Western mores regarding sexuality unmask deep hypocrisy in conservatism. Facebook – buttressed by these mores and reflected by some state laws – this week told many South Africans that their ancient traditions were wrong and had to be suppressed.
Category: “Modern” Africa
OnSafari: Lucy’s Future
We had a Maasai guide for our final days in Kenya. There are about 500 guides in Kenya’s best game park, the Maasai Mara. Only three are women: “our” Lucy was one.
Two days after national elections, results have yet to be announced but the country looks increasingly like it will accept the outcome peacefully. Lucy won’t be the only beneficiary of peace. In 8 of Kenya’s 47 counties (comparable to our states) provisional results give governorships to women.
OnSafari: More Than Roars
People come on safari to see lions and elephants, but they return for another trip and refer their friends often because of the surprisingly moving non-game viewing experiences.
Just as there’s more to America than Disneyland and Vegas, there’s a whole lot more to the places where the great animals still roam the wild.
Democratic Flames
Kenya’s August 8 national election will test democracy as never before, anywhere in the world. Kenya’s incredible tribalism and its new found intellectualism are being force-blended into a modern world that just so happens at this very moment in human history to be questioning the very worth of democracy.
I think it will make it. Others aren’t so sure.
May Day Dead
Much of the world takes a holiday, today. All of Africa’s largest and most powerful countries are on holiday. May Day carries a morbid tradition of celebrating the horrible mental and physical tolls on workers in the second millennium.
So who isn’t a worker? Is Trump a worker? Is Nigerian Aliko Dangote a worker? Is the poor Joe who was once a miner in Appalachia still a worker? Everyone and no one is a worker, today. This is a false moniker for the modern age and it leads us into a sort of dangerous nostalgia.
Now a Grim Tale
‘Laikipia’ runs off the tongue into conversation exactly like the beautiful waterfalls that burst out of the high jungles over the dramatic cactus landscapes of deep canyons and endless vistas in north central Kenya.
Laikipia was a beautiful story in the 1970s, still compelling two decades later in “I Dream of Africa,” but it’s a grim and dark tale, now.
Dark Africa
Africa is growing darker than ever.
Recently Kenya joined Rwanda and Morocco in banning plastic bags. The Ministry’s announcement cited numerous reasons, including the UN “Clean Seas’ initiative. But while this strikes a westerner as environmentally revolutionary, it’s little more than window dressing a far more serious problem.
Living Proof
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.
Macabre Renewables
Drop some pop western culture into a poorly developed area of Africa, add a pinch of a dictatorial politic, and you get a horribly tragic ritual slaughter of three agricultural workers in rural Tanzania.
When the three field scientists from the urban center of Arusha traveled yesterday to a very rural part of central Tanzania, villagers accused them of being vampires and hacked them to death.
Party Paradox
African intellectuals bring clarity to our current campaign: Nothing matters in this election but Establishment-Yes or Establishment-No. Obama’s failed promise of change makes any qualification heresy.
Clinton and the DNC’s very public decision not to indict Republicans, thereby reducing Democrat’s chances for a legislative majority, suggests nothing less than stale embrace of the Establishment, and by so doing, boosts Trump.
Yesterday a Kenyan. Today a Ugandan.
Societal Upheaval
“How can a billionaire businessman who calls Mexicans rapists, …insults women, stereotypes black Americans, admires…Putin, threatens to bar Muslims from entering the country …become a presidential candidate? Surely decent, responsible, fair-minded people would not give such a national and international menace a chance to become the leader of the free world?”
To that South African columnist Donald Trump is as newsworthy as a dozen other crisis in his country this morning and hundreds across the continent.
There’s a lot of news in Africa, today. And a lot of it is about Trump.
Lion Lessons
The great King of Beasts might soon be something less. It’s not just the statistical decline. It’s losing its glamor. It’s important that we outsiders don’t force this issue. Africans are handling it just fine.
But you’d never guess which Africans.
Rugged Religiosity
On the eve of Eid-Al-Adha, Kenya’s highest court today ruled that schools can’t prohibit girl students from wearing Muslim attire, including the hajib.
Kenya now stands in marked contrast to Europe led by France and Belgium which have banned religious attire in public areas. The U.S. sides with Kenya. So who is right?
Democratic Disease
Rotary Charity and Gabon Wealth, two very different issues this morning that teach a similar lesson: you can’t buy success.
The oil rich country of Gabon remains unsettled this morning following contested elections and days of violence. A third case of the presumed eradicated polio was confirmed this morning in Nigeria.
Two extremely different African tales share an amazing similarity. Both of them were completely predictable and for the same reason. Let’s start with Gabon.
For Appearances’ Sake
For Appearances Sake! Today in black South Africa, black high school girls complained to a black Minister of Education that white teachers insisted they straighten their naturally curly hair.
That takes the cake. Read more