Sean Jacobs is the author of Media in Post-Apartheid South Africa. He teaches international affairs at the New School in New York.
Photographs of Festac by Marilyn Nance (1977)
In April 1966, Senegal hosted the Festival mondial des arts nègres (Fesman), the first global, state-sponsored festival of African art, music, drama, poetry, literature, film and dance in the era of African independence. It was the brainchild of Léopold Senghor, Senegal’s president, who saw the arts as a field of struggle....
On 10 February, the rapper AKA (Kiernan Forbes) was murdered in downtown Durban, along with his friend and manager, Tebello ‘Tibz’ Motsoane. They were on their way to perform in a nightclub when two assailants ran up to them and shot them at close range. AKA had turned 35 a couple of weeks earlier and had been South Africa’s top rap artist for at least a decade. He was celebrated at home (winning multiple South African music awards), toured several other African countries and was nominated for an MTV Europe award as well as a BET award in US, though in a separate category for African artists.
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