These are from the weekend paper.  Actual quotes from South Africa’s minister of foreign affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (Jacob Zuma’s ex-wife, and the ex-ex-minister of health who introduced the idea that AIDS is simply a disease of poverty, easily cured with garlic and African potatoes)…

“A judge is not supposed to do that. It’s not for judges to decide on foreign policy. They don’t run government and they don’t run foreign policy. There is separation of powers. They run the judiciary. I don’t comment on the judiciary.” (This after a judge in SA’s constitutional court sided with the current minister of health that it was unadvised to prevent the Dalai Lama from visiting).

“Tutu does not run government. Remember, he said he was not going to vote. If it were up to him, there would be no elections next month.” (In response to Archbishop Desmond Tutu declaring that he would now boycott the conference.) Full Story »

Got a hot atrocity? Bring it on and I’ll try to wrap my mind around it. For example, I read four books on the Rwanda massacres starting with We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Philip Gourevitch’s book may have been single-handedly responsible for positioning the tragedy front and center before American intelligentsia. Full Story »

Once known as “The Dark Continent,” Africa boasted a romantic reputation to Westerners as an unknown place of mystery and intrigue. The moniker still holds true today, although for a different reason: Most Americans know so little about current affairs on the continent that news from African countries might as well be struggling to escape a black hole.

Fortunately, Immaculée Ilibagiza’s memoir, Left To Tell, serves as a light in the darkness—even if the darkness it illuminates is among the darkest in modern history. Full Story »

With the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Reagan revolution has at last realized the robber barons’ dream: privatize the profits and socialize the debt. Nicely done, fellas.

— a letter to the editor of The New York Times from Candida Pugh of Oakland, Calif.; Sept. 10; emphasis added.

We now see the compensation wasn’t deserved. I don’t think taxpayers want their money to go to the C.E.O.’s of these very large institutions.

— Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the exit pay packages of Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac who, The Times’ Eric Dash reports, are eligible for as much as $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation; Sept. 10.
Full Story »

In China, size matters. People want to have a car that shows off their status in society. No one wants to buy small.

— Zhang Linsen, the 44-year-old founder of a media and graphic design company in Songjiang, China; he owns a black Hummer H2; July 28; emphasis added.

It’s a cultural thing. When the kids are hungry, they go to their mother, not their father. And when there is less food, women are the first to eat less.

— Herve Kone, director of a group that promotes development, social justice and human rights in Burkina Faso, quoted in the Washington Post Foreign Service’s Kevin Sullivan story about the impacts of the African food crisis on women and children; July 20.
Full Story »

I’ll approach Obama with fearless honesty. He’s a liberal. I oppose liberals. That’s all that’s involved here.

— Rush Limbaugh on presidential candidate Barack Obama; Mr. Limbaugh has renewed his contract with Premiere Radio Networks and Clear Channel Radio, which will pay him more than $400 million; Mr. Limbaugh once referred to Sen Obama and actor Halle Berry as “Halfrican American” on the Jan. 24, 2007, broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show; July 6.

We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.

— former senator Phil Gramm, one of presidential candidate John McCain’s top economic advisers, likening the nation’s economic problems to a “mental recession“; July 10.
Full Story »

In 2004, Yahoo turned over user information to the Chinese government that was used to track down a dissident journalist, Shi Tao, and send him to a labour camp. It was the moment that the Internet knew sin.

Now, Judge Louis Stanton has decided to force Google/YouTube to disclose a complete set of data on all YouTube users. As TechCrunch reports: “That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.”” Full Story »

One Life, by Johnny Clegg, first released 2006, 16 tracks, ASIN B000I5YROM

We’re on our way home to find our freedom
and I’m on my way home to find you my friend
where we can stand in the light of the people
and breathe life into the land again.

“When the System Has Fallen,” Johnny Clegg

“If you have a patch of ground the size of a door, you can feed a family of four,” rhymes my friend, John Broom. John is well over 80 and has been involved in teaching gardening and feeding schemes in Africa for the Quaker Peace Foundation for decades. I believe him.

Africa itself is a vast and fertile land. Full Story »

You want a dark, Goth version of Tweety Bird? Have at it.

— Lisa Gregorian, executive vice president for worldwide marketing at Warner Brothers Television, in a story about “[a]n unusually large number of classic characters for children … being freshened up and reintroduced — on store shelves, on the Internet and on television screens — as their corporate owners try to cater to parents’ nostalgia and children’s YouTube-era sensibilities”; June 11.

Your eminence, you’re looking good.

— President Bush, addressing Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican; June 13.
Full Story »

Exxon Mobil is acting like a dinosaur now, not adopting to a changing environment.

— Stephen Viederman, a New York shareholder, after “Exxon Mobil’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, defeated a shareholder effort … to take away one of his jobs at an annual meeting punctuated by a debate of the company’s policy toward renewable energy and global warming”; May 28.

Despite significant challenges in the U.S. market, we continue to reshape our business for long-term success. This attrition program gives us an opportunity to restructure our U.S. work force through the entry-level wage and benefit structure for new hourly employees.

— from a statement by Troy A. Clarke, the president of G.M.’s North American operations, announcing that “19,000 hourly workers — a quarter of a unionized work force that already has been drastically pared down — have accepted buyouts“; up to 16,000 of these $28-an-hour workers may be replaced by “entry-level” non-assembly workers making $14 an hour; May 30; emphasis added.
Full Story »

“Who killed her?” asked the five-year-old daughter of an acquaintance upon being told that her granny had died. That she could have died of old age and natural causes never occurred to the little girl. It is a chilling reminder of the type of society that South Africa has become.

The last few days, the world’s murder capital has cemented its place as the country where you are most likely to die in a violent attack. 22 foreign African economic migrants have been murdered by rampaging mobs around Johannesburg. Full Story »

Elections in Africa are always precarious affairs. If there is the least sense that, perhaps, the current dictator-for-life will somehow be deprived of power then the citizens will expect change.

If, despite this overwhelming demand for change, the election still goes the way of the incumbent then … well, you get events like Kenya. Previously seemingly stable countries erupt into genocide and horror.

Then we get Zimbabwe. A place that has been unstable and unpleasant almost since independence. Current president-for-life, Robert Mugabe, is responsible for massacres in Matabeleland and causing untold suffering to his people. He has rigged every election since independence. But he is gradually losing control as the economy falls apart (inflation is now 100,000% - everyone is a billionaire).

So, here we stand. The elections took place on the 29th of March. The results were due out this morning. They are not yet out. The opposition parties expect to win. So do the people. If Mugabe still wins, then the chances are that there will be outrage.

However, if Mugabe rigs it outrageously, and his well-paid army takes to the streets … well, things will go on much as they have for the past decade. Unpleasantly.

More news as it happens.

One makes a life-changing decision for some time in the future and then … And then time goes by. The shock wears off. Denial (or futurism) creeps in.

It wasn’t until I was emptying my flat as my cleaning lady took possession of most of my bits and bobs that it really hit home.

The life of a cleaning lady

There are around 15 million South Africans of working age (out of a population of 41 million). Around 8 million have jobs. The rest don’t.

For 2 million uneducated, barely literate women there really is only one choice for earning a living. They clean the homes of the people who do have jobs. These are the cleaning ladies, or “Domestic Workers”. Maids, in other words.

Sometimes they live in and cook and clean and wash. Sometimes they turn up once a week to do some ironing and basic cleaning. They’re not paid much. The minimum Government-mandated wage is less than $1 per hour.

Since most white English-speaking South Africans battle with African names, these women call themselves mundane platitudes, like Beauty, or Faith, or Monica. I think half the cleaning ladies in Cape Town are called Monica. Full Story »

Maybe you once cared for a drug addict? What led them there, what keeps them there? Not your problem. And you believe in all that “tough love” shit; you know that they must make the decision to come clean and live responsibly.

But you also believe that you can make that journey easier for them by showing them how an addiction-free life can be, and by offering them the advantages that make it worth going cold to achieve.

At some point, though, maybe you get an inkling that the process isn’t working. Maybe it’s after they’ve come out of rehab once too often, only to go on a binge again, that you start thinking that the effort isn’t worth the stress.

Countries are like that too.

Full Story »

I believe my current participation could be a distraction.

— major league baseball pitcher and accused steroids and HGH cheat Roger Clemens, in withdrawing from a scheduled appearance at an “event, which takes place largely at Disney Hollywood Studios, and lets fans interact with athletes and ESPN personalities and watch live ESPN programming”; Feb. 20.

I’m very excited about watching this game. I do want to thank your coaches. Thanks for coaching. Thanks for teaching people the importance of teamwork. I like baseball a lot, so thanks for teaching them how to play baseball, too.

— from President Bush’s remarks at a “tee ball” game between the Little Dragons and the Little Saints at Ghana International School in Accra, Ghana; Feb. 20.
Full Story »

The results of the most recent S&R poll are in. Readers were asked:

What issue do you feel has not been adequately covered in the presidential debates thus far?

1: Civil liberties (26)
2: Green energy (15)
3: Media consolidation (11)
    Net neutrality (11)
5: Executive power (10)
6: Mercenary forces (9)
    Sibel Edmonds/corruption conspiracy (9)
8: Native American rights (7)
9: Infrastructure (6)
10: Student loan debt (5)
    AFRICOM/US military control of Africa’s resources (5)
12: Other (4)
13: Nuclear proliferation (3)
    Economy (3)
15: Trade policy (2)
16: Sub-prime lending crisis (0)

You’re invited to vote in our newest poll, which asks about your voting plans for November. The poll is live in the column to the right.

All S&R polls and results are non-scientific. At least, they’re not very good science. For amusement purposes only - no betting, please…

China is rapidly becoming Africa's largest investor. They require little in the way of good governance and are aggressively creating new infrastructure in their drive to secure resources for their own industrial expansion. This offers both risks and opportunities for Africa. Once China becomes the most visible investor in Africa it also implies that their assets will be targeted by activists and opportunists.

Download the podcast: China in Africa.

Aid and trade are essential to Africa’s further development. The US dollar declined by 30% during 2007. This has an effect both on the real value of aid and on the world economy.

Scholars and Rogues is pleased to introduce the first in a series of talking and speaking type Scrogues. This Scrogcast was presented by Gavin Chait at an informal interactive gathering of analysts at Frost & Sullivan. The seminar is about 11Mb, is in MP3 format, and is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License

Download the Scrogcast: The US dollar in Africa.

You know, America is probably wondering why, why do you care? And one of the reasons we care about the suffering in Sudan is because we care about the human condition all across the face of the earth. And we fully understand that when people suffer, it is in our interest to help. And we also understand that when people suffer it makes it more likely that some may turn to the ideology of those who use murder as a weapon. So it’s in our national security interest and it’s in our — in the interest of our conscience to confront this, what we have called a genocide.

— President Bush at a Jan. 17 press briefing after meeting with Rich Williamson, U.S. special envoy to Sudan.
Full Story »

Africa has a problem with causality.

Not that the rest of the world consistently gets the idea either, but there are no other regions that so consistently mess up the nature of cause and effect. The source of this confusion is the economic boom that results from the mere good fortune of having some valuable resources.

In both Russia and Venezuela the near vertiginous rise of oil prices has stimulated economic growth; which is a good thing. It has also led the Big Men in power to associate that boom with their own blunt political ministrations. Both Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin have perverted their constitutions to ensure their continued control. “After all,” they think, “if it weren’t for me the economy wouldn’t be doing so well.”

Sadly - for themselves - this is a woeful fantasy that the citizens of these oppressed lands are willing to go along with. They remember the poverty of previous leaderships and confuse democracy with economic neglect.

Lest you think this is mere speculation, consider the following: In 2003 Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, took control of his country’s oil production after declaring his lack of faith in private endeavour. It is difficult arguing that Chavez’ nationalisation was a bad thing when daily oil revenues have risen from $ 50 million in 2003, to $ 190 million in 2007. Yet it has been an appalling disaster. Full Story »