Category: “Modern” Africa

The Big Election Day

The Big Election Day

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Today is America’s Big Election Day. This blog is for my African friends and readers, many of whom are involved in crafting new, dynamic constitutions.

Every four years America holds its largest election. This includes for the president; all House of Representatives; most state, county and city representatives including elected judges. It excludes officials whose terms are scattered including two-thirds of the Senate, half of the state governors and a few other positions.

But by far and wide, this four year cycle is “The Big Election.” The first Big Election I voted in was in 1968. I’ve voted in every election since then; this will be my 11th Big Election.

Who gets to vote, when and how, have been issues that America has addressed and redressed for centuries, and we still don’t have it right. In America’s earlier days – in fact for the country’s first 150 years if not longer – there really was no “One man, one vote.”

Most election regulations have always been left to the individual States to decide, and historically voting laws have disenfranchised many citizens in many States. For our entire history, individual states have tried and often succeeded in suppressing the vote of people traditionally unable to secure power, like Afro-Americans.

Voting suppression was effected by requiring special taxes or demonstrations of income, by proof of secure employment and other means. The suppression always effected the least powerful and tended to keep those in power for longer.

My first Big Election in 1968 was the first election in the nation governed by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), federal legislation that for the first time regulated and tried to homogenize the various States’ laws.

The VRA helped enormously to stop voter suppression, and freer voting occurred right until this very election. This time, though, a barrage of Republican state legislatures changed state laws again suppressing the vote of the poor, disenfranchised, disabled and elderly. These are all constituencies that normally support Democrats.

Successful court challenges have been made against most of these, but not all of them. Last-minute rules, such as that promulgated Friday by the Secretary of State of Ohio, may not allow for enough time for a court challenge before today’s voting.

So it remains to be seen what effect this incredible reversal of nearly a half century of improved voter enfranchisement will do. If the election is close for any of the races in the states with these voting regulation controversies in play, then the results could be delayed for some time until the court challenges are complete.

And in many cases – the Pennsylvania “billboard controversy” is a good example – illegal regulations that the court ultimately vacated were in place for a long enough time to still effect the outcome.

No political party or power can impede the growing transparency of our elections. The free access of the internet and the explosion of media outlets, more journalists and infinitely more blogs, has assured that very little if anything can be kept secret. If someone is cheating, it will be revealed.

But that radical freedom is not without its own disadvantage. It means that the sometimes truly infuriating right of anyone to lie in a political campaign and promulgate that lie without legal redress is guaranteed. Any politician can say anything, can make the most outrageous and mendacious charges against her opponent without fear of any retribution.

The argument that prevails against interdicting such behavior is the argument of transparency. As with someone cheating – if someone is lying – it will be revealed.

The problem is that the revealing takes energy, intellect and time. And a large portion of the American electorate doesn’t have any of that. A large portion of the electorate is easily fooled, even as we work tirelessly for them to be able to cast their ill-advised ballot. That’s one critical curse of democracy: that many people will vote against their best own self-interest.

Egypt, Tunisia, Kenya and likely Tanzania are all crafting new societies based on democratic elections. Lacking America’s long history of democracy can be a benefit in this modern age. Learn from our mistakes, and perhaps we can learn from your accomplishments.

The Democratic Challenge

The Democratic Challenge

by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

Two of Africa’s wisest old men have echoed the same cautions that America’s founders gave a young democracy about its elections. Beware: Bad elections are the greatest threats to democracy.

Yesterday Kofi Annan and Ngugi wa’Thiongo focused on the upcoming Kenyan elections as a marker for world democracy and reflected on America’s distortion of elections as something to be avoided by younger countries.

Annan is a well-known world figure, one of the most prominent Secretary Generals the United Nations has ever had. Like Jimmy Carter who remained remarkably active after leaving office, Annan’s role in global negotiations has never ceased. In fact, it was Annan who led the Kenyans out of the mire of the violence following their last election in 2007.

Ngugi has adopted America as his home after a career as a professor at Yale and New York universities. He is currently the Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Univ. of California in Irvine. Until 2004 he lived intermittently between Kenya and the U.S., and in Kenya is heralded as a famous revolutionary and writer.

What Americans obsessed with their own election need to know is that huge new parts of the world, especially in Africa, are adopting democracy and America’s form of democracy to govern their young societies.

This is a major change from hardly a generation ago when just as many new countries were adopting forms of Chinese communism or heavily top-down managed socialism. It’s a testament of course to the end of the Cold War, but also of the preeminence of capitalism in the global economy.

Old countries like China might be able to fiddle with capitalism and not disrupt their mechanisms for governing, but new countries can’t. The power of the economy is so critical with emerging countries that it often trumps other moral and social issues.

A case in point was Ngugi’s violent condemnation yesterday of Kenya’s decision to use English as the predominant language for governance. Ngugi is Kikuyu, the main tribe in Kenya and was imprisoned as a freedom fighter under the British. He is himself a master of the English language but he has written scholarly novels in Kikuyu, and he believes preserving multiple languages is critical to an advanced society.

It is something of the inverse argument in America as to whether Latinos should be validated by a greater use of Spanish in government.

Arguing that the current Kenyan leaders are “child abusers” for denying “mother tongues” Ngugi says, “To have a mother tongue … and add other languages … is empowerment. But to know all the other languages and not one’s own is enslavement.

“The post-colonial government and the entire [Kenyan] elite have chosen enslavement over empowerment,” he concludes.

The problem, of course, is that the violence that followed the 2007 elections turned ethnic. It is completely understandable that current politicians wishing to avoid anything much beyond a dull election want to steer clear of languages that are specifically ethnic.

In America as in Kenya when one person speaks a language that another person doesn’t understand, enormous suspicions arise, conjecture becomes almost as credible as fact-checking, and literally all hell can break lose. Unlike in Canada or Belgium where multilingual democracy flourishes, in most of the world multiple languages breed distrust.

(N.B. What puzzles many in the Kenyan situation, though, is why English was chosen rather than Swahili. Swahili belongs to no specific tribe and so is clearly universal among East Africans. The problem is that Swahili is a lingua franca and suffers thereby from a sore lack of precision. Tanzania tried to use Swahili as the formal language for many years, slowly giving way to English. It’s near impossible in Swahili to say succinctly, “Federal zoning regulations with regards to clean and safe landfills will preempt county council laws with regards to individual ownership.”)

(N.B. continued: Swahili in my view, by the way, is one of man’s most wondrous cultural achievements of the last several centuries, creating poetry of nearly every statement while maintaining a universal morality far superior to many popular western notions about right and wrong. But that’s another blog, and in this case I think Ngugi is wrong.)

Annan didn’t mention language, but in virtually everything else the two scholars said yesterday there was agreement.

Annan who is Ghanian was in Kenya yesterday. He referred to his fears that money is buying power in Kenya, as in the world over. “The infusion of money in politics … threatens to hollow out democracy,” Annan told CNN in September.

Annan understands the importance of capitalism in the world, today, but he also sees it as a threat to democracy. Many of us wait expectantly for his treatise on how the twain should ever meet, but for the time being I suppose we should presume he simply wants aggressive regulation.

In Kenya today he sees a brazen challenge to its young democracy by its rich leaders. Four of Kenya’s richest men and political leaders, including the son of the first president Jomo Kenyatta, are on trial in The Hague for inciting the violence of 2007.

Yet two of them, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, are running for president. (Not yet officially, but in Kenya “officially” comes quite close to the actual election.)

Annan sees this occurring not because the Kenyan people want it to, but because these individuals are so powerful, and because they are so rich.

Ngugi concurs: “Unregulated money in politics undermines …confidence in democracy… The explosive growth in campaign expenditures … strengthens fears that wealth buys political influence.”

American politicans’ penchant for personal stories about their early impoverishment is mostly malarkey or at best irrelevant to their current control of wealth. The vast majority of successful American politicians are rich. The cost of entering politics defies many startups. Over $1 billion will be spent by candidates and their surrogates in the current U.S. election.

Both men see the poor, the less privileged, the disabled and geographically disenfranchised as likely a majority of African voters that can be deftly ignored in a modern election:

Ngugi: “Too often, women, young people, minorities and other marginalized groups are not given a full opportunity to exercise their democratic rights.”

Democracy is today widely popular throughout new African countries and embraced as the best way to protect and govern themselves. But the messages that Ngugi and Annan delivered yesterday to a promising young African country resonant here at home just as much.

Democracy is never achieved; it’s simply strived for. America has used democracy for nearly two and a half centuries, yet the corrupting power of money, the difficulties of implementing democracy to a multi-lingual population, and the ease with which the underprivileged can be disenfranchised are threats as great today as they were in the 18th century.

Nor any greater a threat in Kenya than here.

Clash of the Faithful

Clash of the Faithful

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A colonial benchmark is struck in Kenya as Parliament considers banning religious organizations in publically funded schools. The Catholic Church has initiated a massive campaign to counter Parliament’s likely move which I doubt will be successful.

The Education Bill is one of the most striking features of Kenya’s rapid move to implement its new and modern constitution. If successful the bill will effectively wrest the last bit of control religious institutions have on Kenya’s public primary and secondary schools.

Currently up to a quarter of Kenya’s rural primary and secondary schools maintain a religious character as a legacy from colonial times. The state normally places and pays for the teachers and in most cases (but not all) the administration, and the church maintains the infrastructure and controls much of the school day including extra-curricular activities. It is specifically these religious activities that clash with Kenya’s new constitution that Parliament is directed to implement.

Most of these schools are on property owned by the church, and one of the more contentious debates expected is whether the new Kenya will use its modern power of eminent domain to effect ultimate jurisdiction over the existing land and school structures.

Education has been the top priority of every African government since modern governments existed, and regardless of their political and social persuasions, virtually every African country’s education was built on religious foundations.

The British explorer David Livingstone created the sound bite for colonial development in the 1830s: Civilization, Commerce & Christianity. The Three C’s were implemented by a mixture of privately funded missionary work and rapid education funded by the colonial powers.

The two were inseparably intertwined in the 19th Century, whether that was German Lutheranism, British anti-Catholicism or French, Belgium and Portugese Catholicism. Education is expensive, and the colonies had neither a legacy of any type of education or the wherewithal to fund secular educational services.

Besides in the colonial days it was only America that had struck a secular course for its society and America had no African colonies.

When my wife and I first went to Kenya it was to teach. We were hired and paid by the Kenyan government, but assigned to a large 800-student boys boarding school in a remote location in western Kenya that the then Kenyatta government had little interest in supporting. The Catholic Church stepped in, providing almost all of the funds for St. Paul’s Amukura Secondary School and a Headmaster and Assistant Headmaster that were both priests.

The priests essentially ran every component of the school, from sports to curriculum, although a national examination that determined matriculation often governed what the curriculum should be.

The Church, not the government, solicited aid from abroad to fund the schools science laboratories, build and maintain the infrastructure that allowed hundreds of rural boys to board at the school, provide a small dispensary and in many cases scholarships for the most needy.

That has changed significantly over the years, with the government now mandating virtually everything but after-school hours’ programs. Kenya’s rapid development has meant that many boarding schools and the high costs associated with them changed into day schools, but where boarding is still necessary the Church remains the paymaster.

Extracurricular activities, boarding where it continues, and the land on which the schools still sit are the contentious issues before Parliament.

It is the Catholic Church that has the most to lose, and it is pulling no punches in its drive to dissuade Kenyan legislators from further diluting its influence.

If Parliament continues on the track predicted, “…our schools will start producing Godless creatures and the society will be ruined,” Kisii Catholic Bishop Joseph Mairura told reporters this weekend.

The issue is especially sensitive right now as Kenyan Christian churches suffer violent terrorist attacks presumed to be in retaliation for the government’s invasion of parts of Somalia controlled by Islamists.

Public sentiment is charged. The comments left after Sunday’s weekend stories that the leadership of the church is going to fight Parliament’s moves were divisive and angry.

Is a certain Church/State separation the right move for Kenya now at a time of stressed government resources?

It depends on how much faith you have.

While We Moo

While We Moo

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Nine countries in Africa have more cell phones per capita than the U.S. and their youthful programmers are creating more creative apps than here at home.

South Africa, Libya, Botswana, the Seychelles, Gabon, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and the Congo have a higher per capita cell phone rate than the U.S. In part this is because land lines were never very good in many African countries, but it’s also because the technology of cell towers developed as fast in Africa as in the U.S.

Most European countries also have a higher cell phone per capita than the U.S., but what it means for Africa is that apps that are African specific are appearing in the dozens – sometimes hundreds – every day.

The most widely used cash transfer app in the world, M-Pesa, was first created and launched in Kenya in 2007. Today the app supports 23,000 jobs and has 17 million registered users in just Kenya alone.

But that isn’t even half the story. It was hardly two years that operational control for M-Pesa was ceded by its creators to IBM, which subsequently hired all of that development company’s employees. It was a clever – perhaps necessary way for IBM to avoid difficult worldwide patent contracts, since it is now free to develop the app worldwide.

M-Pesa is simple and complete, and that’s probably why it hit a brick wall in the U.S. Interstate commerce laws, local taxing authorities and most of all, the “cost for the media” (i.e., the price that the app owner wants to command for each use) has bogged down use here and in the rest of the developed world.

GoogleWallet is the closest to M-Pesa, and it’s still cumbersome compared to the beauty of the Kenyan app.

There are many apps as creative and simply beautiful as M-Pesa that Africans have developed, but one very unique app that caught my attention is iCow, and it’s not because I farm.

And that’s the point. Although iCow is most useful to the full-time dairy farmer, there are many Kenyans who are not farmers nevertheless own cows. In the fast paced changing Kenyan culture, professionals working normal 9-to-5 jobs often still own land in rural areas with aspects of farming still undertaken by much of their family.

iCow is a “cow calendar,” remarkable resource for locating vet services and medicines, and a news app that regularly updates the user on the newest science in dairy farming. Most importantly, it tells you when to milk your own unique cow, depending upon its age, feed intake and breed.

A professional in Nairobi recently told the city newspaper that she manages her small dairy farm 150 miles away “through regular [iCow] SMS updates.”

iCow was so successful that it spawned a whole range of other farm apps created and used in Kenya.

Nearly a generation ago we were warned that the “Information Revolution” and “Information Age” would be a pivotal moment in human history.

It’s happening, now.

Truth Matters

Truth Matters

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Slips of the tongue in Kenya – like the U.S. – trump any attempt by today’s wimpy journalists to champion truth. Unfortunately contemporary journalism deems what it inaccurately characterizes as “fairness” more important than truth, and the public has had just about enough.

Several days ago a minister in the Kenyan government called for the eviction of “Maasai” from his constituency during an attempt on the street to quell a demonstration that was becoming violent.

Several days ago a candidate for President of the United States derided half the population as moochers incapable of patriotic decisions while he was speaking to financial backers.

Both remarks revealed the true beliefs of their speakers. Both were incendiary, capable of spawning new and troubling events. And to be sure, there were journalists in both countries that so reported and ended their filings there.

But also in both countries there were as many if not more journalists who equivocated the event with the protagonist’s supporters rationalizations. Fortunately, at least this time, the public is having none of it in either country.

Ferdinand Waititu, a minister in the Kenyan government, raced to his constituency just outside the Nairobi airport two days ago to help quell a mounting demonstration protesting the murder of a young man. He was caught on a phone video telling the crowd to evict Maasai and basically laying the blame for the killing on the ethnic Maasai.

Like Romney, the speech was not intentionally secretly taped, it was just taped without prior notification. Its value was not preordained. Its value grew as the truth of the moment evolved in real time.

“Prior notification” was a great trick of gentleman journalists pretending to be fair. In fact, today, we’re probably all being taped all the time by one means or another, either by London MI5 as we sit snoring on a bus or by our children at a family dinner.

And that’s good. The technological revolution can’t equivocate. At least not yet. What it sees is what is, not what’s later spun or previously prepared.

Waititu in Kenya is now under arrest for hate speech. Kenya is approaching a pivotal moment next March as it holds the first national election since the ethnic violence of 2007, and admittedly the government is at least temporarily reigning in some human rights at least until the constitution and new president are in place.

There was nothing criminal in what Romney said, and probably not even hateful. His remarks were dismissive and – by the way – inaccurate, and as a mix portray a pessimistic and egotistical man that most certainly shouldn’t be president of the United States.

But both incidents display how bad currently journalism has become. It takes no rocket scientist to come to the conclusions above about each man’s remarks. But in today’s sick age of preposterous “objectivity” journalism in both countries taxed our time trying to minimize the despicable nature of the “truth.”

It begins with both men apologizing for what they said. Apologies aren’t what they used to be. They used to be shameful admissions and left real scars on those who offered them. And they were mostly considered a pivotal moment for the individual who signaled a change from one way of thinking or doing business to another. And appealing to our better natures, we the public would hopefully then forgive them, give them another chance.

Today apologies are as frequent as press conferences. They seem to have assumed the nature of little more than deflecting interest in the truth. Politicians like Waititu and Romney apologize for a mistaken remark as something insignificant.

Well, thank goodness for the modern age. The Kenyan social media, like the American social media, driven not by equivocating journalists seeking the highest viewership but by the highest morality, will have none of it, anymore.

Truth matters.

Three Times Nostalgia

Three Times Nostalgia

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Not too many years ago, the Mt. Kenya Safari Club was the magic that made a safari. Today it’s just another resort off the Thika Superhighway.

Bidding has opened for 95 of the quarter million dollar residences on the Mt. Kenya Holiday Homes resort, located hardly spitting distance of the Safari Club. Each of the ultra modern 3- or 4-bedroom homes in two or three stories has a fireplace, and is powered and heated by solar panels.

The 123-acre complex is being marketed to city dwellers who long for a second country home, in a perfect location for weekend hiking, bird watching, trout fishing, horseback riding and that occasional golf.

There will be a perfectly manicured 9-hole golf course, and the entire complex is secure by a big game proof electric fence and mini-moat to keep out those wandering buffalo. But if you yearn for wild animals like zebra, lion, elephant and so forth, don’t worry. The resort is just south of the Sweetwaters Ole Pejeta private reserve, famous for its abundant big game.

When Kenyan safaris first became popular to Americans in the 1970s, trepidation was introduced into hard-earned holidays, and the “adventure vacation” was born. And to be sure back then, we knew lots less about malaria and how to prevent it, many of the roads were hardly tracks, and most of the night time lodging was in very basic tented camps with shared toilet and shower tents.

More than once I took my safaris far enough into the bush that we would encounter locals who had not often seen visitors. It was never certain how these meetings would develop: friend or foe. And about the same time police were being appointed to far out places, and it was always certain we’d be delayed for a bribe.

And quite different from what you might expect, the game was hard to find. There was actually more of it, of course, but it was very skittish of people. It wasn’t really until the 1980s that Kenya’s highland game was approachable enough to take good pictures.

So what game we did encounter evinced the old “fight or flee” syndrome. On my very first safari at the age of 21 on my very fast game drive I was charged and hit by a rhino. In my first decade as a safari guide I had tusks through floorboards, was rolled in my tent by an elephant, escape charging lions, had a woman faint to a bellowing buffalo and watched two lovely ladies scream while being charged by a hippo.

And every day was very dusty and very dirty and the evening’s ice cold water for showers was manna from heaven. And even the finest Chicago debutante appeared at the evening camp fire looking like Miss America.

In those days you didn’t race over to Kenya and back for a 12-day jaunt. Most safaris were 22-26 days long. And by the third week, I would definitely notice “adventure fatigue.”

That was when we’d arrive at the Mt. Kenya Safari Club.

Frankly, in the 1980s, the Mt. Kenya Safari Club was hardly more than a nice Holiday Inn on well landscaped grounds built around a central Victorian mansion. The fact was that there were similar homes in the Kenyan highlands, but kept well under the radar, because they were owned by old white colonials still lying low. So to a visitor the Mt. Kenya Safari Club was the most unexpected and amazing jewel in the crown of an adventure safari.

It cost about three times what other night’s lodging cost. The plumbing always worked. Usually, there was hot water. The food, all local, was fabulous, and the old colonial woodworking, Victoria furniture and servants clicking heels became a sort of Colonial Theme Park.

There was a Members’ Dining Room ostentatiously separated from the guest dining room, and membership (open to all) cost about $500/year. The President of Kenya was one of the few black members at the time. (He was one of the few who could afford it.)

So your richest and most resplendent clients were advised before departing home that William Holden, the principal investor of the Club, would welcome their “membership.” And by so doing on those few nights under Mt. Kenya, you would remove yourself from the grand guest dining room and be escorted by the Maitre D’ into the exclusive members’ lounge.

Back then $500 was about a third what a 25-day safari cost! Using the same metric, today, you can actually make the entire down payment on a 4-bedroom, 4-bath luxury home with a fireplace!

The grand if palatial public areas of the original Safari Club were all deep wood plastered with big game trophies. The Club was originally designed as a hunter’s retreat by William Holden and friends. As photography safaris grew much more popular, the board had no trouble pivoting into the modern age.

Today the Safari Club is a Fairmont Hotel. Its revenue stream is now less than 50% from tourists, attracting Kenyans from the city for a weekend holiday.

And no longer unique, there is nothing here different from other nearby resorts like the new Mt. Kenya Holiday Homes except some very precious nostalgia.

Development for What

Development for What

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Rising conflicts between Chinese and Africans in Zambia and Malawi demonstrate that the Chinese do-anything desperation for Africa’s natural resources may be backfiring.

In 2009 China surpassed all other nations to become Africa’s leading trading partner. It is likely the continent’s biggest aid donor as well, although western institutions rating aid argue that the quid-pro-quo of Chinese aid moves it from the category of aid to investment.

I sat recently with three young Chinese men, probably still in their teens or early twenties, as we all waited for a delayed flight from Nairobi to Kampala. Our inability to communicate well was mitigated by the long delay. One of the fascinating things I learned from them was that they were not just excited about their upcoming work gig in Uganda, they were emigrating there!

They held one-way airline tickets from a Chinese construction company, jobs to build a highway in western Uganda, undoubtedly enough sudden cash that together they had just purchased a laptop in duty free, and … no intention to ever return home.

The rest was left to my speculation, but it seemed pretty clear to me that after their contract with the construction company ended, they would set down roots in Uganda and spend the rest of their lives there.

This is hardly new. It is exactly what the British did when they built the East African colony’s infrastructure in the mid 19th Century, except that they imported Indians rather than Scots. At the end of various construction projects, the Indians set down roots and today are as much Kenyan or Tanzanian as a Kikuyu.

The initial motives were identical as well. The British East African Trading Company was proudly a profit-making business which intended to extract as much as it could out of East Africa for the benefit of England. Chinese today are desperate for the natural resources necessary to power its society, lacking in China and flush in Africa.

Later Livingstone’s moral imperatives got entangled in British colonial development, but until that historical point the two capitalistic paths are identical.

What’s different, today, is that social authority derived of a growing embrace of self-determination, and the importance of human rights, are much different than two centuries ago. The British model of buying out local chiefs with bags of beads is quite similar to what the Economist calls “oil for infrastructure.” But the willingness of the local people to enter the deal is much more restrained.

Last week this restraint blew a threshold in Zambia and Malawi.

Mine workers staged a violent protest against their Chinese manager/owners. The Chinese have yet to mature beyond the desperation of need, and many are ruthless paymasters particularly when it comes to mining.

Last year Human Rights Watch documented increasing labor abuse by Chinese managing Zambia’s copper mines. Last week it came to a head when workers struck one mine and then battled security personnel and police, killing one of the principal Chinese managers.

In neighboring Malawi, what appears to be nothing less than a xenophobic vendetta against small Chinese business owners began last week. The government policy will essentially close down hundreds of small, local Chinese businesses in Malawi, developed I presume like the three guys I met waiting for the flight to Kampala want to eventually do in Uganda.

And in a stark 180-degree difference between the British colonial era, the Chinese ambassador to Malawi more or less endorsed the Malawian government’s move. There is little connection left between the homeland and the Chinaman who moved away.

In Dakar last week, Hillary Clinton remarked on these growing tensions and argued rather well that Chinese policy won’t work. “The days of having outsiders come and extract the wealth of Africa for themselves, leaving nothing or very little behind, should be over in the 21st century,” she said.

“Throughout my trip across Africa this week, I will be talking about what that means – about a model of sustainable partnership that adds value, rather than extracts it,” she added.

I’m not sure. I’m sure that Hillary’s admonition is correct, and that the right and moral way for a developed society to act toward a developing one is not the Chinese model. On the other hand, I’m not sure the American model is all that much better. Our “aid” to Africa is fickle, up with Democrats and way down with Republicans. All that Africa is left with is confusion and a certainty that American constancy doesn’t exist.

Africa needs infrastructure desperately. China needs oil desperately. There’s great constancy in that.

Black and White

Black and White

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Flip it, white man. What if you were, well you know, the other… color. They sang in London, but they were from Africa.

The difference between black and white, between slaves and slave masters, is the ultimate difference between race, although I agree with many that it isn’t that much different than between Kikuyus and Zulus. But it is the ultimate. You can’t go further down the spectrum.

My take of the many excellent bands and singers in South Africa is with this constantly embedded theme of difference, separation, oppression. From most of the rest of the world, it’s flipped. But today, in South Africa, it’s arguably the white who feels oppressed.

Last month in London the annual concert brought together contemporary music from South Africa to the white disaspora outside.

South Africa’s White Diaspora is one of the most interesting floating cultures in the world. Formed mostly by the 1800 people monthly that fled the country in the 1980s, it’s created huge footprints in Australia, Canada, the U.S. and England.

While some have returned, most have not, but unlike immigrants and refugees from other parts of the world, white South Africans find it difficult to integrate into other western societies.

I’ve often met, for instance, the children of those who immigrated speak with a South African accent even though they’ve grown up outside.

The tribalism of white South Africans is as strong as any black tribe on the continent.

Let the music tell the story:

Eat And/Or Die

Eat And/Or Die

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Published on jimbonham.com's blog.
Organic brats and burgers covered with organic lettuce as Nigeria berated our summer holiday grill obsessions and viciously debated a national law to accelerate the use of genetically modified crop seeds.

If my relatives are any indication, America is turning neon green. We couldn’t even use non-organic salt for the July 4th barbecues. And the meat was hormone free and the veggies had to be certified non-bioengineered.

I can’t blame the younger generation. They are beset by pandemics of autism and allergies difficult to explain. And I’m the first to rate the taste of organic food as far superior to all that processed stuff.

But the world is starving and many of Africa’s leading advocates for increased food production are demanding rapid use of anything that can speed up food production and increase agricultural yields.

Last year both houses of Parliament in Nigeria passed a sweeping law allowing the use of any sort of seed whatever, even those not yet vetted as safe in developed countries.

“Nigeria should be feeding the rest of Africa,” Senator Ayo Adeseu explained at a food forum last week in Ibadan. “But we have been lagging behind due to non adoption of the latest in technologies. ….The urgent challenge before the nation is that we should imbibe biotechnology.”

President Goodluck Johnathan has refused to sign the bill. He has refused to comment specifically as to why, but the bill would allow farmers and their cooperatives to buy seeds from anywhere without the need for any government certification whatever.

The desperation to feed the starving of the world increases every year. This is because some headway is being made, and success breeds hope, and food policies and scientific advances occur more slowly than the death of a malnourished child.

The most critical areas are actually outside Africa. India ranks on top, and yet its economy is growing in leaps and bounds. Last month two scientists in “Tropical Medicine and International Heath” explained this in part because Indians were adopting western lifeways wholesale that, in fact, contribute rather than ameliorate hunger on a macro level.

Fast food, too much sugar, an unbalanced diet when overlaid a population that still has wanton starvation only increases it overall.

But the rapid adoption of western lifeways in places like India can also mean rapid adoption of many of our developed concerns about “being green.” India’s small farmers find themselves twisted into a dilemma about their own survival, the higher cost of genetically modified seed, the certainty of a higher yield but the questions about long-term safety.

So Goodluck Johnathan is not alone, and many in the developed world are impressed with the critics of genetically modified food. The principal criticism is of the increased use of pesticides that can be used against bioengineered crops. Dr. Michael Antoniou of King’s College London School of Medicine said last monththat most bioengineered foodstuffs were dangerous.

The pesticides themselves could kill if not handled correctly, they advanced the immunity of viruses and insects that could be massively harmful to crop yield, and finally Dr. Antoniou worries that the bioengineering itself will create a harmful food.

Everyone stipulates that bioengineering increases yields, and as I survey the area around which I live this year of a drought, it’s amazing to see how bioengineered corn seed has created crops that can survive at least marginally without water!

It’s a race to be sure. But is it a race to end hunger or life?

All Sparrows Are Weavers

All Sparrows Are Weavers

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Saturday South African flags will fly at half mast as a bushman of the Kalahari receives a state funeral, a fitting tribute to a noble but conflicted lifeway in an increasingly modern world.

Did you laugh hilariously at the beautiful movies, “The Gods Must be Crazy”? The star and the cultural consultant for several of them was Dawid Kruiper, the San man who will be buried Saturday in desert dunes next to his wife.

The fame and fortune bestowed on him when the movie was released augmented an already proactive life dedicated to saving the bushman life style. In fact Kruiper’s activism began in the 1930s when as a little boy his family was evicted from its traditional lands.

He joined his family then in performing “folk ways” for tourists and his humiliation grew.

A Bushman’s humiliation is never external and rarely effects the sun-creased smiles.

The indigenous peoples organization, Survival, quoted him as having said:

‘I am a natural born. I have something inside of me that no one can take away. I am there always for my community, but I do things the natural way. I would say that our traditional lifestyle was much better… I am most comfortable like that, like the weaver bird. I can move anywhere any time. I can collect my home, my grass and rebuild my home… Like that bird, if I can just have freedom and rights, I would be happy.”

But to achieve the successes Kruiper attained, he had to change.

He took an Afrikaans name, to begin with. He studied Afrikaans and worked closer and closer with the modern community of Uppington, South Africa. His children are fully modernized. Only his wife continued to join him in the desert.

Yet he achieved many of his goals, and in 1999 South Africa ceded nearly 40,000 acres for “natural use” to the remaining Khoisan bushmen in Kruiper’s old clan. In effect the government deeded over a massive hunk of land to a handful of individuals.

Kruiper was also successful in getting both South Africa and Botswana to allow the remaining San people to continue to pursue traditional life styles in some shared Kalahari national parks.

These and many other San civil rights issues would have achieved far less prominence and chance of resolute success had Kruiper not crossed the line in the sand between purist living and modern politics.

His children will not carry on his traditions. Traditional San are disappearing. As he died in a modern hospital that helped him attain the ripe age of 76, schools, roads and enterprising little businesses are now found where endless savannah used to be.

There’s no reason to mourn this change. The house sparrow is also a weaver.

Africa Bails Out Europe

Africa Bails Out Europe

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How do you feel during the Holiday Season when you see a homeless person drop a coin in the Salvation Army’s tin?

A deepening world economic downturn, caused mostly by Europe, is having violent effects in Africa even as poor Africa helps to bail out Europe.

It was hardly two years ago that the American stimulus and Ireland’s spectacular comeback from the cliff had markets and spirits alike rising. And Africa seemed to be on a steady path of growth and prosperity. The Arab Spring, modestly violent in Egypt and Tunisia, was good news.

Africa’s situation couldn’t be more different, today.

Mali is essentially two countries, with a violent stalemate between extreme Islamists and a corrupt traditional government in Bamako. The Congo is blowing up, again. Nigeria is near catastrophic civil war in the north. Angola’s strengthening dictatorship provoked widespread demonstrations, yesterday. Uganda’s miserable leader yesterday took advantage of an eviscerated opposition by banning 38 organizations that had refused to denounce homosexuality. That’s the short list.

There’s some good news: Somalia, Kenya. But then there is bad news again: Egypt.

What’s going on, of course, is that the global economy is turning south.

That’s not an oversimplification, nor a rationalization. Even something as complex as Egypt can be explained as the generals’ growing confidence that their naughty ways won’t be interdicted because the big guys have more pressing business to attend to at home: their economies.

When the economy is improving, especially after the depression the world just experienced, no one wants to rattle the boat. The status quo reigns supreme. And that was the situation in much of the world and Africa in 2008-2010.

But when the economy goes sour, the prosperous hibernate, the middle classes begin to panic and the extremists forge strong alliances with the poor. The only salient political power that emerges is extremism. And that’s the situation, now.

So the culpable are those who did nothing, or did something wrong, in trying to remedy the world economic downturn. We’re well beyond what caused it; the new blame shifts now to those who did nothing to remedy it.

Europe.

You can’t tighten your belt while you’re losing weight and hope to put on some pounds. An undernourished kid has to reach critical mass before starting to exercise and build muscle. It’s called stimulus. (Athletes call it steroids.) The U.S. did it. China did it. South Americans did it and Africa did it big time, and they all struggled out of the hole.

But Europe didn’t, and now the world suffers. So what does poor Africa do? At the Los Cabos conference, South Africa pledged an additional $2 billion for the IMF fund designed principally as an European bailout. It did not go over well back in South Africa. But South Africa, the continent’s giant, knows that if Europe falls everything in Africa falls, too.

South Africa is unique among African countries to be considered a “developed country” instead of a “developing country” by world institutions. The classification was made shortly after World War I when the League of Nations appointed South Africa as the custodian of then Southwest Africa (now Namibia) taken from the defeated Germans.

It was a marginal call. In those days societies were seen as defined by their elites and upper class. South Africa’s huge and neglected black populations were seen more as a problem similar to America’s native Americans than as intrinsic to the society as a whole.

Nevertheless South Africa is significantly richer than most African nations and most visitors to its main cities and attractions find it little different from developed world cities and attractions everywhere. But since the end of Apartheid South Africa could have lobbied world institutions to reconsider its classification.

That wouldn’t have been easy, either. It’s not just a matter of pride, but of foreign investment, interest rates and much more. In the end South Africa’s new black rulers decided to retain the global classification.

And now they are fulfilling their responsibilities. And bailing out Europe who couldn’t figure out how to do it themselves.

Big Gay Brother

Big Gay Brother

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Many African reactions to Obama’s gay marriage statement focus on the hypocrisy of the “small government” stand taken by so many conservative Americans.

Social issues like marriage percolating to the top of a political campaign for president of the world’s yet most powerful country confuses many in Africa. America is among all known for “freedom” and “small government.” But you can’t have a small government that enforces laws on social habits like sexual orientation or marriage.

Consider the strong anti-gay forces in places like Uganda, that among many other legislative attempts are still trying to criminalize knowing that someone is gay and not advising authorities.

This is government intrusion of the greatest sort, of course, yet it is supported whole-heartedly by America’s right: AIM’s Cliff Kincaid argues that Ugandan is simply trying to “create a Christian society.”

Enlightened Ugandans see forcing any social ideology onto society as too much government:

Religious intellectual, Ugandan Kizito Michael George, argues that emphasis on social issues like gay rights is not the purvey of the government. He goes further: keep the church out of the state, at the church’s peril.

But Kizito and many other pro-gay rights’ advocates recognize that the current Ugandan regime is publically pro-big government. It’s one of the only ways that the dictator president Yoweri Museveni can stay in power.

So it reveals the incredibly irony of America’s right that argues for “small government.”

Many Africans see additional hypocrisy in America’s constant push for human rights in China and elsewhere, with such forceful attempts by America to limit the rights of gays and women.

“Africa is hardly what we consider a progressive continent at the forefront of human rights,” says one person commenting on South Africa’s News24. “However we seem to be far ahead of the USA.”

The Africa that is maturing through its Spring Awakenings is forcefully for small enough governments that human rights are aggressively protected. Universal suffrage and freedom of expression are considered no more important than freedom of expressing one’s sexual orientation.

Both the new South African and Kenyan constitutions replaced “man and woman” as the definition of marriage with “spouse.”

Those youthful societies have little intolerance of sexual orientation left. South Africa has been tolerant of gays for centuries. Its famous early politician and Prime Minister of the Cape, Cecil Rhodes, was openly gay.

Kenya is newer to the opening and so there is still some vocal resistance, although its fading in the face of the public’s wide-spread support for gay rights.

As a result analysts in both countries see Obama’s move as political:

John Ngirachu reporting this weekend from Kansas City explained to Kenyans back home that Obama’s move “boils down to the electorate.. Both candidates know the issue can cost them the election in states where the conservative Christians are influential.”

Ngirachu and others in Kenya and South Africa see the whole episode as a scripted ploy that began with Biden’s announcement. It’s particularly poignant in Kenya where the presumed successful candidate for President next year has begun to disassociate himself from the man who had been presumed the successful candidate for Vice President.

I think it fair to point out, too, that many in Africa see America’s religious right as something akin to a social flash-in-the-pan, and that with less time than many African societies took to become truly free, America’s right will fade into history.

The hypocrisy is just too stark.

Leave It To The Kids!

Leave It To The Kids!

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A 13-year old Maasai boy (genius) who rigged up an electric light device that seems to successfully protect his boma from lions is no longer herding his family’s cows. He’s got a scholarship to one of Kenya’s best private schools!

Richard Turere like all young teen Maasai boys was principally responsible for taking care of the family stock. Fortunately, he found time to go to a local school as well, and the little time he had uncorked his genius.

He put what he learned about electricity and lighting to work for himself! Lions are becoming an increasing bother throughout Kenya, as their habitat dwindles, as agriculture explodes and as prey diminishes. They are more and more often preying on cattle and goats.

The traditional Maasai response is to kill the lion, and in fact that’s happening quite a lot. I’ve written about the horrible poisons that are sometimes used in bait traps, and simple gang spearing is turning into something of a national sport.

In Richard’s own area near Nairobi national park, cattlemen had lost 18 cows, 85 sheep and goats and 14 donkeys since November. Their response was to kill three lion in a single week.

Richard didn’t like that idea, because school had also taught him the importance of wildlife to Kenya’s economy. So he rigged up a series of lights around the kraal in which the stock spent the night, which flashed intermittently and were powered by the same solar panel that ran the family’s TV.

Guess what? No lion! Even while neighbors were still being bothered.

Richard began his experiments when he was 11. He told teachers that he noticed that the lions never struck when people were walking about, including at night with flashlights. Lion won’t come near stock when people are active, so Richard concluded that he could fool the lion into thinking people were around his stockade all night long!

He wired four then five sets of flashlight bulbs around the stockade and connected them to a switching box powered by an old car battery charged by the same solar panel that runs the family’s TV.

The result was a random flashing of lights throughout the night. It seems Richard was right: the appearance is one of people being awake in the area. And while six neighboring farms were attacked by lion in the last several years, the Turere farm was spared!

Richard’s successful and very practical science project got immediate attention country-wide. When the National Geographic Big Cats Initiative found out about it from Wildlife Direct in Kenya, Richard became an instant celebrity. And his genius was doubly rewarded. Not only did he save his family’s lions, but enough patrons came together to send him to one of Kenya’s finest private secondary schools.

The plight of wildlife in rapidly urbanizing Africa looks dim at best to me. But with enough Richards lighting up the darkness, who knows?

Hola Hollande! Following Africa?

Hola Hollande! Following Africa?

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

Africans are generally pleased with Sarkozy’s defeat by Hollande. To them it suggests that right-wing western policies are on the decline. Virtually all of free Africa is to the left of most western countries.

Africa’s incredible economic growth, now an astounding 2-3 times the west, is likely to remain 1 or 2 points higher than world growth for the foreseeable future, making it among the best areas in the world to invest.

But the growth comes not from the austerity that the Sarkozy-Merkel alliance has thrust on Europe with disastrous consequences, but rather from aggressive infrastructure development and stimulus. Once working the economies were polished up with modest tax increases that nonetheless reduced corporate taxes while redistributing tax burdens onto the wealthy.

This is not a westerner’s right-hand cup of tea.

And this is hardly “socialist.” The widely respected conservative business quarterly, McKinsey, was among the first to notice Africa’s working formula for economic success:

McKinsey acknowledges that the resource revolution mostly spurned by China in Africa, with new technologies that dig deeper and probe further, account for nearly a third of Africa’s growth. And this is what westerners constantly highlight: Africa’s newly rich commodity markets.

But the other two-thirds is twice as important! And according to that McKinsey report, is linked to social policies that include “government action to end armed conflicts… trimming foreign debt…shrinking budget deficits… and privatizing state-owned industries.”

This was accomplished initially by additional government spending and debt, stimulus. The cash for this stimulus came mostly from China. As the recession pulled China back from its high investment in Africa, governments turned to luxury items, in particular cars, for increased taxes. Even as free trade agreements were being negotiated, new tariffs were smacked on imported alcohol and cigarettes, for example.

The result was an increased tax base, even as middle class individuals felt taxes go down and growth continued right through the west’s recession.

This all began more than a decade ago when Africa was sucking up aid like a dry sponge. I remember the forlorn remarks in those days regarding Africa’s “black hole.” But it was precisely this added spending in a time of no growth that ultimately produced the economic powerhouse Africa seems to be, today. Growth, unlike Sarkozy and Merkel (and Romney and Paul) claim, comes not from austerity but from stimulus.

Everything always seems to begin with economics, but sooner or later social ramifications are inevitable. Sarkozy like Romney is an anti-immigrationist, so to speak. And France has no fewer immigration problems than America. For generations France welcomed Africans from its former colonies with wide abandon. But in the last decade exacerbated by the recession immigrants have become the same whipping boys they are now in the U.S.

In 2007 Sarkozy dropped a nuclear bombshell during a speech in Dakar, the capital of one of France’s former most important colonies, Senegal. He was arrogant, patronizing and insulting, and it marked the start of his anti-immigration policies.

“There’s talk that Hollande will give a rebuttal to Sarkozy’s infamous Dakar speech of 2007.” writes an influential African blogger in Paris, but “the essential point is that Sarkozy is gone.”

Social ramifications will take longer to measure. But Hollande has already called Merkel to aggressively advise her of his public’s serious message: stimulus not austerity.

It’s the Africa way! Perhaps Hollande could make a call to Obama, now? Would Bernanke take the call?

Better Visit The Selous Soon

Better Visit The Selous Soon

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Bruised but recovered from the embarrassing loss of the Serengeti Highway project, Tanzania looks truly set on creating one of Africa’s largest dams over currently one of its largest game parks.

Friday, Energy and Minerals minister William Ngeleja announced during a visit to the area that “This is not a ghost project…Tanzanians will see it kicking off this July.”

The visit was perfectly timed. Heavy rains throughout East Africa have been flooding large agricultural areas and destroying many smaller villages. Not only would the dam produce more than twice the electricity Tanzania projects needed within the country, it would control the devastating flooding that seems on the increase with global warming.

When first proposed in the 1980s the project had a price tag of a half billion dollars. Today the cost is $2 billion, and most of this will come from Brazilian banks.

Environmentalists seem resigned to the project finally happening. The huge outcry raised when the project was first proposed, equally as vociferous when rebirthed the first time in 2002, is today totally lacking.

The best environmental study for the area was conducted by FAO in 1981. At that time there was concern that the large project would seriously disturb the water ecology of the area.

Other studies focusing on the then developing Tanzanian tourist industry in The Selous Game Reserve in particular were more equivocal. The impact area is so large, and the tourist area so small, it’s very hard to predict how these will intersect.

But there’s no question that the area effected will be huge, greater than the Colorado river basin that was effected by the construction of the Hoover Dam. The flood lake itself could exceed 100 sq. miles. The controlled water flow that would absolutely benefit area agriculture and provide stability for dozens if not hundreds of area communities would likely drain another several thousand square miles of wetlands.

Such an impact in the 1980s was deemed too consequential, and the World Bank pulled out of the project in the 1990s. The Norwegians stepped in, then fretted over the impact for several years before also stepping aside after pouring about $25 million into environmental studies.

The uncertainty of how the project would impact Tanzania’s inland fishing industry was the basis for local political opposition that when then allied with environmentalists worldwide effectively eviscerated local support. But it seems now that even while there could be catastrophic impacts to freshwater fishing, local sentiment has swung in favor of more power and less flooding.

Although the World Bank and western agencies remain cautious about resupporting a project they once ditched, Brazil, China and South Africa (the new “BRAC” countries) have no such qualms. The money is there.

It remains unclear how the project would effect the relatively small area where nearly 80% of all tourists visit, the “Lower Selous.” It’s possible this area will see little change other than the greater fluctuation of the Rufiji River along which most of the camps are built. This is something camps in Zambia’s Lower Zambezi have been dealing with for years, as the great Kariba Dam performs similarly.

But the half dozen or so new camps in the “Upper Selous” near Stiegler’s Gorge will likely be drowned away. This includes Serena’s new and popular Mivumo River Lodge.

The world has changed considerably in the last 40 years since the Stiegler’s Dam was first proposed. Global warming was not well understood then and even though development has lagged last century’s predictions, growth is accelerating, today.

A project of this magnitude could have enormous local benefit. What concerns me is that the Tanzanian government and parastatal authorities managing electricity remain corrupt and unprofessional. Yes, there will be new power, but will anybody get it?

But if the Tanzanians can get their own disheveled house in order, then I think it would be unconscionable to trade off the social and economic benefits of the project to save the beautiful, wild and otherwise unmanageable Selous. Unlike with the Serengeti Highway, there is no alternative.

Food and jobs.