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Culture January 2019

South Africa. The True Legend of the Black Swan.

Kitty Phetla, ballerina and choreographer with Joburg Ballet, grew up among the tin-roofed rows of houses in the township of Soweto. Her en pointe success, gained by talent and tenacity, is an example of redemption for young South Africans. Her life-story would make a good film and it is said that a Hollywood producer has…

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African Musicians. License For Transformation.

With the catchy rhythms of Afro-Pop, African artists are increasingly singing about young Africans’ frustrations. The political leaders threatened by this musical impetus try to silence it. Music has always been a medium with which to challenge the establishment – from Miriam Makeba’s warning to the apartheid government to Fela Kuti’s rebuke of wayward postcolonial…

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Music and Dance. Tango, African Rhythm.

Music and dance in Latin America has much of what is African. An example: the Tango. The Tango was invented in the slums of European immigration in Buenos Aires a century ago; closely tied to an instrument such as the bandoneon (a musical instrument of the reed and bellows family, inspired by the concertina and…

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Advocacy

Yvette Mushigo, Breaking the Silence.

The Congolese activist and jurist Yvette Mushigo is the coordinator of the Synergie des Femmes pour la Paix et la Réconciliation (SPR), a network of…

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Baobab

The qualities of a Tuareg sheikh.

At the foot of the Atlas Mountains, a mountainous massif in the Western Sahara, there was a powerful kingdom ruled by a sheikh as wise as…

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Youth & Mission

Pope Francis to Congolese Youth.

Looking at the hands with which a different future can be built, Pope Francis suggests "five ingredients for the future", like the five fingers. In the stadium…

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