The New Yorker recently released its top Africans of 2012
including some of the most compelling individuals around the
continent. From President of Malawi, Joyce Banda to the Occupy Nugeria
group and even PSquare. Alexis Okeowo lists some of Africa’s most
fascinating people doing innovative, admirable, and sometimes destructive work:
1. Her name has been on the minds of most Africa observers
this past year, and with good reason. Joyce Banda, the President of Malawi,
took office in April, after an epic power struggle in which the late former
President’s allies tried to block her from rightfully assuming the position,
and she has since made a promising impression.
She took a substantial pay cut, put the Presidential jet and
cars up for sale, vowed to arrest the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, an
accused war criminal, if he entered Malawi (a promise that several other
African presidents have shied away from), and has spoken out against proposed
anti-gay legislation.
She also has been a prominent advocate for women and
children, famously leaving her first husband because he was abusive. The hype
on Banda may be outsized—critics point out that her taking a pay cut and
selling the jet and cars was necessary in a floundering economy—but I am eager
to see more from her.
2. It is rare enough to find vocal gay-rights advocates in
West Africa, but the Cameroonian lawyer Alice Nkom takes it one step further:
she has devoted her practice, the Association to Defend Homosexuals, to
protecting L.G.B.T. citizens in a country where homosexual acts are illegal. As
a result, she has been repeatedly threatened with disbarment and arrest. (One
Cameroonian lawyer went on local television with a Bible, advising that Nkom be
put to death for promoting homosexuality.)
Sixty-seven years old and grandmotherly looking, the lawyer
called attention to an “anti-gay crackdown” last year in Cameroon, in which at
least ten people had been arrested on charges of homosexuality, including one
man who was sentenced to three years in prison for sending a text message to another
man, and numerous incidents of homophobic violence. She refuses to close her
practice. “Someone has to do this,” she says.
3. The director of one of this year’s most stunning films,
“Nairobi Half Life SaveFrom.net,” is the Kenyan David (Tosh) Gitonga, from the
small town of Nanyuki. Praised by the Hollywood Reporter and Kenya’s
second-ever official entry for the foreign-language Oscar, Gitonga’s first film
is a lush, suspenseful coming-of-age tale and an ode to the multilayered
stimulant that is Nairobi. The film won the Breakthrough Audience Award at the
AFI Fest 2012.
Notably, Gitonga, who has worked on several productions as
an assistant director, is part of a generation of young African filmmakers,
which includes Djo Tunda Wa Munga, the Congolese director of “Viva Riva!,” and
the Rwandan Kivu Ruhorahoza, who made “Grey Matter,” that appears poised to
reinvigorate moviemaking on the continent.
4. As a woman, Tanzanian lawmaker Al-Shaymaa Kwegyiris
already a minority in her country’s Parliament. But as an albino, she is one of
merely two parliamentarians with first-hand knowledge of the increasingly
perilous existence of the country’s albino residents.
In June, she broke down crying in Parliament as she
recounted the grim facts: almost eighty albinos have died in ritual killings in
recent years, and many others have been raped. Little has been done to find the
perpetrators of these crimes, and many albino Tanzanians live in constant fear.
Albinos are often killed and dismembered there because of superstitious beliefs
that charms made from their body parts—some of which sell for thousands of
dollars—bring prosperity. Though a few charities in Tanzania aid albinos,
Kwegyr’s efforts, if heard, would be the most effective.
5. Proscovia Oromait is a nineteen-year-old college student
and one of the newest members of Uganda’s Parliament. The youngest lawmaker in
the country’s history, she is filling the office of her late father and says
that she simply wants to continue her father’s initiatives—when she’s not in
class.
6. Writing on a range of topics, from a painting of the
South African President Jacob Zuma’s genitals to widespread poverty, the
newspaper columnist and political analyst Justice Malala has cemented his
status as one of South Africa’s most important voices today with sensitive,
insightful commentary. On Zuma, he wrote: "The freedoms that we enjoy
today, the dignity that we enjoy today, are enjoined in that [South African]
constitution. For us to enjoy all these and to continue to enjoy them, we have
to acknowledge that this same constitution will allow things that pain us,
things that kick us in the very heart of our being, to continue. The depiction
of Zuma in such a manner did so to many of our compatriots. Yet that is the
bargain we struck."
7. Nigerian pop music is taking over the continent. The
captivating duo P-Square has been churning out hit after addictive hit. The
group is made up of identical twin brothers Peter and Paul Okoye. Behold their
latest single: "The freedoms that we enjoy today, the dignity that we
enjoy today, are enjoined in that [South African] constitution. For us to enjoy
all these and to continue to enjoy them, we have to acknowledge that this same
constitution will allow things that pain us, things that kick us in the very
heart of our being, to continue. The depiction of Zuma in such a manner did so
to many of our compatriots. Yet that is the bargain we struck."
8. In some ways, the Rwandan President Paul Kagameis the man
of the moment. Accused of helping to orchestrate a rebellion in the eastern
part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for political and material gain,
Kagame has, despite considerable evidence, continued to deny involvement in
some of the worst violence that has taken place in the country in years. He has
remained defiant even as allies like the United States and the United Kingdom
pulled their aid to Rwanda, which makes up forty per cent of the country’s
budget, as a result of that involvement. The international community, still
grappling with its complicity in the Rwandan genocide, is now being forced to
plead with him to pull back from a conflict that he won’t admit he has a hand
in.
Bonus! Many people came together to provide the face of
Occupy Nigeria, a protest movement that fundamentally shook Nigeria early this
year. After the government removed the seven-billion-dollar fuel subsidy that
made fuel cheaper for Nigerians, leading to a near halt of local trade and
business as the price of fuel doubled overnight, young and working-class people
organized mass protests that took over the streets. Nigerians were told that
government deregulation of the petroleum industry would free up funds for other
uses, an incongruous message in a nation where only the élite profits from the
oil wealth. The subsidy was partly restored, thanks to protestors. The question
now is whether the Occupy movement will sustain itself and hold the government
accountable as reports of oil corruption emerge.
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