There are other reasons than “the threat of terror” that prompted America to close its embassy in the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) yesterday.
I know really good, young people who have recently left the African service of the State Department as the Trump administration systematically hammers down our foreign service. There’s always been terror in the DRC. There’s just now fewer, lower paid, less capable Americans to deal with it.
Trumpian tactics are now front and center in the highly contentious South African elections. Why? Because they’re so successful.
The leader of the most leftist party, the EFF, which while very radical and occasionally offensive in his criticism of its opponents has rarely deviated into outright lying. Julius Malema is now doing so, “stoking Trumpian fires of anger and violence in [his] supporters.”
Can you imagine the day when Jamie Dimon’s yacht is taken away from him by a socialist port authority? Or better, when that cottage on the lake you only used a couple times last summer is expropriated by the local county?
Yesterday’s decision in South Africa to proceed with changing the constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation shows the desperation that societies which have progressed too far down the path of income inequality will go for recompense. Better watch out. It’s coming soon to your nearby authority.
Gov. Brown understands better than anyone in America what Climate Change means: “Things like this will be part of our future … things like this, and worse,’’ he said yesterday of the fires ravaging his State.
And the people of Cape Town understand better than almost anyone in the world the prospect of running out of water. How they reacted to their prolonged drought, and how they managed it so well, is a model for all of us as we confront Climate Change.
The election to Congress of the first refugee, a Somali woman from Minneapolis has caused furor in Kenya as prominent politicians congratulated her in spite of aggressively having demanded the closure of the refugee camp she grew up in.
Ilhan Omar was the successful Democrat candidate to replace Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) who stepped down earlier this year after sexual abuse allegations which he vigorously denied, and he just won Tuesday’s Minnesota Attorney General’s race.
There’s more: Trump vehemently warned voters against supporting her, claiming that Minnesota “had suffered enough from Somali immigrants.”
Rebecca Davis writes in South Africa’s Daily Maverick that “fervent supporters of the Republican and Democratic parties are no longer inhabiting the same moral universe.”
The South African woman is in the United States for our election. Trump’s gruesome retrenchment from the globe into his own ego impoverished much of it, especially Africa. Why? Because the America that I knew and loved before Trump helped the world. Trump doesn’t even help America, Davis concludes. All he tries to help is himself and his tiny family.
It really is all about the economy. Serious safari cancellations noted last week – including that of Queen Máxima of the Netherlands – because of Tanzania’s announced crackdown on gays has caused a firestorm in East Africa. It’s still burning:
Over the weekend the government jailed a local overtly sexual popstar, the European Union recalled its principal Tanzanian diplomat, the Tanzanian government claimed that “the campaign… is a personal stance and not the State’s”, and the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania released a “security alert.” How should we read all this?
Tourism to Tanzania may be headed into a nosedive as major media organizations around the world widely report the national crackdown started this week against the LGBT community.
EWT received multiple “special offers” and “discounts” from various Tanzanian safari companies just this week. One can only assume the publicity on the LGBT crackdown is having an immediate effect.
Last month as my South African safaris for this year were coming to close I had a startling personal experience that really challenged my current view that most of the world – not just America – is a mess.
As far as South Africans at least are concerned, America is much more of a mess than Europe.
The reaction to the Chinese decision to reverse a policy that prohibits the use and limited sale of endangered species is a successful distraction from much, much more serious woes.
The policy change is nowhere near as bad as exclaimed by conservation groups. They – and most Chinese – are being duped with the same tactics used by Trump or Duterte or Le Pen and all the other crazies close to running the world. Don’t let them get away with it. Focus.
Tanzania’s crash to the right has been phenomenal. Why do so many Tanzanians support it? That question goes a long way to explaining a lot of the world, not just Tanzania.
Tanzanians who had been roughed over by police, bureaucrats and corrupt politicians now see some relief under President John Magufuli. He couldn’t do this through the democracy that existed in Tanzania, because it was corrupt. Magufuli has become what we used to call a “benevolent dictator,” and it’s what the whole wide world craves today.
No, Ugandans, Kanye West will not boost your tourism. In fact, he’s done exactly the reverse.
American safari travelers mostly can’t stand Kanye West, and yesterday’s elaborate ego exchange between West and the vicious dictator, Yoweri Museveni, will actually discourage American tourism to Uganda.
Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance eclipsed an historical moment over the weekend in Tanzania: Tanzania now has as many high profile kidnappings as Nigeria.
Four days ago two purportedly “white” kidnappers allegedly staked out a high profile gym in the main city of Dar-es-Salaam before sunrise. When Africa’s youngest billionaire arrived for his morning workout, they stiffed him into a car, shot widely into the air and sped loudly and defiantly away.
There are simpler, more horrid facts to explain the world’s relatively recent embrace of populism and authoritarianism than income and gender inequalities or climate change.
Hunger.
The picture above is from the lead article of the very popular Daily Maverick. South Africans of every political stripe remain furious with Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump’s patent lying about them yesterday.
Parts of this lead story now follow, written by one of South Africa’s most colorful authors and filmmakers, Richard Poplak.
(“Oomie” and “Suidlander” are explained in full after the article below.)