#1 : Gotham to Kansas

#1 : Gotham to Kansas

SchizoidKenyaWhat every foreigner remembers is the Westgate Mall attack. But what dominates every Kenyan’s memory of 2013 is the March 4 election. In that divide is an universe of potential and catastrophe.

And such is all of Africa to an outsider: Youthful, idealistic, spectacular, exciting, unhealthy, poor and dangerous.

This is my Number 1 story for 2013: Kenya is Africa.

Kenya has one of the largest populations of poor people in the world, even though its GDP ranking puts it in the top 50% of all countries, singularly distinguishing it from many other African countries.

Income disparity explains this. According to the Heifer Project, the top ten percent of Kenyan households control 40% of the country’s wealth. (In contrast, roughly the same percentage of American wealth is controlled by only 1 percent of Americans.)

But what’s particularly notable in Kenya is that the spread between that 10% and 90% is much greater than in America. The lowest income among Kenya’s growing middle class (the ten percent) averages 6-7 times more than the highest income among the bottom 90%.

This puts income disparity in a brand new light. Unlike in America and the other capitalist champions that have done everything in their history to make Kenya in their image, a rich person is geometrically better off in Kenya than a poor person.

It’s the reason Nairobi is cluttered with Mercedes, Gucci outlets and increasing fashion shows; while rural Kenya still suffers from the highest infant mortality on earth.

And that 10% middle class has begun to flower, and therein lies all the potential seen by outsiders. In films, business, literature and music, and global peace-making, Kenyans are growing more and more notable even as their most neglected people are getting sicker and poorer.

Kenya’s actual capitalist ranking is very low save one critical exceptional component. The World Bank ranks countries’ capitalism as its “Doing Business Metric,” a very thorough dissection of all the things needed to start, operate and succeed in a private enterprise.

Kenya is ranked 129 of 189 countries examined. It would be much lower if it didn’t achieve the rank of 13th in the world for the ease of getting credit. That high ranking comes precisely because of the enormous investment world leaders through their own state and global institutions are making and have always made in Kenya.

And that’s because the country is so strategic in world affairs. It carries the guns to Somalia, the diplomacy to The Sudan and at least the veneer of human rights to its much more despicable neighbors.

So while few investors would normally choose such a troubled society as Kenya, the allure of incredibly easy credit keeps them coming. Capitalist champions like the U.S. routinely sugar-coat the difficulties of transparency, bribing and climate change by comparing Kenya to the rest of the East African region which it dominates.

Whether “Konzo of Kajiado” will ever come to fruition remains to be seen, but investors have secured the capital for large residential and commercial developments that are difficult to organize even in the continent’s behemoth economy, South Africa.

So it’s absolutely undeniable that capitalists believe deeply in Kenya and possibly as a model for long-term business in all of Africa. They may be the greater risk takers in their club, but they may also end up the biggest winners.

I believe poverty is institutionalized in and essential to the current world economic system, even while those who benefit most are often the most vocal crusaders against poverty. And Kenya is the test tube they all use.

And so ironically fueled mostly by Chinese investment and massively topped up by western aid, Kenya receives more attention per capita than any other non-warring country in the world.

Why?

The first reason is because … it always has. The country is now and always has been strategic, and often divided radically opposed forces. Since the earliest precolonial days its excellent harbors provided trade to all of interior Africa instantly bringing face to face the Arab slave and ivory traders with Christian missionaries.

In colonial days it buffered Britain from Germany. In post colonial days it buffered the western powers from China and Russia.

In modern times Kenyan dictators battled Kenyan Nobel laureates for the country’s psyche. And the battles were not all cerebral. More than 1300 people were killed and a million displaced in the violence that followed the flawed, contentious and finally negotiated “democratic” election of 2007.

And today it carries that schizophrenia into economics and politics. The country’s constitution is magnificent, championing human rights in ways U.S. activists can only pine over. Yet its actual record in implementing those magnificent principles is abysmal, and Human Rights Watch is increasingly condemning actual social practices regarding the media, police and most importantly, the “ICC.”

There is no other abbreviation so well known in Kenya as “ICC” which stands for the International Criminal Court. Kenya’s president and vice-president are on trial for crimes against humanity in the ICC at The Hague. Yes, that’s what I said. And to add insult to injury, consider that both men were indicted by the ICC before they were elected last March.

Kenya’s schizophrenia is genetic. It’s known as tribalism and more simply, racism. Despite a youthful population in which more than 70% of Kenyans were born a decade after a “democratic independence,” the country remains incredibly split along tribal lines.

It was tribalism that brought the despot arab Moi to power for a generation. It was tribalism that brought the democratic Kikuyu presidents to power thereafter. Whether by force or ostensible free will, Kenya is ruled by tribal power.

And that tribalism seeps down first to business, then to social institutions and the media, and finally into the schools. Efforts to end tribalism take a far back seat to efforts simply to minimize its more egregious effects.

And so Kenya today shows exceptional promise, creates a “western veneer” of respecting human rights and a insatiable desire for capitalism, but seems unable to emerge from the ruts of poverty and tribalism that have plagued it forever.

Is this what democracy and capitalism is all about? Or is it what foments terrorism?

So we come full circle to the Westgate Mall attack. To the 1998 embassy bombings. To the Nairobi airport incineration. To an average of three horrible deadly terrorist attacks every month.

As I said when describing the Westgate Mall attack for the first time, Kenya doesn’t deserve this. In all its duplicities, masquerades and outright lying, Kenya has nevertheless managed to be … until the embassy bombings … one of the most peaceful countries in the world.

It is no longer. It is one of the least peaceful countries in Africa. “Peace” as defined for example in Rwanda is not something to lust for, so autocratic rule and brutal suppression of human rights is not worth peace. So some would argue that Kenya’s lack of peace is the excitement and hope for resolution of our new world’s competing ideas.

Perhaps so, and that’s noble to be sure. But for the wonderful Kenya I remember as my home for a short time long ago, it’s as different a place as Gotham is to an impoverished Kansas farm town.

I wouldn’t want to live in either. But what, exactly, is in between?

TOP TEN STORIES 2013

TOP TEN STORIES 2013

kenya13TOP1Kenya and democracy. Kenya and war. Kenya and terrorism. Kenya and racism. Kenya and international justice. Kenya and films. The number one story in Africa in 2013 is Kenya, and it’s not all a good one.

#1 in 2013: KENYA
There is no country in Africa as important, dynamic, hopeful and conflicted and in trouble as Kenya. That’s my number one story and much more on this tomorrow, as I review in greater detail 2013’s top stories in the days to come.

thumb.obamawar.13TOP2
#2 in 2013: OBAMA’s WARS IN AFRICA
Starting with the Kenyan invasion of Somali, the chase of the LRA through Uganda, the drones, the coordination with France in the DRC-Congo, the end game in Mali and even tertiary conflicts in places like Western Sahara, there has never been an American president who has used so much force in Africa. Gruesome, powerful details on Thursday.
 
 
thumb.mandela.13TOP3

#3 in 2013: The DEATH OF MANDELA
Not just an icon of freedom, democracy and forgiveness, Mandela was the glue that held the current South African ruling party, together, and in many ways, more important to the past than the turbulent present in South Africa. More on this Friday.
 
 
 
thumb.arabwinter.13TOP4

#4 in 2013: ARAB SPRING followed by WINTER
Egypt, Tunisia and Libya led the revolutions of 2011, and all of them today have slipped into distinct vestiges of themselves before 2010. What was won, what was lost and what’s to come … next week on Monday.
 
 
 
thumb.climatechange.13TOP5
#5 in 2013: CLIMATE CHANGE
Weird weather, yes, and mostly destructive. But also very powerful consequences for global politics and multinational agrobusiness as cash poor Africa tries to decide how to prepare for the coming ecological destruction. Next week on Tuesday.
 
 
 
oppHunting.13TOP6
#6 GROWING OPPOSITION to HUNTING
Increased poaching, recession stresses on tourism, and measurable declines in big game populations have all contributed to a much more significant public opposition to big game hunting. Even with a growing American market, Africans are beginning to realize that big game hunting is a liability. More next week.
 
 
 
sensationalelepoach.13TOP7
#7 SERIOUS ELEPHANT POACHING EXAGGERATED
The media went overboard and I think unethically so in reporting a serious increase in elephant poaching. The most respectable publications like NatGeo are besmirched. There’s a problem but so much different than reported. More next week.
 
 
 
tourismchanging.13TOP8
#8 BIG SAFARI MARKET CHANGES
Marriott’s acquisition of South Africa’s Protea Hotels might not mean a lot to you, but it does to everyone selling Africa tourism. It means the way people buy safaris, what they do on safaris, how big the lodges will be and so much more is changing so fast. More next week.
 
 
 
 
enduring corruption.13TOP9
#9 ENDURING CORRUPTION
Despite real hope throughout Africa over the last few years that corruption was coming under control, horrible reversals occurred in 2013. From South Africa’s multi-scandal president to the success of global bribing that reduced sanctions in Zimbabwe, Africa’s veil of deceit got miserably thicker. More next week.
 
 
 
falasha.13TOP10
#10 END of the BLACK JEWS
A little reported story of enormous consequences for thousands of Ethiopia’s Falashas, the assumed black Jews of Africa. After nearly a half century of exile recovery, Israel concluded its final jumbo jet missions that removed one of Ethiopia’s ancient tribes to Israel. More next week.

Et Tu Uhu?

Et Tu Uhu?

kenyatta.witlessprotectKenyan politics has infected the World Court. There’s little chance, now, that Kenya’s president will be tried as accused for crimes against humanity.

The trial against the vice president remains on track, for now, and the possibility that one will proceed and the other not opens up a whole new can of worms in Kenya.

I don’t consider the ICC, the International Criminal Court in The Hague, to be so just that a simple decision to go to trial means that the accused are guilty. But close. The standards of the ICC are much higher than for the jurisprudence of sovereign states. And the reason the case against Kenyatta is collapsing is because the prosecution’s witnesses are dropping like flies.

Before advising the court that her case had collapsed, ICC prosecutor Bensouda was quoted by a Kenyan disaspora group as having said, “Witness 4 revealed in May 2012 interview that he had been offered, and accepted, money from individuals holding themselves out as representatives of the accused to withdraw his testimony against Uhuru.”

Whether this unconfirmed report is true or not, the original 11 witnesses against Kenyatta are all now gone. Without witnesses Bensouda’s specific request yesterday to the court was to postpone further proceedings while she tries to get additional witnesses.

It’s not a completely foregone conclusion that the judges will either postpone the trial indefinitely or end it. But close.

The proceedings have teetered from the beginning on the certainty that the witnesses would ultimately testify. That was further complicated when several witnesses actually recounted, claiming that they had been bribed to say untrue things in order to obtain a conviction.

Bribing to convict, bribing to withdraw, it’s all very likely in a Kenya political drama, and I’m not the least surprised it has succeeded so far from home. It’s the way of politics in Kenya.

My sense has always been, and remains, that Kenyatta and his vice-president, William Ruto, are both guilty. I think it fair to conclude that most western world leaders also feel the same way, though they would never say so. But with Kenyatta, it’s all a moot point, now.

And the interest in the affair now turns to Ruto, whose trial is much further on than Kenyatta’s, and whose few witnesses have at least held on. And what’s uniquely interesting is that at the time both men were accused of these crimes, they were accused of attacking each other.

Or more exactly, Ruto’s Kalenjin/Luo alliance supporting candidate Raila Odinga, was in bloody battle with Kenyatta’s Kikuyu supporters of Mwai Kibaki, who was declared the winner of that close election.

Thirteen hundred people were killed and a quarter to a half million displaced.

Why are they now president and vice president … together? Because it was a brilliant political move that won Kenya’s freest and fairest election, and it allied two murderers against their prosecution.

But what now? What if Ruto is convicted and Kenyatta is freed? Does that in itself reignite the tribal enmity that led to the 2007/08 violence? If convicted will Ruto be forced to step down, vindicating the Kikuyu as the all-powerful, forever dominant leaders of Kenya?

Would it ultimately demonstrate that in Kenya you win by hook or by crook?

I wouldn’t be surprised. Can’t be fully convinced of this yet. But close.

Will The Real Maasai Stand Up?

Will The Real Maasai Stand Up?

which real maasaiIt’s rare that I admire either a charity or NGO working in Africa, so when I do I let people know. If you’re considering an end-of-the-year donation, consider apw.org.

The African People & Wildlife Fund at less than ten years old at its latest iteration promotes practical solutions to wildlife/people problems in Africa striking a balance for people that is often ignored by more purist wildlife NGOs.

And in the process of so doing has achieved a success that NGOs significantly older and far better funded have failed to do: protecting in an environmentally friendly way at very low cost Maasai stock from predators.

APW’s “Living Wall” is so simple it’s comic, when I think of all the money and science and startups that have come down the line for a generation trying to protect Maasai stock from lions to stop Maasai from killing them.

The Commiphora is a wild bush/tree that grows thick. By creating enclosures fenced with growing Commiphora a remarkable, sustainable barrier is created. And if grown through chain-link fencing (a huge additional cost, of course) the barrier achieves 100% success in keeping out cats.

Although Maasai are rarely nomadic anymore, they still graze their stock often far and wide from their homestead, bringing them home to the coral at night. Traditional thorntree enclosures were fine in the old days, when the human/wildlife conflict was less severe and when pressure particularly on lions was much, much less.

In the last several years scientists have recognized that the decline in the lion population may be more serious than any other large African animal. A number of factors have contributed to this, but the single most important one is likely human/wildlife conflict.

As Maasai grow sedentary and deed their land, they cease being nomads and become ranchers. Traditional boma enclosures are no longer appropriate, for animals or people. And chain link fences that are as high as a Commiphora grows are prohibitively expensive.

APW now documents more than 200 Living Walls working well throughout the Maasai Steppe of Tanzania, protecting more than 50,000 farmed animals.

I think one of the reasons APW was successful when so many other NGOs failed is quite simple: they put the Maasai first, not the lions. Rather than focusing on whether a strobe light or repetitive sound or electric fence was sufficient to deter lions, they started out with what was easy and convenient for the Maasai to use.

And basically they simply enhanced what the Maasai always did: instead of harvested thorn trees, which are too slow growing as live trees and near impossible to cultivate easily, they found a good, easy substitute. In other words, they asked the question, what could a sedentary Maasai use as a thorn tree?

Whereas the traditional animal focused NGO would ask, “What will keep lions away that won’t hurt them?”

Both are important questions, but one leads to a more rapid, practical and complete solution. One puts the Maasai first, the other puts the animal first.

Many NGOs have tried to integrate Maasai, particularly the youth, into anti-poaching and less aggressive pro-wildlife initiatives. APW focused on gizmos, like GPS devices and aps for phones that the kids love, resulting in greater success.

Many NGOs see Maasai as simply a problem: over grazing destroys the environment, wild life doesn’t. I venture to say most educated Africans feel the same way, and there’s this implicit feeling that these wandering farmers ought just put on a pair of pants and learn accounting.

APW dedicates a good amount of resource towards project officers who instruct Maasai on sustainable rangeland management. I’m not sure this is a good long-term strategy, since I tend to side with the majority of experts and Africans who feel there is no way that current East African domestic herds can be sustained. But the reality is that dynamic is not going to change quickly, and in the meantime, any better orientation to rangeland use and management will help.

Once again, APW takes the Maasai side.

There are other good initiatives in the APW program, but finally what I find truly satisfying can be easily seen by anyone visiting their website. So many NGOs and even East African government programs love to display the earinged Maasai resting on his acacia stick with a shuka wrapped about him and a few bracelets or anklets dangling from his appendages while he watches his goats.

APW gets real. They display Maasai kids in Polo T-shirts smiling wonderfully as they focus their binoculars. That’s the real world, today. That’s taking the Maasai’s side.

Vultures & Other Vermin

Vultures & Other Vermin

Dead vulturesIt’s been a generation or more since certain animals considered vermin were proudly exterminated in the U.S., and the concept of bounty on nuisance animals is in welcomed, serious decline.

Rather, state governments have undertaken more scientific hunting seasons that try to achieve an ecological balance deemed appropriate. So, for example, this year Iowa added more hunting days for deer because the first “harvest” was considered too low.

I think this is rather presumptuous if not outright arrogant. Call a spade a spade.

Read more

Grim Outlook for Kenya

Grim Outlook for Kenya

kenyan suicide bomberIs Kenya becoming the new Afghanistan? Another suicide bomber Saturday killed six and injured almost 40 in Nairobi.

The attack was in the Pangani neighborhood of Eastleigh, Nairobi, an area with many Somali immigrants.

The day before on Friday twin explosions in the northeastern town of Wajir killed another person. Thirteen people have been killed this week alone. Panagani was the 4th attack on the 50th anniversary week of Kenya’s independence.

And among the most striking facts about these attacks is that they were hardly headline news. In most of Nairobi’s newspapers, they received scant attention compared to how they were reported in Europe.

And last week a confidential report prepared by the New York City Police Department on Kenya’s Westgate Mall attack analyzed Kenya’s growing violence.

Officers from the NYPD were in Nairobi before the Westgate Mall incident was over, ostensibly to learn from it how to protect New York. Their report confirmed what had been suspected for a long time: the four principal attackers were nearly amateurs by war standards, could have caused enormously more damage if they had better weapons, and apparently all escaped.

One of the chilling aspects to the NYPD report as analyzed in the Daily Beast is how similar the attackers appear in many regards to America’s child terrorists responsible for our growing number of school shootings:

There is only cursory planning. The weapons used are all deadly powerful but often poorly designed for the kind of attack planned, and often, don’t work. Entry and exit for the attackers is easy. And perhaps most chilling of all, worldwide terrorists like those at Westgate are increasingly individualized rather than ideological.

Just like kid shooters in American schools.

This “terrorist war” whatever it has become is usually instigated by individuals who are mentally ill, or who are not ideological but simply angry, often vengeful.

They are not soldiers under some mission command, and they often have no demands. They just want to … kill.

The Westgate Mall attack and the attack this past weekend in Nairobi — as with almost all the attacks these days in Kenya — is basically Somali against Somali. Just as a school shooter is a student against a student.

The Somali terrorists in Kenya claim to be protesting the Kenyan invasion of Somalia initiated in October, 2011. Kenyan troops continue to occupy Somalia.

Kenyan Somalis on the whole very much supported the Kenyan invasion and now the current mission, which as I’ve often pointed out, is really a proxy war for America and France. Kenya would not have been capable of succeeding in that invasion without hardware, training and logistics from America.

And so the targeted terror is at those Kenyan Somali communities. At the same time the police see these communities as harboring the terrorists, which of course they do.

Money, materials for bomb making and suicide mission recruitment is all done within the Eastleigh community of Nairobi. It is often, brother against brother.

So the comparison with Afghanistan ends quickly, as there are far fewer supporters of Kenyan terrorism in Eastleigh than of the Taliban in Kabul.

But like America, which is losing tourism revenue from school shootings and if it continues will likely loose foreign investment, Kenyans are already suffering both.

The promise of the country prior to the Somali invasion of October, 2011, was exceptional. But last year’s election of an indicted war criminal as president, and the growing tribalism that dominates the Kenyan government now threatens Kenya’s growth.

I wrote several weeks ago about Kenya’s falling position with Transparency International. Last week the Thomson Reuters Foundation called Kenya “a thriving underworld aided by political corruption and a large informal money transfer sector.”

Conceding the country could be a financial and services powerhouse for the region, the report concluded the country is “a safe house in a bad neighbourhood.”

So the comparison with America is also flawed. Compared to America’s challenge of just getting guns out of kids’ hands, Kenya’s is far more daunting.

It’s no child’s play in Kenya.

Kenya Tourist Attack

Kenya Tourist Attack

barelyavertedContinued terrorism in Kenya and more public attacks against tourists is resulting in draconian laws that are turning Kenya into an autocratic state.

Kenya’s average of three terrorists attacks monthly continue. Yesterday, ten tourists escaped death when a grenade thrown at them bounced unexploded off their minibus window.

Prior to the Westgate Mall attack foreign investment was growing seemingly undeterred by the increasing terrorist attacks in Kenya. It’s not clear yet if that has changed.

But clearly tourism is down, and tourism remains a fundamental part of the Kenyan economy. Many operators are turning to local and regional tourism. In something that appears desperate to me, the Kenyan Tourist Board is spending considerable funds to lure Nigerian tourists, where terrorism is as bad if not worse than in Kenya.

And not surprisingly, some of Kenya’s most respected tourism companies are now concentrating more of their investment in Tanzania.

Cheli & Peacock, a landmark Kenyan tourist company, announced this week it was opening new offices in Arusha, Tanzania.

The Kenyan government is not an ostrich with its head in the sand. With a string of negative press reports starting with terrorism and extending unendingly to the country’s leaders trials in The Hague, president Kenyatta is growing increasingly authoritarian.

And Parliament seems willing to go along with him.

Increased police powers and a reversal of the decentralization of the police was the most imposing move. Clearly directed against terrorism, there was limited opposition to this fall’s moves, until the courts got in the way.

The Kenyan constitution is a good one, and the government more or less reversed itself on new police laws before an expected challenge in the court. Using Obama’s techniques but for bad ideas, Kenyatta is quietly using his executive powers to take more control over the police and make them less publicly accountable.

Simultaneously, the government wants to muffle the press, and once again Parliament seems ready to go along. I guess the idea is if you can’t wield the power to stop terrorism, perhaps you can stop the reporting of it.

The two laws Parliament may pass next week “seriously restrict the work of journalists and independent media in Kenya and give the government enormous space for censorship,” according to Kenya’s main online newspaper, The Star.

These laws, too, will be challenged in court if passed.

But while we know that tourism is suffering, because the industry is so public and necessarily transparent, we haven’t learned yet that foreign investment may also now be under attack. And if that’s true, Parliamentarians are likely freaking out.

The answer to the end of Kenya’s terrorism begins with leaving Somalia. I’ve been saying this literally since Kenya invaded Somalia in October, 2011. But that’s not in the cards.

Kenya is America and Britain’s proxy in Somalia, and from that point of view, things are going pretty well. If Kenyan troops were to leave, it’s likely the warlords and terrorist would regain control.

So Kenya continues to suffer so that Americans can enjoy their holidays… but not on safari.

Rain Rain Won’t Go Away

Rain Rain Won’t Go Away

rainbow.serengeti.peronThe rains have come back to the Serengeti; the wildebeest are moving south; all is well.

Last month the travel media went ballistic worrying that the wildebeest migration had been historically altered from eons of pattern and was going to spend the season in Kenya, when they should be in Tanzania.

The rains were late … well, maybe 3-4 weeks late. And there were plenty of YouTube videos and blogs documenting large groups of wildebeest moving north over the Sand, Mara and Balaganjwe rivers, when they should have been moving south.

Well, they’re back on track now.

“Wildebeest on a southerly course,” writes the very respected tour company, Nomads, yesterday. Their blog continued:

“There has been rain in the crater area towards Endulen, Central Serengeti, some in Ndutu and even in Loliondo so we are hoping for the plains to be green soon and the movement to proceed southwards, and by the time Christmas comes they should hopefully all be where they should be.”

And the weather report for the Serengeti is all but boringly normal.

This is tedious.

Whether it is the wildebeest migration, the coming apocalypse or the conversion of Obama as a mullah in Iran, our current world of instant communication takes the least bit of misinformation and spreads it around the world as the gospel truth.

A month ago, travel professionals were lamenting the end of the Serengeti migration. Yes, the rains may have been late, if 3 or 4 weeks is late in today’s crazy climate change world, and what do you expect a half million animals that have to eat grass to do?

They went where it was raining, and that was – for a short period of time – in an opposite direction from the norm.

How has your weather been recently?

But it’s been a very short time that the weather was out of sync in the Serengeti, a very short turnabout, and they’re back on track. And even if it had been longer, it would hardly have been the “end of the migration.”

We’re all adjusting at home and abroad to changing weather. And so are the wildebeest. And for us travel professionals it means certain caution about promising anything that has to do with weather.

But don’t worry about the wildebeest. They’re extremely adaptable.

Which is a lot more than I can say for most travel professionals.

Beyond Wrath and Tears

Beyond Wrath and Tears

mandela and the worldNone but Mandela were able to get the presidents of the United States and Cuba to shake hands.

According to Reuters, a U.S. official implied it was a planned gesture of reconciliation in the spirit of Mandela’s legacy. As Obama walked from his seat to the podium to deliver his eulogy, he stooped briefly to shake Castro’s hand.

The day was marred by climate change. (Forgive me, that’s quite an exaggeration. But it’s true that throughout sub-Saharan Africa weather is increasingly severe as it is becoming at home.) Rain – heavy at times – competed with the aggressive vocalizations of the crowd in the stadium.

Obama was the most widely cheered. In stark contrast, South Africa’s president and his associates were so widely booed and jeered that the proceedings were interrupted.

And in a twist only explicable as South Africa’s growing frustration with Zuma and their increasingly corrupt government, the great and merciless tyrant from next door, Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe, received thunderous applause.

The tributes at today’s Memorial Service for Nelson Mandela were given by arch enemies and celebrated virtually every political system that exists today in the world.

The first speech was appropriately given by UN secretary general Ban. The second speech was given by the AU Commission chairperson.

The third speech, and the first of six world leaders was given by President Obama.

Obama was followed by the president Rousseff of Brazil, Chinese vice-president Li Yuanchao, Namibia president Pohamba, Indian president Mukherjee and Cuban president Castro.

Obama’s speech was indeed grand, as many of his public speeches have been. He began poetically and gently as you would expect from this gentle academic, acknowledging the sadness which in fact may not exist at quite level commensurate with Obama’s speech.

He then moved chronologically through Mandela’s life, linking him with the life ways of Ghandi and King, taking up the shackles of the oppressed.

Ever the equalizer, Obama referred to Mandela’s ascent during the time of “Kennedy and Khruschev” and then veering into the hyperbolic he compared Mandela to Lincoln for holding the country together “when it threatened to break apart” and completely ignoring the fact that Mandela himself had little to do with his country’s profoundly wonderful constitution:

“he would erect a constitutional order to preserve freedom for future generations – a commitment to democracy and rule of law ratified not only by his election, but by his willingness to step down from power.”

Politicians have a clever way of stinging those listening to them (Castro and Mugabe, both of whom lead dynasties of power that have lasted longer than the life span of an average South African).

Obama then spent too long extolling Mandiba’s self-doubt and humility: “ “I’m not a saint,” Obama quoted him, “unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.” Politicians rarely praise someone without praising themselves.

Obama then explained Mandela’s greatness in terms of his family and closer friends, again a somewhat tenacious bend of history, as for whatever reason, Mandela’s pre-release relationships were rarely strong or lasting.

In a recurring theme in almost all Obama’s speeches that refer to another individual, and a message that I find tiresome but was not the least tiresome on the South African audience, Obama defined greatness in an individual as something to be manifest in the simplest of men and women: Mandela should be used as model for yourself.

Losing himself momentarily, Obama praised Mandela’s “rebelliousness” only to immediately pull back and remind the audience of his team work.

In what I consider one of his greatest and most revealing lines, and one I see as timely and hopeful, Obama said that Mandela “learned the language and customs of his oppressor so that one day he might better convey to them how their own freedom depended upon his.”

It’s an insightful look into the mirror, and one tempered with humility.

Referring to “Ubuntu” which today mostly refers to a widely used computer operating system which like Linux is mostly free to African users, Obama worked its derivation as “the tie that binds the human spirit.” Non-violence, shared understandings, a sort of political Zen.

I don’t think Obama got it wholly correctly, and he certainly misused it as a lead into complementing Mandela for his work fighting AIDS. This may have been intentional, since it’s widely construed as one of Mandela’s greatest failings, his lack of wholly grasping what AIDS was and what South Africa should have done about it during his time.

Courageously embracing the fact that both Mandela and he above all represent victories in the struggles against racism, Obama said “Michelle and I are the beneficiaries of that struggle.”

He then quickly qualified the point that the struggles aren’t over, and while in the same remark he would once again chastise Cuba, Zimbabwe and China for their suppression of human rights, he began instead:

“There are too many of us who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality.”

That was when I applauded most.

The end of the speech was magnificent, painting a wonderful picture of a wonderful man and ending with the poem Invictus.

Ninety world leaders plus dozens other dignitaries attended the service. Six world leaders sat on the podium and gave eulogies: China and Cuba are communist. Brazil and India are democratic socialist about equally left of U.S. democracy. Namibia like South Africa is squarely democratic, both a bit right of the U.S.

Obama went first among them, and the applause was thundering. It was much less so for the five who followed.

Mandela almost joined the communist party in South Africa during his youth, and much of his training in the 1960s and 1970s was paid for by China in Tanzania. The Indian icon and revolutionary, Mohatma Ghandi, was close friends with the first Secretary-General of the ANC, John Dube. Their lives followed remarkable parallels in South Africa where Ghandi lived an activist life for more than 20 years.

During the days of the 1980s when the ANC was blacklisted as a terrorist organization, Cuba was a vocal and proud supporter. Travel to the west by ANC executives from Tanzania, where most were exiled, was arranged almost always through Havana by Cuba.

One of Mandela’s few progressive initiatives was to develop a trade alliance that included India to the east and Brazil to the west. This successful trade powerhouse is now beginning to wield incredible influence in the world arena. Brazil’s rapid economic growth in many ways mirrors South Africa’s.

South Africa was given stewardship of the German colony of Southwest Africa (later to become Namibia) by the United Nations after the Nazi collapse in World War II. Enormous international pressure on the apartheid regime granted some autonomy to Namibia that allowed apartheid to effectively end there just before it did in South Africa.

But in return for this autonomy, South Africa retained control and assumed sovereignty over Walvis Bay, the only effective port in the country. One of Mandela’s first actions as president was to return Walvis Bay to Namibia.

The fact that a single world leader can command such tribute from such a range of ideologies and traditions is proof in my opinion that there are far better solutions to crises than war and that maybe the difference between these ideologies isn’t really as great as the proponents within each ideology may claim.

But listening to Obama carefully I realized that neither Mandela or he are capable of truly changing history. The gauntlet of demarcating important changes in history must just be too great a tax on the resources of the individual.

Mandela – and Obama – are artists, one revolutionary, the other an organizer. I wholeheartedly subscribe to their shared world view, one of enduring compassion and justice.

But the implementation of Mandela’s and Obama’s dreams must wait for less gentle souls. Judging from the impatience and enthusiasm of the South Africans applauding Obama, that won’t be long.

Ending Legacies

Ending Legacies

Background image by Justin Ng.
Background image by Justin Ng.
The ANC’s manifestos for what a free South Africa would be is far from what we see, today. Mandela’s vision of the ANC was far from what it was when he was released. White South Africans certainty that a black South Africa would self-destruct was dead wrong.

There’s a lot of myopia in South Africa’s most recent history.

In the rainbow of organizations that confronted apartheid — from the communist party to the almost identical but intensely rival trade unions, to the ANC to the Zulu off-shoots to the white ladies’ “Black Sash” – there were violent disagreements over what a new South Africa should be.

Ending apartheid was the only unifying force. I often wondered while working in a shared office in Johannesburg in the late 1980s and coming into contact on a daily basis with all these different political activists, that if apartheid ended quickly and abruptly, say by some or other group staging a successful coup, that all hell would break lose among the opponents of apartheid struggling for control.

All but white anti-apartheid groups also were unified in desiring a socialist society, one that was fairly tightly controlled from the top, and this was most represented by the certainty that South Africa’s mines would be nationalized.

The gold, diamond, coal and precious metal mines of South Africa is what gives it its wealth.

The communists and most of the trade organizations and radical youth groups also wanted to nationalize the banks. The apartheid government had essentially already nationalized the massive transportation system, so quite apart from equality for the races, education and health, nationalization was a fundamental core of the fight against apartheid.

But apartheid didn’t end abruptly with a coup, but with multiple years of negotiation albeit mostly in secret.

And today South Africa is one of the most capitalistic countries in the world. France, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries are far more socialist than South Africa.

The country is also increasingly corrupt. No-bid contracts are the rule of the day for the current government, and that has led to a clique of new age business people that it is assumed either give huge kickbacks or equally valuable political support.

It has compromised the education of young children, the quality of infrastructure, and even the government’s own plans for home construction. This very rich country seems unable to improve the lot of its most oppressed, while its leaders become millionaires.

The country lost a decade or more in the fight and control of AIDS, as both Mandela and his successor refused to believe it was a sexually transmitted epidemic.

The youth of South Africa, those who are called “new borns” for having arrived after Mandela was freed, are understandably angry and impatient. The passing of Mandela will give them new strength.

I believe that one of the reasons South Africa flounders today is because Mandela carried no clear ideology with him into the new South Africa. Like Obama, overwhelmed at the helm of history making a radical change in course, Mandela became the Great Compromiser.

Keeping society at peace during such a serious change overwhelmed everything else. This is completely understandable. For if peace had not been maintained, a revolutionary period would likely have resulted in an even worse situation.

The country’s constitution is a magnificent document, but Mandela had little to do with it (and today’s problems rest squarely in not implementing it fully and well.) The lack of retribution and aura of magnanimity ascribed Mandela was really created by Desmond Tutu and others. The transference of real economic power that was tried in the late 1990s was instigated by the youthful agitators in the mines and the ANC, and by that time, Mandela was already gone.

One of the reasons Mandela did not oversee a major transformation of South African society is because he was a construct of others who were much more powerful than himself.

It’s fascinating today to read of white South Africans’ certainties that Mandela was a maverick operating outside ANC direction, while simultaneously listening to old ANC members claim how they groomed Mandela as their figurehead from the getgo.

The real truth is likely somewhere in between, in that compromise that is Mandela’s greatest and perhaps his only legacy.

“Real Change” remains a political banner. You can change the color of the president in both South Africa and the United States without altering where black people remain on the graphs of economy.

It’s a question that is being asked round the world, not just in South Africa.

But I admit it was a bad time, the early 1990s, to experiment with new social orders. The Cold War had been definitively ended with a victory of capitalism over socialism. It would be several more years before Hugo Chavez would be democratically elected to renew such experiments, and that hasn’t gone particularly well.

Mandela will forever be remembered, and rightly so, for peacefully transferring power from the oppressors to the oppressed. That’s remarkably important and a statement for the ages that retribution never works for any ideology, any idea.

He deserves the great honors that attracted. But the concept of a peaceful transition wears poorly when not enough then changes as a result.

The Cold War has ended. Overt racism at least is grudgingly ending slowly. The Great Recession is ending. From South Africa to the United States, there is an energy in the youth to bring to fruition the symbols their parents created as landmarks out of a terrible past.

It could be an exciting future. And if so, Mandela’s legacy of peaceful transition — and likely Obama’s too — will be an historic moment, the last moment of symbol, a turn towards substance.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela

NelsonMandela2Last night’s prime time evening news in South Africa featured the trial of a man accused of ordering the murder of his wife.

Other news included current President Zuma’s scandal over use of public funds to build himself a mansion, and South Africa’s deep involvement with UN troops now scheduled to go into the Central African Republic.

So many South Africans went to bed last night twisting and turning over the macabre soap opera husband order to kill, terribly conflicted by their country’s growing militarism in central Africa, and increasingly impatient with their current clown president’s antics.

About an hour later, Nelson Mandela died.

‘There are heros and there are monsters, but most of us are ordinary mortals caught up in events too turbulent for any of us. …when the battle is over, all we will inherit will be the ashes of a once beautiful land.’

The above quote is from Wilbur’s Smith’s novel, Rage, published in 1987. The book purports to foretell the calamity that what would befall South Africa with the end of apartheid.

For years and years doomsayers claimed that South Africa would self-destruct, or at least fall into terrible violence, once Nelson Mandela died.

Today South Africa was blanketed by peace and celebration. 160 individual sites in Cape Town area were designated as “tribute sites” where throughout the day mostly smiling and thoroughly loving small crowds gathered with flowers in their arms. Cape Town’s flowers are unique in the world.

In fact, in one of the world’s most prestigious botanical gardens, Kirstenbosch in Cape Town, the special golden strelitzia genetically engineered in honor of Mandela while he was still living, was laced with the petals of other flowers visitors had arrived with.

Rage was wrong. Mandela’s doomsayers are wrong.

South Africa not only survives in tact, peaceful, but with palpable mourning that leaves the country vulnerable. But the country is strong enough not to worry, now.

It wasn’t, before Mandela’s time.

I count myself among those cynics who dislike attention given to any single individual, no matter how important that individual is. I prefer to think that events linked to any given individual’s actions reflect the overall society rather than that individual’s will.

And similarly, as time passes a prominent individual’s actions are often exaggerated. Heroes are created by the media, rarely in history.

The oft-recounted two dozen years of imprisonment on Robben Island, for example, is usually misconstrued as Mandela had remarkable freedom as a prisoner and remarkable access to those supporting him.

The revolutionary, certainly criminal acts of violence ascribed Mandiba by youthful agitators misstate situations where Mandela actually became involved against his better judgment.

The lack of vengeance regularly referred to shortly after Mandela took power in 1994 was hardly personal. The entire economy of South Africa – huge by Third World standards, the triggers on possible nuclear bombs, the warehouses of secret information on the questionably ethical private lives of the new leaders … they were all in white hands.

What Mandela was and will always be is the embodiment of all the goodness that is the better part of South Africa. He was never alone.

He was an artist more than a revolutionary. Perhaps he was also uniquely perspicacious, perhaps he sensed better than anyone that his society’s four centuries of racism would begin to reverse on his watch.

And yet for “most of us mortals,” our shoulders could hardly have borne the times the way Mandiba did. His greatest struggles weren’t while in Robben Island or on public trial. He was never seriously injured in battle or tortured in prison, as many, many were. He didn’t lose children as many, many others did from the brutal violence of numerous incidents like Sharpeville. He didn’t die, as many, many revolutionaries did for the cause.

But those hundreds if not thousands of real heroes of the moment – long forgotten by almost all of us, now – became all wrapped up in the symbol of the new society’s first leader. That was his greatest accomplishment, carrying the garland of activism woven by the forgotten thousands, and displaying such boggling humility after victory without retribution, with such perfection.

When you think of Mandela, when you read Long Walk to Freedom, when you listen to his speeches and now listen to his eulogies, think “South Africa,” not “Mandela.”

It’s so easy for us to identify with an individual rather than ingest and analyze periods of history. That is the role Mandela performs, and he accomplished it with the finesse of a man-made golden strelitzia standing commandingly within all the many other natural things of beauty.

There are heroes and there are monsters, and they come and go with the fall release of new films. There are societies that make monstrous mistakes and suffer for eons.

And there are societies like South Africa that create wonder and joy with terrifying and heroic reversals of precedent and tradition. The South African who will be long invoked as the symbol of that ending of an unbelievably enduring epoch of human indignity is Mandela.
Strelitzia_larger