Linn’s Year Ablog

…on writing about South Africa at least.

Their April 16th article on newly elected President Jacob Zuma is just too good. I mean, really good — as in, the best article I’ve ever read about contemporary South Africa.

It’s insightful, funny, comprehensive and peppered with simple, key statistics that give a pretty good sense, I think, both of the highly controversial and highly enigmatic Mr. Zuma and of the country as a whole. Its view of South Africa as neither a perpetual “miracle”-country nor an apocalypse-approaching failed state is severely lacking in both SA and foreign media, and the careful balance it strikes between praise and criticism is rare, no matter the country.

(The reader comments attached to the Zuma article, however, are unsurprisingly belligerent and distorted, but the four comments on this related page, if you’re looking for more reading, are genuinely enlightening.)

One of my favorite new rules is Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies, which states the following: “As a…discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

This happens in politics, when all the intelligent things have been said and there’s still a whole internet to fill. Bush and Obama are both Hitler, dontcha know.

In South Africa, it was discussions about apartheid that grew longest. “The apartheid government was a truly fascist regime,” claimed one friend. “I mean, from the pass laws to the militarism to the ugly brutalist architecture….” And another: “It was like Germany in the 30s. Decent people just got caught up in apartheid, and they didn’t know how to stop it.”

Heroin also = Hitler, I guess.

(See also Reductio ad Hitlerum.)

Saw a fantastic documentary last night, at Joburg’s “Out in Africa” LGBT film festival, called Brother Outsider. It’s the story of Bayard Rustin, an advisor to MLK and the brains and brawn behind the 1963 March on Washington. He was a brilliant organizer, but his open homosexuality made him a target both for segregationists, who hoped to paint Civil Rights leaders as “perverts,” and and for some fellow leaders, who saw him as a distraction or liability. Anyway, it’s a well-done film; check it out.

I went to see a movie at the festival on Monday night as well, although it’s hardly worth a mention. It was a mockumentary about sex workers in Frisco, but it had neither cohesiveness nor a sophisticated point. It was, however, packed with vice, and that’s always good at holding an audience.

Incidentally, I went to the movies on both nights with German ex-pats. Monday: a guy working at organic farms around South Africa for a few months, via WWOOF. And Tuesday: a friend of a friend, who directs the high school exchange organization AFS in SA.

I’m not usually one to find new musical groups before other people, but I can’t imagine you’ve heard of this one. And a song of theirs, called “Jimmy Hat,” has just got me drumming on my thighs ’til they’ve turned red. But Gleni, the Italian handbag manufacturer, says red is a hot color this year. So listen to the MP3, and try some drumming yourself.

(By the way, Gleni also says that red is “the color of passion, victory and positivity” and that it is “perfect with jeans.”)

I discovered Carol Cleveland Sings a few years ago among the archives of a wonderful website called Song Fight, which holds public, weekly music competitions based on chosen song titles.

I’ve been a CCS fan for a while now, though, and like any good music snob, I now know everything about them. I know that they’re a side project of some UK band; I know that Carol Cleveland is a 60-something British actress who was in Monty Python skits, and I’m pretty sure that she hasn’t sued them yet. I also know that their music is “a unique brand of Neo-Psychedelic Casiocore, with traces of Civil War-Era Lo-Fi Alt-Vaudeville while attaining a strict Post-Electro-Baroque-Pop background.”

And it doesn’t get any better than that.

So check out some more CCS songs, and when they’re famous, I’ll have told you so.