Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Thirty years of Black rule has seen South Africa degenerate from the beacon of Africa into just another basket case on the Dark Continent. And I have decried and chronicled each distressing milestone of its patented descent into the heart of darkness. Chronicling South’s squandered freedom I joined the anti-Apartheid movement in the early 1980s. In the grand scheme… Read more.
Springboks: Long way from Apartheid, stone’s throw from fourth title During Apartheid, the South African national rugby team, the Springboks, was nearly all-White. Back then, Black South Africans would have seen it as treason to support that team. Then, South Africa released Nelson Mandela. His Christ-like inclination to turn the other cheek was as disarming as inspiring.… 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.
Nelson Mandela Day is all about mobilizing people, governments, NGOs, and corporations to take steps every day to make this world a better place. Here, courtesy of mandeladay.com, are 10 Sisyphean goals the Nelson Mandela Day organization will be championing over the next 10 years: Goal 1 – Provision of quality education for all children.… Read more.
A statue of Nelson Mandela was unveiled at United Nations headquarters in New York. The country of South Africa donated the statue in commemoration of a 100-years since Mandela’s birth. (The Associated Press, September 24, 2018) No doubt Mandela deserves this honor. I just wonder why South Africa had to pay for it. The UN… Read more.
History is littered with public figures who betrayed the public trust. But no betrayal has been more shocking and disillusioning than Aung San Suu Kyi’s complicity in genocide against the Rohingya. I have vented my own shock and disillusionment in such commentaries as “Aung San Suu Kyi Becoming Democratic Mascot of Myanmar’s Military Dictatorship,” March… Read more.
Frankly, I don’t see how anyone with any common sense can still think I was wrong to denounce Winnie years ago. It seems Nelson Mandela is proving too great a self-aggrandizing prop for some to let him go. Which brings me to his ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela–Mandela. Because nobody has done more to bask in the god-like… Read more.
My respect for the spousal role Winnie Mandela played in South Africa’s “long walk to freedom” has always been undermined by my contempt for the political role she played, which too often had her behaving more like the matriarch of a crime family than the long-suffering mother of an oppressed people. But even I was… Read more.
Evidently, despite reports to the contrary, Indians remain very proud and protective of their caste system. Only this explains why they are still venting anti-American outrage over the NYPD daring to arrest a high-caste Indian diplomat on December 13 “just because” she was treating her low-caste Indian housekeeper like an indentured slave. But you’d think even Indians… Read more.
Long Walk to Freedom is Nelson Mandela’s compelling autobiography, in which he highlights his 50-year struggle (1944-94) to liberate Black South Africa from White Apartheid oppression. The irony, of course, is that Mandela spent 27 of those years in prison, where his walking was clearly limited. Freedom in Exile is the Dalai Lama’s equally compelling autobiography,… Read more.
