Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
African leaders on fools’ errand African leaders say they’re on a mission to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia. Evidently, they think European leaders haven’t bothered to try. But prevailing facts and circumstances make clear these Africans can only be on a fool’s errand. An African delegation on a peace mission to Ukraine headed by South… Read more.
Give our Benin Bronzes back The Smithsonian marked Indigenous People’s Day last week by holding a ceremony to give 29 Benin Bronzes back to their rightful owners. It wanted the ceremony to be symbolic and substantive in equal measure. The Smithsonian is the latest institution heeding Nigeria’s demand to return artifacts British forces plundered. Most notably, Germany agreed last… Read more.
Kenya held another free and fair presidential election last week. But, with Monday’s announcement of the official results, the country is threatening to descend into violence. That, of course, would be déjà vu all over again. Because the previous two elections, in 2012 and 2017, played out that way too. I commented on the most… Read more.
Democratic protests in Tunisia gave birth to the Arab Spring in 2011. Therefore, it speaks volumes that Tunisians voted this week to return to a form of government that makes the dictatorship they revolted against back then look positively Jeffersonian. More than 94 percent of the votes backed the new constitution, which will see sweeping executive powers… Read more.
Nelson Mandela International Day is all about mobilizing people, governments, NGOs, and corporations to take steps every day to make this world a better place. The United Nations sent out a clarion call today for everyone to redouble efforts to meet the Mandela Day organization’s 2030 goals. Mandela Day goals Goal 1 – Provision of… Read more.
Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. But his martyrdom has made him as much the face of Pan-Africanism as MLK’s has made him the face of Black civil rights. This is why even I can appreciate the “closure” the return of Lumumba’s remains represents for his family. Never… Read more.
On Friday, Macky Sall, Head of the African Union, led a delegation on a mission to Russia. They went to beg President Vladimir Putin to lift the Russian blockade on Ukrainian grain exports to spare millions of Africans now on the brink of starvation. Unfortunately, Putin demonstrated once again that he has nothing but contempt… Read more.
Like me, you have probably wondered why so few Africans blame Vladimir Putin for what so many know is his own war in Ukraine. But now we know… Of course, this is the same president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, who is aping other world leaders by playing mediator between Russia and Ukraine just for… Read more.
Podcast Episode 68: Think Russia’s Putin Is Diabolical? Meet Ethiopia’s Abiy… Related commentaries: Russian invasion of Ukraine… Read more.
