Chimurenga is a publication of arts, culture and politics from and about Africa and its diasporas, founded and edited by Ntone Edjabe. Both the magazine's name (Chimurenga is a Shona word that loosely translates as "liberation struggle")[1] and the content capture the connection between African cultures and politics on the continent and beyond.
History
Chimurenga was launched in 2002 as a magazine promoted by Kalakuta Trust and founded by Ntone Edjabe. It is based in Cape Town, South Africa, but its network is international. Chimurenga focuses on Africa and its diaspora, aiming at capturing the connection between African cultures and politics on the continent and beyond. Chimurenga gradually began developing a series of publications, events (called Chimurenga Sessions) and specific projects.
Notability
Chimurenga is reviewed by newspapers and magazines and it is presented inside conferences, events and exhibitions. In 2007, it was part of the Documenta magazine project within Documenta exhibition in Kassel; in 2008 it was reviewed by an article of The New York Times.[2] Its director Ntone Edjabe talks about the magazine and its approach during numerous interviews and conferences also at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Art Academy in Berlin in 2005, at the Dakar Biennale in 2006 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009. In particular the capacity of Chimurenga to influence ideas and writing and its role as an innovative educational model is recognised by initiatives such as Meanwhile in Africa... in 2005,[3] and Learning Machines: Art Education and Alternative Production of Knowledge in 2010.[4] In 2010 Chimurenga began a collaboration with the magazine Glänta to translate Chimurenga into Swedish.[5]
Activities
In addition to its magazine, Chimurenga produces other publications, events and specific projects.
Magazine
The first issue of Chimurenga magazine was published in April 2002. Each issue has a specific theme. Initially a quarterly, Chimurenga now appears approximately three times a year. Interrogating the superficial has always been the core agenda of the publication. The various renegades are captured in a series of profiles "thinking out loud". Chimurenga shies away from the Q&A format and includes deconstructed and imagined interviews, surreal short stories and poetry and other devices that challenge strict notions of fact and fiction. Covers are equally indicative of the orientation of a journal which is at once theoretical, erotic, and provocative. One cover featured the words of "Strange Fruit", the song about Southern lynchings that Billie Holiday immortalised. Another featured Neo Muyanga's portrait of Steve Biko's bruised face. The first edition showed Peter Tosh at a gig in Eswatini in the early 1980s, pointing an AK-47-shaped guitar in the direction of South Africa and chanting down Babylon.
Chimurenga Vol. 1, Music Is The Weapon, April 2002
Chimurenga Vol. 2, Dis-Covering Home, July 2002
Chimurenga Vol. 3, Biko in Parliament, November 2002
Chimurenga Vol. 4, Black Gays & Mugabes, May 2003
Chimurenga Vol. 5, Head/Body(&Tools)/Corpses, April 2004
Chimurenga Vol. 6, The Orphans Of Fanon, October 2004
Chimurenga Vol. 7, Kaapstad! (and Jozi, the night Moses died), July 2005
Chimurenga Vol. 8, We're all Nigerian!, December 2005
Chimurenga Vol. 9, Conversations in Luanda and Other Graphic Stories, June 2006
Chimurenga Vol. 10, Futbol, Politricks & Ostentatious Cripples, December 2006
Chimurenga Vol. 11, Conversations With Poets Who Refuse To Speak, July 2007. The magazine produces a presentation video of the issue.[6] The issue is translated into Swedish and published by the magazine Glänta 2/2010.[7]
Chimurenga Vol. 12/13, Dr. Satan's Echo Chamber, March 2008. The magazine produces a presentation video of the issue.[8]
Chimurenga Vol. 14, Everyone Has Their Indian, April 2009. Dedicated to Third World projects and links, real and imaginary, between Africa and South Asia. The magazine produces two presentation videos of the issue.[9]
Chimurenga Vol. 15, The Curriculum is Everything, May 2010. The issue is conceived as a second chance to write history: a low-techtime-machine that allows produce a back-issue of a newspaper and to analyse xenophobic events that took place in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya in the week 11–18 May 2008. The issue is produced by an online editorial board[10] that involves writers, artists and journalists in collaboration with the magazines Chimurenga and Kwani? and the publishers Cassava Republic Press.
Chimurenga Vol. 16: The Chimurenga Chronicle, October 2011 — described as "the once-off edition of an imaginary newspaper.... Set in the week 18–24 May 2008, the Chronic imagines the newspaper as producer of time – a time-machine.... An intervention into the newspaper as a vehicle of knowledge production and dissemination, it seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream representations of history, on the one hand filling the gap in the historical coverage of this event, whilst at the same time reopening it. The objective is not to revisit the past to bring about closure, but rather to provoke and challenge our perceptions."[11]
Chimurenga also has a monthly online edition that presents other short contributions not directly connected to the themes of the paper publication.[12]
Chimurenganyana
Chimurenganyana is a series of low-cost publications and a distribution system. A selection of articles from Chimurenga are printed on small sizes and are sold by street vendors who normally sell cigarettes. Each edition is focused on a specific theme.
Julian Jonker, A Silent Way: Routes of South African Jazz, 1946-1978
The Chimurenga Library is a selection of magazines and publications that - according to Chimurenga - influence thinking and writing in Africa. The selection is presented on an online database under CC-BY-SA compatible with Wikipedia; it presents general information on the magazines and a sort of genealogy that links publications to one another.
In 2009 Chimurenga Library is shown with the title "Chimurenga Library: An introspective of Chimurenga" at Cape Town Central Library with a series of multimedia itineraries (reading routes and sound posts) and live events (music, readings, meetings with authors, projections and wiki workshop during which students are involved in producing Wikipedia articles).[13] The idea of the presentation is to rethink a library as a laboratory which can trigger curiosity, adventures, critical thinking, activism, entertainment and random reading. The show presents panafrican independent periodicals, and the exhibition Why Must A Black Writer Write About Sex, a selection of texts on sex from African literature which confront stereotypes on sexuality and literature genres.[14]
PASS Pan African Space Station
The PASS Pan African Space Station is an annual 30-day musical intervention, that takes place through a freeform radio station and in unexpected venues across greater Cape Town. The initiative is promoted by Ntone Edjabe and Neo Muyanga (The Heliocentrics) in collaboration with Africa Centre and it is organised in 2008, 2009 and 2010.[15]
Ntone Edjabe: Then, the Zimbabwean nationalist struggle and the music that fuelled it. Now, the struggle to stay awake as Cronin puts it. Somebody somewhere decided to assemble the aspirations of many of the world's sufferahs under "ah" sounding syllables: amandla; intifada; aluta; sankara; guevarra; zapatista; rasta…whateva you know…one is almost tempted to throw 'kabila' in there (laughs)... im saying 'chimurenga' toes that line. It also brings together the political and the cultural better than any slogan our struggles may have produced. When one says 'chimurenga', you could be reading from a Jonathan Moyo speech or talking about Thomas Mapfumo's music.
Y magazine: The rallying call "Who No Know Go Know" is apt & tight. Please break it down.
Ntone Edjabe: The Chief Priest (Fela) used to throw it down in mid-song, just before giving his version of the latest world news. It's a West African English translation of "if you don't know you better find out". In other words, ignorance is curable. One needs to take this with gloves - or a condom - 'cause this is not to say Chimurenga has medicinal pretensions. We all know prevention is best…if anything Chimurenga is a communal yard where we are free to exhibit our sick heads. Escaping the torpor of post-independence in order to do this is in itself therapeutic, considering the heavy dosage of painkillers that make up the current reading diet this side of the Limpopo. And from what I hear, the other side too....