Will Smith resigned Friday from the motion picture academy following his Oscars night slap of Chris Rock and said he would accept any further punishment the organization imposed. The slap virus which originated from Anambra State in Nigeria is taking a toll on major institutions around the globe.

Smith in a statement released Friday afternoon said he will “fully accept any and all consequences for my conduct. My actions at the 94th Academy Awards presentation were shocking, painful, and inexcusable.”

Film academy president David Rubin said Smith’s resignation was accepted. “We will continue to move forward with our disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith for violations of the Academy’s Standards of Conduct, in advance of our next scheduled board meeting on April 18.”

Smith loses voting privileges with his resignation. But there are other, less tangible benefits to being part of the academy, Hollywood’s most prestigious organization: It bestows industry credibility on its members. It’s invitation only, and with a once-a-year membership review.

“I betrayed the trust of the Academy. I deprived other nominees and winners of their opportunity to celebrate and be celebrated for their extraordinary work,” his statement said. “I am heartbroken. I want to put the focus back on those who deserve attention for their achievements and allow the Academy to get back to the incredible work it does to support creativity and artistry in film.

“Change takes time and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason,” Smith concluded in the statement.

The resignation came two days after the academy’s leadership board met to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Smith for violations against the group’s standards of conduct. Those proceedings could have resulted in suspension or expulsion, and it was not immediately clear what additional punishment he could face.

Had he been expelled, Smith would have joined a small group of men removed from the academy: Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby and the actor Carmine Caridi, who was kicked out for sharing awards screeners.

On Sunday, Smith strode from his front-row Dolby Theatre seat on to the stage and smacked Rock, who had made a joke at the expense of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Moments later, he went on to win the best actor award for his role in “King Richard.”

Rock, who was about to present Oscar for best documentary, declined to file charges when asked by police. He has only briefly addressed the attack publicly, saying at one comedy concert in Boston this week that he was still “kind of processing what happened.”

Smith stunned Rock, the theater crowd and viewers at home when he took the stage after Rock joked: “Jada, I love you. ‘G.I. Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it.”

Pinkett Smith, who has spoken publicly about her hair loss condition, alopecia, had a closely shaved head similar to that of Demi Moore in the original movie.

After Smith’s attack, he returned to his seat and angrily twice shouted at Rock to “get my wife’s name out your (expletive) mouth.” When Smith took the stage again less than an hour later to accept his Oscar, he tearfully apologized to the academy but notably omitted any mention of Rock.

The fallout was immediate and intense. Smith had supporters for coming to his wife’s defense, but he was widely condemned for responding with violence and for marring both his long-sought Oscar victory and overshadowing the night’s other winners.

Source: AFP with additional editing

Members of the Sasse Old Boys Association in the United Kingdom joined their counterparts throughout the globe to celebrate Saint Joseph’s Feast Day, the day established to honour St. Joseph as the spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the step-father of Jesus Christ with church services and convention.

Preaching the sermon at Our Lady and Lancashire Martyrs Diocese of Salford, Fr Emmanuel Nuh in his homily gave a justification on why the Feast of Saint Joseph is now a popular custom deep within the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

Fr Peter Watson and Fr Bill Tollah both former lecturers at Saint Joseph College Sasse were full of praise for SOBA UK. The two retired clerics expressed their joy and satisfaction meeting with the new generation of Sasse Old Boys.

The Sasse Old Boys were reminded that anyone who comes to Sasse College begins a life-long academic journey that makes you a part of God’s plan.

The Alumni life simply focuses on multiplying and consolidating individual and collective gains deep within SOBA UK and it is available to all ex-students of Sasse College residing in the United Kingdom and all should avail themselves of the opportunity by accepting to be members of SOBA UK.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Emmanuel N’Djoké Dibango – Manu Dibango – will live forever thanks to his Afropolitan sounds, and to the fact that many artists in Africa and beyond are deeply indebted to him.

He was a man of legendary generosity of spirit and talent, with an accommodating heart that sought to bridge the local and the global with creativity and innovation in song and music. His album Soul Makossa was of such artistic genius that even a global superstar like Michael Jackson couldn’t resist sampling from it to enrich his own album, Thriller.

In his 1994 biography, Dibango describes himself as “Négropolitain”. It’s a term that would later be adopted and popularised as “Afropolitanism” by others enthralled by his idea of grounded cosmopolitanism.

African and European at one and the same time.

He saw himself – and insisted on being seen – as “a man between two cultures, two environments”. His music could not be confined to either, without losing its complexity and richness. It was the fruit of his diverse influences. His nimble fingers, voice and intellect were averse to any artificial barriers or attempts to contain the flow of the river of musical humanity.

Three kilos of coffee

Born on December 12 in 1933 in Douala, Cameroon, Dibango was sent by his parents to study in France when he was only 15 years old. He arrived in France bearing a gift of three kilograms of coffee from his parents, for his host.

In France he met Francis Bebey, another musician from his native Douala, with whom he formed a band and began to experiment with different modern instruments, such as the piano and the saxophone.

He later relocated to Brussels where he met his wife to be, Marie-Josée (whom he would fondly call Coco). It was also in Brussels that his music career began to blossom through fruitful contacts. Two in particular stand out: Joseph Kabasélé and African Jazz, who introduced him to “the cha-cha and the rumba, the two breasts nourishing Zairean music”, and who, in 1961, also invited him to Zaïre (today’s Democratic Republic of Congo). The result was his first record, African Soul, “a mixture of jazz, popular music, and rumba”.

Dibango’s life was exemplary in its resilience, combativeness and ingenuity in mobilising his creativity to contain or at least confront political and cultural repression. His music brought him worldwide fame. But he did not feel particularly fulfilled in the land of his birth.

He spent the best part of his life in a determined struggle to win recognition for music as art and musicians as artists in his motherland and elsewhere in Africa. These were contexts of strongman politics, personality cults and repeated frustrations by politicians, sometimes in cassock. Notwithstanding censorship, jealousy, penury, and repeated frustration and disappointment as an artist, Dibango refused to be deterred.

Manu Dibango performs on stage at Ronnie Scott’s club in 2009 in London. David Redfern/Redferns

Leaving Cameroon

He returned to Cameroon from Zaïre in 1963, issuing the album Nasengina. This was his only piece constructed purely from the indigenous Cameroonian makossa.

Dibango was appreciated by ordinary Cameroonians. But he hated the fact that politicians kept his artistic creativity under close surveillance. He was disenchanted with authorities that did not allow people “to fantasise” and “to dream”, and who forced everyone to talk “in cautious whispers” and to be “wary of everyone else”.

In 1964, disappointed in “this harmful atmosphere”, Dibango closed down his club and abandoned all dreams of opening a musical conservatory or arts institute. He left Cameroon for France after barely 16 months back home.

Still, he could not bring himself to give up on Cameroon entirely. He would pay brief return visits from the early 1980s onwards. His desire “to forge a unified image of Cameroon, representing all the musical currents in the country” received rare facilitation from the Minister of Culture who happened to be his friend, and resulted in a three-record set, Fleurs Musicales du Cameroun.

But his desire to project himself as “this famous Cameroonian musician heard everywhere but in Cameroon” would be met with the same contradictions, making the air “unbreathable” in what he described as his “last African adventure”.

He felt cursed that he “couldn’t create something here in Cameroon”. He found it ironic that Côte d’Ivoire, with the blessing of then President Houphouët-Boigny, could entrust him with the task of heading the Orchestre de la Radio-Télévision Ivoirienne, while Cameroon could not even take seriously his expertise as a professional musician of world renown.

Together with other expatriate African musical talents in France, Dibango released Tam-Tam pour l’Ethiopie, to raise funds for famine-stricken Ethiopia between 1983 and 1985. The initiative served as “proof that Africans too could take concrete action” vis-à-vis their own predicaments. And he personally took the proceeds from the album to refugee camps in Ethiopia to ensure that

‘For once, the money wouldn’t be misused by the government in power’.

Although the situation has improved significantly since publication of his biography in 1994, Dibango’s music is still much more appreciated abroad – as “world music” – than in Cameroon.

Despite the government’s attempts to impose creative inertia upon him in the early 1960s, Dibango was given the honour of composing the theme song of the 1972 Africa Cup of Nations football finals hosted by Cameroon. In 1988, he received a decoration as a Knight of Order and of Valour. However, as Dibango observed, “the authorities could decorate me with all the medals they liked” without doing much to stop “the descent into hell” for artistic creativity in a country where it is not uncommon to mobilise the military to raid clubs. Or to impose entertainment taxes with the intention of crippling artists who are perceived to be critical or unpalatable.

Manu Dibango died after contracting COVID-19 at the age of 86 in Paris, where he felt “condemned to be an expatriate”.

Quibble as they may in Cameroon, Dibango leaves behind a towering record of Afropolitan musical genius of truly global magnitude, to feed and inspire many a generation to come. Manu Dibango does not have to be in Cameroon, in Africa or physically in the world to continue to do things of relevance.

Culled from The Citizen