Les Misérables who barricaded the streets for bread not cake were ultimately wiped out. Give them a smartphone and Twitter and we wait to see what happens in Hong Kong, but in Africa, where colonialism masterfully subdued millions for a century, “revolution” has never yet occurred.
It seemed like Africans could take anything. Until now.
What do you see in the picture above? Snapped by a reporter for one of South Africa’s most read publications, Aisha Abdool Karim is not himself a photographer. This was last week in the very center of Cape Town, St. George’s Mall.
The woman being dragged was a refugee. There is growing xenophobia in South Africa against illegal immigrants, which we know is a worldwide phenomenon. But what does the picture tell you?
The revolutionary fervor seeping from Hong Kong to Argentina to Mexico has infected Kenya’s most important tourist area, the Maasai Mara.
Younger educated and articulate Maasai ranchers are protesting the contracts that their elder clansmen signed with safari companies that ridiculously are supposed to continue through 2025. Unlike Hong Kong where of thousands of people are flooding into the streets, the Maasai are flooding the tourists areas of the Mara with thousands of cows.
Making a surprise appearance last week in London, Harry Potter author J.K. Rawlings appealed to young delegates at the One World Conference to “stop voluntourism.”
Rawlings invoked her not-for-profit, Lumos, to discourage volunteering in orphanages in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Colombia, Haiti and elsewhere.
A few days ago in New York I sat down with someone deeply involved in The Sudan’s American diaspora, and I was stopped in my tracks when he affirmed with facile certainty that the diaspora thinks the current revolution will succeed.
But what do you think he said when I asked him to predict if Trump would be defeated next year?
Years ago when I first guided safaris one of the concerns potential travelers had – before and after their trip! – were the … bathrooms.
Even today we joke that the veld has a bathroom anywhere you might need it! But in the old days the concern wasn’t so much with the veld as with the hotel or lodge.
Who are your heroes? It’s an important question, particularly now when the world seems totally forsaken.
Today starts the Mashujaa weekend in Kenya. The stem, shujaa, is a straightforward, heavy Swahili word for “hero.” Kenya has many ‘shujaa’s to celebrate this year, in sports, literature, politics and academics. And in Kenya — seemingly unable to mend its tribal rifts – the country really does come together this weekend. The heroes come from all the tribes. It’s a time a citizen really thinks first of herself as Kenyan, and then something else.
OK, buckle up. I’m going to show how last night’s democratic debate explains this week’s Tunisian presidential election.
Right. Do all those dem candidates even know where Tunisia is? (Do you?)
Today is the Columbus Day federal holiday in America.
“Columbus Day” puzzles many of my African readers. After all, Columbus didn’t land in America but in the West Indies. So it seems a fickle holiday in a country that’s known not to have that many.
A moment of peace in a world of war. The Nobel Peace Prize correctly heralds the young democratic Ethiopian leader, Abiy Ahmed Ali, for his efforts “to achieve peace and international cooperation, [specifically] to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea.”
But forgive my refrain, the absence of western diplomacy from “Trump” risks obliterating all the good that’s been done.
Next week the Zambian High Court might obliterate one of the last great remote wildernesses on earth.
One of the most difficult and expensive and pristine natural wildernesses in Africa is the Chiawa reserve on the Zambezi river in south central Zambia. After years of bribing, subterfuge and international challenges, this remote wild might be sacrificed for copper.
News fatigue. Scandal fatigue. Impatience fatigue. Impatience fatigue? What’s that?
The cartoon above is not from the United States. It’s by Africa’s greatest cartoonist, Zapiro, published this morning in South Africa’s widest read, provocative daily media, the Maverick. And believe me Africa has plenty of news to poke fun at. So why does a prominent African newspaper poke fun today at Trump?
Suspicions are increasing that the Tanzanian government covered up to four cases of ebola discovered in Dar-es-Salaam in early September.
Tanzania has denied the accusation.
Almost all the greatest explorations from Europe into Africa began with Mssrs. Thomas Cook, a group of brothers and friends who were the precursor to the Thomas Cook Travel company that went bust this weekend.
Mssrs. Cook et al would be contacted with little more than the explorers’ avowed itinerary: for example, “I’m going down The Nile” or “to find a big mountain in Abyssinia.”
“Live a little, there’s trouble ahead.”