and three weeks after the birth, a baby boy is named. In the Dagara tradition, you own your name up until the age of five. After the age of five, your name owns you. Your name is an energy; your name has a life force. It creates an umbrella under which you live. That is why it is important to hear the child before they giving him or her the name, because the name must match the purpose. My name, Sobonfu, means “keeper of rituals.” Continue reading…
Fifty years ago, the former Belgian Congo received its independence under the democratically elected government of former prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Less than seven months later, Lumumba and two colleagues were, in the contemporary idiom, “rendered” to their Belgian-backed secessionist enemies, who tortured them before putting them before a firing squad. The Congo would not hold another democratic election for 46 years. In 2002, following an extensive parliamentary inquiry, the Belgian government assumed a portion of responsibility for Lumumba’s murder.
The city agreed Tuesday to pay more than $7 million to settle a wrongful death civil suit lodged by the fiancée and pals of Sean Bell, the unarmed black groom gunned down by cops on his wedding day, sources said.
I grew up in southwestern Burkina Faso, where the houses are built with mud and nicely polished with cow dung and ash. The children have their own rooms; the women have their rooms; and the men have their room. It is not to promote gender differences or sexism but is a way for men, women, and children to be able to meet their needs. Men and women often come together, but always in a sacred space.
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