I was in Nairobi yesterday watching a brilliant protest backfire miserably.
“Rowdy Kenyan youths” (as described by the police) deflated the tires of more than 200 vehicles on Kenya’s main highway at the peak of rush hour causing a nightmare traffic jam that backed up the city for nearly a whole day.
I’ve traveled back and forth to Africa all my life countless times, and probably most of those are through London. Why London?
An English Breakfast.
Fastest Way.
Some may have trouble accepting these simple and obvious truths, so let me elaborate.
I’m traveling once again to Africa! Stick with me for some great adventure in the bush and first-hand experiences in several of Africa’s biggest cities!
For nearly two months I’ll be guiding three different safaris with some wonderful folks from the U.S., Canada and Germany. We’ll be concentrating on the wilderness, of course, but there’s some interesting stuff I’m really looking forward to in Nairobi, Joburg and Durban.
First stop is Nairobi! I’ll be there early next week and will post as much as I can!
The #NeverAgainMSD may be the first public movement to actually tackle our paralyzed government while confronting and beating such behemoths as the NRA. We should have known. Remember South Africa.
Hector Pietersen is one of the most revered persons in South African history. He moved the struggle against apartheid further along in one day than it had in the previous 100 years. He died doing so, at 12 years old.
Today is the American Presidents’ Day holiday. It has a particularly biting edge to it this year, because the vast majority of the country vehemently disapproves of President Trump.
Officially marked to celebrate the birthday of our first president, George Washington, the holiday was expanded by most of the States to also celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, which also occurs in February hence the name.
There’s only one of 52 countries in Africa where individual citizen gun violence reaches the level of America’s : South Africa.
Citizens – huge percentages – in both America and South Africa believe banning at least some guns will reduce this horror. Guess what? South Africa has already passed some of the toughest gun laws in the world but gun violence is still increasing. Does this mean laws against gun ownership don’t work? There’s a pretty terrifying answer.
Watch South Africa, Americans!
The election of Jacob Zuma, a year or so of excessive celebration by his base then an accelerating deterioration of the economy, the scandals which mounted until his ouster yesterday with one year left in his second term, instantly followed today by a police roundup of all the scoundrels involved … this, my friends, could be Donald Trump in America.
Imagine Ryan voting to impeach Trump and Pelosi voting not to: American political strategists better closely follow what’s happening right now in South Africa.
The South African president – despised in every corner of his land while retaining the steadfast loyalty of an enraged minority – was thrown out yesterday afternoon, or more correctly, the process began to oust him. At last! you exclaim, a unified South African sigh of relief and joy? Not quite. The opposition is remarkably subdued. It seems they believe that might have lost all chance of coming to power now that their one-and-only issue is moot.
What do the leaders of Zimbabwe, South Africa and the U.S. have in common?
In South Africa, today, the first real action to oust President Jacob Zuma is expected after at least 5-6 years of planning to do so. In Zimbabwe the destructive dictator Robert Mugabe who was ousted by a coup last November may be on the way back!
And in the U.S.? Neither Zimbabwe or South Africa provide as much surprise and contrast to the past as Donald Trump in the White House. Impeachment by the book is simple; by historical standards a slam dunk. But the chances of impeaching Donald Trump are about as great as winning the super lottery. So why is it so hard to get rid of these monsters?
Rolex, Pandora, Cartier … Valentine’s approaches. This year, if you’re basically a moral and just person, you might want to stick with chocolates.
Those are just some of the companies that Human Rights Watch (HRW) says may be obtaining their gold and diamonds from the use of more than a million child workers, most abused in Africa.
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?
Collusion? Vengeance? Contrariness? Or just stupidity?
These four questions, which hover over practically every action by high American officials today, are perfectly illustrated with an example in Uganda. Following citings for massive bribery issued by New York prosecutors against Uganda’s foreign minister, the Trump administration holds high-level meetings with the accused to praise him.
Collusion? Vengeance? Contrariness? Or just stupidity?
After all their hard, creative and persistent efforts it’s heartbreaking watching Kenyans now destroy their beautiful society. Then again the heartbreak feels the same when I think of what Trumpism is doing to America.
The Kenyan government defies court orders to turn the country’s TV stations back on. The Trump government defies laws passed by an overwhelming vote in Congress to impose Russian sanctions. Yes, there is protest and outrage but not enough so both governments prevail in their anti-democratic slaughter of freedom and liberty.
This weekend the world’s largest big game hunting convention opens in Las Vegas very much as it has for each of the last 30 years. Except this year there’s one radically new component: It will be attended by the United States Secretary of the Interior with a delegation from the department in full hunting regalia.
That’s not surprising, but the agenda has shifted for this august group of officials. Unexpected meetings have been arranged to decide what to do about President Trump’s flipflopping about elephant tusks.
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.