ZAM Magazine

18/11/2024

A ZAM transnational investigation conducted across six African countries has revealed the complicity of governing political elites in rapid deforestation. At the same time, many of these elites are receiving billions of dollars and euros in ‘green’ funds from international partners, including the UN, the EU, and the World Bank. Previous instalments of this investigation, already published by ZAM, have highlighted this pattern in Uganda, Nigeria, and Mozambique. The latest findings from Cameroon, Ghana, and Malawi are in line with the earlier results.

In each of these countries, companies and individuals were found to be actively involved in deforestation with impunity and often with the complicity of government officials at the highest levels.

Read the full investigations by clicking our link the bio.

14/11/2024

Now available, The Complicit Camera.

Purchase a copy of The Complicit Camera by clicking the link in our bio or by visiting our store at zammagazine.com.

12/11/2024

For the past three weeks, the streets of Maputo, Mozambique's capital, and other major cities have been consumed by protests against the ruling Frelimo party and the electoral fraud that, according to EU observers and the opposition, is securing its continued dominance following the 9 October elections.

Estacio Valoi, a Mozambican investigative journalist and member of ZAM's partner Network of African Investigative Reporters and Editors (NAIRE), left his country to attend the African Investigative Journalism Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the end of October. Upon his return, he discovered that the protests, which had already begun before his departure, had intensified significantly. He shared his experience with ZAM in an interview from his hometown of Pemba in the north.

Read the full interview by clicking the link in our bio.

Images: Ismael Miquidade
Video: X post Zenaida Machado

08/11/2024

Coming home, an interview with Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

By Riason Naidoo for Africa is a Country. Read the full interview now on zammagazine.com or via the link in our bio.

Image 1: Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi in 1991 in front of her work Diale (Where We Come From) prior to her departure to Nyköping, Sweden. Courtesy Gabriel Baard.

Image 2: Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, “Bayeng”(Visitation), 1990-1991. Pastel on paper. Photos by Gabriel Baard; courtesy Everard Read gallery.

Image 3: Mafatsi A Tlakana (The Meeting of Different Realms), 1991. Pastel on paper.

Image 4: Otlisa Bophelo Ko Ntlong (She Brings Life in the Home), 1990-1991. Pastel on paper.

Image 5: Ntlo E Etsamayang (The Walking House), 1990. Pastel on paper.

04/11/2024

Many of Zimbabwe’s richest men and women are vessels for the ruling party’s looting of state coffers. Commonly called ‘mbingas’, for their penchant for the good life, these briefcase entrepreneurs drive luxury cars, own several mansions, broadcast lavish weddings and parties on online media and buy gifts for their fans.
However, they rarely engage in meaningful production or create employment. Mukudzei Madenyika traces how they rose from once well-intended black empowerment schemes...

Read the full story by clicking the link in the bio.

16/10/2024

Great to see our investigation 'Hotel Kremlin' being reviewed at DW News

Activists are condemning the juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger for failing to keep their promises. Some are calling for a return to civilian rule.

09/10/2024

Zimbabwe's Kardashians: surrounded by Rolls Royces and gold amid disease and starvation. Meet the mbingas in this new ZAM exposé.

ZAM is an international multi-media platform celebrating African creativity and new thinking. Committed to giving an edgy and contemporary viewpoint on Africa, ZAM’s content is free of clichés, platitudes or romantic notions of the continent.

02/10/2024

Black Achievement Month 2024 | (In Dutch) Twee geweldige voorstellingen in het Internationaal Theater Amsterdam! Raymi Sambo Maakt onderzoekt de verhouding van de Obama's tot de zwarte gemeenschap en dichter/performer Gershwin Bonevacia op zoek naar zijn tien jaar oude zelf. Respectievelijk 1 oktober en 31 oktober. Info en tickets via de link hieronder of hier:

ZAM is an international multi-media platform celebrating African creativity and new thinking. Committed to giving an edgy and contemporary viewpoint on Africa, ZAM’s content is free of clichés, platitudes or romantic notions of the continent.

01/10/2024

1.10.24 | Talking the late Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera in a packed ZAM Boekenclub van Lezers en Schrijvers.

18/09/2024

On this day in 2001, Eritrean dictator Afwerki opened a witch hunt at journalists, human rights activists and others. Habtom Yohannes recalls the horrible moment and profiles his missing journalist colleagues.

ZAM is an international multi-media platform celebrating African creativity and new thinking. Committed to giving an edgy and contemporary viewpoint on Africa, ZAM’s content is free of clichés, platitudes or romantic notions of the continent.

10/09/2024

A tribute by professor Hein Willemse to South African poet and activist James Matthews who passed away last weekend. Also: a video from the 2020 ZAM Nelson Mandela Lecture with the poem Freedom Child, performed by James Matthews and Melanie Scholtz.

ZAM is an international multi-media platform celebrating African creativity and new thinking. Committed to giving an edgy and contemporary viewpoint on Africa, ZAM’s content is free of clichés, platitudes or romantic notions of the continent.

04/09/2024

The highly anticipated second volume in the widely acclaimed and celebrated self-portrait series, Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness by Zanele Muholi , which it's first book won the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation award as the best photography book award and the second edition is here.

In Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II, Zanele Muholi explores and expands upon new personas and poetic interpretations of personhood, queerness, blackness, and the possibilities of self.

Read more by clicking the link in our bio.

Images:

01/09/2024

As September begins, Nigerian photographer Stephen Tayo (.tayo) enters his second half of his two month stay at the BijlmAIR studio in Heesterveld at the invitation of the Amsterdam Buro Stedelijk.

Tayo is a self-taught fashion, art and cultural photographer who uses his work as a platform for social commentary on wealth, class, race, gender and identity. The artist occupies his surroundings as his photo studio, a method he will also use in the Bijlmer.

BijlmAIR (Bijlmer Artist-in-Residence) is the residency program of CBK Zuidoost in collaboration with The Department of Painting and Sculpture of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi (Ghana) and Buro Stedelijk , the project space of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Last year, Tayo participated in an exhibition in Amsterdam Brave Beauties in Communion: Imaging Black Q***r Liberation organised by Motormond
Read a story on Brave Beauties in Communion and interview with Motormond founder Musoke by following the link in our bio.

📸1) courtesy of .tayo , 2) and Stephen Tayo in front of Motormond. Image courtesy of Roji Sirajudeen

30/08/2024

On 9373 Cemetery Road

The internet is awash with descriptions of the space that South African documentary photographer and journalist Golopang Ledwaba set up at 9737 Cemetery Road, Braamfischerville, Soweto, earlier this year. The Mandebele Photo Gallery, is a space for education, “incubatorship”, and upliftment; a resource centre; a project space; a cultural hub; and a café. Ultimately, the space, not much bigger than a garage, is a community centre…

Read the full story by clicking on the link in our bio.

Author: Bart Luirink

Images: Jodi Bieder

The Mandebele Photo Gallery & Gopolang Ledwaba

24/07/2024

While most of his iconic images have returned to South Africa, some remain in European institutions.

Ernest Cole was an acclaimed apartheid-era South African photographer who died in exile in New York 34 years ago. The recent return of vintage Cole images to South Africa from Sweden needs to be seen in the context of a recent wave of repatriation of valuable African heirlooms. The Cole saga is not yet over, involving a tussle over rights of ownership of his remarkable legacy. This is a close-up perspective from a photographer.

Story by Paul Weinberg

This story was first published

23/07/2024

The racist politicization of Black hair in African schools

When Christian missionaries established schools in different parts of East Africa, they constructed the narrative that Black hair was unsightly, ungodly and untameable. In many postcolonial schools this still seems to be the norm.

By Nadege Bizimungu

22/07/2024

The winners of the 13th cycle of CAP were announced on Saturday 6 July at the international photo festival Rencontres d’Arles in France. The prize is directed at photographers who engage with the African continent or its diaspora. The five winning entries will be showcased in a series of exhibitions in collaboration with significant photography events in Africa and the rest of the world to further raise the profile of African photography.

This years 4 out of 5 winners are:

Farren van Wyk
Tshepiso Moropa
Kriss Munsya
Ahmed Khirelsid

Congratulations to all the winners 🤲🏾