Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
For a little context, here is a relatively lengthy excerpt from “China Buying Up Political Dominion Over the Caribbean (Latin America, and Africa),” February 22, 2005, in which I presaged (almost 10 years ago) the spectre – not only of countries selling their sovereignty to China for easy cash, but of China placing increasingly mercantilist… Read more.
One of my pet peeves is the person who insists on using the honorific title “Dr” after receiving an honorary PhD. But even more galling is the person who insists on using this title after buying one from a diploma mill. Most galling of all, however, is the person who insists on using this title… Read more.
Oscar Pistorius was in an altercation at an upmarket nightclub over the weekend, his family said Tuesday… Regardless of who started the argument, the weekend episode focuses fresh attention on the disputed character of Pistorius, a globally recognized athlete who is on trial for murder after he fatally shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a closed… 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.
His family finally let him go…. Condolences to my friends and comrades in South Africa; although, it speaks volumes about what a beloved and influential man Nelson Mandela was that people all around the world are grieving his loss just as much. In fact, so inspiring was Mandela that, in his tribute just moments ago,… Read more.
Here is what I wrote six years ago after South Africa’s ruling ANC dumped Thabo Mbeki in favor of Jacob Zuma as party leader, thereby ensuring an ignominious end to Mbeki’s tenure as the country’s second democratically elected president: It’s an insult to Mbeki’s distinguished career of public service that he’s being so unceremoniously upstaged… Read more.
I have no doubt that when the time finally comes, South Africans will put on a state funeral for Nelson Mandela that will make those Catholics put on for dead popes seem modest and irreverent. And the least of it will be the who’s who among world leaders queuing up to pay their last respects.… Read more.
It has become de rigueur for celebrities from around the world to make pilgrimages to South Africa just for self-indulgent photo ops with Nelson Mandela. Nobody has lamented this trend more than I: He’s treated more as a tourist attraction these days (like the Statue of Liberty or, perhaps more to the point, a Carnival… Read more.
Much is being made of the fact that President Jacob Zuma refused to meet with First Lady Michelle Obama during her week-long official visit to South Africa and Botswana, which ends on Sunday. Indeed, it’s arguable that he intended to convey a deliberate slight by arranging only for his female minister of prisons to greet… Read more.
I am acutely mindful that my commentaries on the growing pains of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are taking on the specter of flogging a dead horse. This is why I am loath to write yet another one on the following regressive phenomenon that is now unfolding there: African leaders once personified unbridled despotism. Now they’re… Read more.
