Blue Crush 2

Nope. Neither Michelle Rodriguez nor Sanoe Lake is in it... Sigh.

When China Met Africa

Must see. This looks quite interesting.





“When China Met Africa”


Starting on the 13th of June in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa,  The Encounters Documentary Film Festival will feature a series of African and other international documentaries including the likes of this one.


On the front line of China’s foray into Africa, the lives of a farmer, a road builder, and a trade minister reveal the expanding footprint of a rising global power.

‘When China Met Africa’ is a film produced by Marc Francis & Nick Francis and Miriana Bojic Walter.

www.whenchinametafrica.com

Protest Action Against Corrective Rape

Cape Town, South Africa - 15 May 2011

Killing of a Durban lesbian sparks hate crime protest [iol]

By DASEN THATHIAH and ESTHER LEWIS

Women protest outside Durban's City Hall after a 
lesbian was raped and  killed in KwaMashu. The 
protesters claimed the government was not  
protecting gay citizens. Picture: Mthobisi Mbanjwa

The murder of a Durban woman has angered the gay and lesbian community, who are demanding government take hate crimes more seriously.

Nqobile Khumalo, 23, went missing on May 4 and her body was found in a shallow grave near her parents’ home in KwaMashu’s F-Section two days later, said police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Mdunge.

A man has been arrested in connection with her murder and is in Westville Prison awaiting a bail application.

Khumalo’s funeral was held in KwaMashu on Saturday.

Police say they have no knowledge of Khumalo’s murder being linked to her being a lesbian. But Lexit - an organisation that defends the rights of lesbian and bisexual women - claims Khumalo was killed because of her sexual preference.

The organisation staged a protest outside the Durban City Hall yesterday, singing and waving placards, to show anger at the murder.

“This is part of a nationwide protest because many lesbians are being raped and killed yet nothing is being done,” said chairwoman Thobeka Khoza. 

FULL ARTICLE

In related news...

South Africa Starts Anti-Hate Crime Task Force [Autostraddle]

South Africa’s Ministry of Justice has established a national task team to address hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans South Africans after 170,000 activists submitted a petition calling for action.

The government has been accused of not doing enough to help lesbians targeted for “corrective rape,” a hate crime in which men rape gay women to “correct” their sexual orientation or behaviour or punish them for preferring women. The new task team will begin operations on July 15, and will include six representatives from the gay community and six government representatives from the judiciary, police force, and department of social development. It will work towards changing current legislation, public awareness, and creating gay-friendly shelters. At a preliminary meeting earlier this week, a few of the options discussed included adding sexual orientation to a list of aggravating factors in sexual assault, which would make sentences heavier; using magistrate courts as equality courts; changing the minimum sentences for hate crimes and adding sexual orientation as a basis for hate crimes; and sensitivity training for police.

FULL ARTICLE

Zanele Muholi: A Visual History of Black Lesbians in post-Apartheid South Africa

Today, I ran across a post by theGAQ about Zanele Muholi, a South African lesbian artist. I haven't heard of her before but she definitely reminds me of an artist I first stumbled upon in Juxtapoz, Kehinde Wiley (and as GAQ points out as well). Wiley uses the old master painting style to paint portraits of black men. In "Faces and Phases," Muholi photographs black lesbians in black and white, which sometimes brings to mind early photography.

"In Faces and Phases, I continue to document and explore black lesbian identities through portraiture, where the participants are photographed in their various domiciles. One of our collective painful experiences as a community is the loss of friends and acquaintances through disease or hate crimes. Some of these participated in my visual projects. What is left behind now is the individuals' portraits that works as a site of memory for us, as a trace of 'who and what existed' in a particular space at this particular moment when our black lesbian and South African histories intersect."

You can read her artist's statement here.