Africa Table: The Vela Incident: South Africa's Secret Nuclear Test Revisited

Join the Center for African Studies for their weekly lunchtime lecture series.

Speaker: Victor Gama, Director, PangeiArt; Visiting Artist, CCRMA, Stanford University

On 22 September 1979, a double flash over the Indian Ocean (near Antarctica) detected by an American satellite was suspected of being a nuclear test, possibly conducted by South Africa, alone or in cooperation with Israel, but never acknowledged. Strict secrecy clauses still in place today have prevented those involved in apartheid's nuclear weapons program to come out and testify. The test was the validation of apartheid’s military power and strategy that engulfed the whole Southern African region, in particular Angola and Mozambique, in a destructive ‘cold- war’ conflict in the late 70s and 80s.The recent discovery of the diary of an officer of SA's Navy has exposed the event. This talk is about a joint research project by Angolan composer Victor Gama and Cape Town's Chimurenga Chronic journalist Stacy Hardy that challenges opaque representations of Southern Africa's recent past and highlights the need to regain control of its historical narrative. The project resulted in the multimedia piece Vela 6911 commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and staged in Chicago, Lisbon and Luanda.Victor Gama is an Angolan composer, performer, designer of contemporary musical instruments as well as an electronics engineer. He is the director of PangeiArt and the producer of the digital archive and musician's platform 'Tsikaya - Músicos do Interior' in Angola. He is currently Visiting Artist at Stanford's Centre for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.