The Lists
THE PLAY LIST
Jihan El-Tahri: I will admit that I’ve been sleeping on Jihan El-Tahri, even though there’s been many a gathering at which I’ve seen her and had friends gush about her work. On the advice of a filmmaker friend, who passionately stated that El-Tahri is probably the best documentary filmmaker in Africa, I went to the DVD store to rent the 2009 documentary Behind the Rainbow, her film on the inner workings of the ANC in 1991, 1997 and 2007.
It’s a neatly woven foray into what happened at the historic negotiations with the apartheid government and fearlessly traverses the shaky territory of the arms deal, the breakdown of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy and the RDP with commentary from the likes of veterans Pallo Jordan, Andrew Feinstein, Victor Moche, Thabo Mbeki, Jessie Duarte, Sue Rabkin, Ronnie Kasrils and President Jacob Zuma. It’s a sobering two hours that complicates how we view our national politics today. (MB) First on the playlist is Mary Lou Williams’s St Martin de Porres from the album Black Christ of the Andes. The song celebrates the life of a Peruvian patron saint of racial justice. The album was recorded in 1964, following Williams’s return to performance after almost a decade of charity work. Necessary listening. (KS)
THE READING LIST
Andrew Tshabangu:
In Grahamstown, I had the belated opportunity to admire the quiet forcefulness of Andrew Tshabangu’s collection of photographs as curated by Thembinkosi Goniwe.
On a shelf near the entrance of the room where the framed photos hung were several copies of the Fourth Wall-published book Footprints. Waiting for Tshabangu, I circled the gallery, read several scholarly essays on his photographs and juxtaposed these with a brief interview I had with the photographer.
I came to the conclusion that we can talk and write about photographs all we like, but nothing beats the actual act of looking at one, for however long it takes. Footprints, at least, affords us the opportunity to do both. (KS)
Esther Perel: It’s time to re-evaluate relationship accountability I’m still devouring Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit, but I came across an interesting article by Belgian psychologist Esther Perel on her website.
Perel argues that relationship trends like ghosting and icing — where you’re dating someone and suddenly, perhaps after the first time you get intimate, the person doesn’t call back or “blue ticks’’ you forever — are the result of a lack of empathy and a fraying state of emotional intelligence in modern society, probably exacerbated by how we communicate today.
In an era when there are so many opportunities to be noncommittal, this article discourages us from using people as bed warmers in relationships. It also urges us to end them with integrity if we need to, so that people don’t leave relationships, no matter how brief, feeling abandoned or unlovable.
Basically, we need to do better. (MB)