The Last Laugh?

December 19, 2016December 19, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

lastlaugh The alt-right may be ecstatic, but the majority of us in the world are increasingly depressed. And now guess what? There’s no comic relief.

A much watched tongue-in-cheek news podcast in South Africa recently replaced twenty years of sarcasm with all that’s left: “there’s only bad news.”

I thought of South Africa’s much loved Evita Bezuidenhoutis after watching this week’s opening sketch of Saturday Night Live. Plays on Trump’s naivete if ignorance are less funny now, because they’ve turned out to be real. The news was wrong: Sarcasm is the truth.

Authority Dolls

December 16, 2016December 16, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

authority-fossil The trouble with authoritarian rulers is that their authority becomes more important than themselves.

Adam Barrow defeated Yahya Jammeh last week in The Gambia and unleashed days of celebrations in the capital of Banjul. Twenty-two years begun with a violent coup seemed to end happily when Jammeh called Barrow and graciously conceded. Seemed like the old man just had had enough.

But it just wasn’t that easy.

Their Fault

December 13, 2016December 13, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

their-fault Xenophobia infects, kills and spreads like any biological virus: “Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba … speaks loudly about illegal foreigners and tells them to leave his city … because of the right-wing frenzy whipped up by Trump.”

A pandemic spreads until it dies out: It’s not reversible. Trump may have softened his xenophobic rhetoric in the U.S., but it’s only growing in South Africa.

Words Matter

December 12, 2016December 12, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

trumprussianelection Tanzania has begun issuing new licenses for radio stations, but it’s forbid broadcasting in local languages.

The decision is just one more technique occuring worldwide as authorities grapple with fake news. In Tanzania anyway, fake news is presumed harder to propagate in English or Kiswahili, the country’s two official languages. Now why would that be?

The New World

December 9, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

trumpsamir Trump’s America is just like many other world power centers, and Africa’s dean of communism sees this as the wonderful start of an irreversible change. According to Samir Amin, you can throw out the Democratic Party with the Republicans; in fact, America as we’ve known it for 2½ centuries is over.

Listen to the old man. Marxism and communism still carry components that could be helpful to us today, just like there are good components in both contemporary conservative and liberal ideologies. Just beware. These are troubled times, but they are also very new and unprecedented times.

Living Proof

December 8, 2016December 8, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

stonebwoy Ditch the Grammy’s Tuesday. The story of how two African nominees squeaked onto the list says it all.

Dear reader, please beware that all my anxieties and fears and sleepless nights following November 8 will now be dumped onto the American music industry.

Blasting Away!

December 5, 2016December 5, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

demoschmac Is it a glimmer of hope or a foggy masquerade? Weekend elections in Europe and Africa suggest the former, but really, is the conservative populist movement terrifying the world coming to such a quick end?

The expected winners of Austria and The Gambia’s presidential elections, both die-hard if ruthless populists, were soundly defeated. Look to Africa for the greater meaning.

For certain, polling worldwide doesn’t work, anymore. That doesn’t mean you should just “forget about the predictions” because the predictions will tell you something very important.

A Thousand Words

November 29, 2016November 29, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

ugandapicturewords Anyone taking a picture is arrested or shot. Then, Facebook takes down the pictures of the courageous who manage to post the massacre. A Kenyan TV journalist is charged with “abetting terrorism” for taking … TV video.

And most noteworthy of all, the organizer of the massacre, self-imposed Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni poses for a “government picture” in sunny South Africa with its despised leader, Jacob Zuma. You can truly wonder in Trumpian vernacular, “What the f*#! is happening in the world today!”

Genocide in Uganda?

November 28, 2016November 28, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

ugandaviolence Major violence erupted in Uganda over the weekend. This morning the U.S. embassy warned travelers intending to visit the west of the country which includes its major tourist attractions.

The country’s major opposition leader, Kifefe Besigye, tweeted the photo shown above with the caption, “Genocide in Kasese.” News media have not confirmed it.

The worst violence in Uganda’s modern history follows the dictator’s self-installation Thursday for a fifth term as president, and then his implementation of several draconian laws including an anti-gay measure that some believe was withheld until Trump seemed securely in power.

Crashing Ceese

November 22, 2016November 22, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

maliii The big news yesterday about France’s election is prophetically linked to yesterday’s buried news of the collapse of Mali’s election.

Results are not yet known, they will never be, for the 12,000 local and regional Mali officials. Cast ballots were burned, stolen and even blown up by jihadists. In the rebellious north most polling places never even opened.

Yesterday I showed Mali as the quintessential example of climate change and rapid development sabotaging African society. The tragedy goes much further: Soon it will threaten France. Ultimately it will kill Trumpism.

Triumphant Tutu

November 15, 2016November 15, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

tutu One of the world’s gentlest, most thoughtful and consequential men is sick and dying but more importantly, suffering. After 85 years he has changed his mind: euthanasia is right.

Desmond Tutu, the revered Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Laureate and winner of countless other peace prizes including America’s Presidential Medal of Freedom, is above all a deeply religious, non-violent man. His prolonged sickness broke his resolve against euthanasia two years ago when he wrote in an Op-Ed in the Guardian “I have been fortunate to spend my life working for dignity for the living. Now I wish to apply my mind to the issue of dignity for the dying.”

Tutu’s arguments are not religious ones, and that is what has attracted me to his thinking. His arguments are practical, political.

No Change … Again

November 14, 2016November 14, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 7 Comments

nochange Look, it’s happening all over the world. I’m going to compare two places I know, South Africa and the U.S.

South African society is just beginning to seriously hurt about a year after a similar sort of political turmoil hit them to our Trump election, the re-election of a clearly incompetent executive that an entrenched political party was then only partially able to control.

Year-long protests nearly shut down the country’s educational system and the economy has started to decline much more seriously than globally or for other African countries. About a year ahead of the U.S. in terms of political change, this could foreshadow the U.S.

Into the Forest

November 9, 2016November 9, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

intotheforest No one knows what to expect from President Trump, so whether you’re a Kenyan tea farmer or an American software engineer or a South African financial consultant … suspend your fears. What he said in this incredibly nasty election, the alleged horrors of his past – forget. Elections are reality TV, and he knew better than any how to exploit that.

But everyone knows what to expect from a united conservative, Republican government. If that government holds under Trump – and that’s not certain – my predictions are clear:

Two Clear Choices

November 8, 2016November 8, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

electionday Diversity vs. Human Rights is the great battle of our time. Elections are defined by them. They are so sacrosanct that they defy the necessary compromises for functioning democracies.

Society gets strained, broken, then destroyed.

That’s what I see happening in America, today, as it has already happened in most newer emerging countries like those I know in Africa. But exactly how far have Americans gone towards destruction?

The Whole World Weeps

November 7, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

thewholeworldweeps The “world’s on edge” was the headline in South Africa yesterday, but I could have plucked it from virtually any corner of the world.

Most Americans don’t care what the rest of the world thinks, including Democrats and even Bernie supporters. I think of all the sadness I feel at this election, this is the greatest.

It proves that we are egocentric if narcissistic, but most importantly, grade school dumb. That may be fine for writing an involuted gaming app; it’ll kill you – and everybody else – in the real world.