Early each morning I submerge myself in African news. Until this year I struggled with my arrogance, checking possible pretensions about honesty and fairness that Africans were presumed lacking. That’s flipped. I fear the morning, now:
“Nothing short of torture,” one of South Africa’s most respected publications said today, quoting Amnesty International’s characterization of what is happening on our southern border.
The “American nation [is] complicit in the demise of its own democratic well-being,” writes South African Ebrahim Rasool today.
There’s a sense in the American progressive media that the worst may be over, that Mueller’s investigation heralds an imminent victory, and that it’s time to get off the streets and begin electing those midterm Democrats. Rasool disagrees: Extremists in the west have harnessed “the power of the state… to unleash its dread on people … and sanctioning, if not fomenting, war.”
Rasool is not talking about the Syrian civil war. The war he fears is global. Dare we call it the nuclear apocalypse? A few more Democrats in The House isn’t going to stop it.
Nigeria’s second largest city and its most ancient, Kano, is suffering so much from rapid development that its essential history and culture is threatened.
All of Africa is developing rapidly. I can’t remind my American friends enough how quickly we’re being left behind by multitudes of foreign societies dedicated to infrastructure expansion and cultural well-being. A perfect example of this is Kano but it’s only worthy of celebration if you don’t mind losing a millennia of history.
The Maasai of East Africa, the Rohingya of Myanmar and even the 4th generation Rhodesian farmers of Zimbabwe are inhumanely imprisoned in modern societies incapable of figuring out how to assimilate them.
No better example of this conundrum than America’s own native Americans. We visited the site of Little Bighorn. It’s one of the most moving national monuments in our country.
Well now, social media – this same Facebook that you’re now using – may be the most powerful political tool on earth. Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta has even bettered Trump tweets by unfollowing his Deputy President.
Kenya is agog. First of all, you do know what “unfollow” means don’t you?
Infidelity, sexual deviance and pornography are now all OK, and this is as monumental a cultural change as gender rights. American-led it is spreading across the world. Example which follows is Kenya.
The acceptance of what only a few years ago was considered immoral and unethical is aggressively rationalized by churches, especially evangelical ones as political necessity. Religion has unmasked its piety. If Jesus or Muhammad only knew.
The recent, great deaths of two public ladies tells us something very important about our time. In these terrible moments of human history, death attracts more civility than life.
America’s Barbara Bush and South Africa’s Winnie Mandela are being treated like saints, and that’s wonderful and refreshing. The fact is that practically every person is worth celebrating for the good things they’ve done in their life, and literally every human being has done something worthy of our praise and admiration.
But as in death, they were not in life.
Today cast members of South Africa’s entry for the 2018 Oscars best foreign film of the year were herded into a “safe house” to protect them from growing threats against their lives.
The “Wound” (“Inxeba” in native dialect) is a film about a young urban gay factory worker in South Africa who returns home for the traditional circumcision ceremony. Gay relationships are renewed among mentors and initiates suggesting this has been going on for years. In this particular year, though, the closets crumble. Some are outed threatening traditional marriages, parents are scorned and disgraced and the film ends in a quagmire of depression and loneliness.
This is a change in South African culture. Why now?
Hopefully the remarkably stupid Kenyan government has learned its lesson, but it remains to be seen.
Today Kenyan courts ungagged the country’s three major TV networks. Tuesday the government pulled the plug on the networks for covering the mock swearing-in ceremony of the loser in the recent national election.
As you’d expect the first moments’ back-on-air was a press conference of the mock government and faux president who would never have drawn this amount of attention had the government not gagged the TVs in the first place.
Stronger religious protections, more affirmative action and new constitutional protections of minorities is the #4 story of Africa for 2017. Sounds good until said simply: tribalism on the rebound.
The political catastrophe of South Africa and the election circuses in Kenya are the best examples. Democracy and tribalism bring out the worst of each other. Africa may be no different than the rest of the world, but understanding Africa is fundamental to untangling this mess.
Anything happen this year?
Sorry. Perhaps a poor attempt for just a bit of relief. End-of-the-year analyses are coming out. I sit in a little world of Africa news and things, but I expect all the little worlds feel the same thing I do: the universe is tanking. Now if you’re sitting at a big desk on Wall Street you see it otherwise, because the rich world is doing just fine. But time’s have changed. The world is starting to move as one, and how Africa or Taipei or the Ukraine or Latvia goes, so eventually does the whole world, even eventually the rich.
Who is Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma? Well, she’s a presidential candidate in South Africa. But after she appeared at one of her scheduled political rallies recently, and not a person showed up but her own team, South Africa’s most provocative political publication asked Who is Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma?
There’s a very important election in America, today. But I’m wondering – like Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma – if elections as we currently endure can really tell us anything about what the electorate wants? Do elections matter, anymore?
There are multiple ways to distort news. One of the most effective is to get rid of the person who gathers it. It’s a harsher step than simply bellowing out untruths like Fox News but the latter often foreshadows the former.
Two weeks ago journalist Azory Gwanda was kidnapped and hasn’t been seen since. He was a reporter for a Swahili-language Tanzanian media company that was often critical of the current president, John Magufuli.
On Saturday, September 30, Kathleen and I drove our black Jeep Grand Cherokee from Taos west on highway 64 through Dulce, New Mexico, past a facility that aliens had built under the ground to conquer the world. With a prolonged drought depressing South African honey production, the government has removed restrictions on the importation of mānuka honey, which purports to better many antibiotics and is natural.
The first item of fake news is amusing and mostly benign. The second item of fake news can kill South Africans. Like zero tolerance for sexual harassment the cultural revolution needs to debunk one just as ferociously as it debunks the other.
Winter’s coming: Fatigue in the blood-shot eyes of the activist. The man who couldn’t stop jumping for joy when Mugabe resigned. Grandma endlessly flapping her flag after the court annulled Kenya’s election.
Mothers pushing baby strollers at the Womens’ March. Old people in wheelchairs storming a Congress trying to rescind Obamacare. Tribalism strangles Africa. Now it’s gripped its evil tentacles around America. Please take heed.