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The present debate about democracy in Africa illuminates a critical dilemma: the persistence of a political framework in Africa that is largely derivative, adopted without sufficient interrogation of its congruence with indigenous socio-political realities. This transplantation has frequently entailed the marginalization of endogenous systems of communal accountability and participatory leadership, supplanting them with structures characterized by clientelism, patrimonialism, and the dominance of political “godfathers.” Consequently, a cyclical pattern emerges, wherein periods of civilian rule, often marred by ineffective governance, alternate with military interventions, perpetuating a state of political instability.

The livelyhood of thousands of people in Accra who depend on the festival was jeopardised on a whim..yes on a whim. This blatant abuse of power comes at a time when government policy is focused on job creation and economic growth.

So what does it mean when state agencies deliberately disrupt an art economy with its own means of production?

What does it mean for cultural workers+ artistic freedom in #Ghana when people in power can send armed police to shut down an exhibition using a public health crisis as cover for a false flag operation?

We will also be launching a new project to raise money to support people in detention who need legal aid and representation. join us this Friday 24th September @Accradotalt Brazil House 6pm.

Perpetual abstract project supervised by visiting artist Biko Haffar for #ChaleWote2021

📸 Teabag

#ChaleWote2021 performance inside Ussher Fort Accra ,former holding facility for the enslaved. Built by Dutch human traffickers in 1649.

Future Remains......

Questioning the idea of an object and space, which evoke memories of incidents in time, leads to a performative and installative work. A ruin and hunger of consumed electronic machinery feeding into our human genetic system, revealing a ghost of utopia and dystopia. In the realm of robotic remains are unforeseen circumstances driven by death. Echoing voices of bleeding electronic gadgets powered by experimental driven sound. A cry of industrial and technological machinery in our everyday activities as an ambiance coordinated by Emilio Gordoa ,guides the decayed robotic body of Martin Toloku in a costume made of discarded electronic objects with a series of improvised dance and body responds to the evocation of accident. Lena Czerniawska on the other hand reveals the untold story which is obscured from judging eye through a series of drawings on the scrap automobile.

“Future Remains” is a futuristic tale of sudden death – the decomposition of speed, the warning, the lament, the robotization of death. Civilization is a deadly toy that brings excitement, change and demise. The future is obscured by smog and in the darkness it is easy to have an accident. A moment of inattention, unnecessary acceleration and reality shatters. Continuity is broken, a person disappears. What's left is a lonely garbage dump – a broken window, torn clothes, a suddenly aged shoe, a crushed car body, a broken phone. And that's just a fragment of the life we had with them. Everything we leave behind becomes part of a great, baroque garbage dump. The ghosts of modernity wander through landfills, get entangled in cables, plastic bags and the flames of the unnecessary. This is the downfall of humanity, exposing our greed and selfishness. It is a wasted future, a future derailed, lost, without meaning and without waste plunged into the darkness of burning waste and oceans of garbage. We are trying to resuscitate it, inserting mechanical limbs, valves, connecting it to electricity, performing electric shocks.

📸 @rez-Inyazi

Richmond Donkor

A place of many suns.

Chale Wote Street Art Festival

PRESIDENT KAUNDA HOSTS MANDELA IN ZAMBIA 1990

Barely 16 days away from his release from prison, Nelson Mandela visited Zambia on 27th February 1990 where he was greeted with the ceremony normally reserved for heads of state.

Among the people that welcomed him included notable figures such as leaders of the Frontline states, Commonwealth representatives, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman and the exiled ANC Executive Committee.

• Present at the then Lusaka International Airport were:

• Yasser Arafat - Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman

• Tunku Abdul Rahman – Malaysian Prime Minister

• Yoweri Museveni – President of Uganda

• Sam Nujoma - SWAPO Leader

• Herman Toivo ja Toivo - SWAPO Founder

• Robert Mugabe – President of Zimbabwe

• Quett Masire – President of Botswana

• Joaquim Chissano – President of Mozambique

• Obed Dlamini - Prime Minister of Swaziland