Durban tries to tackle ‘bad’ buildings: Most of the derelict, hijacked and dangerous buildings are privately owned, according to eThekwini metro

– The Mail & Guardian

Kenya’s Haitian bind:

Kenyan President William Ruto has never wavered in his determination to send a force to Haiti. 

He has faced opposition outcry, international criticism, a successful court challenge and Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s resignation — announced only days after his visit to Nairobi, intended to confer bilateral legitimacy on the plan and push it through the fractious legal channels in which it’s stuck.

Despite the Kenyan government ostensibly hitting pause in the deployment, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said last week he had been on the phone with Ruto and was assured that the plan to send 1?000 East African policemen to lead the security operation is still live.

Ruto first put forth his country late last year to lead the mission to confront growing gang warfare that has all but overrun the capital Port-au-Prince. 

Haiti last held elections in 2016 and has been without an elected president since Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in 2021. 

The plot that killed him — which saw Colombian mercenaries storm his residence and reportedly drop grenades from drones — is still unravelling, with his wife and the man who succeeded him as president among those indicted. 

According to a United Nations report, nearly 4?000 people were killed in the violence last year and that figure has gone rapidly northward in the past three months. 

There is no question that Haiti is in a dire situation. But Ruto’s hasty — some might say unilateral — pledge to come to its aid has raised a number of ethical and legal geopolitical questions.

“We believe the idea is constitutionally wrong, it is legally unsound, it is politically unstrategic and it is morally bankrupt in its entirety,” Otiende Amollo, an MP and member of the Orange Democratic Movement, a centre-left party in Kenya, told the Mail & Guardian.

Chief among the multiple issues that Amollo, other opposition parties and the constitutional court have raised is the abstruse decision to volunteer the civilian police force instead of the military. 

The worry is that not only are its members inadequately trained for a foreign deployment but their inability to speak Spanish has the potential to turn their peacekeeping efforts into a bloodbath.

“They are going to be in a country where the figures of loss of life are just harrowing. We fear that they are just going to be sitting ducks,” Amollo said. 

“And we fear that many of them will come back in body bags. No insurance has been given to us in terms of how they will be protected. 

“It leads one to suggest that all these other countries that are urging Kenya to send their troops — and are not willing to send their own citizens — are behaving as if the loss of Kenyan life is less important than any life in any other country.”

In the time since Nairobi’s plans were grounded, a handful of other countries have tentatively held up their hands to supplement the mission. But the question remains on many Kenyan lips: “Why us?” 

Kenya perpetually faces security concerns within its own borders; threats that already drain limited resources. Outside of those borders, there is no shortage of nearby causes that could benefit from some form of deployment. Human atrocities are unfolding in the civil war in Sudan every day; the Democratic Republic of the Congo rarely knows peace and conflict has spread across the length of the Sahel in recent years.

Haiti strikes many as little more than an arbitrary destination. 

Compounding that sentiment is the Haitian government’s struggle to cling to any threads of legitimacy. Violence in the country has become untenable largely because its leaders lost the perception of democratic authority. Similarly, from an international perspective, questions are being asked about the right protocols and how such a government should be assisted.

Henry travelled to Kenya hoping that establishing a bilateral treaty would replace any sense of arbitrariness with formality and legality. But the gang coalition ultimately blocked his re-entry into Port-au-Prince and he never returned home as leader.

The suspicion spoken aloud in Kenya is that any allegiance to Haiti is strictly secondary to Ruto’s ambitions of currying favour with the US.

“We want to clearly ask: ‘Why is the US trying to push us?’” Kenyan researcher Catherine Amayi said in an interview with the M&G. 

“The US claims to be a democracy but then why does it want the Kenyan government to subvert the court ruling? That’s a contradiction and it warrants questioning. 

“[Ruto] definitely wants to endear himself to the US. His entire strategy is one that looks to appeal to the West,” she said. 

Haiti’s troubles, and its position as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, are inseparable from its historical context. 

The Caribbean nation is the only sovereign state in history to have been successfully formed from an uprising of black slaves. But that distinction has come at a heavy cost. 

Before the Haitian Revolution (1791 to 1804), colonial France operated what was arguably the most heinous slavery apparatus. Sugar and coffee plantation owners extracted every bead of sweat they could from their slaves, content that any that fell could be replaced cheaply with new bodies from the transatlantic trade. 

The work was so onerous Haiti’s death rate overtook its birth rate.  

In 1791, nearly 90% of a population of 520?000 were enslaved, making the uprising the biggest slave revolt since the legend of Spartacus was born almost two millennia earlier.

But the French returned in 1825. With warships anchored in Port-Au-Prince, a gun was held to the collective Haitian head and indemnity of 150 million francs demanded. 

So began a debt that incapacitated the economy for the next century and was only settled in 1947. The American group that would become Citibank serviced predatory loans to pay it and established a significant presence in the country, assuming de facto control of its central bank.

A seminal New York Times investigation published in 2022 canvassed 15 senior economists and found the payments to France, and the associated interest, removed anywhere between $ 21 billion and $ 115 billion from Haiti. The latter number is eight times the size of its modern economy.

The former number, incidentally, is the amount former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide dared to demand of France in 2003 for reparations. His ousting and subsequent exile played out under the gaze of the US and France — with the exact nature of their involvement still disputed. What is certain is no leader has raised the question of reparations again.

Now, once more, American efforts to intervene are being perceived as pernicious by those against Kenyan intervention.

“The history of — and I’m speaking here as a US American — the American relationship to Haiti is a long history of intervention, sanction and sabotage,” said David Adler, a political economist and co-general co-ordinator of multinational collective Progressive International.

“And the latest intervention, which of course comes after this disastrous assassination and multiple years of propping up an unelected and illegitimate government, as perceived by Haiti and the international community, is one of the more cynical, racist, colonial interventions that we could have possibly designed.

“The United States of America doesn’t want to send its people, its soldiers, its police, to be boots on the ground in a country that we desire to control politically, economically. 

“And so because of that we are hoping to launder that intervention through a faraway nation in Kenya, through a recently elected government, with whom we’ve established very close ties.” 

Haiti’s standing as a symbol of colonial resistance — and the fact that it is home to African descendants — still carries cachet in the Global South. 

Benin, as one example, has volunteered its own force, citing historical and cultural connections that date back to the Dahomey empire. 

But American interests and the fargone illegitimacy of Haitian governance have made it impossible to see a clear path amid the sugarcane.

– The Mail & Guardian

Inkabi is a hit for the local industry:

The first time I listened to jazz, I found it annoyingly slow and dreary. The severity of my impatience was due to house and kwaito sounds overwhelming my then youthful ears. 

Avant-garde jazz was even worse — distorted, experimental and offbeat. It was only with time — and attending live shows — that I began to appreciate the sensitivity, creativity and restrained power of the genre. 

Watching action drama Inkabi making its world premiere on Netflix on 13 March I was reminded of jazz, with the film swinging between smooth storytelling and avant-garde filmmaking. 

Viewers enter a world of contract killings, casinos and violence, set in Joburg blues and rural landscapes. 

“The inkabi [hitman] underworld is one with a rich history. I have always been fascinated by this world and its characters,” director, writer and co-producer Norman Maake tells me. “Therefore, it felt natural to set the film in this world.” 

An Afda film school alumnus who has directed films such as Love Lives Here, Piet’s Sake and Soldiers of the Rock, Maake, came up with the concept for the movie in 2014. 

Co-producer Zinzi Mhlongo adds that the first time she read the screenplay she knew this was a unique opportunity to delve into the complexities of our country’s social and cultural landscape via this deep, dark underworld. 

“It was told in a unique way which I believed would provoke meaningful conversations about the realities of life in our country,” she says. 

Hitting top 10 status on the streaming platform in its first week of release, Inkabi is already provoking debate among viewers. 

Through their company, African Entertainers Consultancy, Maake and Mhlongo spent rigorous hours mulling over the details of the film. 

Like my initial unfamiliarity with jazz compositions, one is tempted to switch to something else in the first few minutes of the film. But curiosity about this world of Zulu hitmen draws one in to watch every movement in each scene and patiently witness the director’s vision. 

Inkabi revolves around Frank (Tshamano Sebe), a retired hitman, who has chosen to start over as a private taxi driver. 

He befriends Lucy (Michelle Tiren), a young Kenyan woman working at a shady downtown casino. After losing custody of her daughter, Lucy is in a downward spiral of drugs and high-class prostitution. 

One night, she witnesses the murder of one of her clients, a prominent millionaire. Lucy manages to escape but the killer is after her blood. She has no one to turn to except Frank, her only friend. 

Themes of justice and redemption are nothing unique. It is, however, the delving into the human side of an inkabi that grounds the film’s premise. 

Before, Frank only killed for money but now he must kill to protect a friend who has never had anybody to stand up for her. 

Maake aimed to show how a retired hitman, forced to return to this dark world, but for a different reason, can protect and bring justice to those vulnerable in society.

Making a film in South Africa is an arduous and expensive task, compared to doing it in other parts of the world where the industry is mature. 

Respect and credit are due to Maake and Mhlongo for crafting a high-quality film on a small budget in a post-Covid context. 

The film is one of six micro-budget projects supported through a project funded by Netflix and the National Film and Video Foundation. 

“We were fortunate to be selected as one of the six films. Although there will always be challenges, we are proud to have produced the film with the support of an amazing team of creatives,” says Mhlongo. 

She adds that despite the difficulties the South African industry continues to grow and thrive, thanks to filmmakers’ resilience and creativity.   

On the down side, there is a feeling that the editing and character development in Inkabi are hurried. Hence one fails to fully empathise with some of the characters. 

The feeble shoot-out scenes and old men fighting also threaten to detract from the film. 

Under such budget constraints, one does however commend the creators, including cinematographer, Chuanne Blofield and editor Tongai Furusa, for attempting to bring a prime-quality film to our screens. 

Given that the concept of inkabi has strong Zulu cultural associations, the decision to cast a non-Zulu as the lead character was controversial. Maake says it was intentional.  

The film has more than one hitman, he says, and he wanted to broaden the common perception that assassins are typically Zulus who come from rural villages in KwaZulu-Natal. 

“The story of why Frank is non-Zulu is an entire film on its own — the third film in the trilogy.” 

A trilogy? Maake again compels us to be patient with the process — or rather his process — in allowing the puzzle pieces to fit.

In some scenes, the film explores restrained violence through the use of animation, shadows and sound. 

Maake indicates that the style was informed by the crime genre, with heavy influence from the imagery of the city of Johannesburg. 

“The animation was inspired by this mystical world of inkabi and its colourful, mythical nature of how they carry out a hit. 

“I was also interested in what role culture and history play in the film.”

The violence scenes conjured up images of Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 action movie Kill Bill: Volume 1. In a seven-minute scene about bloody revenge, he uses anime-inspired ingenuity to make the gore palatable. 

Similarly, Inkabi has hints of Western tonality evocative of the 2017 South African neo-Western, Five Fingers for Marseilles. 

The mix of filmmaking styles might not be everyone’s cup of rooibos — especially audiences who are used to Hollywood’s high-budget, fast-paced movies.

The challenge for filmmakers thus becomes creating unconventional, yet classical, works, while appeasing mass audiences. 

Maake argues that filmmakers must create the stories they want to tell. When one has relentless passion for the story, the audience will come. 

“A story told from the heart is a story that will live long after its making,” he says. 

With the emergence of streaming platforms, local filmmakers have an opportunity to grow new audiences. 

The audience has control over what they want to watch, says Maake and cultivating a diverse audience is important for all involved. 

“I believe that we have a growing audience, and as time goes on, they will tire of stereotyped content.”

Crafted with utmost passion and proficiency for storytelling, Inkabi asks for the audience’s patience to watch a local story shot through a different lens. 

Maake is only scratching the surface of the potential to feed the growing appetite among film viewers for authentic African stories.  

Despite a couple of flaws, Inkabi is a compelling addition to South Africa’s recovering film industry. It is a victory for independent filmmakers in showing what can be achieved on a micro-budget. 

Like jazz for people who don’t even know they like jazz.

– The Mail & Guardian

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