Written by: Daluxolo Moloantoa
Chimurenga magazine will launch the Chimurenga Chronicle, a once-off edition of a speculative pan-African weekly future-forward newspaper that travels back in time to re-imagine the present, on “Black Wednesday,” October 19.
Comprising of a 128 page multi-section broadsheet, and the stand-alone 40 page Chronic Life Magazine and 96 page Chronic Book Review Magazine, the chronic addresses the issues of borders, migration and hospitality from multiple, global perspectives.
Back-dated to the week May 11-18 2008, it reports primarily on the first week of the xenophobic violence in South Africa – and similar episodes of xenophobia such as the outbreak of “ethnic” violence in Kenya and “religious” attacks in Nigeria. The Chronic seeks to place these events within a broader context, focusing outward on the events and situations around the world during this period, to challenge the logic of emergencies that characterize the writing of Africa in contemporary media.
Eight thousand copies of the newspaper will be made available to Somali shops in both Johannesburg and Cape Town this week and will be sold at R50 per copy. Thereafter, they will be available at bookshops such as Exclusive Books nationwide, retailing at R150, 00 per copy.
In an interview with Spreche, a culture magazine of the Goethe Institut, Chimurenga Chronicle’s editor Ntone Edjabe said: “It took us a full year to complete the project. It is the most intense project I have ever been involved with. There is an urgency that the form of putting together a newspaper imposes upon you throughout the stages of the project.”
Edjabe says the aim of the newspaper is to move past the two dominant media reactions at the time of the xenophobic attacks in SA. These reactions were exceptionalism and shock.
“The media responded with a level of morality in tune with South Africa’s exceptionalist disposition to the plight of other Africans caught up in this predicament. The general response from civil society and politicians was like “This is not us. This is not South Africa.” But how different is this from the genocide in Rwanda in 1998, the post-election violence in Kenya in 2007, or how Cameroonians treated the Nigerians who had fled to their country to escape the Biafra War in the late 1960’s?” he said.
The event takes place at the Goethe Institut in Johannesburg at 7:30pm, and will take place on the same day in Lagos and Nairobi.
A Chronic Library exhibition will also be displayed from 19 to 26 October at the Goethe Institut.
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