You’re probably reading this on Facebook. Well if so, buckle up. Time’s are a changin’.
I can tell from the stirrings on the African continent, grossed up by European sentiment first started in Ireland, that serious social media regulation is on the way.
So I wanted to write a blog this morning about all the African leaders who lied, making comparisons with Trump of course. Couldn’t come up with much, actually. Dictators generally don’t have to lie.
Walifundisha sisi na macho yet yamefungwa. Tulipowafungua, walikuwa na ardhi na tulikuwa na Biblia.
Moments of human greatness often come in speeches. They lose a little each time they’re replayed or recounted from one person to another or translated through languages, because each language has a unique tonality, syntax and onomatopoeia – an unique style for their own unique talk.
Party power controls democracy. Elections make the final decisions but to get onto the ballot you have to go through the party.
Independents have a slightly greater shot in America where primary elections aren’t closed exclusively to registered party nominees but it’s rare in America that an “independent” who caucuses as a Democrat is challenged by a Democrat in the primary.
What I fear most is that we’ll give up. “A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.”
MLK said those exact words at a church in Selma the day after Bloody Sunday, but they’re rarely quoted. Instead a much shorter paraphrased version is attributed to him, even though he didn’t say it: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Thus our age began.
Climate change is a silent slow motion video that with a touch on your remote bursts out of your TV with the cacophony of earthquakes and volcanic thunder. You reach for the remote. Mute the volume again. Change the channel.
Half of Zimbabwe’s population is starving. Today. Right now. Kenya’s oil that had been saving its government from default has come to an abrupt halt. “Unprecedented numbers” are starving and sick in southern Africa.
Does this mean that America is three times as bad as Kenya and has now devolved into a third world culture?
The Human Rights Watch’ “World Report 2020″ implies exactly that. “In 2019,” the report states, “the United States continued to move backwards” towards the cabal of wicked dictatorships and failed states. Have we really fallen that far?
Five days after Solemaini was killed the UN Security council convened a special meeting for the escalating terrorism in Africa’s Sahel.
Speaker after speaker noted how terrorists are winning military conflicts in the region and that basically, the UN had to beef up its military peace-keepers in the area.
Then came the U.S.’ turn to speak.
Empowered by their greater morality, three of Africa’s most important countries are giving America the finger.
Last year was different as small and developing countries in particular seemed to kowtow to Trump’s self-styled Mother Superior attitude towards them. But the killing of Solemaini seems to have broken that spell.
Something bad is happening and Africa is the bellwether. A couple specific events that I’ve chosen to discuss below in Kenya and Nigeria suggest security is failing or at least being so stressed it’s not working well.
And these events are but a drop in the ocean of what must be happening throughout Africa, likely the world. Something bad is happening.
Not so long ago I was lazily swinging in a hammock in Manda Bay. My son and his girlfriend were blithely watching the sunset over the island from their open verandah above me. Yesterday, terrorists blew up that place, now an American air base.
Readers of my blog won’t be surprised there’s an American air base in Kenya, since I’ve been writing critically about American troops in the area for nearly a decade. But what happened Sunday is a perfect example of American policy unweaving all over the place. We’re unscrewing the lid on terrorism.
In many parts of Africa a new year – and especially a new decade – begins with somber predictions from seers and religious leaders whose adoration depends upon their past reliability.
In Kenya the famous psychic Nicolas Aujula says Trump will lose “but won’t go quietly.” In Nigeria The Presiding Bishop of The Divine Seed of God Chapel Ministry, Sasa, Ojoo, Ibadan, Prophet Wale Olagunju says, “With little prayer, Donald Trump will win the election.”
So there you have it.
It’s pointless and misleading to choose the “top stories” for Africa for the last year, much less the last decade.
Although I’ve done just this for the last 15 years, now nearly every moment is too consequential to parse into importance with any meaning.
The long Christmas holiday in America starts soon and goes right through next week because of the day-of-the-week that Christmas lands. It’s one of the biggest end-of-the-year travel periods in decades because of this as well.
But somehow it doesn’t feel like a holiday this year. People are still spending like crazy in an economy that to me is all smoke and mirrors, but all over the world dissatisfaction with their lives is only growing. You know the list. America’s on top.
Listening to her, you wouldn’t believe that Charlize Theron is South African. Her English is near perfect Americana and her experience in South Africa before coming to the United States in her twenties is also near perfect Americana.
I’ve often used South African comparisons as harbingers of what will happen, here. So has Theron, the star in the movie, Bombshell. None in Hollywood have the life experience that Ms. Theron has to play this role.