Just Like That

"Just Like That" is a 1986 Afrobeat song by Fela Kuti and his band, Egypt 80. Often described as a "shock and awe" track, it serves as a scathing commentary on the chaotic state of Nigeria and Africa during that era.

Key Themes and Context:

Political Disillusionment: The song reflects on Nigeria’s failed transition to democracy in 1979. Fela uses the lyrics to highlight the absurdity of war, corruption, and election rigging that left citizens "shocked and dumfounded".

Spiritual Influence: The track was recorded during a period when Fela was heavily influenced by Professor Hindu, a controversial spiritual adviser. This influence reportedly led Fela to reject a major record deal with Motown Records.

It was originally released as part of the album Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense in 1986.

Dakan

Plot: Manga and Sory are two young men in love with each other. Manga tells his widowed mother of the relationship, and Sory tells his father. Both parents forbid their sons to see each other again. Sory marries and has a child. Manga's mother turns to witchcraft to cure her son, and he unsuccessfully undergoes a lengthy form of aversion therapy. He meets and becomes engaged to a French woman called Oumou. Both men try to make their heterosexual relationships work but are ultimately drawn back to each other. Manga's mother eventually gives her blessing to the pair and the end of the film sees Sory and Manga driving off together towards an uncertain future.

Causing uproar in Guinea 29 years ago, Dakan has been hailed as the first West African film to tackle same-sex love. Yet its director would never make another feature film, and its legacy has been a warning for other filmmakers.

7 March 2022

By Chrystel Oloukoï

Dakan (1997) (With English Subtitles)

A high-angle camera zooms in on Manga and Sory, two high-school boys kissing passionately at night in a sulphurous red convertible car in Conakry, Guinea. The music is late Guinean singer Sory Kandia Kouyaté’s ‘Toutou Diarra’. This is the opening scene of Mohamed Camara’s Dakan (1997). It’s unforgettable in its heralding of night-time as a site of transgressive queer possibility, and for its bold pairing of a homoerotic encounter with a classic Mande song to the memory of great warriors of the region’s precolonial past.

Hailed as the first West African film to explore homosexuality, Dakan (‘destiny’ in Mandinka) premiered at Cannes in 1997, where it faced a mix of fiery rejection and fascination – both of which were to accompany the film for a long time to come. Camara often recalls how Djibril Diop Mambéty (Touki Bouki, 1973; Hyenas, 1992), a veteran of African cinema, walked out of the film’s press conference stating: “You can be sure that your career is over, but in a hundred years, people will still talk about you.”

The film had already barely come into being when its subversive theme led to the government withdrawing financial support. It made finding actors difficult. Camara’s own brother had to play Manga, while he himself acted as Sory’s father.

Screenings were a risky business. Dakan was shown at the 1999 FESPACO, having lived a full life on European and North American festival circuits already. As Beti Ellerson notes, the film’s theme enabled it to find a public outside of the usual viewership of African cinema, in particular in a number of independent and LGBT-themed festivals in the era of New Queer Cinema.

The film starkly divided audiences. Black, queer, continental and diasporic audiences from Soweto to Washington DC were enthralled. But in the filmmaker’s home country, it became the object of a national controversy. In a 2019 interview for AfroQueer podcast, Camara recollects changing hotels every day and leaving before the end of screenings to avoid potential violence.

Yet, Dakan wasn’t Camara’s first brush with public hostility. The charged themes of his previous short films – incest in Denko (1993) and child suicide in Minka (1994) – revealed his keen interest in familial dramas and the tension between social expectations and individual desires. What could be mistaken for a taste for the sensational was a deep desire to humanise complex social issues.

Aside from fascination and vilification, Dakan also met with frustration. Detractors and fans alike wrongly assumed Camara to be gay. They asked questions about the hidden realities of queer life on the continent that the filmmaker couldn’t answer. In both post-screening discussions and reviews, question were raised as to whether the world the film portrayed was even possible. It was, of course. Yet, Camara responded to these queries by speaking out against the realist imperative African filmmakers found themselves confined within. He spoke more in favour of creative individuality. His was a work of art, not a testament of existence nor an anthropological document.

The rhetoric had limitations, but it resonated in the context of African cinema often corralled into documentation by former colonial powers and newly independent governments alike. Camara belonged to a generation of Guinean filmmakers who were disenchanted with the overly didactic cinema of Syli-Cinema, Guinea’s Ministry of Information film unit under Sékou Touré’s Marxist and Pan-Africanist regime.

Mambéty aside, few could have predicted that Camara’s filmmaking career would end so abruptly. Since Denko won several prestigious prizes, Camara had embarked on his first feature, Dakan, as a director full of promise. But, 29 years later, he hasn’t been able to make another feature film.

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"Anengiyefa, based in London, pours passion into their blog "Things I Feel Strongly About"—a vivid, unfiltered space where deep reflections on Africa's rich cultural heritage collide with sharp critiques of colonialism's lingering scars, the invented fiction of race, and the pseudoscientific myths Europeans once spun to justify domination. With over two decades of wandering across the continent's diverse landscapes—from bustling markets to remote villages—they weave personal stories of warmth, Ubuntu-rooted hospitality, and human connection that defy stereotypes. 

Recent posts dive into the soul-stirring legacy of Fela Kuti's Afrobeat rebellion, the enduring ripple effects of European imperialism on African societies, and why the label "Black" carries problematic, historically loaded baggage rather than simple description. 

On X, @anengiyefa delivers incisive, no-holds-barred takes: defending Ukraine's fight against invasion, calling out racial biases baked into global conversations, championing human rights, and dismantling anti-imperialist hypocrisy. Whether highlighting how international rules matter profoundly to the Global South or rejecting excuses for prejudice ("That doesn't make her not racist"), the voice is consistently principled, intellectually fierce, and unafraid to challenge comfortable narratives."

Nurtrire

The word 'nursing' is derived from the Latin word 'nurtrire,' which means 'nourishing'. Nursing has maintained its status as a trusted and vital role for centuries.

In the late 1990s I would study during the day for my professional qualifying exams, and work at night on this job as a healthcare assistant in a hospital. It is perhaps what some might call moonlighting. I worked in this job for five years, between 1997 and 2002. I had taken a crash course in basic nursing. 

I think I would have made an excellent nurse if I'm to be honest. I had a feel for the job. This was the role I enjoyed the most in all the jobs I've done in my life, yes, even more than the legal work, which in later years became much more impersonal.

This was hard gruelling work, hands-on nursing on the wards, but I found myself enjoying it after a while. Looking after the patients and seeing them get better was rewarding. Some of them were very ill, and not all of them made it, meaning that for the first time ever I was made to confront dying and death as part of my job. That I found some fulfilment in the job came as a surprise really, as I was the squeamish type before then. 

I even toyed with the idea of embarking on full nursing training and gained admission to Kingston University to start a Nursing degree programme. But I took the advice of a friend who is a medical doctor, to pursue the legal qualification instead since I was already a qualified lawyer from abroad. I admit it was sound advice, although I think my friend might have had considerations in mind such as prestige, social status, and the remuneration aspect, none of which mattered much to me at the time as I was then driven entirely by passion. 

In May 2002 I was admitted to the Roll of Solicitors of England and Wales, so it was then that I made the switch and resumed my legal career, but I never overcame the sense of loss. 

Welcome

It is a deeply rooted, widespread tradition across many African cultures to be welcoming, hospitable, and respectful towards strangers. This practice is often rooted in indigenous philosophies like Ubuntu and others similar to it, where greeting and assisting anyone, regardless of whether they are known, is considered a duty, showing respect, and extending community kindness.

Key aspects of this tradition include:

Proactive Greetings: In many communities, it is customary to greet everyone you pass, even strangers, to show acknowledgment and respect.

Hospitality as Duty: Historically, travellers could rely on being offered food, water, and shelter in villages.

Formal Welcome: In some cultures, villages had specific, designated people or, in some cases, specific homes in the centre of the village, to receive and welcome visitors.

Shared Resources: Visitors were often treated as part of the community and permitted to use available resources. 

Cultural Significance: This, in part, stem from a belief that hospitality is good manners, enhances social reputation, and brings potential blessings.

It is this proclivity that was misinterpreted as timidity by early European visitors to the continent, for the Europeans were themselves more inclined towards aggressiveness. This clash of attitudes between Europeans and indigenous communities is repeated around the world wherever Europeans arrived for the first time. 

My own interpretation of the attitudes of indigenous African societies is that those attitudes reflected the fact that at the time of first contact with Europeans, indigenous African societies were socioculturally more highly evolved than their European counterparts. Anestral Africans had attained a high level of socio-cultural advancement, there was a high degree of social harmony. 

Image: Sign at the London Zoo. 

The term "Black"

The term "Black" has historically been used in a pejorative, derogatory, or stigmatised manner in many Western contexts, particularly during the eras of colonisation, slavery, and segregation. During the 17th–19th centuries, the term was often coupled with a social identity as an enslaved person and associated with negative stereotypes regarding intelligence and human dignity.

The perception of the word shifted dramatically in the 1960s. Activists and leaders, such as Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), reclaimed the term to promote racial pride, solidarity, and power, countering the long history of negative, racist associations, such that today, "Black" is widely accepted and used as a standard, often capitalised, term for people of African descent, though some still debate its historical, or political implications.

"While it was once used as a derogatory term for a "negative foil to 'white'," it has been successfully reclaimed, moving from a label of oppression to one of pride." MissionUS — I genuinely dispute this. 

If anything, the embrace of the term Black  only reinforces the notion of otherness. I have great difficulty in embracing and taking pride in a term that its very purpose was, (and continues to be, in the minds of today's racists) the diminishment my very humanity. 

The Arab World — In many historical and contemporary contexts, the term for "Black" (aswad) or specific terms used to describe Black people in the Arab world have been, and often still are, used as a pejorative. Anti-Blackness in the Arab world is rooted in a long history of slavery, environmental, and theological prejudices, leading to the use of racialised slurs. The Arabic word abeed (‘abd, plural: ‘abīd), which means "servant" or "slave," is commonly used as a derogatory slur for Black people. This usage is deeply connected to the legacy of the Arab slave trade. While aswad means Black, it has often been used in a negative or stereotypical context in both medieval and modern literature.

I wish to keep this debate alive. I do not want this to be a matter that is thought of as settled. To my mind, it would amount to a cop out, and the embracing of the diminishment of my own humanity to think of myself as Black. I am a human being, a person; I am more than just a colour.

Our aim should be to work towards the acknowledgement of our common humanity, all of us as human beings. Race is merely incidental, it is just a natural attribute. 

Image: Taken from "Understanding the Lives of Black Tudor Women" An African Tudor woman in 16th–17th century England.