This is not Africa it's a t-shirt

As Asuka and Caitlin explained earlier we met last friday to design t-shirts. We view these t-shirts as just another medium to publicize our critical voices. This is again part of our strategy to mimic IC. Meredith's pillar, People Media explores how IC's supporters are the face of the movement, how they are a vehicle for the IC's brand and IC's message by taking part in their campaigns and by wearing their t-shirts and bracelets.

My t-shirt features the slogan : This is not Africa, it's a t-shirt.


This sentence calls attention on the commodification of the conflict in Uganda. There is so much that can be said on a t-shirt. Can a t-shirt vehicle an encompassing message? Can it tell the whole story about the political situation in Northern Uganda/Congo/Sudan? The message on IC's t-shirts is often very reductive. Actually, their t-shirt either feature the name of a country : Congo, or pictureas of IC's work in Uganda (such as building schools). However, it does not come with more detailed explanations. No reference to Joseph Kony, the LRA or abducted children (which is mainly how IC depicts the turmoil in Uganda/Congo/Sudan... a very reductive account of the political situation).

Yet, I personnally don't think that a t-shirt can vehicle a comprehensive message. It is rather a tool for branding, for vehiculing a shocking/sensationalistic message.

Yet, we thought that IC's t-shirts could be improved. For example, they can make allusion to the limits of this 'medium'. Maybe, they could make reference to the people wearing it. They could refer to how IC's ambassadors can talk more in details about their t-shirts, to how these t-shirts can be a conversation starter...

...but, are these ambassadors aware of the message they are wearing?

Moreover, my t-shirt also highlights how Africa is essentialized and how the political situation in Northern Uganda/DRC/Sudan is essentialized too... a theme that keeps on coming up in my own analysis of IC's coverage in mainstream news medias.

Finally, the back of my t-shirt makes direct reference to my pillar : news media.

I wrote the 5Ws : a basic principle of journalism. The motto : every story should answer each of these quesitons : who? what? when? why? how?

By writing Kony/Museveni/1987/colonial era/LRA/UPDF/NRA/Abucted Children/IDPs, I want to call attention on how IC depicts the conflict in Uganda (which is technically not a civil war anymore given that the government and the LRA signed a permanent ceasefire in february 2008).

IC mostly reduces the cause of the conflict to Joseph Kony.

Yet, it does not account for the colonial past, for the complex roots of the conflict, for how the LRA movement started as a religious resistance movement headed by Lakwena...

for how the NRA put Museveni in power through a coup in 1986...

for how the NRA/UPDF is allegedly also responsible for committing atrocities, rapes, lootings, et cetera....

for how the victims of this civil war were not only children, but men and women who were forced to flee in 'protected villages' (IDP camps) put in place by the government, further compromising their security.

Yet, in American medias, the story is monolithic, black and white : Joseph Kony is the perpetrator and his victims are abducted children forced to become soldiers...

Most of the time, media coverage of IC's campaigns devotes 2-3 sentences to explaining the conflict and medias just repeat over IC's explanation of the (former) conflict.

I say former conflict because now the LRA activities are mostly spreading in Congo, which is just a complete other story... again... a more recent situation that has all its complexities beyond Kony and the LRA.

Good Night