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25.02.2025
16 Minuten
Doek! is an online literary magazine published in Windhoek since
2019. It has brought to the front new fiction, nonfiction, poetry,
and visual art —to much acclaim. Experimental and daring in various
ways, its beautifully curated editions have enriched Africa’s
literary and visual landscape quite unexpectedly. Early on, Rémy
Ngamije, one of the co-founders, invited the Basler Afrika
Bibliographien to contribute glimpses from its archival holdings
and within the curatorial frame of providing “a window to the
past”. After a series of historical photography explorations, we
now jointly curate past Namibian voices in aural graphs. In this
extract from a public presentation in Basel on 24 July 2024,
Ngamije reflects on the path he and his colleagues walked to
imagine new literary futures in Windhoek. Today, five years later,
he is an established writer and Doek! is not only a thriving
magazine but also a prominent literary award and festival beacon.
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20.09.2024
22 Minuten
Barbara Müller fungierte von 1973 bis 1988 als Präsidentin des
Komitees «kämpfendes afrika» (ka), das 1971 als politische
Solidaritätsorganisation Medic’ Angola begann. Zunächst eng mit dem
maoistisch geprägten «proletarischen Internationalismus» der
Kommunistischen Part der Schweiz verbunden, konnte das sich seit
1976 «kämpfendes afrika» nennende Komitee besonders enge Kontakte
zu einigen Befreiungsbewegungen im südlichen Afrika aufbauen.
Barbara Müller reflektiert im Gespräch mit dem BAB Archivar Dag
Henrichsen zunächst über die Bedeutung von Freundschafts- und
Solidaritätsbeziehungen mit afrikanischen Bewegungen in einem
schwierigen politischem Umfeld (zu letzterem siehe auch den
früheren podcast mit Barbara Müller vom 9. März 2023). Im zweiten
Teil skizziert sie Veränderungen in der Unterstützungsarbeit am
Beispiel der Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) und mit Bezug
auf die Unabhängigkeit Zimbabwes 1980. Dieser Auszug aus einem
Gespräch vom 22. März 2023 bildet die siebte und vorläufig letzte
Episode in der Podcast-Reihe zur Solidaritäts- und
Anti-Apartheidbewegung in der Schweiz.
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26.07.2024
30 Minuten
In view of South African journalist Ruth Weiss’s 90th birthday in
2014, BAB’ s archivists invited her in 2013 to a public
conversation in the series “Archivgespräche” – “Archive talk”. In
this podcast episode, conducted in both German and English, we
provide an extract from the live-recorded conversation held in
Basel. It includes introductions to Ruth Weiss’s collections by the
archivists Dag Henrichsen and Susanne Hubler Baier, followed by
historical interview snippets from her impressive tape collection
and her reflections. The conversation took place as part of the
preparations for the BAB exhibition “’My very first question to
you’. An acoustic portrait of the journalist Ruth Weiss and
southern African liberation politics”, shown between 2014 and 2917
in Basel, Cape Town, Lusaka, and Bayreuth. The exhibition went
along with the publication of her autobiography “A Path through
Hard Grass. A Journalist’s Memories of Exile and Apartheid” (BAB
2014), with a foreword by South African writer Nadine Gordimer,
Ruth Weiss’s lifelong friend about whom she also talks in the
conversation. The recording also features snippets from interviews
with the Anglican bishop Trevor Huddleston and ANC’s president
Oliver Tambo. This podcast episode is a fitting format to
congratulate Ruth Weiss on her 100th birthday in 2024.
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14.06.2024
22 Minuten
1973 als Teil einer Solidaritätsbewegung gegen Kolonialismus,
Rassismus und Ausbeutung in der Schweiz entstanden, konzentrierte
sich das Afrika-Komitee in Basel auf eine kritische Solidaritäts-
und Informationsarbeit mit und zur Zivilgesellschaft in Afrika.
Nach 50 Jahren löst sich das Komitee 2024 auf. Mitbegründer:innen
Gertrud Baud und Hans-Ueli Stauffer reflektierten bereits 2018 in
einem Gespräch mit BAB Archivar Dag Henrichsen über damalige
Themensetzungen in der Schweizer Zivilgesellschaft und im
«Bulletin» des Komitees, weiterhin «brennende» Themen mit Bezug auf
den afrikanischen Kontinent sowie enttäuschende post-koloniale
Entwicklungen. Dieser Gesprächsauszug ergänzt eine Reihe von
vorherigen podcasts zur Solidaritäts- und Anti-Apartheidsbewegung
in der Schweiz, siehe hier.
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12.10.2023
12 Minuten
The Namibian artist Tuli Mekondjo reflects in this conversation
about her work in the colonial image archives of the Basler Afrika
Bibliographien and how this led her to initiate new artistic
practices and conceptualise and design a new art performance.
«Ousie Martha» references generations of African laundry women in
Namibia as wage labourers in white settler homes, often depicted in
settler family photography. Inventing an outdoor print technique
with copies of one particular photograph of a laundry woman in
Okahandja in 1953 from the BAB photo archives, Tuli Mekondjo
produced embroided «lappies« (rags) and choreographed a laundry
woman’s performance of Self at the BAB in April 2023. In this
extract from a conversation with BAB curators, Tuli Mekondjo
explains the genesis of her latest work and why she wanted to have
the premiere of her performance to be staged at the archives in
Switzerland. «I wanted to engage with the ancestral voices by
responding, singing with them, mimicking their acts of labouring
while they sang. I wanted to bring Ousie Martha into that space,
but to do the laundry for her.” As she told The Namibian newspaper
after the Basel performance: “In Switzerland, Germany and Europe in
general, they need to be reminded of the horrors of colonialism and
the traumas they inflicted” (10 May 2023)
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Über diesen Podcast
BAB is a centre of documentation and expertise on Namibia and
southern Africa, located in Basel, Switzerland. Our podcast
features extracts from past and recent interviews with scholars and
BAB guests as well as selected recordings from the extensive
southern African historical audio archive curated at the BAB. The
series maintains a loose format. Listeners may also want to consult
the BAB online catalogues of the archive, library and publishing
house for additional information about a scholar or theme. The
catalogues are found on www.baslerafrika.ch.
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