I met Don Manuel in 2007 in Cape Town, South Africa where I had occasion to do an internship with the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS). The first thing you must know is that Don Manuel has a lot of things to say. He is a Spanish-speaking Rasta who makes ‘Afro-Cuba’ reggae; is well travelled and his a Capoeira Master/instructor. Both being immigrants; we often found ourselves comparing Cape Town to other places in the world with which we were familiar and discussing our 'world views'. It made for some interesting conversation, which (along with other topics) inspired this interview.

In Pt I, Don Manuel introduces himself

Pt II and III after the jump

Who said cynical people cannot be or are not optimistic and vice versa? In order to be an idealist, one has to balance on the fine line between cynicism and optimism.  Although opposite, those two emotions fuel the minds of idealists who are cynical enough to be dissatisfied with the status quo and optimistic enough to believe that positive change is possible...

It's all down to interpretation. They say; one man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. A logical conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that most of the dictators of today were heroes to some people yesterday. It's sad that over long periods of time; power, greed and dissent corrupts the best intentions of leaders, just as it did the pigs of George Orwell's Animal Farm.
From this, one can predict that today's heroes could potentially become tomorrow's dictators. The developing world (where poverty is rife and most of the time democracy is in its infancy) is most vulnerable to this culture of personalities, which lends itself so well to the creation of political heroes and dictators. Enough of the theoretical - in terms of dictators that used to be heroes, the prime example that comes to my mind is Zimbabwe's own - Robert Mugabe

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From my understanding, a social construct is a system of interpretations (and corresponding behaviour) that comes into being because people collectively choose to follow it for any number of reasons. Ali G is a white man playing a stereotypically black character. Let’s think about it though…