Sean Jacobs

Fela’s political career unfolded when a distinctly Nigerian left – rooted in universities, trade unions and parts of the state – was at its intellectual and institutional height. His music, public persona and confrontations with military rule cannot be fully understood without reference to that history. 

The ANC’s rising clout in the Global South recalls its glory days as a national liberation movement. Its abysmal domestic record, however, indicates a common post-colonial quandary: how to transition successfully from protest to power. Despite South Africans’ flair for exceptionalism, this is not the only place in the world where erstwhile liberators, once they’re tasked with ruling, become as loathed as the former oppressors. The question that will begin to be answered after tomorrow is what might come after national liberation.

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.