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The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Lumumba everlasting': Belgium marks Congo's slain leader's 100th birthday with exhibition
If he had lived, Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, would have marked his 100th birthday this month (on 2 July). This unreached milestone is being marked by an exhibition in Brussels at a time when Belgium, the former colonial power, is facing renewed questions about his death. Lumumba was 35 when he was overthrown during a political crisis, then tortured and assassinated by a firing squad in January 1961, along with two associates, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo. Nearly 65 years after the murders, which were carried out by Congolese rivals with the support of Belgian officers, Lumumba's family are still searching for answers. In an unexpected development in June, Belgium's federal prosecutor referred a 92-year-old former diplomat, Étienne Davignon, to the Brussels criminal court over alleged war crimes related to the killings. Davignon, who was dispatched to Congo as a 28-year-old diplomatic intern on the eve of independence in 1960, is the only survivor among 10 former officials accused by the Lumumba family in 2011 of involvement in his assassination. The charges relate to Lumumba's unlawful detention, his denial of a fair trial and 'humiliating and degrading treatment', although a charge of intent to kill has been dismissed. Davignon has denied all claims of involvement. Christophe Marchand, a lawyer for the Lumumba family, said: 'The idea is to have a judicial trial and to have the truth about what happened, not only the role of Étienne Davignon – because he was one part in the whole criminal plan.' Lumumba was a charismatic champion of Congolese independence who made some disastrous decisions during his short-lived premiership. One historian has described his assassination as Congo's 'original sin' that shattered hopes of unity and prosperity in the newly independent country. In 2001 a parliamentary inquiry concluded that Belgian ministers bore a moral responsibility for the events that led to the Congolese leader's gruesome death. Marchand said the parliamentary inquiry had made clear that 'Belgian civil servants took an active part in the transfer of Lumumba from Léopoldville (Kinshasa) to Katanga', where he was murdered. Although the lawyer thought the investigation should have begun earlier, he considered it very significant that Belgium's highest prosecutor had now concluded there was enough evidence for a trial. 'There are very few cases where a former colonial state agrees to address colonial crimes and to consider that they have to be tried … even if it's a very long time after,' Marchand said. A hearing has been scheduled for January 2026, when a judge will decide if a trial should go ahead. Davignon has rejected the case as 'absurd'. The aristocrat is a scion of the Belgian establishment, a former vice-president of the European Commission, who has been involved in numerous Belgian blue chip companies. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion Speaking to SudInfo this July, Davignon said he had been questioned by the earlier parliamentary inquiry 'where it was found that I had no direct or indirect responsibility for what happened to Lumumba'. He accused the prosecution of being overzealous and 'having gone into things a bit blindly'. Belgium's foreign ministry said it was not able to comment out of respect for the separation of powers, while noting that it was not implicated in the prosecutor's dossier. Nancy Mariam Kawaya, a coordinator at the Congolese Cultural Centre, which is hosting the Lumumba centenary exhibition, said: 'The murder needs to be judged so Belgium can be at peace with the story, so the Congolese can be at peace with the story and we can write a new chapter. 'I want to trust that justice will do its work now,' she added. The exhibition, she said, sought to widen the focus beyond Lumumba's death. The subject of his violent end 'takes so much space' that 'we don't realise that people don't know who he was, his ideas … What was actually his fight?' The small exhibition of paintings by Congolese artists at the cultural centre seeks to fill that gap. One artist imagines an idealised centenarian Lumumba, with cropped grey-white hair, gazing enigmatically into the distance. There are more unsettling works. Another painting depicts modern-day Kinshasa as an unpopulated metropolis of skyscrapers and soup of rubbish, reflecting the scourge of modern-day plastic pollution in the Congolese capital. In another work Lumumba, crowned with a halo, sits on a plastic chair in a rubbish dump as two shoeless young boys stretch out their hands. One of the boys, his hands dripping in blood, is holding a smartphone – a bleak reference to the minerals used to power the world's devices that have fuelled years of conflict in the DRC. Opened in 2023 by the city of Brussels, the Congolese Cultural Centre is part of efforts to turn the page on Belgium's fraught relationship with its former colonies. The exhibition, which runs until 30 July, is entitled Lumumba Sans Temps, a play on words. Sans temps (without time, or everlasting) sounds like 100 years (cent ans) in French and is intended to underline the timelessness, say organisers, of Lumumba's message of unity, rather than division along religious or ethnic lines. 'Lumumba remains our contemporary,' contends Dady Mbumba, the exhibition's curator. 'Lumumba fought for liberty, for equality, for unity,' he said, stressing the importance of the latter after decades of conflict in the DRC. Mbumba, who was born in Congo and lives in Belgium, wants better knowledge of Lumumba's life and the colonial past in both countries. 'It is a history that we share … although difficult and painful.'
The Guardian
23-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Travelling to Trump's US is a low-level trauma – here's what Africans can do about it
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I reflect on the increasing difficulty of travel and immigration for many from the African continent, and how one country is plotting a smoother path. I have just come back from holiday, and I'm still not used to how different travel is when not using an African passport. My British citizenship, which I acquired about five years ago, has transformed not only my ability to travel at short notice but it has eliminated overnight the intense stress and bureaucratic hurdles involved in applying for visas on my Sudanese passport. It is difficult to explain just how different the lives of those with 'powerful' passports are to those without. It is an entirely parallel existence. Gaining permission to travel to many destinations is often a lengthy, expensive and sickeningly uncertain process. A tourist visa to the UK can cost up to £1,000, in addition to the fee for private processing centres that handle much of Europe's visa applications abroad. And then there is the paperwork: bank statements, employment letters, academic records, certified proof of ownership of assets, and birth and marriage certificates if one is travelling to visit family. This is a non-exhaustive list. For a recent visa application for a family member, I submitted 32 documents. It may sound dramatic but such processes instil a sort of low-level trauma, after submitting to the violation of what feels like a bureaucratic cavity search. And all fees, whatever the decision, are non-refundable. Processing times are in the hands of the visa gods – it once took more than six months for me to receive a US visa. By the time it arrived, the meeting I needed to attend for work had passed by a comically long time. Separation and severed relationships It's not only travel for work or holiday that is hindered by such high barriers to entry. Relationships suffer. It is simply a feature of the world now that many families in the Black diaspora sprawl across continents. Last month Trump restricted entry to the US to nationals from 20 countries, half of which are in Africa. The decision is even crueler when you consider that it applies to countries such as Sudan, whose civil war has prompted many to seek refuge with family abroad. That is not just a political act of limiting immigration, it is a deeply personal one that severs connections between families, friends and partners. Family members of refugees from those countries have also been banned, so they can't visit relatives who have already managed to emigrate. The International Rescue Committee warned the decision could have 'far-reaching impacts on the lives of many American families, including refugees, asylees and green card holders, seeking to be reunified with their loved ones'. A global raising of barriers The fallout of this Trump order is colossal. There are students who are unable to graduate. Spouses unable to join their partners. Children separated from their parents. It's a severe policy, but shades of it exist elsewhere by other means. The UK recently terminated the rights of foreign care workers and most international students to bring their children and partners to the country. And even for those who simply want to have their family visit them, access is closed to all except those who can clear the high financial hurdles and meet the significant burdens of proof to show that either they can afford to maintain their visitors or that they will return to their home countries. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion It was 10 years before I – someone with fairly stable employment and a higher-education qualification – satisfied the Home Office's requirements and could finally invite my mother to visit. I broke down when I saw her face at arrivals, realising how hard it had been for both of us; the fact that she had not seen the life I had built as an adult. Compare this draconian measure to some countries in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, that have an actual visa category, low-cost and swiftly processed, for parental visits and residency. A new African model But as some countries shut down, others are opening up. This month, Kenya removed visa requirements for almost all African citizens wanting to visit. Here, finally, there is the sort of regional solidarity that mirrors that of the EU and other western countries. Since it boosts African tourism and makes Kenya an inviting destination for people to gather at short notice for professional or festive reasons, it's a smart move. But it also sends an important signal to a continent embattled by visa restrictions and divided across borders set by colonial rule. We are not just liabilities, people to be judged on how many resources they might take from a country once allowed in. We are also tourists, friends, relatives, entrepreneurs and, above all, Africans who have the right to meet and mingle without the terror, and yes, contempt, of a suspicious visa process. If the African diaspora is being separated abroad, there is at least now a path to the option that some of us may reunite at home. To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
Yahoo
21-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Parties and proclamations: Juneteenth across the diaspora
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. I'm Adria R Walker, a Mississippi-based race and equity reporter for the Guardian US, and I'm excited to be taking over this week. I've been working on a story about the ways Black American communities have celebrated – in many cases, for centuries – the formal end of slavery, which is variously called Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, Jubilee Day and, perhaps most famously, Juneteenth. My article will be published on 19 June, Juneteenth, a federal holiday that was enshrined into law four years ago. In doing this reporting, I've learned a lot about the holiday that I grew up celebrating. For this week's edition of the newsletter, I'll guide you through what Emancipation Day can look like in the US and its legacy. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, which abolished slavery in the states that had seceded during the civil war, though slavery was abolished nationwide when the 13th amendment was ratified on 6 December 1865. News of the proclamation spread varyingly. Some southern enslavers attempted to outrun the order and the Union soldiers who brought news of it, moving the people they had enslaved farther and farther west until the army caught up with them. In Galveston, Texas, it was not until 19 June 1865 that people who were enslaved found out about the declaration. News of that freedom was enshrined in Juneteenth, celebrated annually by Galvestonians and nearby Houstonians. While Juneteenth has become the most famous emancipation celebration, it is far from the only one. I had the idea for the story a couple of years ago, on 8 May 2023, when I became curious about how communities across the south celebrated emancipation historically and in the present day. On that day, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, one of the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, my home town, had shared a newspaper clipping on Instagram about a historic Emancipation Day celebration on 8 May. The 8 May celebrations, which are still observed by the Mississippi School of Mathematics and Science and the local community, began in 1865, when Union soldiers arrived in Columbus to inform the enslaved people that they were free. Elsewhere, 8 August commemmorates the day the former president Andrew Johnson manumitted (freed) the people he had enslaved – the emancipation proclamation had not applied to Tennessee or West Virginia. William Isom, the director of Black in Appalachia, tells me that Samuel Johnson, a formerly enslaved person, is credited with the spread of 8 August celebrations. In Florida, the day is celebrated on 20 May, honouring that date in 1865 when Union troops read and enforced the emancipation proclamation at the end of the civil war. In Gallia County, Ohio, they have marked 22 September 1862, the day on which Lincoln drafted the emancipation proclamationsince 1863 – making it one of the longest-running emancipation celebrations in the country, Isom says. Some communities have celebrated 1 January since 1863, when Lincoln signed the proclamation, while others celebrate 31 December, or Watch Night, when enslaved and freed Black Americans gathered to hear news of the emancipation proclamation. Watch Night is still observed in Black communities across the south, including in the Carolinas, where Gullah Geechee people observe Freedom's Eve, and elsewhere. As a child, I attended Watch Night services at church in Mississippi, though I didn't appreciate the significance at the time. Whenever and wherever slavery was abolished, formerly enslaved people observed and celebrated the day – this is consistent across the African diaspora. I knew about Emancipation Day festivities in the Caribbean and in Canada, for example, though they are different from those in the US, but I didn't know such celebrations extended to the northern US. In Massachusetts, Emancipation Day, also known as Quock Walker Day, is on 8 July. Quock Walker, born in 1753, sued for and won his freedom in 1781. His case is considered to have helped abolish slavery in Massachusetts. In New York State, the Fifth of July was first celebrated in 1827, an event first held the day after full emancipation was achieved there. After the British empire ended slavery in 1838, many areas in the north began to observe 1 August. In Washington DC, on 16 April, people commemorate the anniversary of the 1862 signing of the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, which abolished slavery and freed about 3,000 people in the capital. Under the act, former enslavers were compensated for the people they had enslaved, a common practice during efforts to end slavery around the world. However, the people who had been enslaved did not receive compensation. I vaguely remember attending my first Juneteenth celebration as a little girl. Farish Street, a historic Black district in Jackson, was abuzz with people. Despite it being the middle of summer in Mississippi, the heat didn't stop folks from coming out to eat, dance and socialise. The state is relatively close to Texas – it is about a six-hour drive from Jackson to Houston – so we have quite a bit of cultural overlap. It made sense that we would share holidays. Like many other cultural traditions, Juneteenth spread across the country with the arrival of southern people during the great migration. In the decades since, Juneteenth has been catapulted from a local or regional event to a national and international one – last year, for example, I was invited to attend a Juneteenth event in Toronto, Canada. Other emancipation commemorations travelled, too. The 8 August celebrations, for example, moved throughout Appalachia, through coal country and into urban metropolises such as Chicago, Indianapolis and Detroit. Historically, the holiday included celebratory aspects – eating traditional foods, hosting libations, singing, dancing and playing baseball – but also a tangible push for change. Celebrants would gather to find family members from whom they had been separated during slavery, attend lectures and advocate for education, and practise harnessing their political power – something that was particularly relevant in the reconstruction days. For Isom, Juneteenth can become a day that the entire country comes together to celebrate freedom, while communities' specific emancipation celebrations can be hyper-local and hyper-specific. 'Even in [places] where there's not necessarily many Black folks at all, they're having the Juneteenth events,' he says. 'And so the local celebrations – like for here, 8 August or 22 September – that's where I feel like communities can showcase and celebrate their own cultures and traditions around Emancipation Day. We need both.' To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
The Guardian
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘As a film lover, I want more': the Black female directors taking centre stage
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week I spoke to Rógan Graham, a curator of the British Film Institute's latest season, Black Debutantes: A Collection of Early Works by Black Women Directors. The programme runs throughout May at the BFI Southbank in London, and is a celebration of the feature-length work of Black female film-makers, both the familiar and the seldom screened. Rógan Graham conceived of Black Debutantes after reflecting on the career trajectories – or lack of them – of female directors beyond their debut films. The BFI often runs seasons dedicated to film-makers such as Mike Leigh or Akira Kurosawa, and Graham asked herself: which Black female director has a robust enough filmography to uphold a month-long season? This is, of course, not to downplay the incredible achievements of Black women in cinema, but it was evident to Graham that 'Black women don't have as long careers within the film industry. The statistics are stark.' Graham realised that many of the films she loved by Black women, such as the coming-of-age drama Drylongso by Cauleen Smith, or Naked Acts by Bridgett M Davis, which are featured in the season, were debuts that neither director has yet followed up. 'Cauleen Smith has continued to have a very long, creative career, and has worked with a lot of galleries and art spaces with experimental video work,' Graham notes, 'but she is very much outside of the traditional … not even Hollywood, we're talking about independent, American cinema.' Drylongso isn't an outsider kind of film – watching it, it seems very much part of the coming-of-age films so prevalent around the time of its release in 1998. Graham compares Drylongso with Leslie Harris's Just Another Girl on the IRT (which would have been included in the season, had it not been rereleased by Tape Collective this year). 'Both films deal with very real issues that Black teenagers of that time were dealing with,' she says. 'But that doesn't take away from the fact that they're hilarious and they're relatable.' Mothers, daughters and the camera The films Graham selected for Black Debutantes showcase a wide variety of genres, from Ngozi Onwurah's dystopian drama Welcome II the Terrordome to Dee Rees's queer teen film Pariah and Euzhan Palcy's Sugar Cane Alley, which explores the colonial power struggle of 1980s Martinique. Graham says all the films in the season 'walk this really fine line between being relatable and warm, but very much dealing with issues'. Graham didn't realise until she had completed the season's curation that there was a mother-daughter dynamic in much of the work she had chosen, whether explored literally in films such as Frances-Anne Solomon's What My Mother Told Me, or more tangentially, for instance in Losing Ground by the late Kathleen Collins, which features a prerecorded introduction by her daughter Nina Lorez Collins. 'Kathleen died in her 40s [in 1988], and it was her daughter who safeguarded her work and helped get it restored,' Graham says. 'And I think that's incredibly powerful.' Continuing the matrilineal theme, Davis's Naked Acts tackles childhood sexual trauma but with 'a lighter touch'. In the film, the aspiring actor Cicely does not want to shoot a nude scene, as her mother, who was in blaxploitation films, was made to do decades earlier. 'That theme of not being like your mother comes through really strongly in a lot of the films,' Graham says. Another key motif in the season is that of the camera as a means of expression. In Losing Ground, Sara features in one of her student's films, which helps her develop a more assertive approach to her jealous and lecherous husband, Victor. Pica, the protagonist of Drylongso, photographs African American men in her community, 'as she believes they'll be going extinct due to the gang violence in South Central LA in the 1990s'. At the end of Naked Acts, Cicely spends time alone with the camera, embracing her own body. 'The way Black women see ourselves and put ourselves in the frame is very much a conversation. As well as that compulsion to document and preserve images,' Graham says. Piracy and privileges A programme of such ambitious scope can't have been straightforward to execute, particularly given the issues with accessing Black films and securing the rights to screen it. Graham tells me that piracy has often been the only way she could access material: 'This is not me stealing anything, but it might be a friend who has a link in Google Drive or a programmer in another country who can slip you a WeTransfer link.' Working with the BFI put Graham in the 'privileged position' of having researchers who could help secure the films after she had scoured the internet and film curation programmes overseas. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion Some of the films required a more personal approach. A 4K restoration of Jessie Maple's Will, the first-feature length dramatic film by an African American woman, premiered at MoMA in New York in January. Maple had died in 2023, and a curatorial director at the Criterion Collection named Ashley Clark introduced Graham to Maple's family. Consequently, Will, which explores the impact of drug use on Black families and communities, will have its first public screening in front of a British audience. 'There's a lot of relationship management, either directly with the film-maker, or with family, or the people who manage their estate,' Graham says. Sometimes, she adds, there is the more frustrating scenario of dealing with a bigger studio that 'doesn't really care or remember that they have the rights to the film'. Into the future: 'There's still a massive disparity' Considering the truncated careers of so many Black female film-makers, I ask Graham what she makes of the state of play today. One of the most critically acclaimed films of the past year, Hard Truths, focused on a depressed Black woman, but it was made by Mike Leigh, a white man. 'Hard Truths is an interesting example,' Graham says. 'There was discussion around who gets to author that kind of story when there is still such a massive disparity between men and women, and Black and white film-makers. But I think when you look at Savanah Leaf, who made Earth Mama, which won the Bafta for outstanding debut, or Raine Allen-Miller's success with Rye Lane, we've got a real crop of debuts in the past three or four years which feels promising.' Graham is regularly checking their IMDb pages, wondering about their second films. She loved Nyoni's On Becoming a Guinea Fowl but notes that it came seven years after her debut feature film, I Am Not a Witch. 'I just want Black film-makers to be continually supported – that's as audience members buying tickets and the industry funding it. Greedily, as a film lover, I want more.' Black Debutantes: A Collection of Early Works by Black Women Directors is at BFI Southbank from 1-31 May, with select titles on BFI Player from 5 May. To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Tanzania opposition officials arrested before Lissu's court appearance
Tanzania's main opposition party has said at least two of its officials have been arrested on their way to a rally to support the leading government opponent Tundu Lissu, who is due in court to face a treason charge. Authorities in the east African country have increasingly cracked down on the opposition Chadema party in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary polls in October. Lissu could face the death penalty over the treason charge. His party has been disqualified from the elections after it refused to sign an electoral code of conduct. Chadema has accused President Samia Suluhu Hassan of returning to the repressive tactics of her predecessor, John Magufuli. The Chadema spokesperson, Brenda Rupia, said the party's deputy chair, John Heche, and secretary general, John Mnyika, were among those detained by police en route to the court in the business capital of Dar es Salaam. Lissu, 57, was due at Kisutu magistrate court on Thursday, amid growing outrage in the country over his detention. Heche had previously called for demonstrations, and Amnesty International demanded Lissu's immediate and unconditional release. Lissu has not been seen since a brief court appearance on 10 April, when he was charged with treason, which has no option of bail, and publication of false information. At the time, a defiant Lissu told supporters: 'The treason case is a path to liberation.' He has been arrested several times in the past but this is the first time Lissu has faced such a serious charge. The politician has led a forceful charge against the government, vowing his party would not participate in polls without significant changes to the electoral system. Chadema's refusal to sign an electoral code of conduct prompted its disqualification – but the party has said the rules were designed to 'ensure that the ruling party remains in power' and that the ban was unconstitutional. The president's party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, won an overwhelming victory in local elections last year but Chadema says the vote was not free or fair since many of its candidates were disqualified. Chadema has demanded a voting overhaul, including a more independent Electoral Commission and clearer rules to ensure candidates are not removed from ballots. Lissu warned last year that Chadema would 'block the elections through confrontation' unless the system was improved. The opposition's demands have been long ignored by the ruling party. Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion A lawyer by training, Lissu entered parliament in 2010 and ran for president in 2020. He was shot 16 times in a 2017 attack that he says was ordered by his political opponents. After losing the 2020 election to Magufuli, he fled the country but returned in 2023 on a wave of optimism as Hassan relaxed some of her predecessor's restrictions on the opposition and the media. Those hopes proved short-lived, with rights groups and western governments increasingly critical of renewed repression, including the arrests of Chadema politicians as well as abductions and murders of opposition figures. In a statement after Lissu's detention, Amnesty International condemned a 'campaign of repression' by authorities, criticising the 'heavy-handed tactics to silence critics'.
