Africa’s Take on Trump

December 8, 2015December 8, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

Africa, like the U.S., is beginning to take Trump seriously. It’s no longer a fluke. It’s a nightmare.

“There is more to Trump than attention-grabbing outrage,” one of Nairobi’s main radio stations broadcast yesterday.

“Trump’s egregious widespread insults and total fabrications [are] on a gargantuan scale,” South Africa’s Mail & Guardian writes today.

The image above comparing Trump to Hitler was tweeted by a 20-year old in Malaysia, and was retweeted thousands of times around South Africa until one of the country’s main news services, IOL-Business, picked it up as a leader on a story about Trump.

There’s a lot of lofty debate whether Trump is like Hitler, following the provocative Washington Post’s opinion piece claiming so.

Frankly, I don’t think Africans care much whether Trump is like Hitler.

There’s always a crazy, even a veritably unhinged political leader. But it’s the texture of the popular support among the locals that defines the era.

I think what Africans like many of us are exploring is the confusion with Trump’s support, seemingly unfathomable, as was Hitler’s in his early days.

A reporter for a Nigerian newspaper was at Trump’s South Carolina rally last night. He wrote:

“Mr Trump supporters cheered and shouted in support… Rod Weader, a 68-year-old real estate agent from North Charleston …said he agreed with Mr Trump’s plans ‘150 per cent’.”

Africans have been preached to for several generations about the importance of democracy to a moral society.

Kenya’s main newspaper, the Daily Nation, summed up the paradigm brilliantly yesterday:

“If a clown like Donald Trump can campaign for the presidency, Rwanda is better off giving Kagame a third term as he has brought about a significant turnaround for his country.”

Paul Kagame is Rwanda’s dictator, nurtured by France and the U.S. because he has imposed peace on the troubled country, albeit as ruthlessly as Stalin. Technically, the constitution rammed down Rwandans’ throats in 1994 by the U.S. and France prohibits Kagame from a further term. Hm. Some conundrum, eh?

That is only one of many conundrums of democracy. People convinced to vote against their self-interest, people manipulated by a Trump to channel legitimate anger in immoral directions, dumbing down issues until they are meaningless … these all emasculate democracy.

Donald Trump brings them into stark relief in the home of modern democracy, America.

Should I say: it gives democracy a bad name?

Or should we own up to the fact that people not voting, and people voting without adequately studying the complex issues of the day, and an electorate about as stupid as you can imagine because those who weren’t stupid withdrew public educational support for two generations are the real culprits?

Democracy is not automatic. It must be earned and nurtured. To my African friends all I can say is take heed:

Donald Trump is in some ways like Adolf Hitler. When power flounders the shark attacks. A poorly stoked and nurtured democracy is the best place anywhere for strongmen to succeed.

Here for a Refund

November 3, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

South Africa’s student protests just won’t stop. They’re sweeping across the country and are getting serious. Is this the sixties for South Africa?

“Our parents were sold dreams in 1994,” a student leader told the Economist. “We’re here for a refund.”

A third of all South Africans are between 10 and 24 years old, born after the end of apartheid and now attending school at some level subsidized by government.

The protests began about a month ago at the country’s most prestigious science university, Witts, over an announced 10% increase in student tuition. In South Africa all higher universities are funded by the federal government, a similar role to the state governments here.

After two weeks of violent protests, #FeesMustFall resulted in South African President Zuma rescinding all fee increases … for this year.

That barely dampened the moment. Right now protests are continuing at virtually every higher institution in the country, with particularly large and volatile demonstrations in KwaZulu Natal and the Western Cape, but events are changing rapidly.

The country’s most prestigious liberal arts university, UCT (University of Cape Town), was one of the few where classes resumed today following a humiliating apology by its chief executive to students, although small protests continued on campus as well as at Parliament. But in most places in the country, higher education is at a dead stop.

After Zuma announced the rescinding of all fee increases, the protest issues spread like wild fire. “Outsourcing” university workers has now been reversed at the UCT and the Witts CEO has agreed “in principle.”

This is a fundamental issue in South Africa. Several years ago universities discovered huge budget savings if employees previously hired for maintenance, food service, transportation – virtually every industry – were outsourced to large companies.

The universities insisted the large companies hire the existing university employees, which they did, but within a few years benefits, wages and contract negotiations were seriously reduced.

Government subsidies for education based on income are equally under fire, not because students disapprove of the principle, but because it has been so unevenly applied.

The government’s protocol for determining income is rife with corruption and nepotism, often unfairly subsidizing those who are quite affluent while ignoring truly poor students. More interestingly, students are also demanding an end to the notion of minimum performance in secondary schools as a metric for determining subsidies.

What I find so interesting about all of this is that it brings back some deep memories of my own college career which for me was dominated by the anti-War protests.

But as I became more and more involved as a student in those protests, I also became involved in the Civil Rights and Womens movements.

“Trouble had been brewing on campuses for months,” the Economist reports.

The magazine concludes that current protests are congealing into the all-powerful issue of racism, reporting that demonstrators “complain that universities have too few black staff or students. This is true, but largely because, thanks to terrible schools, black South Africans still do much worse in exams than whites, something the ANC has failed to fix.”

Since the end of apartheid the ANC has ruled South Africa, winning election after election, yet it is widely blamed throughout the country for this current and many other predicaments. Zuma’s cavalier flip-flop on fees, which could push the government debt to untenable levels, is typical of the knee-jerking, lack of policy that today characterizes ANC governance.

In the last election the 18-24 year old crowd hardly voted at all.

I don’t think that will be the case the next time around.

Life Goes On

October 30, 2015October 30, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Tanzania’s president-elect John Magufuli is the best outcome from an election that was free-and-fair enough. The disgruntled country seems to agree.

The exception is Zanzibar, where tensions are rising. Travelers should avoid Zanzibar now. The rest of the country went back to work, today. There were few celebrations even in the strongholds of the ruling party. Winners seem to know how seriously disappointed the opposition is.

Losers seem to be accepting the outcome.

Zanzibar is different and always has been. The “marriage” of the independent countries of Zanzibar and Tanganyika in 1964 has never been fully accomplished. The island has a very autonomous government, but in the last several cycles the mainland’s ruling CCM party has held power even there.

This year the island opposition claimed the election count was fraudulent, violence erupted and was quickly contained by what seemed to have been a premeditated arrangement between mainland authorities and those supporting the CCM candidates.

Shortly thereafter the Election Commission annulled the election. Today the island is very tense. Almost exclusively Muslim, Friday is normally a rest day. The island, though, is so heavily invested in tourism a normal Friday would have had far more activity than reported today in Stone Town, the island’s only city.

International observers give the election a passing grade without too much enthusiasm because of the Zanzibar annulment. Foreign observers generally concluded several days ago that that was a mistake.

It was an election of surprising switches and previously unimagined allegiances. Tanzania’s Shakespearean politics twisted onto itself creating a contest between two men who had been close friends and colleagues for years, loyal leaders of the CCM with ideologies and policies that were essentially identical.

Since neither had any substantive difference with the other, both let the electorate fashion their difference: the supporters of each claimed only their standard bearer would reduce the enormous corruption of the country which denies so many millions the basic services they need.

Magufuli was a dark horse from the ruling party. His opponent, Edward Lowassa, was expected to be the ruling party’s candidate virtually until Magufuli was chosen instead.

Lowassa comes from the better developed and more rebellious north, so the north was ecstatic when he defected from the ruling party to join Chadema, the main opposition based in the north. Then within days of realigning his allegiances he brought four other opposition parties into a giant opposition to become the first real challenge to CCM’s near 60 years of ruling Tanzania.

Just the simple idea that the ruling party might be undone sent young and educated Tanzanians into the stratospheres of extreme hope. There was no debate over the complicated new constitution, no question about taxes or budget or even schools – which is normally a very important issue, no scrutiny of the fact that Lowassa and Magufuli dropped from the same tree.

No one charged Lowassa with sour grapes for having been dumped by his life-long party. His own scandalous past in that party, his confession to playing a major role in a hundred-million dollar aid scam that resulted in his being fired as prime minister, was hardly mentioned.

Instead, the entire point of the election devolved into nothing more than the possibility that the ruling elite might be defeated, albeit by … one of its own.

Well, it wasn’t. And despite unusually numerous election irregularities, all the outside observers are coming to the conclusion that after serious qualifications to the notion of “free and fair,” the election really does represent the will of the people.

John Magufuli is a good guy. I would have voted for him over Lowassa, simply because to this moment Magufuli remains uncorrupt if complicit with the corruption that suffuses his colleagues. Lowassa is a confessed crook.

Magufuli has worked his way up the ladder of political succession step-by-step over many years. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry. He’s known for his corruption-busting antics, including hiding in situations to bust unsuspecting corrupt policemen that wander near him unawares.

He comes into office with all the credentials that hopeful Tanzanians actually say they want. But then again so have past presidents like the current one, Jakaya Kikwete. A few years into the role and the glitter is shed, and a poor elected official suddenly has Swiss bank accounts and shares in world hotel chains.

All Tanzania can hope is that this pattern of good guys turning bad might be less easy to do in today’s growing internet world, especially with Tanzania’s youth so currently fired up.

So skeptical but satisfied. Like the country, resigned to what hope remains.

Winter Winner

October 29, 2015October 29, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Tanzania’s ruling party’s candidate has won the presidential election, the opposition has rejected the results, and the election in Zanzibar has been annulled.

The Election Commission declared John Magufuli the next president with 67% of the popular vote just as the business day in Tanzania ended.

The country is tenser than ever. The slow live announcement of constituency results was viewed suspiciously by the European Union whose election observers issued a preliminary negative report on the validity of the election.

America expressed “alarm” with the Zanzibar annulment.

Normally a mouthpiece for all East African leaders in power, the EAC (East African Community) commission watching the election said it was “concerned” with the large number of disputes so far filed.

Earlier, the main opposition party UKAWA announced it was rejecting whatever outcome would be announced. German radio opined, “Transparency is crucial. Tanzania, which has been a force for stability and peace for decades, cannot be allowed to descend into chaos.”

Were this Kenya or South Africa, the situation would represent serious potential violence. I don’t think it does in Tanzania.

The opposition was hastily put together, an unlikely amalgam of disparate parties. It is itself fractured, and I just don’t think its leaders are capable of organizing any real protest.

A rerunning of the election in Zanzibar cannot change the presidential outcome. Even if every Zanzibari vote was for the opposition it would move the percentages less than 2%. (Zanzibar’s population is 1.3 million of the country’s 53.6 million.)

Nevertheless, the decision to annul the Zanzibari election squarely places it in the center of any violent reaction that may now develop in the country. The fact that nearly an entire day has now passed since the election was officially annulled there, and that violent reaction and police response has been less than expected…

… suggests to me that the party in power will prevail, that some violence will occur for a rather strung out period, but that within a month Tanzanians will have settled into a terrible disquiet of acceptance.

I have many Tanzanian friends on Facebook. Before the election Facebook and other social media were exploding with election bombast. Today it’s eerily quiet.

Night is descending on a freakishly bleak Tanzania. More tomorrow.

Messy Mashujaa

October 20, 2015October 20, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

It’s “Heroes’ Day” in Kenya, Mashujaa Day, and one of my Kenyan heros, journalist Macharia Gaitho, just displayed our time’s most painful paradigm: hypocrisy.

Like many long-lasting, courageous journalists in Kenya Gaitho is analytical and penetrating, seemingly nontribal, usually grumpy but without fail calls a spade a spade.

Today he berated his country’s national holiday in its most widely read newspaper:

“Unfortunately, we no longer celebrate our mashujaa, our heroes. We celebrate tyrants and thieves.”

Mashujaa Day was a social compromise of Kenya’s fabulous 2010 Constitution. Prior to then, “Kenyatta Day” and “Moi Day” were celebrated much as Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays were once celebrated separately here.

Jomo Kenyatta was the country’s first president and Daniel arap Moi was its second. Mashujaa Day combines them, as we combined our presidents’ birthdays into Presidents’ Day, but goes further than we have.

Mashujaa Day extends the celebration to the average bloke who perhaps without any notice helped to create a better Kenya through self-sacrifice. This addendum to the celebration was added because Kenyatta and Moi represent the two most powerful (although often opposing) tribes without acknowledging the remaining 40% of Kenyans.

“Mr Kenyatta … thought Kenya owed him all its riches and spent a bit too much time ensuring perpetual riches for his heirs.

“The Moi regime … [was] one [of] a rapacious orgy of slash-and-burn economics.”

Here’s what’s important in Gaitho’s roast of his national holiday: For some at first inexplicable reason, he ends today’s column (after seven asterisks) with the following:

“I really fail to understand the Obama doctrine. Syria and Iraq are in danger of falling to Isis, that monstrous Islamic supremacist movement spreading its tentacles across the region and beyond.

“But instead of backing the Syrian government against the monster, President Obama insists on a self-defeatist support for the armed rebellion against President Bashir al-Assad, that he assumes can also be used to fight Isis.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it, Cousin Barry. On this one I am with Russian President Vladimir Putin, if his military intervention is what will strengthen Assad and keep terrorists from our shores.”

Gaitho is right, history is turning out to harshly judge Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi. They were not the heroes “Heroes’ Day” intended to praise. And I’m pretty sure Gaitho will agree that neither is Bashir al-Assad.

For the record I don’t support the Obama policy in Syria, which is widely supported here. I really believe we should cut and run, and there are few on either side of our gaping American political divide who join me.

But I can’t understand Gaitho’s criticism of his first two presidents for their failure at fair governance when the real legacy of Kenyatta and Moi was that they kept the country stable and so much so that it was protected from outside forces.

So why does Gaitho now support Assad for the same reason?

Alas, heroes crumble easily in today’s extraordinarily complex world.

Terrorism Today

October 19, 2015October 19, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Four countries in sub-Saharan Africa are at increased risk of terrorism: Uganda, Ethiopia, Burundi and the Central African Republic.

The warning is issued by the 2014 Global Terrorism Index, a massive compilation of each year’s terrorist incidents.

The report is good news for Kenya, continuing good news for Tanzania and all the rest of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the index has only been produced for the last five years, its track record so far is good.

Uganda and Ethiopia’s increased risk is linked directly to their increased authoritarianism. Burundi is essentially an ethnic conflict.

In fact last week Uganda’s principal opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, was arrested and put under house arrest to end his organizing protest rallies. This stands in marked contrast, for example, with Tanzania’s heated up but very free presidential election and Kenya’s exceptional transparency in government.

The GTI is by some measure overly thorough and as a result some of its lesser predictions might be seen as premature, but the overall index suggesting increased or decreased terrorism will be used in critical decisions by many global businesses including tour companies.

The index is not without controversy, since it refuses to view Israel and Palestine with the same parameters as the rest of the world. The much less used but competing British index, the Verisk/Maplecroft Terrorism Dashboard actually suggests an increased terrorism risk in Nairobi.

The GTI report is less of a chronology of terrorist events than it is a measure of those events’ impact on the country. In other words larger economies more capable of shrugging off terrorist incidents, like the United States, will be less impacted by terrorism than smaller economies like Kenya.

As a result Kenya continues to be seriously impacted by terrorism, because the index is a 5-year weighted average, and Kenya’s terrorists incidents in 2008-2013 included severe attacks like the Westgate Mall.

From this perspective Kenya ranks the 13th most impacted in the world of the 162 countries studied, compared to the U.S.’ 30th, even though there were more actual deaths and injuries in the U.S. considered terrorism than in Kenya.

Terrorism as defined by the GTI includes such acts as school shootings.

The bottom line is that mayhem from terrorism is increasing substantially, although localized and heavily a result of the ongoing conflicts in the Mideast. GTI dissects nine organizations it has determined are the main terrorist organizations worldwide:

Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Al-Qaida in Iraq & Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, ISIS, The Taliban in Pakistan, Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Al-Shabab and Boko Haram.

(Currently, the Tamil Tigers have signed a peace agreement in Sri Lanka, Al-Shabab is almost gone and Boko Haram is retreating in Nigeria. That leaves today’s principal terrorist organizations all from the Mideast.)

Terrorism is as old as time itself. Were the GTI Index to be applied to all the years since the American Revolution, it’s likely that America would vie with the Mideast for the most terrorism overall.

Our revolution, Indian wars, Civil War, presidential and other political assassinations and today’s contemporary school shootings would likely add up to as much all the trouble over that same time in Africa.

What’s changed is technology and the likelihood that every person with a smart phone knows what bad things are happening where and when. That’s good for the possible resolution of bad things, if you believe as I do that we are all basically good.

But it causes us great angst when forced to try to understand such wanton harm. My novel, Chasm Gorge, tries to help you understand that.

There was a time when those who considered themselves good easily sheltered themselves from those they considered evil. Today, what is “good” and what is “evil,” as well as the ability to “shield” onself, are no longer quite as certain as in the old days.

Terrorism is as much an intellectual challenge to understand as a political challenge to stop.

The darker the red, the more impact from terrorism.

Queen to Pawn! Check!

October 9, 2015October 11, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 4 Comments

The high profile arrest of a Chinese woman for ivory trading in Tanzania means a lot more than just the arrest of a Chinese woman for ivory trading in Tanzania.

Her arrest is proof that the ruling party in power in Tanzania fears losing the national elections in two weeks. Probably even worse is the naivete of conservation organization’s glee at her capture:

Yesterday conservation groups went ape over the arrest of Yang Feng Glan, the 67-year old vice president of the Tanzania China-Africa business council, a resident of Tanzania since the mid 1970s.

The Elephant Action League calls her the ‘Queen of Ivory:’

“She has been trafficking ivory since at least 2006, working with the most high-ranking poachers in the country and in the region.”

Glan is not new to Tanzanians and clearly her crimes have been known for some time. Remarkable, isn’t it, that the police superintendent announced yesterday that she’s confessed to everything.

This means that she won’t be presenting a defense. There will not be lawyers to assist her in allocating the blame. She won’t be “naming names.”

It was all her fault, all 30,000 elephants or so, all hundreds of thousands of tons of ivory, all immigration and customs passes … she did it all herself, and she’s confessed.

No need to question any officials now who might have approved such important matters as unmarked cargo bins, or police who never checked those giant warehouses down by the dock, or those wildlife officials who left butchered elephants lying in the veld to be investigated not by forensic detectives but striped hyaenas. They’re all off the hook, now. Fang confessed and so the issue of elephant poaching and the illegal ivory trade…

… won’t disrupt the upcoming October 25 national elections.

And I’ll bet my bottom dollar that Mrs. Fang won’t be sentenced for her confessed crimes before the elections are over, and that the complexity of the deals over her “confession” will haunt politicians on all sides for years to come.

These idiot politicians are making deals with the devil, and I can’t wait to see how it pans out. For the time being, of course, all they can see are the ballot boxes on October 25.

That’s what I think is the key to all of this. The party in power is in trouble for the first time since independence. One of the greatest bastions of support for the opposition is in the country’s north where elephant populations are safe and well protected, where tourism is so important.

Last month a hastily arranged seminar by local conservationists and journalists followed the ruling party’s promise to double tourism revenue if elected.

It received wide publicity and finally elevated conservation and the elephant problem into the national consciousness.

“I need conservation and the future of tourism to be part of election issues,” said the Director of the Serengeti Preservation Foundation (SPF), Meyasi Mollel.

“Conservation is a key issue in Tanzania, because the country’s economy is entirely based on natural resources. So for political parties to ignore conservation is a grave mistake,” Adam Ihucha, a brave journalist for the East African, said while keynoting the conference.

Note that the ruling party recently banned then unbanned his publication.

So in the last month as the election heats up, so finally did the conservation crisis in the country. That crisis is nearly entirely composed of the decimation of elephants in the center of the country, which is a stronghold of the ruling party.

If the ruling party loses the center of the country, it loses the election.

So the Queen of Ivory is nicely behind bars, has confessed, and guess what, won’t have to say a single other thing.

At least not until October 26.

Breaking Up is Hard To Do

October 6, 2015October 10, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Many believe Tanzania’s elections in three weeks will be violent. I’m not so sure.

The contest between the presidential candidate of the party that has ruled Tanzania since inception, John Magufuli, and the first viable challenger ever, Edward Lowassa, is in many ways a setup for violence.

Lowassa is a former prime minister in the ruling party and until July one of its elites. Many expected he would be anointed the new presidential candidate, including himself. When Magufuli was chosen instead, Lowassa united four opposition parties that had been at each others’ throats for decades and became the single candidate of the opposition.

Lowassa is not a nice guy. Whether or not he really was responsible for one of the most scandalous incidents in his country, he was fully aware of it.

Yet he has the support of many in Tanzania who are fed up with the one-party state and – at least in situ – he represents the first real break with that ideology.

The only reason I concede violence is plausible is because of the recent emergence of militias to “protect” the different party candidates.

“Tanzania has been one of Africa’s most peaceful countries …and has been regarded … as one of the continent’s strongest democracies. A close and hotly contested election might challenge both of those assumptions,” writes former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania, Johnnie Carson.

The respected and somewhat leftist U.S. media magazine, The Hill, carried an op-ed recently from the chairman of the ruling Tanzanian party that upped the tone for the election, claiming “If [opposition candidate] Lowassa … wins, then the country stands to become a new front for terrorists.”

Many of us felt The Hill was irresponsible publishing the piece, because the assertion is so ridiculous it exceeds even those of Donald Trump.

Nathalie Arnold Koenings, an African anthropologist writing in African Arguments, dismissed the article as a purely an incendiary swipe at the opposition, countering:

“As to the possibility of violence erupting in the upcoming elections, if there is extremism to fear in Tanzania it may be that of a ruling party bent on suppressing the political will of its citizens.”

Carson elaborates: “Questions have also been raised about… replac[ing] the very experienced Director of Elections with a novice election chief, who might be more easily manipulated.”

Hilary Matfess of the National Defense University listed a series of recent government actions suggesting a premeditated stricture of the political life in the country, including clamps on freedom of the press and use of the internet, to give the ruling party an unfair advantage.

It’s the militias which are troubling. Zanzibar has often erupted in violence after national elections, in part because of the gunshot marriage between it and the then country of Tanganyika that formed the current Tanzania, and for more contemporary reasons that pit its near universally Muslim population against mainland Tanzania’s Christians.

But never before have opposition parties or candidates on the mainland organized their own protective militias.

It reeks of Kenya’s 2007 violence following its closely contested election.

Nevertheless, I still see a peaceful outcome for several reasons:

First, I don’t think the opposition will win. Much of the current party‘s power is certain to be eroded as many opposition members are elected to Parliament, as I’m certain they will be. But the main party is so entrenched in most of mainland Tanzania, it’s hard to see the only national candidate, the President, coming from other than the ruling party.

Second, I think a lot of Tanzanians – like me – are disappointed that for the first chance ever to oust the main party, the leader assuming the charge was until July a part of the main party! And probably as corrupt as all the others he now contests.

So what would really change?

So ennui and apathy may result in a low turnout, favoring the party in power.

But stay tuned. I’ll stay on top of it.

Pick The Winner

October 1, 2015October 1, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The guru of anti-capitalism has received a warm welcome in South Africa in advance of his Saturday lecture in Soweto.

The young French economist rocked the world last year with his book, “Capitalism in the 21st Century,” claiming that income inequality is intrinsic to capitalism.

Thomas Piketty will deliver the prestigious Nelson Mandela annual lecture this weekend. He follows such eminent persons as Bill Clinton and Kofi Anan, taking a stage intended to highlight South Africa in the forefront of global development.

Piketty’s explanation for income inequality caught the economist world by surprise last year, leaving many jaws still open. His rather simple thesis is that accumulated wealth, capital, will always grow faster than the growth of the community in which that capital is held.

In other words, get rich just by accumulating wealth and renivesting it.

Piketty contends this works regardless of your financial acumen, regardless that the world around your bank account might be in a depression, and regardless of the particular currency in which your capital is held.

In other words, do nothing but reinvest.

Remember, this is a macro idea. Don’t go out and put all your marbles in the penny stock offering just appearing in your inbox. It isn’t true for every unique, individual case, but Piketty believes in the global context, it always works. There will never be enough bad unique individual cases to reverse the overall thesis.

Moreover, even if your portfolio is linked to the S&P, if the economy sinks 3% and your portfolio tumbles only 2.5%, that’s not exactly a compelling reason to embrace his theories.

Piketty therefore has no strong message for personal investors. His message is much more poignant: in today’s capitalist world, he explains why the rich get richer while the poor get poorer… no matter what.

Needless to say, this reportedly shy and now overwhelmed scientist has not received an especially welcoming reception by his peers here. Paul Krugman is an exception, embracing what he calls the Piketty “phenomenon.”

Robert Reich, now an announced supporter of Hillary Clinton, likes him …. sort of.

Except for those two, though, most American economists are in the throes of trying to dissect Piketty’s simplicity for the devil detail, even while they fear its truth.

So Thomas Piketty hasn’t been invited to give a lecture here.

Piketty’s own data for South Africa shows that between 1910 and 1950, the top 1% took home between 22% and 25% of the national income. Though this declined to 11%-12% between 1950 and 1980, the alarming finding is that it has risen again to between 16% and 18% today.

That isn’t as bad as the chart for America from Wikipedia shown to the right. But, of course, America is the bastion of capitalism, so it stands to reason that Piketty’s theories would be most accentuated here.

So should I find it remarkable that it is a much smaller economy, albeit a very capitalist one like South Africa, that embraces Piketty?

No, because while in America the ignorant who hold much of the wealth are fostering greater ignorance, in the rest of the world the ignorant are becoming increasingly educated and powerful.

“Globally, we have rejected the equal sharing of misery that was the result of the socialist experiment,” the editor of South Africa’s top financial newspaper, Tim Cohen, wrote this week. Yet: “Personally, I find Piketty’s ideas fascinating…what I think is really unassailable is his central notion that … the disparity between economic growth and investment growth … is the foundation of inequality.”

I don’t think the disagreements over Piketty’s so obvious thesis are as complicated as critics suggest.

Economists like Cohen who embrace Piketty, like most of the South Africans, don’t want inequality. They might cherish it as much as Donald Trump, but they know in their society that it is the fuel of bloody revolution.

Economists like Paul Krugman embrace Piketty because they’re socialists who hate inequality with a passion.

Robert Reich doesn’t like inequality, but he likes Hillary, he likes being a capitalist Secretary of the Treasury and he’ll search till hell freezes over for some exception to the notion. Economists writing in The National Review know Piketty is right … and want it to stay that way.

Americans to a man are not pressed like South Africans. Our society is too stable. But when capitalism as practiced here in America begins to fall because of forward thinking from places like South Africa, we’ll have to pivot.

I don’t think that day is too far away.

Papal Productivity

September 24, 2015September 24, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Persons who consider themselves religious are declining in the world and Africa. But did you know that for the first time there are now more Catholics in East Africa than Protestants. Why do you think?

Catholics now make up approximately 18.0% of East Africa’s 194 million people, while Protestants have declined to 16.4%. This is the first survey ever where East African Protestants numbered fewer than Catholics.

Otherwise, there isn’t much good news for Christianity in Africa. Christianity continent-wide is declining significantly relative to Islam.

(The raw numbers of Catholics, Protestants and of course Muslims is all on the increase, and that’s usually what you hear from them. But relative to an even faster growing overall population, only Muslims are increasing.)

I think Pope Francis helps us understand why Catholics are now ‘outpercentaging’ Protestants: He’s an Hispanic of Italian immigrants, progressive politically, and socially and scientifically aware; and this mirrors many young Africans.

A increasingly large portion of Africans are not born where there parents and grandparents were. The massive dislocations of African populations are due mostly to a huge migration into urban areas from rural ones, although a small yet significant portion is a growing number of political refugees.

Young Africans are politically progressive, as demonstrated by the growingly powerful youth political movements in places like Kenya and South Africa, and they likely understand and embrace climate change, evolution, and even such arcane science as stem cell research.

This positions them as a society much like Pope Francis. Of course this begs the larger question, why? As a nonreligious person, I feel confident in suggesting an objective answer:

Redistribution of wealth, stability, and a sense of pride (which I concede is not generally considered religious) I think are the three driving factors. Catholics do much better than Protestants with these, and Muslims do much better than Christians.

I’m not suggesting these are the banner ideals for a perfect society. Indeed, freedom vies constantly with stability in Africa, and freedom does not seem to be a religious virtue but it is definitely one of mine. But in societies so terribly ravaged by war and strife for so long, stability often trumps freedom.

The modern Christian religions of Africa were determined in the mid 19th Century when European leaders eked out the continent not just for political control, but also religious control.

At that time Protestants got the biggest piece of the pie, particularly in East Africa where august men like David Livingstone gained not just the respect of the world, but of the local populations.

When independence came to Africa, many cities, towns and street names were changed back to African names from Leopoldville, Elizabeth Lane, Kaiserstrasse. But not changed were streets and towns named “Livingstone.”

Things began to shift shortly after independence swept the continent in the 1960s.

Protestantism is distinctly conservative relative to Catholicism, and even without any tenants associated to the meaning of “independence,” European Protestants warned against awarding independence to the colonies while European Catholics welcomed it.

That rather set the stage, and the Cold War accelerated protestants’ decline even more. The end of the Cold War also was another significant point, when western nations in a moment withdrew their support for much of Africa. Alas, Muslims stepped in and have never stepped out.

From my point of view, Catholic and Muslim charity does more good than protestant charity. This is simply because Catholic and Muslim charity is centrally organized while most protestant charity is composed of a multitude of small, independent projects from independent church communities abroad.

As readers of this blog know, I find it hard to embrace most charity in Africa, believing very strongly that only government-to-government assistance will ever succeed.

And that’s also why Muslim and Catholic charities are better viewed in Africa than protestant ones. Nearly two-thirds of the funds distributed by Catholic charities come from government grants. Protestant charities are reluctant, often adamantly opposed to government funding.

Government funding is much larger and comes with many more strings attached than individual church donations, and as a result, is coordinated throughout the entire spectrum of foreign aid. That makes Catholic charity far more efficacious than Protestant.

Even countries that are exceptionally protestant, like South Africa, have followed the current pope’s progressive actions with admiration. There is no single protestant leader in the world, nor really any single Muslim leader.

Personally I remain worried and skeptical of organized religion. But like many Africans, I follow Pope Francis with enormous admiration.

Undeniably Ugandan

September 22, 2015September 22, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Marriage is now … ‘nonrefundable’ in Uganda. This brings a whole new perspective to trophy wives.

The irony here is that Ugandan womens’ rights groups celebrated this Ugandan Supreme Court Decision, once again proving that Uganda is a mirror universe of the modern day.

Mifumi is a much needed Ugandan NGO that works principally against domestic violence. SALVE international reports that 68% of Ugandan women 15-49 years old suffer serious domestic violence.

This is roughly twice the continent’s average.

The litigation Mifumi brought to the Ugandan Supreme Court was actually to make bride price illegal, essentially ending it. Instead the Supreme Court made the practice nonrefundable. In Uganda and other similar socially transitional societies, if the woman divorces her husband the bride price is refunded.

It’s hard for me to understand how Mifumi thinks this ruling is a victory, as it is anything but. It further institutionalizes a primitive custom in modern garb.

Paying the women’s parents a certain sum in order to marry their daughter is rooted in the folkways of almost all traditional peoples. But the foundation of these folkways is the institutionalized inferiority of women to men. Bride price is simply a component of this larger perception.

Now the court is telling its citizens to look twice before acting, because the act is so important it can’t be undone.

In more modern cultures like ours the man proposing, the man giving the ring, the man standing by the religious leader waiting for his bride to be presented to him … all are vestiges of these early discriminations against women, and Uganda has begun canonizing them in modern terms.

Uganda is one of the saddest stories in Africa, a once vibrant and intelligent nation that was in large part shepherded into a land of super conservatism by American republican leaders.

Click here to begin reading that lengthy story which among other bad outcomes led to the “Kill the Gay” laws that have made the country so infamous.

But like Donald Trump playing to his constituencies’ fears and immoralities, the Ugandan president has navigated his stay in power by playing to the primitive side of his countrymen.

The Ugandan Supreme Court, like all institutions in the country, is a sham controlled by the president. Its August decision on bride price reflects Museveni’s beliefs exactly.

Museveni’s victory is greater than he expected. Now even the primary womens advocacy NGO is in his camp.

Burkina Volte or Faso?

September 21, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The crisis in little understood Burkina Faso is not over because apparently the Arab Spring that exploded in early 2011 is not over.

No one knows this better than the dictatorial leaders remaining in Africa who control the African Union (AU) which this time was instrumental in demanding that the Burkina coup leaders give up and go home.

Let me explain.

About a year ago, the old Burkina dictator of 27 years, Blaise Compaoré, was forced to flee the country by nothing more than spontaneous street demonstrations.

No one much noticed because Burkina Faso, the old Upper Volta, is one of the world’s poorest and smallest countries, a land-locked withering land that lacks any natural resources.

Compaoré didn’t blink an eye when trouble started in Africa in 2011. He didn’t blink an eye when virtually all the countries to his southwest exploded into the horrible Blood Diamond wars of the nineties.

He didn’t blink an eye the last two years when Mali devolved into chaos or when France arrived to put it back together.

Compaoré never had much to do or mismanage. His existence quite frankly was based almost entirely on his agreements (with virtually anyone who asked) to use his centrally land-locked country as a military base.

These included the good guys and the bad guys in the Blood Diamond Wars, the U.S. (for Obama’s increased militarization of Africa), France (for fighting Mali extremists) and Nigeria (for fighting Boko Haram).

So most people were yawning when about a year ago he routinely announced that he would once again stand for President for his sixth five-year term.

Out of the blue street demonstrations organized in Facebook exploded. That’s fascinating.

Did the Arab Spring never die?

A rather self-promoting piece in the Washington Post by a Vassar professor so contends.

Unfortunately the professor spent more time promoting his forthcoming book than he did explaining his proposition, so let me try.

The Arab Spring was not a singular phenomenon in Egypt sparked as Republicans may believe by Obama’s cheer leading. Nor was it confined to the most repressive of regimes and the most liberal, denying entry by any but the most extreme.

It was a cyclical phenomenon more or less linked to generational awakening of having been oppressed.

Maybe, but if it is a cycle — like anything today — it’s massively amplified by social media, the information revolution.

It’s hard, in fact, to point to any previous cycle in Burkina Faso’s history, since following a turbulent era immediately after Independence it was a single entity – Compaoré’s Company, if you will – that held control.

But the individual power provided by Facebook to organize similar sentiment is uncontained by geopolitical borders.

First there’s dissatisfaction, and the Vassar Professor may be right in that being a generational cycle. Then there’s dismay at being unable to remedy the dissatisfaction, after which there has historically in Africa been resignation and an endless stream of strongmen.

No longer. And what’s particularly fascinating about Burkina Faso’s quick devolution into revolution was its equally quick restoration out of revolution.

Hardly a day after military associated with Compaoré successfully staged the coup, they were besieged by virtually every other African leader and institution, good guys and bad guys, to reverse and get out.

The AU was most vociferous, and the AU is controlled by some of history’s most notorious strongmen. Why did they insist on a return to “democracy?”

Because they fear what is happening in Burkina will happen to them.

And, you know what? I think they’re right.

Egypt No-Go

September 15, 2015September 14, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Last week EWT promoted an Egyptian trip. The killing of a tour group by Egyptian security forces Sunday mandates that we now withdraw that offer.

Tourists deaths, kidnappings and violent injuries are way down in Egypt compared to the “good ole days.” A decade ago 12-15 million people annually visited Egypt and about 250 were killed or violently injured each year.

Many of these were horrible terrorist attacks but no one seemed to care or report about it.

Last year ten million people visited Egypt and less than 20 were killed, kidnapped or violently injured.

Sometimes, though, the numbers don’t speak for themselves.

The attack occurred about 220 miles southwest of Cairo in the Western Desert near an oasis called Bahariya (in some reports, shortened to “Bahyira.”) This is an adventure tourism area popular with backpacking tourists.

The Wall Street Journal reported that four tourist vehicles “clearly marked” with “tourists luggage on roof racks” had stopped for a lunch break.

The Journal further reported that there were 21 people in the convoy, including 14 Mexicans, an American, four Egyptian drivers, an Egyptian guide and a police officer along to guarantee that “The convoy was on the route agreed upon with the authorities.”

London’s Guardian newspaper also reported that the group had permits in their passports which were displayed on Facebook.

Al-Jazeera said helicopter gunships fired on the convoy.

It seems clear to me the Egyptian military made a mistake and that the government is now trying to cover for it.

ISIS and offshoot rebel groups are active in the Egyptian deserts, especially after the catastrophe in Libya and the current Cairo crackdown on Muslim extremists.

Ten years ago in the literal carnage that occurred to tourists in Egypt in its heyday, when everyone was going to Egypt carefree and seemingly unconcerned with the mass political killings of tourists that were regularly occurring, it was the bad guys against the tourists.

Now the problem is we won’t know who the bad guy is.

ISIS, for sure, and one way of avoiding them is to not go into the desert. Most tourists should know this.

But now what about the Egyptian government itself? So paranoid that it presumes any four-wheel drive vehicle is an insurgent?

The uncertainty and reactionary paranoia of the Egyptian government radically alters the prospect of tourism in the country. Remember, it’s not just the facts, it’s how people perceive the facts.

And I for one perceive Egypt at the moment like an over zealous fanatic with too much caffeine holding weapons that are far too dangerous for protecting me.

Train Wreck

September 14, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 4 Comments

I step very gingerly on loose railway ties when we bird along the Mississippi River close to the horrible derailment last spring, wondering why Kenya can build a modern railway and we can’t.

The quick answer is that Kenya isn’t: China is, in Kenya. The second quick answer is because Republicans think they can get along just fine without government invested infrastructure.

Kenya’s 380-mile modern, fast standard gauge railway project is “running ahead of schedule.” When fully operating in 2017 it will cut the travel time between the coastal city of Mombasa and megalopolis of Nairobi down to 4 hours.

China is paying for 90% of the $3.8 billion dollar cost with the Kenyan government paying the remainder and then of course paying for the operating costs.

Railways worldwide are usually not profitable … as in the United States. That’s because they don’t have as many derailments.

Railways are understood in the sane, modern world to be a lost leader, a necessary infrastructure that builds commerce and ultimately increases tax revenues enough to justify them while providing the population with a modern service.

Like … a sidewalk.

It’s generally an idea Republicans don’t get: providing their constituencies with infrastructure. They prefer to believe the private sector will know when to build something.

“America’s sparse rail network is so far behind [the] standards in [European] countries,” the Guardian newspaper reported after our spate of spring crashes.

A private sector that prefers to clean up toxic leaking bonfires because it’s less expensive than building something that won’t crash is how America does it, today.

Kenya’s new railway replaces the decrepit “Iron Snake” that was built more than 100 years ago and is essentially useless, constantly breaking down and often taking 19 hours to travel from Mombasa to Nairobi.

The railway was one of the first undertakings of the British colonial regime, recognizing that transportation of goods and people was essential to development. The colonial power pursued similar projects in its Indian and Asian colonies.

Pity we overthrew them too early.

China has significantly withdrawn its investment in Africa since its slowdown this year, but the project was begun early last year and it appears the Chinese will see it through.

Chinese attempts to “cut corners” with a standard Chinese-designed culvert were thwarted in March by Kenyan authorities who insisted on sticking to the original British design. Work was actually stopped for several weeks until the Chinese agreed to continue with the original design.

Remarkably the railway will cut right through Nairobi National Park and parts of the Tsavo national parks, but there has been little opposition.

“We can’t say to the Nairobi resident: ‘You have to sit in a traffic jam for the rest of your life’,” the famous conservationist and anthropologist Richard Leakey told reporters.

China isn’t just playing nice guy. China had lots of cash it needed to invest a few years ago. It knows that Africa often produces as great a return on investment as in its own society. And Africa has … oil and other natural resources.

But this mercantile motivation is what capitalism is all about, right? Then how come our own government won’t invest in its own people? Because the private sector is so greedy it holds all the cards?

Yeah, that’s it.

Frontrunning Change

September 11, 2015September 11, 2015 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

“Real Change” possible in Tanzania’s October elections makes me wonder if there’s not a democratic wave of discontent sweeping over the whole darn world.

Violence can be a certain byproduct. In the U.S. it’s increasing gun violence, school shootings, highway sniping. In Egypt … and maybe Tanzania … it’s election turmoil.

Venezuela, Britain’s Labor Party (tomorrow), Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Turkey, even the Ukraine … the list goes on for some length: these are all places like the U.S. and Tanzania where very radical political change is possible this year.

Not necessarily likely, but possible in a way no one would have predicted a year ago. I for one think this round will be flat, but I think it heralds truly radical change the next time around: There are Elizabeth Warrens standing by in every corner of the world.

Tanzania is an excellent example of this “New Era” of change.

The country’s election is scheduled for October 24. Like most sane countries in the world, the campaign really only began this month. The candidates were picked in July, and they were about as surprising as Donald Trump running as a Republican and Bernie Sanders as a Democrat.

Tanzania’s political history for the last quarter to half century is very similar to the history of countries like the U.S. I hear laughter in the halls of academia, but hear me out.

I know Tanzania was a strictly socialist, even one-party system for the last era, hardly a political map of the U.S. But in the end these two radically different political systems really made very little difference to the millions of people they governed.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been very little social or political change … worldwide. In fact in the U.S. we see racism and civil rights slipping backwards. The “voice” of the majority has grown increasingly weak.

The status quo held fast throughout this entire period: People in power – sometimes 30 or 40 years ago – stayed in power, or their children or the spouses took their places.

Almost all these leaders matriculated through the business world. There were few educators, scientists, laborers or even lawyers who ever held the reigns of power.

Capitalism was the bulwark of all policy. So it really didn’t matter if you were a one-party if autocratic politic like Tanzania, or a strict communist state like China, or a presumed open democracy like the U.S.: what mattered was profits and (financial) growth.

The Great Recession tolled the end to this mentality. It’s no wonder again that the U.S. was in the vanguard of change. But Barack Obama’s legacy turned out not to be ‘Real Change,’ as much as his supporters shouted it during his election.

The Democratic Party – which could have brought about Real Change – didn’t. Tanzania is going through that pivotal moment right now.

The ruling party, the CCM, has failed to meet the youthful aspirations of its electorate, and in an absolutely amazing coalition of ridiculously diverse opposition groups, UKAWA has mounted a real challenge for the first time in the country’s history.

But as with Obama’s election in the States, or Mursi’s in Egypt, or Erdoğan’s defeat in Turkey, I don’t think it will happen this time around.

For one thing, the UKAWA candidate leading the charge had expected to be the candidate of the ruling party he’s now contesting!

Think Donald Trump.

What we have is a moment in human political history where the pot is just starting to bubble.

Tanzanians, in fact, are asking their compatriots to heed the American rule that “one’s hand is expected to be extended to the winner in a congratulatory handshake after the polls results have been announced.”

The fear as in so many fragile societies is that defeat of ‘Real Change’ returns a status quo that is simply too unbearable. The bubbles in the pot boil and violence occurs all at once.

I’m less certain about Tanzania and the rest of the world than in the U.S., but I think this round of elections worldwide are bubbles in the pot, not the boiling over that brings real change.

But beware: A watched pot never boils. One ignored, explodes.

Africa Answerman

Sharing the beauty of African life today. Adventurer. Conservationist. Owner of Explorers World Travel.

Category: Politics