Sotho

…to http://basotho.wordpress.com (Sotho)

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Lawyer, born into a prominent Afrikaans family. He studied law in South Africa and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He became an active member of the Communist Party, while also reaching the heights of the legal profession. He defended those charged in the prolonged Treason Trial of the 1950s, and led the defence team at the 1964 Rivonia trial. In 1964, he was arrested and charged with membership of the then underground Communist Party, and in 1966 was sentenced to life imprisonment.
www.biography.com

Bram Fischer stood up for what he believed, and what he believed was that the former system in his home country (South Africa) was grossly unfair toward the larger part of the population. He went to prison for that thought. He was born on 23 April 1908. Happy birthday to him.

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If you can, please vote for Poéfrika (Rethabile Masilo) as the 2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. Thank you. And thanks to Tiel Aisha Ansari, a fine poet, for nominating me.

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On my poetry blog, Poéfrika, I’m trying to collect 52 poems that are in my opinion the most representative of Africa. A few are mine (hey, I’m trying!). They really are the ones I’ve worked on the most. Now, do you have one from anyone that you think I should include? If so, send it to me and I’ll be happy to consider it. In the end I’d like to have 52 awesome Africa-inspired poems linked to on my website. A poem per week. Here is the not-quite-finished list. Click away and enjoy.

• Week 01: The profile on the pillow
• Week 02: Wrath
• Week 03: Sunrise
• Week 04: Confession
• Week 05: Butterfly
• Week 06: All the same
• Week 07: Still I rise
• Week 08: Where have you gone?
• Week 09: Saturn’s Child
• Week 10: Thetsane blues
• Week 11: I, Too, Sing America
• Week 12: A Poem for the innocents
• Week 13: Africa
• Week 14: Preface to a 20-volume suicide note
• Week 15: Feeling fucked up
• Week 16: Facing it
• Week 17: Plea
• Week 18: Song of sunrise
• Week 19: Their behaviour
• Week 20: Easy skanking
• Week 21: Dark August
• Week 22: Song, somewhere near Roma
• Week 23: Stars of stone
• Week 24: I want to write
• Week 25: White canes bend at two places
• Week 26: The bean eaters
• Week 27: Land
• Week 28: Telephone conversation
• Week 29: Moments
• Week 30: Arriving at the night fire
• Week 31: Sunflowers
• Week 32: In the kitchen
• Week 33: Frederick Douglass
• Week 34: Adolescence II
• Week 35: Your presence
• Week 36: There it is
• Week 37: Like a beacon
• Week 39: The grotto of Chehrabad
• Week 40: Notes from my mother’s village…
• Week 41: Love after love
• Week 42: The lost baby poem
• Week 43: I know why the caged bird sings
• Week 44: Bachata
• Week 45: Tourist
• Week 46: Men flow like rivers
• Week 47: Hematidrosis in the olive grove
• Week 48: The sophisticated skinhead
• Week 49: Word speaks
• Week 50: Grace
• Week 51: If you want to know me
• Week 52: Come

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Stephen calls him a silky soul singer, which I think is a darn good description. He was born Marvin Pentz Gay, but stuck an “E” to his surname to avoid misunderstandings. Remember I heard it through the grapevine? He followed that up with a string of successes like You’re all I need to get by in 1968 with Tammy Terrell, What’s going on? in 1971, Let’s get it on in 1973:

“Let’s Get It On” is a 1973 number-one single recorded by American soul singer Marvin Gaye for the Tamla (Motown) label. The title song of the album release of the same title, “Let’s Get It On” held the number-one position on the Billboard Pop Singles chart for two non-consecutive weeks in September 1973. In its first time at number one, it replaced “Brother Louie” by Stories, and was replaced by “Delta Dawn” by Helen Reddy; it then replaced “Delta Dawn” and was finally replaced by “We’re an American Band” by Grand Funk Railroad. Written by Marvin Gaye and Ed Townsend, and produced by Gaye, it was the most successful single ever released on a Motown label.
[source…]

After several other hits like Got to give it up, a funky dance groove, and Sexual healing, perhaps his most famous hit (partly for being the most recent in memory), Marvin descended into drugs and booze, and fears that someone was out to kill him. In 1983 he did a version of the Star-spangled banner, the American national anthem. He finally moved in with his parents and was shot dead by his preacher father on 1 April 1984, a day before his 45th birthday. He is sorely missed. Most of this information and more can be found on Wikipedia.

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Nice excuses do you have more concocted for the next 100 years or so? I mean its been over 50 years and using the same excuse does not attract pity anymore. I mean take the case of India for example, their population alone is greater than that of the African continent, colonized for more than 300 years,Gained independance [sic] 60 years ago and you can see substantial development. How come this is not the case in many African countries? English is not their mother tongue either.

Comment by Reid — 28 March 2008 @ 10:53 pm

The above comment was in response to my 20 June 2006 post called, “Why is Africa poor?” And I just wanted to react to the comment. I know full well that the commenter, Reid, won’t listen to me because his/her mind’s made up already, but what the heck, I’ll give it a shot. I wish Reid would come out so we could talk things over (my email is at the top of http://sotho.blogsome.com, in case you’re reading this, Reid).

Nice excuses do you have more concocted for the next 100 years or so?
As a matter of fact, yes, I do. Except they aren’t excuses per se but what I believe to be the truth. Much as you have accusations and insults stocked up for the next one hundred years, your side of the story, I have what I believe in stocked up, too, my side of the story. And what I believe is that a series of events have contributed to stunting the economic development of many African countries. And, yes, slavery and colonialism are part of that series.

The same thing happened to the American Indian and the Australian Aborigine. It is no surprise that these peoples, who were subjected to the same conditions Africans endured, have been marginalised and are actually struggling to survive in the land of their birth. Only a very short-sighted brain will fail to see this, and choose to label it something else. And skin colour has no bearing on intelligence or stupidity, Reid. None whatsoever.

Skin colour is the organism’s reaction to the intensity of sun rays. The stronger the rays, the more pigmentation cells in the epidermis, called melanocytes, become active, producing melanin, the dye that gives dark people their tan.

I mean its been over 50 years and using the same excuse does not attract pity anymore.
Today we’re still going on about the facts of Alexander the Great’s life, which did not occur 50 years ago but more than 20 000 years ago! What grounds could you possibly stand on to suggest we should not speak about historical facts of half a decade ago? And what historical facts would those be?

By 1905, African soil was almost completely controlled by European governments, with the only exceptions being Liberia (which had been settled by African-American former slaves) and Ethiopia (which had successfully resisted colonization by Italy). Britain and France had the largest holdings, but Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Portugal also had colonies. As a result of colonialism and imperialism, Africa suffered long term effects, such as the loss of important natural resources like gold and rubber, economic devastation, cultural confusion, geopolitical division, and political subjugation. Europeans often justified this using the concept of the White Man’s Burden, an obligation to “civilize” the peoples of Africa.
[source…]

Colonialism came after slavery, mind you. Slavery devastated the continent, depleting it of its healthiest, most viable, strongest citizens. Then colonialism came in to finish the job. When I bring these facts up, it is neither to attract pity nor to seek revenge. It is to bring them up in order to respond to comments such as the one you left on my blog.

And why in the world would the African seek pity? From whom? As far as I know, the African wants the European and the American off the continent. But there’s just too many raw materials and minerals in Africa, aren’t there? And the Occident ain’t getting out unless it has to, is it?

I mean take the case of India for example, their population alone is greater than that of the African continent, colonized for more than 300 years,Gained independance [sic] 60 years ago and you can see substantial development. How come this is not the case in many African countries? English is not their mother tongue either.
It seems to me you might be making an error made by many, which is taking Africa to be a country. For the sake of clarity, Africa is a continent, a continent with many countries; India is a country, and is equivalent to one among the 53 states on the African continent. Due to this, India could not have undergone the same fate under colonialism as Africa. Let me explain.

In the nineteenth century Europe scrambled for Africa, and proceeded to carve it up like pie to suit its strategic needs. No concern was given to how the pie was carved, nor to what toppings were on each piece. In fact, “some 10,000 African polities were amalgamated into 40 European colonies and protectorates [source…].” Imagine that. 10 000 boiled down to 40!

Traditional foes were placed within the same borders, and villages were divided by new boundaries. Take a look at the map of Africa and see how many straight lines there are. India is one country and did not suffer this fate.

Upon independence, when colonial armies were no longer present to keep foe from foe, wars broke out in many places on the continent. And this has nothing to do with skin colour. Take the former Soviet Union, or Yugoslavia. These places, like Africa, had artificial frontiers held together by an ideology backed by a well-trained army. Take away the army, and the rest is history, among black people as among white ones (actually brown and pink respectively. Sort of). Like I’ve said, if you’d like to talk, you’ve got the comments section, and you’ve got e-mail.

Click this: Bob the breaker

Philips to Build Lesotho Plant

Thursday March 27, 12:43 pm ET
Philips Electronics to Build Energy Saving Lightbulb Plant in Southern Africa AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Philips Electronics NV, the world’s largest maker of light bulbs, said Thursday it planned to cooperate with the government and another partner on building a plant in the southern African nation of Lesotho.

The company did not say how large the investment would be, but said the plant will produce 15 million compact fluorescent lamps annually once it is fully operational.

Another factory, more jobs. I suppose we can boil it down to that. We need jobs in Lesotho, and they’re not coming from anywhere within the country but local-based foreign companies. So be it. Welcome to Lesotho, Philips. We hope you’re not gonna be a sweat-shop.

Tsidii Le Loka, originally from Lesotho, South Africa, but now living and working in theatre and TV in New York City, is to work with Highland Council’s Mairi Mhor Gaelic Song Fellow, Fiona Mackenzie.
[source…]

That’s like saying, “Whitney Houston, originally from The United States, Canada, but now…” C’mon people, check your facts!

Facebook | Message: Satire Poems - Prompt Writing

SPEED WRITING Call for Satire: deadline March 15th! Let your talent speak for many. We urge you to write a satirical poem—poke fun at the leader of your choice to flaunt your freedom of speech and your own government’s respect for that human right! This isn’t about politics. It is about supporting the rights of all to write what they want - despite politics. On February 4th the satirist Hédi Ouled Baballah was arrested—behind bars, Baballah can’t continue to speak his mind. Please use your talent and add your voice to protest this infringement on the human right of free speech. More information can be found at www. protestpoems. org (don’t feel sorry for colleagues abroad. do something) All poems will be considered for inclusion in Babel Fruit.

Ed: The deadline has been moved back to the 18th of March. Please participate.
(Rethabile)

Miriam Zenzi Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father, who died when she was six, was a Xhosa. Her professional career began in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers, before she formed her own group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of South Africa.

In 1959, she performed in the musical King Kong alongside Hugh Masekela, her future husband. Though she was a successful recording artist, she was only receiving a few dollars for each recording session and no provisional royalties, and was keen to go to the US. Her break came when she starred in the anti-Apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa in 1959. When the Italian government invited her to the premier of the film at the Venice Film Festival, she decided not to return home. Her South African passport was revoked shortly afterwards.

Makeba then travelled to London where she met Harry Belafonte, who assisted her in gaining entry to and fame in the United States. She released many of her most famous hits there including Pata Pata, The Click Song (Qongqothwane in Xhosa), and Malaika. In 1966, Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba. The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under Apartheid
[more…].

What I personally remember of Miriam is the voice, and the way she was beloved. My folks listened to her at the same time as they listened to Jim Reeves (go figure), and the two form the basis of my pre-teen musical heritage, together with my mother singing around her chores, around her cooking, singing Sesotho traditional songs or Miriam’s Xhosa songs: The Click Song, or Khawuleza. Beautiful woman. Happy birthday to her.

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Ishmael Scott Reed (February 22, 1938) is an American poet, essayist and novelist. Reed is one of the best-known African-American writers of his generation, and along with Amiri Baraka is one of the most controversial (and politically left-wing). His work consistently satirizes the American right-wing (and often the left as well), highlighting domestic political and cultural oppression.

While some have found Reed’s work a vivid, comic depiction of America, others have criticized it as incoherent or muddled. Another group of public intellectuals has argued that some of Reed’s work is misogynistic because of his criticism of the movie version of “The Color Purple,” which the novel’s author, Alice Walker, also criticized.

While he is among a number of black male authors who are criticized as “misogynist” by mostly white feminists, Reed can point to a number of black feminists who defend him, including many whose work he has published.
[source…]

Reed edits Konch Magazine which features poetry, fiction, essays and photography. In the Winter 2008 issue editorial, he says, “Konch began as a print magazine in 1990 and went online in 1998.Konch continues to publish those voices that are ignored by the American media, which abandoned their goal of diversifying their ranks by the year 2000- a goal set by the late Robert Maynard. Unlike the mainstream writers who spend two hour lunches hobnobbing with those whom they cover, the contributors to Konch are volunteers. [source…]”

Happy birthday Mr. Reed!

Jacket Notes

Being a colored poet
Is like going over
Niagara Falls in a
Barrel

An 8 year old can do what
You do unaided
The barrel maker doesn’t
Think you can cut it

The gawkers on the bridge
Hope you fall on your
Face

The tourist bus full of
Paying customers broke-down
Just out of Buffalo

Some would rather dig
The postcards than
Catch your act

A mile from the drink
It begins to storm

But what really hurts is
You’re bigger than the
Barrel
© Ishmael Reed

Tags:
Malcolm X
Malcolm Little
Shabbazz
Black History Month

Obama caricature: The presidential candidate is shown painting the White House black. Now, isn’t that just plain stupid! The text is in Hebrew so I haven’t the faintest idea of what is being said, but the cartoon is unambiguous enough.

Press Release: Statement by IMF Executive Directors at the Conclusion of their Visit to the Kingdom of Lesotho:

Statement by IMF Executive Directors at the Conclusion of their Visit to the Kingdom of Lesotho Press Release No. 08/27 February 20, 2008

A mission of Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) comprising Messrs. Age Bakker, Peter Gakunu, Huayong Ge, Aleksei V. Mozhin, and Ms. Miranda Xafa issued the following statement today in Maseru at the conclusion of a visit to Lesotho:

“We are grateful for the opportunity to visit Lesotho and we thank His Majesty the King Letsie III, The Right Honorable Prime Minister Mosisili, Deputy Prime Minister Lesao Lehohla, Minister Thahane, Governor Senaoana and other honorable members of the Government and Senior officials of the Kingdom of Lesotho for their very warm hospitality. Our visit has provided us with a rare opportunity to learn more about Lesotho from our interactions with the authorities, the public and private sectors, and Lesotho’s development partners. We discussed economic developments and the challenges Lesotho faces in its efforts to achieve high and sustainable growth necessary for a meaningful reduction in poverty. This will contribute significantly to our understanding in the IMF Executive Board, in assessing and discussing the development challenges of the country and the IMF’s policy advice.

“In our meetings with His Majesty the King and the Right Honorable Prime Minister we congratulated them for their commitment to economic development and poverty reduction. We had productive discussions on Lesotho’s economic prospects and development challenges.

“We commend Lesotho’s authorities for their prudent macroeconomic management which has contributed to ensuring economic stability has translated into robust growth, strong fiscal and external positions, single digit inflation, and substantial reduction in debt level. We praise their efforts to promote economic growth through favorable improvements in the investment climate. We agreed with the authorities that achieving the sustainable, broad based economic growth necessary for the improvement of the living conditions of the majority of the Basotho people, remains a challenge. Private sector development is key for achieving growth and reducing poverty.

“We acknowledge that numerous challenges remain on the long road toward effective poverty reduction and sustainable economic growth. The overdependence on Southern African Customs Union (SACU) revenues (over 60 percent) and a global reduction in tariffs as a result of trade liberalization entail risks of revenue slowdown over time. Since the fall of the multifiber agreement, difficulties have piled up, prompting the need to refocus the textile sector and more generally diversify the sources of growth and exports. The need for further financial sector development was discussed, with a view to provide sound outlets for domestic savings and greater funds for domestic investment. The provision of well-supervised financial services and the raising of financial literacy was seen as essential to maintaining financial stability. We agreed with the authorities that productivity-enhancing infrastructure, job creation, fighting HIV/AIDS, and poverty reduction remain top priorities. We believe that with the continuation of prudent policies and the support of development partners, these challenges are not insurmountable.

“We reaffirm the IMF’s commitment to continuing the excellent relationship with the Lesotho authorities.”

The LaunchPad: Where Is Lesotho?

Lesotho is a small nation that is surrounded by the country of South Africa. The King and Queen of Lesotho have invited Johannes Amritzer and Mission SOS to do a Festival for their people. The first Festival was held there in October of 07 and 17 new churches were planted.

This coming week, a second series of meetings will be held there. Here’s a video report of the October meetings and a reminder to pray for Johannes, Peter, and the Mission SOS team this week.

Did the King and Queen really invite these folks to Lesotho for a festival? They said it… what… on TV? They sent an email to invite them? Published the invitation in the paper? Picked up the phone and called them? “We want you to do a festival for our people!”

The clip shows Basotho being healed miraculously. The clip shows the visitors, the healers, through the grace of God, giving sick Basotho their sight back, their legs, their hearing. And it shows the healers insisting that the healees have now been forgiven and saved.

I do not disbelieve in miraculous healing. I have been touched by it. But I disbelieve healers, and this disbelief stems from my conviction that if there is a God, then God is not biased, and will not reveal Him/Herself to a bunch of people at the expense of another bunch of people. This goes to the root of what for me being is all about, and that is if I am and you are, then by God we are. As a result, you can’t have Knowledge and Power if I don’t, and vice-versa, because we are.

If there’s any healing that must go on, it’s not going to be through a bunch of rich visitors to a poor nation. If anything, if Christianity and religion have any meaning, then it must be the opposite, the materially poor must be able to heal the materially rich. Why would God bypass my local preacher and instil in someone I don’t know who comes from a place I don’t know the power to heal me? It’s senseless, albeit dangerous.

N.B: I wasn’t there so I can’t say if collection plates were passed around — but I’d love to know from those who were there.

I wonder if the royal couple did invite these people to Lesotho. If so, then they shouldn’t have. I doubt Basotho need more hoodwinkers at this stage, having enough on a political level as it is. What Basotho do need is the subject of another discussion, but I can stuff it into a nutshell as Work, Political Stability, Economic Vigour and Health and Hygienic Awareness. Plus a little luck from the skies in the form of regular rain.

Did the healees know that their healers have a profitable business behind their action? Who are “the unreached peoples?” And are their melanocytes rather active? (1) Is this about race? Have people with less active melanocytes been reached? (2) It doesn’t seem to be about race, as there has been at least one festival in a European country, Bulgaria. So is this about money? Why are these folks doing this? Do festivals occur in richer, “white” countries? France, England, Italy, America, Spain? If not, why not? Questions and more questions.

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The 25 Most Important Films on Race:

Look around, and you’ll see how African Americans have emerged as the big screen’s most reliable stars. Will Smith is the one demonstrable megastar. Morgan Freeman’s quiet dignity gets him designated as the face of God and the soul of humanity.

And the achievements of blacks are regularly honored by Hollywood. In the past seven years, blacks have won Academy Awards in every acting category. Halle Berry took Best Actress for Monster’s Ball, Freeman Best Supporting Actor for Million Dollar Baby, Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls.

In Best Actor, three of the last six Oscars have gone to African Americans: Denzel Washington for Training Day, Jamie Foxx for Ray and Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland. In these glamorous categories, blacks have achieved a kind of parity. Hmmm, that didn’t take long — only 100 years.
[read about the 25 films…]

The Atlanticist : Africa needs tough love, not more aid poured down a rat hole:

There is not a single state on the African continent that would not today be better off administered under a colonial regime, as Hong Kong was by Britain. If the West genuinely cared about Africa and wanted to make a difference rather than more charity, it would send soldiers to overthrow corrupt and despotic regimes, and constitutional law experts and administrators to architect and operate governing legal and economic systems there patterned after our own.

Like it did in Iraq? I kind of followed this line of thought, clipping my mouth shut with clothes pegs at places, so I wouldn’t yell out obscenities in front of my children. And I went through without a single f-word. I think the writer does identify the problem most of the time:

The African continent is a patchwork quilt of artificially drawn and imposed borders, established, for the most part, by European colonial powers.

Apart from the wars being fought now in Africa, the ones that the colonial west interrupted (while the west itself was free to fight its own murderous wars and get them over with — effectively establishing its borders without African or other outside interference) — but I was saying, apart from these wars, frontiers on the African continent were established entirely by the colonial master and mistress. It is inaccurate therefore to say for the most part. Nevertheless, the writer identifies there a seed for conflict.

Monetary aid is poison. It does not encourage more responsible government. […] A deluge of aid will not fix what ails Africa.

Of course it doesn’t, and it won’t. Whoever said it did or will? But, again, the writer has identified part of the problem. Here’s the thing, as an African, I want the west out, not in, for several reasons. The writer mentions the first one. The second one is unfair trade practices from which Africa is getting thinner and its western trade partners fatter. The third one is that the west messed Africa up once, it’s time it stopped. Got on the bus home. Knowing that “legal and economic systems […] patterned after our own,” as the writer so shamelessly puts it, seem to the west to be the best because ours were uprooted and incapacitated by the same west.

Lack of access to Western markets for products in which African producers enjoy comparative advantage such as sugar, cotton and textiles is a huge problem. Western import restrictions and tariffs stymie wealth creation in Africa.

There again, the writer concurs with me. It is of course a huge problem. And the solution?  “American and European markets should be unilaterally opened to Africa goods, with protective regimes for Western producers being discarded.” Why not stop there, and also provide logical solutions for the other problems so nicely identified? Why talk of colonial regimes administered by America and Britain? We’re quite tired, as a people, of fighting the west off. We want to be left alone.

That’s all we’ve ever wanted, really, even as the west scrambled for chunks of our land. But guess what… instead of getting out, the west is getting in deeper: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7026197.stm I think somebody took your advice. The shame of it is that it’s a waste of money, and we’ll just have to fight and kick the west out again, albeit with an even more messed up continent.

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Thrive Africa:

“It’s amazing to see what God is doing in the lives of these people.”

I wish missionaries or aid volunteers would quit saying this. It gets on my nerves. Every one of them says it, and my big question is, “What?” Drying the country? Inflicting AIDS? Mismanaging the country? Now, is it really God, or is a little politics involved? Why would God distribute riches and geographical phenomena unequally?

I think people who willingly get on the boat to go and “help” should do just that, go and help. It stands to reason. They shouldn’t do it to go and feel good about themselves, or to please God. They should do it to help if they can and if it’s necessary, and God will be pleased.

“Robert ‘Bob’ Nesta Marley OM (February 6, 1945 – May 11, 1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, guitarist, and activist. He is the most widely known performer of reggae music. Marley is regarded by many as a prophet of the Rastafari movement.

Marley is best known for his reggae songs, which include the hits ‘I Shot the Sheriff’, ‘No Woman, No Cry’, ‘Three Little Birds’, ‘Exodus’, ‘Could You Be Loved’, ‘Jammin'’, ‘Redemption Song’, and ‘One Love’. His posthumous compilation album ‘Legend’ (1984) is the best-selling reggae album ever, with sales of more than 12 million copies.
[more…]”

You will have heard of Bob, who has had a good influence on many Basotho of my generation. We jammed to his music and struggled with his philosophy in mind. He is one of my favourite musicians of all time. Happy birthday to him. Geoffrey Philp says a lot more about Mr. Marley and his message.

“It did take a Clinton to clean up after the first Bush and I think it might take another one to clean up after the second Bush. [source]”
~~Hillary Rodham Clinton

Poéfrika:

Someone apparently thinks Dr. Maya Angelou is a “ho” because she supports Mrs Clinton and not Mr. Obama. Hmmm. I know this will generate hits for them, but who knows, maybe you can scold them, or tell someone else to scold them, your congressman, for example, could turn into an effective scolder, or blog shutter. Whatever comes to mind. For indeed, truly, this is stupid.

Sowetan:

A few years ago we had a young kwaito sensation aptly named Lekgoa [sic] because he was white and lekgoa [sic] is Sesotho for white person.

But never have I read anywhere that this young musician was the first white artist to choose kwaito. Neither were many eyebrows raised when Johnny Clegg and PJ Powers branched out.

Are we wittingly going back to the days when we read about “Two men and three blacks killed in a car accident”?

Themba Molefe here touches on a subject I’ve harped on for a long while, as have other people. He talks about black people always being labelled “the first African to…” or “the first black female to…” and so on. While white people who do firsts are not (Themba mentions Johnny Clegg, PJ Powers and a “young kwaito sensation.”).

My interpretation is that people don’t expect blacks to do something, which, when they do, comes as a surprise that warrants “the first black man to…”. But they expect whites to do any and everything, hence no surprise and no firsts there.

Themba also mentions the Senegalese singer Ismael Lo, whose music I admire. Apparently when asked if he was the Bob Dylan of Africa, he replied that perhaps Bob Dylan was the Ismael Lo of America. My sentiments exactly about my country, Lesotho, being named The Switzerland of Africa, but Switzerland not being named the Lesotho of Europe.

I have been told before, whenever I’ve brought this up, that of course Switzerland is famous and well-known, so it’s normal to compare Lesotho to it. But that’s just due to whose standards are being used, and therefore doesn’t work for me.

Question: is a colourless society impossible? I think it is. Here you are, walking down the street, and this white guy is in front of you. You can’t not see that the person is white. And if you’re black, they can’t not see that you are. We can’t achieve a colourless society.

What we can achieve is enough maturity to understand why our outsides are different. Understand that there is occurence of albinism and melanism in America,  in Africa, in Asia, everywhere. That when people are afflicted with these ailments, their characters and what is contained therein do not change. That nurture plays a bigger role than nature in differences among us. And that’s just for starters. There is a long way to go before we mature enough to pretend to live in a colourless society. Even then, the colour will have been ignored only by the force of the spirit, and not by anything else.

So, Themba, the kind of reaction you lament here is gonna go on a lot longer than we’d like it to. Unfortunately. I googled “the first black” and got 3 400 000 ghits (1). Some of these were about Bill Clinton as the first black President of the United States. Then I did “the first white” and got 744 000 ghits (2). Draw your conclusions. First black woman and first white woman get you 157 000 and 21 200 respectively, while the guys get you 82 100 and 67 200 respectively.

Public Enemy’s Chuck D mentions Elvis and Eminem (3) in the same breath, and I add that they haven’t and aren’t being called “the first white men to…”

Lesotho — Anti-Chinese Resentment Flares:

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
24 January 2008
Posted to the web 24 January 2008

Maseru

For 14 years, Mathabo Mabekhla was one of Lesotho’s most successful entrepreneurs. Her ladies’ clothing boutique sold dresses, blouses and slacks imported from neighbouring South Africa, and boasted a client base that included cabinet ministers and their wives.

But dwindling sales forced her to shut down last year, for which she blames the country’s growing community of Chinese retailers. “Chinese are selling very cheap and not good quality things, and they are killing Basotho businesses,” said Mabekhla, 59.

She now sells cigarettes and beaded jewellery on the sidewalk in the capital, Maseru. “The Chinese, they must go back home,” Mabekhla told IRIN. “We don’t want Chinese here.”
[more…]

When I was a kid growing up in the Maseru suburb of Qoaling, we would go to the Chinese plantations not too far from home. There they grew and sold rice and other things. I believe that their project was government financed, or somehow in tandem with a government undertaking. I recall no problem at that time.

There were not only Chinese immigrants but Italian (Mataliana), Indians (Makula) and others. And they were mostly traders and shopkeepers. No problems there either, as far as I can remember. At Peka where I went to high school, there was an Indian trader with whose children we went to school. Apart from the usual kids’ jokes (on those that are different), there were no problems to speak of. In the capital, Maseru, most fast food cafés, as we called them, like the famous Maseru Café, were run by Basotho of Italian descent: white people who were visibly different. No problem. So what is the matter now? Why are we saying, “We don’t want Chinese here,” something we never said to other immigrants?

To my knowledge, when the hard times bite, the immigrant is always the scapegoat. It is happening in France today (immigrants are being forcibly flown to their countries of origin), it has happened in Germany where the Turkish population there has been blamed for economic woes, and Idi Amin chased Indians out of Uganda because they ran most retail businesses there.

I think that Basotho who are suffering from economic disease are right to vent their anger. But I do not think that immigrants are the right targets of that anger. We, the Basotho, have lived for many years on money sent home by our immigrant brothers, fathers, uncles who worked in South Africa’s mines. True, our labour filled a gap, but the Chinese in Lesotho are not exactly vultures. They have provided a certain amount of income for suffering families, through factories or retail employment. If we want to blame someone for being poor, we should blame the government. Governments are elected to work for the populace, and when the populace suffers, those governments, and them alone, remain accountable.

Blaming and attacking the Chinese, or any other part of the population, is discrimination, and it’s wrong. There are lots of Basotho who live and work overseas, and there are other nationalities who live and work in Lesotho. That’s the way it is, and i’m sure we wouldn’t like it much if Basotho who live overseas were attacked in the same manner. Our solution lies in being innovative and entrepreneurial. If we can’t, then there’s something wrong with the way our country is being run, and that’s where we turn toward the government and start asking questions. Khotso, Pula, Nala.

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Lesotho urged to free journo: Africa: News:

Lesotho urged to free journo 23/01/2008 08:19 - (SA) # PM to testify against journo # Journo held for subversion Vienna - The International Press Institute urged Lesotho to drop all charges against a local journalist arrested last year for allegedly making contact with violent government opponents. Thabo Thakalekoala, a journalist at the private Harvest FM radio station in the capital, Maseru, was arrested last June and charged with subversion after he read out on the air a letter said to have been written by members of the army denouncing Prime Minister Phakalita Mosisili as “the unwanted ruler of Lesotho”.
[more…]

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South African theologian and university administrator to lead February Meetings:

Karen B. Eldridge, Director of News and Public Information
865.981.8207 — karen.eldridge@maryvillecollege.edu

Dr. Russel Botman, rector of Stellenbosch University in South Africa and president of the South African Council of Churches, will be the speaker for Maryville College’s 2008 February Meetings, scheduled for Feb. 4-5. Held annually at the College since 1877, February Meetings have offered the College and local community an opportunity to reflect on authentic Christian faith and action in the contemporary world.

In years past, guest speakers and special music have been highlights of the condensed lecture series, which is open to all members of the College community, people in the area and visitors, including the College’s Board of Church Visitors.
[more…]

Libya’s camels land in Lesotho: Africa: News: News24:

Libya’s camels land in Lesotho 10/01/2008 22:13 - (SA) Click here to find out more! # HIV doc files torture complaint # ‘Aids’ medic takes Libya to UN # Gunmen free Libyan diplomats # 2 Libyan diplomats kidnapped Maseru - A huge Libyan government cargo jet landed in this tiny mountainous kingdom on Thursday with Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi’s gift to the prime minister of four camels.

Lesotho’s foreign minister and another top government official were at the airport to receive the two adults and two calves, who were then whisked away to a secret destination. Four Libyan officials accompanying the camels refused to comment. Lesotho foreign ministry officials, who asked not to be named, said they were a present from Gadaffi to Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili, who paid a state visit to Libya two years ago to establish diplomatic ties.

It was unclear how Mosisili planned to use the camels in Lesotho, an impoverished kingdom of 1.8 million people surrounded by South Africa. Temperatures can fall to below zero and rain is sometimes heavy - in contrast to the Libyan desert. Many people in Lesotho use horses as their main means of transport on the rugged terrain.

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Former UNB Professor to Present About Education in Lesotho:

On Thursday, Jan. 17, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 143 of Marshall D’Avray Hall at the University of New Brunswick, Marie Cashion will present A Journey Begun: Public Education in Lesotho, southern Africa. In 2000 the mountain kingdom of Lesotho initiated free primary (grades 1-7) public education, starting with Grade 1and adding a grade each year.

Twenty of these schools are supported to varying degrees by Help Lesotho, a small Ottawa based NGO. This past fall professor Cashion, who recently retired from the UNB faculty of education, visited 15 of these schools to advise Help Lesotho on how it can best assist the schools given their level of need and limited resources. Professor Cashion will describe her experience as well as her plans to involve some New Brunswick schools in creating interest among students here in helping the schools of Lesotho.

Admission is free and a reception will follow the colloquium in Room 225 of Marshall D’Avray. For more information, contact Emery Hyslop-Margison at (506) 458-7457 or ehyslopm@unb.ca.

Chatoyance:

Books will fly through the air for children (Tag, you’re it!):  In honor of all those folks who’ve tagged me with memes (or are memes now all called “hooplas”?) this year and had to listen to me grumble, I’ve got a twist on the theme of meme. I read Doris Lessing’s Nobel speech through TIV’s blog — the speech where Ms. Lessing discussed the hunger for books in Africa — and it left me feeling weak.

And so Lori decided to do something about it. I encourage you first to read more, then to participate and make this venture successful. But let’s ask this, why would this realisation make Lori feel weak? Well, I suspect that she knows how in today’s world you’re as good as dead if you don’t possess knowledge in the form of information, after all, this is the Information Age.

Information is obtained at school from teachers (the knowers), but increasingly more and more from books (the knowledge carriers), and even more increasingly from the World Wide Web (knowledge). Poor people can’t afford school, and certainly can’t afford the Internet as we know it today. That leaves books.

If they can’t even get that, then it leaves people like Lori feeling cold, because then it means poor people are dead meat, and that’s literal. As for us who are more fortunate, we certainly can’t afford school and the Internet for everyone (well, some of us can’t), but we can surely afford books. This is a super project and I encourage you to support it. A heartfelt thanks to Lori and to all those who are taking part in this.

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World Development Movement comment on Bali roadmap:

The EU [says] it will increase taxes on imports from African, Caribbean and Pacific countries on 1 January 2008 if agreements are not signed. At the same time, the EU has suggested that the existence (or not) of an Economic Partnership Agreement will influence EU decisions on which countries receive most aid.

This is an attempt by the EU to get even more market share from Africa and the Caribbean, at give-away tax rates, or as the author of the article puts it, “free trade agreements.”  This reminds me of a blog post in which I was trying to tell JK, a commenter, that the West is not about to leave Africa alone.

I hate being right like this, but there you have it JK. When Africa is reluctant to enter into “trade” with the West, there’s quite a bit of arm-twisting used: “The EU has suggested that the existence (or not) of an Economic Partnership Agreement will influence EU decisions on which countries receive most aid.”

2 January 2008

Press Freedom Round-up 2007
86 journalists killed in 2007 - up 244% over five years

In 2007:
  86 journalists and 20 media assistants were killed
  887 arrested
  1,511 physically attacked or threatened
  67 journalists kidnapped
  528 media outlets censored

Online:
  37 bloggers were arrested
  21 physically attacked
  2,676 websites shut down or suspended

In 2006
  85 journalists and 32 media assistants were killed
  871 arrested
  1,472 physically attacked or threatened
  56 journalists kidnapped
  912 media outlets censored

[more…]

“I keep hearing from white africans [sic] that they know blacks (Africans) since they are from Africa and that they have the mentality of teen agers [sic]. They insist that they are difficult to educate and have hard time [sic] understanding basic procedures. They also claim that blacks are irresponsible and won’t do what is necessary for success. They did differentiate somewhat between westernized blacks and not. Many said they thought the west should stop all aid and just pull out and let the continent sort itself out and that it will probably become mainly tribal again. What are your comments on these assertions.”

This is a comment I received earlier today on my post, “Why is Africa Poor?” The sics in it are not to belittle the commenter, but to assure the reader that I quoted faithfully and did not insert or remove things. Now, where to begin? The comment was left by JK, with an email address that I have not bothered to use. So I’ll address my comments to JK him/herself. My aim with this post is not to attempt to show why Africa is poor, but to settle a commenter’s questions.

JK, your comment, and the assertions of your friends, as you put it, have been said and made a thousand times, and I and other people have tried as many times to address them, and lay such thoughts to rest. Let me just cut to the point here and say that this kind of talk is idiotic and shows shallow thinking and unfounded conclusions. Nobody who considers themself civilised should be pushing such rubbish. OK? Now, let’s get started.

1. …they have the mentality of teen agers [sic].
   What I have heard from most people is that it is Americans who have the mentality of teenagers, not black Africans, not white Scandinavians, not green… Martians, which is why Americans roam the world toting machine-guns and playing cowboys ‘n injuns. But seriously, almost all the Africans I know, black or otherwise, act responsibly and in a civilised manner under normal circumstances. They help each other, respect their parents and their elders, are satisfied with little if it is enough, have a God (or gods) that they do believe in, not on TV but in their hearts and huts, and even in the dark when they’re alone. Most Africans I know worship other things: God, family, spouse, country. Not money. Most Africans I know will die to keep a promise to a friend. If all this sounds like teenagers to you to your friends, then right, I agree with you.

2. …they are difficult to educate and have hard time [sic] understanding basic procedures.
   Why would anyone say that a certain group of people, from a certain piece of soil that floats in a certain region of the ocean, is hard to educate? Is the capacity to absorb and learn new things based on that? On the type of soil? On the shape of the continent? On the salinity of the surrounding waters? Even if this capacity to absorb and learn new things were based on culture, Africa is a huge land with more than fifty countries and more than a hundred different cultures. Don’t even mention the number of languages.

   People should in fact quit saying things like, “Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.” There aren’t any legitimate grounds for grouping Africans and labelling them in a certain way. Nor any other group of people, for that matter. Not culture, and not skin colour, the latter of which depends on the activity of a certain type of skin cell called the melanocyte. Otherwise I’ll lump you with Canadians and Mexicans and Inuits and call you a nation. If skin colour is to be used to determine intelligence (the lighter the skin, the smarter the person in it), as you your friends suggest, JK, then all the albinos in America are smarter than everybody else there, and all the albinos in Africa are smarter than everyone in Africa.

   Let me not stop there. I’d also like to point out that by “understanding basic procedures” you your friends mean becoming white, so to speak. White people scrambled for and got Africa, then they decided the African had to abandon African ways and learn European/Occidental ways, or “basic procedures.” Any resistance to this is labelled as you your friends label it.

   I know few Africans who speak only one language. “Difficult to educate?” I’m writing this in your language because if i wrote it in any other you probably wouldn’t understand, and I’m “difficult to educate?” How many languages do you speak, JK? How far have you gone in your studies? These aren’t real criteria for determining intelligence, as in other countries diplomas can be bought, for example, but you must understand that I’m struggling to prove my non-stupidity here; so you will have to pardon me and pardon my antics. Haeba u utloa hore na ke reng, ha ke bua tjena, u se u tla ntšoarela he, monna. Ou peut-être tu parle français, comme beaucoup d’africains, ce peuple qui est si “difficile à éduquer.” Enfin, pourquoi pense-tu que t’es meilleur que les autres, seulement parce que tes mélanocytes sont moins actives?

3. … blacks are irresponsible and won’t do what is necessary for success.
   What is the white person responsible for? The hole in the ozone layer? Slavery, racism, global warming, the holocaust, colonialism, what have I missed? The KKK, skins, non-skins, what have you… come on, JK, don’t make me laugh. Africans have lived on and with their land for millenia without screwing it up. What are you trying to sell me, here? Africans are inherently responsible for each other, and real communities exist where each member is responsible for all the other members. That is until the white man showed up and forced us to learn “basic procedures.”

   Exactly what do you consider “necessary for success?” Becoming white Learning your “basic procedures?” If Hannibal, the African general who conquered Spain and the south of Gaul (France), in about 220 BC, had succeeded in conquering Rome fully (…he inflicted one of the worst military defeats the Romans had ever known [source]), then the roles would be reversed today. I’d have enslaved you, then colonised you, raped your women, burned your lands, destroyed your religion and your culture and your livelihood, then dragged you to Africa to work in my cotton fields for nothing, and you’d have had to learn my “basic procedures,” and I’d have called you stupid for taking time, or simply refusing, to do so. And I’d have let this drag on for centuries, until the late 1960s (Do this quiz and you’ll understand)

   And even then, I’d still hang many of you (don’t visit this site if you’re weak hearted) who tried to be smart, or who were more handsome than I was and got the girl. And afterwards, I’d continue by denying you your humanhood, denying you decent work and giving it only to the black nation. And then when you started making it, despite everything, I’d ridicule all laws meant to level the playing field, and call them reverse discrimination, or whatever else they’re called. Then I’d post comments on blogs suggesting that white people were stupid and irresponsible.

4. …They did differentiate somewhat between westernized blacks and not.
   Oh, goody! Let me guess, by westernised blacks you mean like Michael Jordan and Bill Cosby? Miles Davis, Andrew Young, Stevie Wonder, Malcolm X, Oprah Winfrey, Martin Luther King, Marvin Gaye, Muhammad Ali, Spike Lee, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, Naomi Campbell, Duke Ellington, Dr. Patricia E. Bath, Alex Haley, Billie Holiday, Quincy Jones, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, David Dinkins, and hundreds of others? In other words, those you your friends couldn’t keep from succeeding you’ve decided to “differentiate somewhat”? Why? What basis do you your friends propose for doing so? Culture? The activity of melanocytes in the skin?

   What will it take to get you your friends to understand that the white man f*cked Africa over, and that the African who goes to any place that is less f*cked over, makes it? What will it take to understand this? I thought you your friends could understand “basic procedures.” And, in all honesty, this here is really basic, JK.

5. ... they thought the west should stop all aid and just pull out.
   If only. Give me a date and I’ll throw a party. Except the west may stop the aid, but it’ll never pull out. The stakes are too high for that, especially today. What with China and India penetrating into the African continent with proposals for partnerships? To that, the Bush administration came up with Africom, and appropriately sat a man who has highly active melanocytes at its helm. The west won’t, repeat, won’t pull out, JK, until Africa has been sucked dry.

   On the other hand, America is stumbling, isn’t it? Why? Because for the past eight years its resources have been targeted at and focused on war(s), just when these two giants that are China and India, or Chindia, as experts aptly call them, were awaking, just as they were rubbing their eyes, yawning, and scratching their balls. Now what?

   What is intelligence based on, JK? Ask your pals. All I can tell you is, it’s not based on the activity of melanocytes in the skin, nor is it based on culture. I suspect it is based on a wide array of factors. I suspect every hamlet has its own village idiot, in America as well as in Africa. Remember that “IQ depends on your culture, class and gender because of the way tests are written [source].”

Isaac Asimov, who had less active melanocytes than black Africans, and wrote sweetly (he wrote some of the most incredible limericks) has said, and I urge you to listen to the man, JK:

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn’t mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”

Indulgently, I lifted by [sic] right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there [source].

Difficult to educate? A hard time understanding basic procedures? Bah!

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How deep’s deep,
how dark’s dark?
What depth will keep
secrets and, will
some shady dim-
ness suffice to turn
a secret grim,
leaving it in the dark?

It is this that
I’ve carried like
a prayer mat
all my life; it
enters me from
nowhere, as we
set off from home
for my kids’ school.

From where we live
to where school is
there is a five
minute walk that
often-times turns
to a nightmare.
I have concerns
that someone’s out

to spill blood, drive
us out of here.
We would arrive
late if we changed
circuits, and would
have given up,
which is no good.
This is our road.
© Rethabile Masilo

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Yay! We’ve got more time…

We’ve just gotten word that the deadline to make donations to Menu For Hope food blogger charity campaign has been extended through the weekend. So if you missed out in entering the raffle for our fantastic prize package, or any of the dozens of other prizes that are up for grabs, you still have time to do so.

If you missed it, now’s the opportunity to help some children in Lesotho. And you might win something grand in the process. Please visit: www.tasteto.com and www.cooksister.com for more details.

Health workers all revved up to hit the road and beat HIV - Times Online:

Not one baby in Lesotho will be born with HIV in 2010. That is the ambitious pledge made by Mphu Ramatlapeng, the new Health Minister in this tiny African kingdom, which has been ravaged by the virus. And Riders for Health, the international charity chosen by The Times for this year’s charity appeal, has a crucial role to play in her quest to conquer HIV-Aids.

In a unique partnership Riders, the Elton John Aids Foundation and the Lesotho Government will ensure that hundreds of nurses, doctors and health workers are mobile by the end of next year – essential if HIV is to be eradicated. The Elton John foundation will provide 120 motorbikes. Riders for Health will teach health staff how to ride and guarantee to keep the bikes on the road with its preventive maintenance programme.

“Not one baby in Lesotho will be born with HIV in 2010″ is a tall statement, but perhaps we need tall statements in Lesotho, as tall as the mountains of the Malutis, in order to get half that much done. This is a forward-sounding project, and we need forward-sounding projects to beat what we’re up against. What we’re up against is starvation, drought and AIDS/HIV, and finding good governance, which is in reality necessary to get tall statements and forward-sounding projects implemented successfully. How do you see it?

One of my fears is for this project to go the way others have gone before: start off well, peter out almost immediately, and line the pockets of a few people. Please see this post. This does not mean help to Lesotho should be halted. It means help to Lesotho should be increased beyond the money, it means we need the money given to help Basotho, and for that the sponsors and donors must keep the books of the money they give. Else we’re sunk, as will the money. I’ll take this opportunity to wish Basotho Keresemese e monate, le selemo se secha se tletseng tšepo, khotso, pula le nala. None of those can really happen without the other.

37 hours left to help feed Lesotho kids — and win great prizes:

by Bonnie P. @ 2:45 pm on 20 December 2007.

As just about every food blog has publicized already, Pim Techamuanvivit of Chez Pim is once again spearheading the epic online fund-raiser Menu for Hope to benefit the U.N. World Food Programme. In 2006 she raised over $62,000. This year’s donations — which just passed $55,000! — will be earmarked for the school lunch program in Lesotho, a small country landlocked by South Africa, as an extra incentive to encourage families to educate their children.

Details here: news.myspace.com/living/organicliving and here: www.cooksister.com. It’s a good cause.

The Hays Daily News:

A few examples of aid-funded projects in Africa that have failed

Eds: For use Thursday Dec. 20 with BC-Rethinking Africa-A Bumpy Road. Also sent yesterday.

By The Associated Press

The World Bank’s private arm, the International Finance Corporation, has found that only half of its Africa projects succeed, and many donors have not done much better. Here are a few of the development projects in Africa that went wrong:
——–

PROJECT: Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline to the Atlantic Ocean DONOR: World Bank COST: $4.2 billion WHERE IT WENT WRONG: The pipeline was the biggest development project in Africa when it was completed in 2003. It was funded on condition that the money be spent with international supervision to develop Chad. However, President Idris Deby’s government announced in 2005 that oil money would go toward the general budget and the purchase of weapons, or else oil companies would be expelled. Now Deby spends the oil money on regime survival and rigged elections.
——–

PROJECT: Lake Turkana fish processing plant, Kenya DONOR: Norwegian government COST: $22 million WHERE IT WENT WRONG: The project was designed in 1971 to provide jobs to the Turkana people through fishing and fish processing for export. However, the Turkana are nomads with no history of fishing or eating fish. The plant was completed and operated for a few days, but was quickly shut down. The cost to operate the freezers and the demand for clean water in the desert were too high. It remains a “white elephant” in Kenya’s arid northwest.
——–

PROJECT: Lesotho Highlands Water Project
DONOR: World Bank, European Investment Bank, African Development Bank
COST: $3.5 billion
WHERE IT WENT WRONG: The project to divert fresh water from the mountains for sale to South Africa and for electricity began in 1986. But the electricity proved too expensive for most people, and the diversion of so much water caused environmental and economic havoc downstream. The development fund raised from selling the water was shut down in 2003. The courts convicted three of the world’s largest construction firms on corruption charges and the project’s chief executive was jailed. Tens of thousands of people whose lives were ruined by the diversion are still waiting for compensation.
——–

PROJECT: Office du Niger, Mali DONOR: France COST: More than $300 million over 50 years WHERE IT WENT WRONG: The goal in 1932 was to irrigate 2.47 million acres to grow cotton and rice and develop hydropower in the Mali desert. More than 30,000 people were forced to move to the desert to work on the largest aid project attempted by French colonial authorities. The African workers largely ignored French attempts to change traditional agricultural practices. By 1982, only 6 percent of the region was developed and the infrastructure was falling apart. The World Bank took over the project in 1985 and has shown limited success with rice farming.
——–

PROJECT: Roll Back Malaria, across Africa DONOR: Multiple agencies COST: About $500 million WHERE IT WENT WRONG: Roll Back Malaria, established in 1998, aimed to halve malaria incidence by 2010. The program said Africa needed $1.9 billion a year to slow the disease, but by 2002 donors had only come up with $200 million a year. By 2004 the infection rate had risen 12 percent. Experts say donors rarely followed through with pledges and some programs were subject to political considerations, such as what kinds of insecticides to use, whether to buy cheap generic drugs or how much poor people should pay for mosquito nets.

I was attracted enough by the title of an AllAfrica.com article to resolve to read it. The title read: “Uganda: Africans Can Overcome HIV/Aids.” I wanted to know how we could do so. If Uganda can do it, then Lesotho can, also, I reasoned. Lesotho has one of the highest rates in the world. I went home this year after 7 years away, and found many of my friends gone, compromised to AIDS and the folly surrounding it.

But I was quickly disappointed by the article, even if it spoke some truths that I would agree with. Shunning promiscuity is one of those. But the author also says things like, “since the condom is about safe sex and safe sinning,” it cannot be Jesus’ approach. Now, I don’t know if it would be Jesus’ approach — my worry lies in the fact that the author thinks condoms are for sinning.

Condoms are for safe sex that should be had by any couple if one of the partners is infected. We must remember that infection does not equal sinning, and that infected people should not be stigmatised like it has been done before. There are many ways to catch a virus. And even if someone catches the HIV virus by fornicating, sinning, cheating their spouse, our job is to help them, not to hurl Biblical verses at them, not to cast the first stone. That’s what Jesus said to the mob that wanted to stone that woman accused of whoring, right? Who are we to pass judgement?

Condoms are also for birth control. If I have “enough” children, or if I don’t want to have children, full-stop, then naturally I use a rubber. There are many reasons why a responsible person would want to use a rubber. They may not want to infect their partner or be infected by their partner, they may want to control the size of their family, they may feel more comfortable having sex with a rubber than without, they may want to use a rubber in order to prolong the excitement of the act. And any of those are as valid as wanting to eat to live.

“Since the intervention of the condom hinders man and woman, whether married or not, to become one flesh, the sexual act that follows merely implies manipulation of among partners as conduits of sensual pleasure and masturbation. Thus the prevailing mistrust for abstinence and faithfulness among partners seriously betrays African cultural and Christian values in preference for secularism and utilitarianism.
[source…]”

I think it’s wrong to imply that who uses a condom sleeps around and cheats their partner (in bold in the quote above; the highlighting is mine). It is simply untrue. And the sexual act can be enjoyed only for sensual pleasure. It is an outlet of love that God has bestowed on us (and maybe on dolphins, too, I don’t know. And who cares?). The sexual act is the ultimate in acts of love. Ranks right next to dying for someone. Maybe that’s why they call it “the small death.”

I also happen to think that this is not a question for Christians, or Jews, or Moslems, or Atheists alone, but for humans. AIDS hits flesh and blood, not spirituality. So I think to look at the issue and make it Christian is beside the point. And that’s what the author is doing. HIV/AIDS is hot-blooded, and kills my Jewish neighbour as well as my Hindu friend. We need to address it in those terms. Go and tell their families what you think Jesus would want and they will tell you what they think their own saints would want. Where does that leave us, standing on this blue, vulnerable planet at the edge of a hostile environment? You tell me.

“The African solidarity with the infected and affected, augmented by the Christian story of the Good Samaritan will bring about the holistic physical and spiritual healing required.”

I dig that. But the article does not convey that meaning. The Good Samaritan stops to help without saying, “Huh, what faith is this one, and did they or did they not fornicate?” I’m a Christian brought up in a Christian home (It is true, but I have to say that here to give my point of view the benefit of being at least looked at by some. Much like running for President in the United States). But I don’t think anyone has the right to interpret either the Bible or the teachings of Jesus Christ for humanity. I accept the fact that there are other religions that do not necessarily agree with mine. I do not want to fight with followers of those religions (or those non religions), but would like to hold hands with them to face the difficulties facing our lonely, vulnerable planet. The only basic, universal truth here is that we’re in deep shit together. Now, how do we get out?
http://allafrica.com/stories/200712170390.html

TwinCities.com - Gates money leaving basic health care in dust:

MASERU, Lesotho - A neighbor shaved Matsepang Nyoba’s head with an antiquated razor. Blood beaded on her scalp. Tears trickled down her cheeks, but not because of the pain. She was in mourning, and this was a ritual. Two days earlier, her newborn baby girl had died in the roach-infested maternity ward of Queen Elizabeth II, a crumbling sprawl that is the largest hospital in Lesotho, a mountainous nation of 2.1 million people surrounded by South Africa.

One of the statements that caught and retained my attention is this one: “Many AIDS patients have so little food that they vomit their free AIDS pills.” In other words, we give them expensive medicine to cure them of AIDS, but they haven’t eaten in a while. Perhaps the money would be better spent feeding patients. Some of them haven’t got transport fare to reach hospitals to receive their free medication. It’s sad. What is the problem?

The problem is that money is pouring in to help cure AIDS and Tuberculosis, high profile diseases and high profile killers, it is true. At the same time, qualified personnel is driven from basic care toward these high profile killers (follow the money!) The result is that people are starting to die from asphyxia and malnutrition. A more thought-out solution is required.

Donald James Woods, CBE (December 15, 1933 – August 19, 2001) was a South African journalist and anti-apartheid activist.

As editor of the Daily Dispatch from 1965 to 1977, he befriended Steve Biko, leader of the anti-apartheid Black Consciousness Movement, and was banned by the government soon after Biko’s death, which had been caused by serious head injuries, sustained while in police custody. The govenment [sic] still denies giving Biko these injuries, even though the officers have admited to beating Biko to the point of neve [sic] and brain damage. Woods fled to London, where he continued to foster opposition to apartheid. In 1978, he became the first private citizen to address the U.N. Security Council.
[source…]

Donald was Biko’s friend and an activist against Apartheid. After the June ‘76 Soweto Riots, the government turned its guns on people like him. He disguised himself and crossed the Tele bridge into Lesotho using a fake passport. His family joined him in Lesotho, and with the help of the British High Commission there, they were flown to London, and to safety.

Donald was born on 15 December 1933. Happy birthday to him.

Is India Bad for Jaguar? - TIME:

A group of U.S. Jaguar dealers said they opposed the possibility that Ford, Jaguar’s owner, might sell the British luxury car brand to an Indian firm. Two of the three firms that Ford has shortlisted as potential purchasers are Indian: Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors. The dealers said that the sale to an Indian company would hurt Jaguar’s image. “I don’t believe the U.S. public is ready for ownership out of India of a luxury car make,” Ken Gorin, chairman of the Jaguar Business Operations Council, told the Wall Street Journal. “And I believe it would severely throw a tremendous cast of doubt over the viability of the brand.”

Trust this kind of thing to come out of America. You tell me: Is India bad for a prestigious company? I think that it is, indeed, given the number of racist-minded people around. If an Indian company acquired Jaguar, then all the misconceptions and stereotypes would come sweating out of a lot of people, tarnishing the make.

Or maybe the fact that India is moving up in the world doesn’t please everyone…

I see this like I see Japan and Germany even if, trust me, I’m no economist. After World War II, those two countries spent their strengths not on warfare or the military, but on their economy. Look what happened. The US is spending its strength on imposing or toppling governments in the middle East, not on its economy. Come China and India, and Brazil.

Still, I doubt the problem is a surge of jealousy. I believe truly that it is ingrained racism and stereotypical garbage. Despite India’s escalating success.

Mountains of Hope:

Special screening of the compelling documentary Mountains of Hope. A fourth-year medical student at Boston University, Kara-Lee Pool, inspired by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation supported work of the Lesotho-Boston Health Alliance, produced this film to educate her fellow students about the health care challenges faced in resource-constrained settings, to raise general awareness about the situation in Lesotho, and to present a message that will help draw Basotho physicians and nurses back to Lesotho. Director Patrick Christell presents a compelling portrait of Lesotho’s human resource crisis and the people involved in turning it around.

A question and answer period will follow the screening with a panel of the documentary’s creators. Screening will benefit the activities supported by Global Primary Care, a non-profit organization supporting the work of the Lesotho-Boston Health Alliance to tackle the human resource crisis in Lesotho.

When: Monday, Dec 10, 2007 at 7:00pm Register at http://www.coolidge.org/node/1407
Where: Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline, MA.
Who: Open to General Public
Admission: $10.00 More Info http://www.globalprimarycare.org Contact BUMC klpool@bu.edu 617-414-6264

Cook sister!: Menu for Hope IV - spotlight on Lesotho: I’m sure you have all heard of the wonderful Menu for Hope event that is the brainchild of Pim and takes place once a year around Christmas.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the campaign involves food bloggers (and others) from around the world each donating something to be raffled off on-line for charity. This can be as simple as a cookbook or as elaborate as a foodie tour of a world-class city. It can be something you will lovingly make yourself (e.g. jams or framed photographs) or it can be something you have persuaded somebody else to donate (e.g. dinner at a smart restaurant) - see last year’s campaign to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

Once the raffle starts, members of the public can visit your site to read about your raffle items and then place a bid by going to Pim’s site. And at the end of the campaign, winners are chosen using a software application, after which the regional hosts will tell people the good news of what they have won. Surely this raises a lot of money, I hear you say? Oh yes - just over $60,000 last year! And what happens to the money? Well, like last year, the money will be going to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and this year’s campaign is going to be particularly exciting.

This is because the WFP has allowed us to earmark the funds to a specific program. We am thrilled to announce that we have chosen a school feeding program in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho - which is situated bang in the middle of South Africa!

If you can participate, do. it’s a beautiful initiative and, as I’ve always insisted, is an example of the kinds of action that will get us out of the quagmire and cycle of poverty, ill-health, and dying land. Please contact jeanne AT 501 DOT co DOT za to tell her what you’d like to raffle, or how you may participate.

They crossed all lands to reach us, to surround
with us fagots and these steeples, laughter
like relief telling who among our folks had
sent them to get our souls. The short one, who
talks little, knew something about what drives
men here, why a king might decree such a
thing out of fear. I stood to stretch my legs,
broke roots off the lianas sagging from
the ceiling, threw them to the hiss of the
sizzling stem, and talked of the year’s weather,
the snow that had surprised everyone and
covered cavern, lair – talked on until I
found in mural dyes some peace, in fire,
sunshine in my cells, root-sent, entire.
© Rethabile Masilo

NB: I didn’t know how to seal this poem, until I posted this. Then I knew. Thanks, WD!

The South African side beat the Lesotho team in Germiston by a comfortable 5-goal margin. Good for them. It’s about time that a side, from a rich country, that can afford to hire World Cup winning international coaches started showing some spunk.

Lesotho may have football talent, it has little else: no Parreira, no optimal training conditions, no internationally active players, no money. Which doesn’t mean that a team needs all those before it starts winning. But some would help. Let’s hope Bafana Bafana can capitalise on its fortune to go a long way at the Nations Cup, and at the 2010 World Cup on its soil.
[Related article]

Until December 31^st, 2007, Canopic Jar will be accepting submissions of poetry, fiction and visual art. No more than five poems, no more than one short story, no more than five visual pieces. Click here to submit (and scroll down for English).

clipped from methodius.blogspot.com In an ominous development, the USA has started establishing military bases in Africa. Why should they want to do that? Are they wanting to start wars here, as they have done in Europe and Asia?

When clouds form and glower at the coast
now boarded-up for the season, and the beast
wind howls at the cliff, it makes little sense
to want to sit and chronicle the sand’s
despair, the fuming ocean (no matter
how rain hits thatch, or how the Almighty
sends every droplet down, no matter why
fog sneaks around the environs of my
lover’s estate, why the African sun
gave love into her breasts) memory soon
rushes in and has me sitting before
this Remington, with its keys that are flawed
or faded, and has me starting to type
with abandon, with no specific hope.
© Rethabile Masilo

“The American scientist at the center of a media storm over comments suggesting that black people were not as intelligent as whites said Thursday he never meant to imply that the African continent was genetically inferior, adding that he was mortified over the attention his words had drawn.”
[source]

Mr Watson, who should be whacked on the head, has reportedly said that:

1. “tests showed Africans did not have the same level of intelligence as whites.”
2. “he was ‘inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa’ because ‘all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really’.”
3. “he was ‘mortified by what had happened’.”
4. he couldn’t “understand how [he] could have said what [he is] quoted as having said.”
5. “to all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.”
6. “there are many people of color who are very talented.”
7. while he hopes that everyone is equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”
8. “a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.”
9. there is a link between skin colour and sex drive: black people have higher libidos

He should be whacked on the head because a scientist who’s famous for his work on genetics, who’s credited with working out the double-helixed genetic information, should know better. Or perhaps he’s already fallen and knocked his head.

Read more:

1. telegraph.co.uk
2. gnxp.com/blog
3. dailymail.co.uk
4. huffingtonpost.com
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki

‘President George W. Bush strongly urged lawmakers Wednesday to reject a resolution that describes the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians early in the last century as genocide - a highly sensitive issue at a time of rising U.S.-Turkish tension over northern Iraq.

“We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915,” Bush said in a brief statement. “But this resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings and its passage would do great harm to relations with a key ally in NATO, and to the war on terror.”’
[more…]

UPDATE:
The bill passed anyway. Aznavour will be happy.

Ha ene, ene, ka litloebelele, e hlatsoe mali a tšolohileng ,
A tšolohileng naheng ea morena bohlale khaitseli ea khotso.

Thlorong ea thaba, above the clouds
That streamed like a sea below me
I said, “That peak is the thought of 9th December 1982”

Why you Lesotho, Lesotho le letle labo Senate le ‘Maseeiso, why did they stage such a brutal butchery on this beautiful mountainous land?
The day we shall all remember, yes, 9th December 1982.

I speak of the great Kingdom of Lesotho, I speak
Of the majestic land of peace, I speak of the kingdom in the sky,
Yes, the kingdom near heaven.

I speak of naha ea bana ba thari, yes, children of the great Moshoeshoe.
Yes, the land that unites us today by the brutal death of the nationals of this Kingdom
and the children of the mothers of South Africa.
It was 12 midnight, somebody said, “Get up!!! Baloi ke baoo!!!
Ra phaphatheha joalo ka balisana ba matha lants’oekhe,
They came with their machine guns
They tortured helpless children, men and women.
They have sent them to jail, they have sentenced them to death, they have imprisoned them for life and yet they have found it necessary, Unavoidable, that they should come to Maseru because torture, imprisonment, persecutions,
killings have not changed the growth of the freedom fighters,
the offensive, the determination of the people and the fact that they face defeat!!
Yes, I speak of Pretoria Butchers, racists and imperialists over southern Africa.

Bana ba thari , this poem like many other poems we heard many many years ago, will speak of fallen comrades and unsung heroes,
In this poem you will hear names like,
Nombewe!!!
In this poem, I will call names like, Toto Biza, Dr Bantwini, Lizethile Dyani, yes, in this poem I will shout names like, Mzwandile Fazzie, Zwelindaba Gova, in this poem I will say out loud names of our fallen stalwarts now languishing six feet under ground, yes, I speak of Samson Kana, Sibusiso Khuzwayo, Nguboekhaya Maqhekeza, Lepota Marayi, Alfred, Mzukisi and Thandi Marwanqana.
Yes, I speak of those who have fallen to the bullets of a common enemy of the people of this land, yes, the people of South Africa, and the peoples of the world.

Ma Africa a matle, this poem will be incomplete if it does not mention names like, Joseph Mayoli, Themba Mazibuko, Bongani Mbuso, Sipho Mchunu, Lidwa Mdlankomo, Michael Mlenze.
This poem shall go down to the dustbin of history if it does not speak of, Phakamile Mpongoshe, Dumisane Mthandela, Mark Mvala, Cecil Ngxito, Sipho Notana, Faku Ntoyi, Trom Nyukile, Matikwane Seroto.

With this humble poem we shall remember victims of 12th December 1985
Whose blood was shed on the soil of Mejametalana
Those who could not flee Leheshehese la bosiu, e, Pikapo ea SADF, yes,
I speak of Vuyani Ziba, the likes of Jackie Qiun, Vivian Mathe, Robert Leshoro, Glen Daries, Bongani Magaga, Lulamile Dantile, Mxolisi Mbali, Twandefika Radebe,
This poem shall be the living monument in remembrance of Leon Meyer, Joyce Modimeng, Jerry Modisane,
When we say this poem, we shall remember Joseph Mophuthing,
With this poem we salute you comrades,
Comrade Mazizi Magekaza, helplessly assaulted to death at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital, by the SADF hit squad,
Amandla Maqabane!!!!

In this poem you will not hear the names of the architects of the Maseru massacre
Because their names belong to the museum of shame.

Bana ba Africa, Sulani ezonyembezi, nithathe izikhali zenu siye phambili because the freedom we have today is paid for by the blood of the fallen heroes.
© Mba

Waiting for our cake
to swell in the kitchen
and sate the oven, he
opened my laces
and I held onto a shelf
of preserve jars and shook
it; oh, I know I disappoint
you, but what does it matter
now—if we don’t violate
man’s law we deserve no
applause for obeying nature’s—
god doesn’t tinker with the stars
to appease our soul. I shook
the damned thing till cymbals
crashed at our feet.
© Rethabile Masilo

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
~Desmond Tutu

Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on 7 October 1931. Happy birthday to him. In the photo he is reacting to testimony on Apartheid presented during a Truth and Reconciliation session in his native South Africa. He chaired the committee and in 1999 was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for his work there.

He has recently drawn fire for criticising some of Israel’s actions against Palestinians.

UPDATE: Read Mike’s American Sacrifices post

“I am Jewish, and stifling debate and dissent [and] criticism of Israel is a disservice to all Jews, the state of Israel and the American people,” [Marv Davidov] said.
[source]

Mr Davidov was referring to the decision by St Thomas University in Minnesota not to invite Desmond Tutu. The reason the school gave was that Bishop Tutu “compares Jews in Israel to Hitler [and] in another section he questions Jewish faithfulness to God. (1)”

It is indeed a pity that those who made the decision to bar him from speaking at the school feel Israel cannot be criticised, or that people’s faith cannot be questioned.

A professor at the university who was pushing for the invitation to be accepted by the school has been “removed as director [of] the university’s justice and peace studies program. (2)” Someone was very strongly against inviting Tutu to the school, which says that Tutu “has been critical of Israel and Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians, so we talked with people in the Jewish community and they said they believed it would be hurtful to the Jewish community, because of things he’s said. (3)”

Please visit The Jewish Voice for Peace (4) and join the campaign to write to St Thomas’s president, Father Dease, about the injustice of this act, and demand the reinstatement of Professor Toffolo as head of the university’s justice and peace studies program.

The Jewish Voice for Peace further says that “the rumor of Tutu’s alleged ‘anti-Semitism’ is based entirely on a propaganda campaign waged by the extremist group, the Zionist Organization of America. Though he is outspoken in his criticism of Israel’s occupation regime, sometimes even bellicose, Tutu has never displayed anything other than deep concern for all peoples and his sympathy for Palestinians suffering under the yoke of occupation.”

See Tutu’s CV (5)

A few minutes ago I visited one of my favourite blogs, Le Chamois, and the title of a post (reproduced here for this post) was what happened to me this morning, and just about every day, or quotidiennement. I walk my two kids to school, and they always want to take the subway — not the tube but the little tunnel that allows people to cross a busy street.

At the other end, more often than not, is a Caucasian man who hands out leaflets about a phone subscription, or something. For those who don’t know me, I’m Negroid. The man gives out his circular/round advert only to white people. I made it a point to observe him, and he will not extend his hand when it’s a black person going by. This morning he gave his advert to a white woman before us, didn’t give it to me, and gave it to the white couple behind us. I waited at a distance and watched. A black woman went by. The man didn’t offer her the circular/round handout.

I live in France where liberté, fraternité and égalité are supposed to be the norm. But in fact, no. They petered out long ago. My nephew in South Africa is trying to visit us for a week, but the procedure is so long and discouraging (read about it here, hat tip to Le Chamois for the link), I’m beginning to think my sister has given up. On the other hand, I went home for the summer. My French wife and my French children didn’t have to ask for a visa, and they could stay in South Africa and Lesotho for 90 days, just like that. L’exclusion quotidienne. No payslips to produce, no electricity bills, no birth certificates, no letters from the chief of their village. Just a valid passport at the airport.

It doesn’t stop there. Now Africans and other immigrants have to undergo blood tests to prove parental relations with family members already in France. Please visit Le Chamois for more commentary and more links.

the run
from qoaling to grootvlei

by lantern light we snuffed out
when sound leapt at us
(or seemed to leap
as it does when the wind heaves forth)
we left, travelling the terrain wintered with contempt,
ears tuned for the sound of foot, boot, the snap
of dog on our tail.

beasts are oblivious to this, to
things that knot us, questing always for acceptance
surviving the dark.

I believe in the only spirit, the faces
of people who’ve walked this way.

as for us, we
held our lantern and crossed the river into azania,
knowing the order of the cycle:
winter turns to spring,
dead leaves make russet apple cheeks,
kernels keep internal life.
© Rethabile Masilo

“President Bush, in a confrontation with Congress, on Wednesday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children’s health insurance.”
[Read more…]

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered Saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
© John Milton

John Milton is the guy who wrote Paradise Lost. This sonnet was written as a result of the massacre of the Waldensians by the Duke of Savoy in 1655. The Waldensians are a small Christian (Protestant) church that has existed since before the Reformation. Why did the Duke of Savoy want them dead? As early as 1211, more than 80 Waldensians were burned as heretics in Strasbourg (1). In fact all of this began much earlier when the Pope refused Waldensians the right to preach without the green light of the clergy. They went ahead and preached, and started going against the Catholic church. For centuries persecution against them continued, on and on through the ages.

The Inquisition sought them out like common criminals, and they were often depicted in images as witches (at that time if you wanted someone burned at the stake, you called them a witch.) But all of it matters little today because we’re in the 21st century, and we know better. Right?

Wrong. Le Chamois reports of Waldensian persecution in Italy in 2007, and Christian conservatives are the persecutors. “Les membres de l’Eglise vaudoise du Piémont en Italie ont été insultés le week-end du 22-23 septembre dernier par un mouvement extrémiste (2).” Or, Members of the Waldensian church in Piedmont, Italy, were insulted on the weekend of 22-23 September by an extremist movement. September this year, yes!

Le Chamois further tells us that phrases such as, “To the stakes with Waldensians!” have appeared on walls of San Germano Chisone and Turin churches. That is a serious threat that evokes what previously happened. Slain by the bloody Piemontese, Milton says in his sonnet. Today it’s: threatened by a politico-Christian minority. What next?

the sun in winter turns its back on us
and, for smelting, goes back to the kiln
where ore from gold is separated.
when it leaves
it pulls the darkness of midnight, stretching it
at the cost of day, or it pushes dawn
the completely wrong way.

and I’ve found that jersey I wore
our first time, and hand-washed and towel-dried it,
laid it bare upon the broad bed. and now I’ll dust
and ready the fire-place so we can leave
fresh prints on the hearth.

in truth, I’ve never really
known whether I’d rather rake leaves or shovel snow,
but it’s a chore we must do each year to escort the sun
when it’s hurled beyond our world, the earth,
to the other side.
it is a time when
autumn leaves and winter comes to whisper to the caves—
at its voice the hills shiver.

and I must also wash and scent the quilt, and
chop wood for the weeks ahead: hibernating in the malutis
requires no less.
so what have you brought
for the night-table. anything should
more than be suitable, of that I’m sure.
© Rethabile Masilo

Read more about or see the Malutis:

1. travelblog.org
2. en.wikipedia.org
3. pbase.com/kitcrawford
4. kzn.org.za
5. ithaca.edu
6. en.wikipedia.org (2)
7. photos.linternaute.com
8. wordtravels.com

after lunch on saturdays
father would carry into the study
a stack of politics, and in wood
scent he’d sit and read till sleep
claimed him, or supper,
or that sparkle of sun sent
in rear windows,
blinding him out
to the awning of trees where
we hooked a hammock
and heaved him into the sisal
net, left him there resting
like a foetus. bringing him
maotoana* tea one day, there lay
on its back on the black earth
beneath him a note-book; row on
row of scribble glared at me,
some sort of theory on
the likelihood of a glad and
bounteous kingdom.
© Rethabile Masilo

* Rooibos tea in Sesotho

WHAT BASOTHO NEED

Great discoveries are often accidents. Roentgen was investigating something else when he realised that x-rays could project the skeleton onto a screen. An apple fell of Newton’s head and knocked him into understanding gravity. While what I’m about to say is no scientific discovery, and is no accident, the question remains: why didn’t someone think of it before?

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has completed a historic purchase by buying maize directly from a group of small-scale farmers in Lesotho. (1)

Simple, as most good ideas are. Less red-tape, fewer Maloti wasted on transport and storage, more benefits for the local population, more jobs for them, too. Why didn’t we do it before? I’ll venture a guess. It is probably due to the incompetence of the people in power, who usually just go with the motions without rocking any boats. As long as they are comfortable, that is. Their keyword is maintenance, not improvement. How do I know this?

I know because there is virtually nothing that has changed markedly in Lesotho since the country became independent from Jonathan’s regime. In fact, things seem to have doubled back and taken a step in the reverse direction. Nothing daring has been done. Oh sure, we’re having periodic elections. But the streets are dirtier. People are poorer. There are more dust-legged boys begging in the streets than there ever were: you can’t park your car without at least two of them fighting over helping you park, all for the prospect of getting a coin or two in return. These kids should be in school or apprenticeship situations. What are we building, here?

Since Leabua’s regime, Maseru is more confused, it seems, and the taxis (what I call buxis, and what Kenyans would call matatus) are amok all over town. And right there in town, people sell food or clothing from car boots. I know that the drought and the HIV virus have done much to deteriorate the situation, but they haven’t deteriorated it for everyone, see? Just for the vast majority of Basotho.

What is worse in my eyes is that in a little more than two years the world cup of football is coming to South Africa. South Africa is Lesotho and Lesotho is South Africa, but do you think we will “make a killing” from the fans that’ll be all over the region? Think again. One of our potential sources of money is tourism, but tourists don’t just visit places. They want to be assured that they’ll receive quality rooms, transport, food, that they’ll be safe and well looked after, that they’ll have things to see. We must clean up our act, otherwise we are going to lose out big time.

“This is a win-win situation,” said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran, speaking from the agency’s Rome Headquarters. “It helps provide income for small-scale farmers while saving money for WFP.” (2)

Damn right!

‘September 16, 2007 6:00 AM

The Lesotho Promise

MASERU, Lesotho — A 494-carat diamond, believed to be the 18th largest in the world, has been found at a mine in Lesotho, a government official said. The stone was a white diamond of exceptional quality, said Natural Resources Minister Monyane Moleleki. It has been sent to Antwerp, Belgium, for auction.

The diamond was found at the Lets’eng Diamond Mine, situated high in Lesotho’s mountains. The Lesotho Promise, a 603-carat stone, was uncovered last year at the same mine and sold for $12.3 million. A 215-carat flawless diamond found in January 2007 brought $8.3 million.

The largest diamond ever found, the Cullinan, was the size of a bowling ball at 3,106 carats in the rough. That finished stone is set in Britain’s Imperial Sceptre as part of the Crown Jewels. Lesotho is a mountainous country in southern Africa ravaged by high unemployment, poverty and AIDS.’
[source]

Is it just me, or the first line of this article and the last one do not go together? We know that “Letseng, in the high plateau of the Maluti Mountains, was owned by De Beers between 1977 and 1982 and closed after a tax dispute with the Lesotho government. JCI reopened it in 2004 [source].” Gem Diamonds took over in July 2006.

Here’s a question: what, or how much, does the Mosotho in the street gain from the discovery of the 18th largest diamond in the world? How much does the average Mosotho gain from the discovery of the 15th largest diamond in the world, when that diamond is found in that Mosotho’s land? Remember that “the Letseng mine is 70 percent owned by Gem Diamond Mining Company of Africa Ltd and 30 percent by the Lesotho government [source].”

NB: More to come on this subject…

17 September 2007

ERITREA

Democratic governments urged to summon Eritrean ambassadors on anniversary of 18 September 2001 crackdown

Reporters Without Borders calls on the foreign ministries of the leading democracies to mark tomorrow’s sixth anniversary of the start of a wave of arrests in Asmara by summoning Eritrea’s ambassadors to express disapproval for a crackdown that led to the suppression of all freedoms and the imprisonment of more than 10 journalists in unknown locations.

Governments that believe in press freedom should make a formal protest about the complete secrecy surrounding Eritrea’s political prisoners and the threats and extortion to which the Eritrean diaspora and exiles and the families of political prisoners are subjected, the organisation said.

“Eritreans need the support of the democracies in order to get President Issaias Afeworki’s regime to loosen its grip on them and their families,” Reporters Without Borders said. “This anniversary must be used to show that press freedom and human rights are not a luxury reserved for a few prosperous nations but a universal right.”

The organisation added: “It would be inconceivable if this anniversary were to pass without any sign of solidarity with Eritrea’s detainees from governments that should make at least some, minimal demands on the countries that have embassies in their capitals.”

On 18 September 2001, the Eritrean government suddenly ordered the closure of all the privately-owned media and began throwing their executives and editors one by one into prison. For several weeks, the political police waged a manhunt in the capital of Africa’s youngest country.

Hundreds of government opponents have been held in unknown locations ever since then. They include at least 12 journalists – Dawit Isaac, Fessehaye “Joshua” Yohannes, Yusuf Mohamed Ali, Mattewos Habteab, Dawit Habtemichael, Medhanie Haile, Temesgen Gebreyesus, Emanuel Asrat, Said Abdulkader, Seyoum Tsehaye, Hamid Mohamed Said and Saleh Al Jezaeeri.

According to the information available to Reporters Without Borders, four of these journalists have already died in the 314 prison centres scattered throughout the country. The few Eritreans who have managed to escape or have been released say conditions in the prisons are appalling.

Those who have not been arrested or who have not managed to flee the country are forced to live under the yoke of an all-powerful government. After the defection of several leading state media journalists, the authorities began last November to arrest other journalists suspected of staying in contact with the fugitives or of planning to flee themselves.

One of the suspect journalists arrested at the end of last year, Paulos Kidane of the Amharic-language service of state-owned Eri-TV and radio Dimtsi Hafash (Voice of the Broad Masses), told Reporters Without Borders after his release: “We were beaten and tortured in prison for refusing to give the passwords to our e-mail accounts. In the end we cracked because the pain was too much.” Kidane died a few months later, in June, while trying to flee on foot across the border into Sudan.

Daniel Mussie of Radio Dimtsi Hafash’s Oromo-language service has not been released since last November’s crackdown. Eyob Kessete, a journalist with the Amharic-language service of Dimtsi Hafash, and Eri-TV editor Johnny Hisabu were arrested while trying to leave the country clandestinely across the border earlier this year and are still being held somewhere.

Even those Eritreans who manage to get out of the country continue to have to submit to the government’s dictates. All members of the diaspora are obliged to keep paying 2 per cent of their income to the Eritrean embassy in the country where they reside. If they do not comply, they are banned from ever returning home, owning any property there or even sending packages back to Eritrea.

The families of journalists and others who flee abroad are exposed to reprisals and there have been cases in which close relatives – brothers, sisters or parents – have been imprisoned indefinitely and denied contact with the outside world.

—————–

ERYTHRÉE

Sixième anniversaire du 18 septembre 2001 : Reporters sans frontières demande aux gouvernements démocratiques de convoquer leur ambassadeur d’Erythrée pour lui signifier leur réprobation

Reporters sans frontières appelle les ministères des Affaires étrangères des grandes démocraties à convoquer l’ambassadeur érythréen de leur pays respectif, en commémoration des grandes rafles qui ont démarré le 18 septembre 2001 en Erythrée, conduit à la fermeture totale du territoire et à mené à l’incarcération au secret de plus d’une dizaine de journalistes.

L’organisation demande aux gouvernements attachés à la liberté de la presse de protester ainsi, officiellement, contre le secret absolu imposé sur la situation des détenus politiques en Erythrée et le chantage organisé envers la diaspora, les fugitifs et les familles des prisonniers.

“Les Erythréens ont besoin du soutien des démocraties pour que le régime de fer d’Issaias Afeworki desserre l’emprise qu’il maintient sur eux et leurs familles. Cette date symbolique doit être utilisée pour montrer que la liberté de la presse et les droits de l’homme ne sont pas un luxe réservé à quelques peuples prospères, mais un droit universel. Il serait incompréhensible que ce sixième anniversaire se déroule sans qu’aucun signe de solidarité avec les prisonniers érythréens soit donné par les Etats qui ont un minimum d’exigence envers les pays qui disposent d’ambassades sur leur territoire”, a déclaré Reporters sans frontières.

Le 18 septembre 2001, tous les médias privés ont été soudainement fermés sur ordre du gouvernement et leurs responsables ont commencé à être jetés en prison, un par un. La capitale du plus jeune pays d’Afrique s’est transformée en terrain de chasse pour la police politique pendant plusieurs semaines. Depuis, en plus de centaines d’opposants, une quinzaine de journalistes ont disparu dans les geôles du pays. Ils s’appellent Dawit Isaac, Fessehaye Yohannes, dit “Joshua”, Yusuf Mohamed Ali, Mattewos Habteab, Dawit Habtemichael, Medhanie Haile, Temesgen Gebreyesus, Emanuel Asrat, Said Abdulkader, Seyoum Tsehaye, Hamid Mohamed Said et Saleh Al Jezaeeri. Selon les informations de Reporters sans frontières, quatre d’entre eux ont d’ores et déjà trouvé la mort dans l’un des 314 centres pénitentiaires qui parsèment le pays. Les quelques Erythréens qui ont pu fuir après avoir été libérés de prison font état de conditions de détention effroyables.

Ceux qui n’ont pas pu fuir ou que la police n’a pas arrêtés ont été contraints de vivre sous la férule d’un gouvernement tout-puissant. En novembre 2006, suite aux défections de plusieurs journalistes célèbres des médias publics, les autorités ont arrêté ceux qui étaient suspectés d’être restés en contact avec les fugitifs ou de chercher à fuir eux-mêmes. Selon le récit qu’il avait fait après sa libération à Reporters sans frontières, l’un d’eux a été “battu et torturé en prison, après avoir refusé de divulger les mots de passe de [leurs] adresses électroniques”. “Finalement, nous avons craqué parce que la douleur était trop forte”, avait-il ajouté. Paulos Kidane, journaliste du service en amharique de la chaîne publique érythréenne Eri-TV et de la station publique Dimtsi Hafash (Voix des larges masses), est mort quelques mois plus tard, en juin 2007, alors qu’il tentait de fuir à pied vers le Soudan. Daniel Mussie, journaliste du service en oromo de Radio Dimtsi Hafash, n’est quant à lui jamais sorti de prison. Eyob Kessete et Johnny Hisabu, respectivement journaliste du service en amharique de la radio publique et monteur de la chaîne de télévision publique Eri-TV, ont été arrêtés alors qu’ils tentaient de passer clandestinement les frontières du pays et sont toujours détenus quelque part.

Même lorsqu’ils sont parvenus à quitter le territoire, les Erythréens continuent de subir le diktat du gouvernement d’Issaias Afeworki. Tous ceux qui vivent en diaspora sont ainsi contraints de verser 2% de leurs revenus à l’ambassade d’Erythrée de leur pays, faute de quoi il leur est interdit de retourner sur leur terre natale, d’y posséder un bien quelconque ou d’y envoyer des colis. Des représailles sont exercées contre les familles de ceux, notamment les journalistes, qui sont parvenus à s’exiler. Des membres de leur entourage proche, des frères, des soeurs ou des parents sont incarcérés indéfiniment, sans contact avec l’extérieur.

__________________________________________

Leonard VINCENT
Bureau Afrique / Africa desk
Reporters sans frontières / Reporters Without Borders
5, rue Geoffroy-Marie
75009 Paris, France
Tel : (33) 1 44 83 84 76
Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51
Email : afrique@rsf.org / africa@rsf.org
Web : www.rsf.org

The 11th of September, dubbed 9/11 by many, was a horrendous day that I think I will remember for the rest of my days. Here are the reasons why. (1) Many innocent people lost their lives, quite unnecessarily and in quite a cruel manner; (2) Most of those who flew the planes or helped hijack them had a future, family, prospects, and they chucked it out the window. I don’t understand; (3) The tragedy was spectacular, and I keep seeing the second plane slamming into a tower; (4) The amount of hate that goes into planning and executing something like this is beyond my comprehension; and (5) I’ve already seen a few films and documentaries on the subject, and I’m sure there’s more to come.

How can we forget, and why should we? How can we forget tragedy? Loss of life? Cruelty? La bêtise humaine? How can we forget 11 September 2001? How? How can we forget the Shoah? How can we forget slavery? How can we forget the dying populations of Iraq? How can we forget Rwanda? How can we forget New Orleans and Katrina? How can we forget Darfur? How? And more important, why should we? How can we forget Apartheid?

Google the phrase “we will never forget” and see how many links you come up with. I hit 946 000. If half of them talk about something other than the 11th of September, there’s still 473 000 people on-line who will never forget. Plus three quarters of the off-line population of the world. Now google 9/11. My point?

This is a long way of saying, I’m glad we aren’t forgetting this, my way of saying we must never forget those, either. No tragedy should be forgotten, and the perpetrator(s) need to be punished. I needed to go this long way to assure my reader that I do refer to all human tragedies. All of them.

I also needed to say this after the day of 11 September (out of respect), but close enough to the day for my little “diatribe” to hold some meaning. Some time ago I read a poem that may perhaps illustrate my feeling more clearly. Poems always do, don’t they? If you want to comment on my opinion here, please do so (agree, disagree with me). If you want to comment on the poem, please do so (poetics of the poem). Here it is:

A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM

Before I start this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the
hands of U.S.-backed Israeli
forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people,
not a war - for those who
know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their
relatives’ bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of
a secret war … ssssshhhhh….
Say nothing … we don’t want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have
piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador …
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua …
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos …
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found
their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of
sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west…

100 years of silence…
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half
of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand
Creek,
Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the
refrigerator of our consciousness …

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be. Not like it always has
been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison,
New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and
Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all…Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing…For our dead.

© Emmanuel Ortiz (published on 11 September 2002)
* Listen to the poem (1)
* Other poems against human tragedy (2)

come, so we may sort out
this family matter,
and that one,
come, I want to talk to you
to tell you of people you’ve never met,
I want to call you uncle to your face;

when you do and we get together,
I don’t always go toward you at the start
but, always past souls, past the hour of sleep
past life-long hallways of heaven
you come forward
to find me in the dark.

and up in the attic, also,
mom hums an air (as the sun
falls behind the hills of Loretto
and shadow creeps to keep us in check)
rocking this way then that way,
wondering what to make of grief
in a photograph; a touchable feeling

inhabits the house, drowns
roof beam, wall, flooring,
much that is but lifeless form worn
pearl-like around our lives;
so I touch it, the feeling, that is,
and slip at last like a statued god
into resolute sleep.
© Rethabile Masilo

I want to see you dance
among blue-pale wisps
at night, when shebeens are dense
with the factory worker,
and bone-shaking mbaqanga*
fills the shack. I want to see you
dance with your body that quakes
as you slide aside to let a rhythm by,
only to pick up some other tones
heading away against the force
of shriller, more common notes,
trembling to this sound this be-bop
that keeps us alive. Evenings
in my corner like the first night
I want to watch you jive, mouthing to me
the words on your lips till I sober up
at the nervous thought, the idea
of never again seeing you dance,
some day when the big life
comes crashing down.
© Rethabile Masilo
_________________________
* Mbaqanga grew out of earlier styles — pennywhistle kwela, township sax jive, gospel-inspired African choral music, and marabi, the lifeblood of South Africa’s illegal township shebeens and dancehalls in the first half of the century.
[Read more…]

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
~Desmond Mpilo Tutu

Zoe, my brother, says “On this day, the 4th of September, in 1981, our home was attacked in the middle of the night by armed soldiers. The target was our father, Benjamin Masilonyane Masilo, who escaped the shooting by the skin of his teeth. It is truly a miracle that he survived the attack. Motlatsi however, his three-year old grandson and our nephew, was not so lucky. He died, presumably in his sleep because he was still in his position on the bed, when the bullets ripped his stomach open.

Lest we forget, and so that such things may not continue to happen to other people, we need to tell this story and those of others similar to ours, over and over and over again.” I say amen to that. I’d hate for what happened to us to happen to someone else. That’s because I know first hand the horror of it, and how much it can destroy a life, lives, not of the killed only, but of the survivors as well. Lest we forget, our job, all of us, is to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening again. We must remind our leaders day and night, and we must be prepared to affront them with guts and integrity.

I refuse to wish anyone a happy 4th of September…

AGENDA #74 – Rape

Poems will be considered for publication in Agenda 74, which will be published in the beginning of December 2007.

Poetry can be but does not have to be on the theme of rape.

Length of contributions: Poems have to fit a full page of Agenda (slightly bigger than A5)

Submission deadline: 14 September 2007

Submission requirements:

1. All submissions must be emailed to editor@agenda.org.za.
2. All submitted poems must come with a short bio and contact details of the author.
3. If you would like to publish anonymously please state so clearly in your submission.

Please feel free to forward this poetry call to anyone you think might be interested.

No deity will ditch us here,
wounded in such way,
dipped in this fear.
For the sake of a world
no matter what, none will do it.
Among us the quick rise,
bury the dead as we move
on, on, carrying on shoulder
like a cripple an age; as
bread-breaking gods come or go
we walk in shade, we blend with the grave.
How they see through stone,
these wretched ones! As
among the meek we look
for a prophet (open
faces round as the moon
perfectly valid with
the truth) we hear soft come-ons,
rumours floating against time
for having won favour with our sons.
Amid palms on the path to the minster
we shall wait; and there
a design we shall find.
Its reason to be is of course
a kicking of arse, where amid animals,
mangers, we assemble a
force that feeds desire.
© Rethabile Masilo

sun promise
for ‘Masekoja

if the sun continues
to shine, to glimmer
as it does on these hills
of Mount Moorosi
to Ha-Makoae, nothing
can really stop sound
that seeks air or ground
like your heartbeat when
I hold you/ if the sun
continues like on that day
you let me in/ and when
essence drops in rooms
we grit strength
to epic-end, and push
till light learns truth
not lies — till a marble
moon hangs above our
midst, and the mist itself
shimmers, and love yields
what it does when
I move toward you
on hut-hearted floor, lions
lie in grass listening to
darkness, for soon the curves
of night-time meet/
we hurl selves at gods, oh
god, till you tell the sun it
can’t stop and it does not/
from dawn’s loins we
whom such thought arouses
shag until born light arises.
© Rethabile Masilo

I have seen many documentaries on genocide and human atrocities. Movies too. Hotel Rwanda? Killing Fields? Roots? Schindler’s List? Been there, done that, and after each time I incredulously asked: “how did all the ‘good people’ allow this to happen?”
[Continue…]

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.
~Ronald Reagan

Cities through fingertips inebriate me;
everywhere I travel lies this pavement
defining the town with a kerb that may
or may not curve to where I go. Patient,
I live to try and see it with my cane
which I slightly slant, never like a stick
but like a pen, to trace my life again
as I walk and tap or touch stone or brick
or granite at my feet. No need to prove
god or splendour. If you don’t listen well
to night-time you might miss the bat that moves
with rubber wing, that flickers around walls
in a feeding frenzy; for the glory
of everything belongs truly to the night,
which holds day as dead retinae carry
light, to watch life with previous sight.
© Rethabile Masilo

I’m in Pambazuka with a poem…

AND I WATCH IT IN MANDELA (by John Matshikiza)

It is not for the safety of silence
That this man has opened his arms to lead.
The strength of his words hangs in the air
As the strength in his eyes remains on the sky;
And the years of impatient waiting draw on
While this man burns to clear the smoke in the air.
There is fire here,
Which no prison
Can kill in this man;
And I watch it in Mandela.
© John Matshikiza

Nelson Mandela was born today in 1918. Happy birthday to him. I won’t bother you with the details of who he is and what he’s done. I’ll bother you by telling you what he means to me. It is immeasurable and it stifles me, prevents me from writing a poem about him, even if that very idea remains one of the aims of my writing life.

When Nelson Mandela was released, I was on a sofa in a small French village called Lamorlaye, staring at the telly. We waited quite a long time because something wasn’t right or wasn’t ready, and we waited. I was excited. “What does he look like?” I’d only ever seen two or three photos of him, and they were 27 year-old photos (or older).

When I was in high school in the late 70s, Soweto happened, and young, black South-Africans poured into Lesotho to escape persecution and death in their homeland. Some were supporters of the ANC, while others were of the PAC, and still others of the BPC. All were after one thing, however: free South Africa from Apartheid. I learned a sort of discipline from some of them. We would gather and sing South African freedom songs into the night. They were in Zulu, Sesotho, Xhosa and English. One of my favourites was, “Nantsi indoda emnyama, Vorster! Pasopa, nantsi indoda emnyama, Vorster” (Here comes the black man, Vorster! Watch out, here comes the black man, Vorster).

Through my new friends we discovered the Freedom Charter, which started off by declaring that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it.” In the early evening after supper we’d huddle around a small transistor set and try to catch Radio Freedom, an ANC station broadcasting out of Tanzania.

Nelson with wife, Graca

I had memorised a chunk of ntate Mandela’s defense speech (Rivonia trial), and eventually threw in ntate Sobukwe’s statements and my own into it. A pot-pourri of freedom words. I was moved every time I recited it, privately or publicly. One of my friends told me to remove the word Azania from the speech and replace it with South Africa. I saw no reason why not.

When he emerged, fist up, Winnie by his side, I immediately broke down and fell, sobbing, into my wife’s arms. I was moved beyond any expectation. Later on we listened to his first words after 27 years. He said that he wasn’t a prophet, but “a servant of you, the people.” Something like that. But I’ve got to find an exact quote:

Friends, comrades and fellow South Africans.
I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all.
I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today.
I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.
[source]

That’s how he began. I have been permanently touched by this man. I have also been permanently touched by other events that occurred in southern Africa, especially in Lesotho. I would like to wish Nelson Mandela a happy birthday, and to thank him for being the person who he is. South Africa is a better place because of people like him. Sobukwe. Biko. Sisulu. Fischer. Motsoaledi. Tambo. Mxenge. Mbeki (the father). Tutu. The list is long. One day when I get to write that poem about him, it’ll most probably be what will happen after he goes, or what happened after he left. A portion of what i had memorised in high school says,

Above all, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent. I know this sounds revolutionary to the whites in this country, because the majority of voters will be Africans. This makes the white man fear democracy.

But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all. It is not true that the enfranchisement of all will result in racial domination. Political division, based on colour, is entirely artificial and, when it disappears, so will the domination of one colour group by another. The ANC has spent half a century fighting against racialism. When it triumphs it will not change that policy.

This then is what the ANC is fighting. Their struggle is a truly national one. It is a struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and their own experience. It is a struggle for the right to live.

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
[source]

tlhokomeliso
‘if needs be, it is an ideal
for which I am prepared to die.’
~ntate mandela

before the naming rites,
even before we were free to be free
from terror in our ranks,
before prison or death
became our constitutional rights,
a cry echoed among the elements
to shake the tenements
inside heaven and inside hell;
flesh came into my shell,
resided in me, heavy and light
according to the moment—
like a rumour, God and politics
entered me and sat on my heart;
so I must ask you to destroy me
because there’s a part of me that
still belongs to the sun, and will
not acquiesce; for the benefit of
your crew, destroy, before it’s too
late, the blood in me that is hers
and will not succumb — slay
this whole idea of a Motuba who
rides a sun-ray to illume our day.
© Rethabile Masilo

The children far from urban Maseru, the children of the real Lesotho,

(A country of mountains, anchored in the sky with the stones of Africa,
a land of beauty, death and love,
Of corn and useless flowers, cattle and Aloe,
Of wild skies and serene earth,
And women stooped to sweep the dirt and weep,
Without tears or fear that will show.)

They have been nurtured into greed.

Trained by other passing fools
Who come in clouds of dry
Dusty ignorance and rented cars to pass, not pause,
where God stores storms for future cause.

(And yes, I am certain there will be storms,)

The children sprung from great Moshoeshoe
He who offered heart and tribe and land to the desperate
Devourers of his family.

He who tried to welcome Boers,
Knowing their guns and locust history,

They now plead and curse for whites to give them candy.
“Sweets” cry the youngest ones,
“Give Candy” the older
“Give me some Candy please” the educated, skilled and bolder.

Whose grandfathers fought betrayers,
Leaving bloody footprints in their land
Step by step back into the loving mountains
Where they made their stand,

These kids, beg with open hand.

It’s terribly amusing for some, fun without a fee,
To fling candy out the windows and turn to watch them
Scramble for their cut and learn to be like those of us
Who know greed sensuously and pray to god, “I want it free.”

So they choose, in innocence, how they want to be,
And I brooded on how to best respond, in ignorance, how to make them see.

Can I tell them of their Ancestors, the trials they had to face,
Or the courage of the mothers and fathers of their race?
I can’t, I’m ignorant, a passing shadow of useless noises when he speaks.
They will grow and learn for years and I’ll be gone away in weeks.

There were but two times I spoke to them and thoughts passed from me to them.
Once I greeted boys with “Dumelang bo-ntate”¹ and they laughed and clapped their hands delighted with the linguistic capers of this monkey from foreign lands.

But they need to hear, or I need to speak, of the price that they will pay
On their trip from past to future, before they lay in deep red clay.

How to help these tender ones in their search to be like me?
I decided to roll the window down and holler,
“Ke e jele!” ²

A free and independent media is essential to democracy. It is a fact. Harness the media, and you kill the whole idea of democracy (or you try). Especially in a country that has few outlets for public expression, like our beloved Lesotho. The government of Lesotho has just decided to withdraw its advertising relation with the newspaper The Public Eye, and some people are rightly wanting to know why.

The government of Lesotho is just about the only advertiser with The Public Eye and this action perhaps seeks to effectively shut down the paper through strangulation, but if the action does not seek to do so, the end result will still be death by strangulation. That immediately deprives the country of free and independent speech, it deprives some Basotho of their livelihood in a country that has a 45% unemployment rate (2002 figures), and it plunges Lesotho back into the abyss it is still struggling to get out of (where criticising the government resulted in a sure backlash).

Public Eye, an independent newspaper with the largest distribution and widest readership in the country, has recently lost its single biggest advertising client. That client is the Lesotho government, which provides 80% of Public Eye’s revenue.

Lesotho is so dependent on SA for commerce that there are few local businesses capable or desirous of taking out advertising space in a national publication. Public Eye thus has little prospect of attracting other business to offset its recent loss. It faces a significant reduction of operations and the people of Lesotho, in consequence, will have diminished access to independent news.
[source]

The newspaper has the largest readership in the country, so the motive does not lie there. According to the All Africa article quoted here, the government is reluctant “to support its recent decision;” it further says that if the motive, undisclosed, is to stifle the newspaper into silence or submission, then the action is illegal.

The Lesotho constitution, Chapter II-14, guarantees free speech when it states that “Every person shall be entitled to, and (except with his own consent) shall not be hindered in his enjoyment of, freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions without interference, freedom to receive ideas and information without interference, freedom to communicate ideas and information without interference (whether the communication be to the public generally or to any person or class of persons) and freedom from interference with his correspondence [source]”

In 2001 the Botswana High Court ruled that its government’s decision to cut advertising from two publications (that were critical of said government) was a violation of those publications’ right to free speech. It stands to reason. A government that cannot stand criticism, on the other hand, must toil to make sure there is no cause for it. Non-criticism by the populace and the media cannot be imposed… it is earned. Let it be so!

“Protesters blockaded the main road in the capital with stones and burning tyres
July 08, 2007, 08:00

Lesotho police say Maseru is calm after last night’s unrest. Protesters blockaded the main road in the capital with stones and burning tyres after soldiers re-arrested alleged mutinous security force members who had been released by the high court.

Pheello Mphana, a Lesotho police spokesperson, says while police were preparing to release the five men, soldiers surrounded the police station and demanded that the suspects be detained.

The men were handed over to police by the army last week after they were suspected of involvement in a series of attacks on ministers. Mphana says the protesters dispersed peacefully.”
[source]

I saw in the distance a god
sucking life through a straw, sucking
the silence; then she darted in a blur
to where, behind a bush,
pygmies pumped air into a beach-ball,
chuckling and slapping smeared hands on it,
till it took the redness of Basotho dye
used by graduates at mountain schools;
they released it, watched it go up, up,
giggling in fields of breakfast
as they ran behind it,
leaping to touch the bottom
now out of reach.
© Rethabile Masilo

My link in Lesotho says, “Hooray!!! Judge ‘Maseforo Mahase of the Lesotho High Court has ordered that Makotoko Lerotholi (a former soldier), the first man to be abducted by the masked men, be released to his family immediately.

Last evening Advocate Haae Phoofolo, a human rights lawyer based in Maseru, lodged an application before the High Court for an order demanding the immediate release of Lerotholi, pointing out that he was unlawfully arrested and has not been charged since. This came after the army had attempted to dump Lerotholi and Motlomelo, another abductee, into the hands of the police. The police agreed to take Motlomelo in (I’m not clear on the grounds yet), but refused to take Lerotholi into their custody citing the horrible condition of his health and self as their reason.

The respondents in the application were as follows: the Army Commander, the Minister of Defence (who happens to be the Prime Minister), the Commissioner of Police, the Superintendent at the Makoanyane Army Hospital and the Attorney General.

Visibly shaken and unstable, Lerotholi arrived at the High Court at around 21:00 hours led by members of the Lesotho Defence Force. He, through his lawyer, recited his story since the abduction at the entrance to Lakeside Hotel on the 22 of June 2007. He was taken by about ten heavily armed men, blindfolded and driven somewhere into the mountains. Along the way he was repeatedly gunbutted and kicked.

His abductors demanded that he tell the whereabouts of the armoury where the guns taken from ministers’ bodyguards was. His torture was systematically directed to the kidneys and genitals, and this has rendered his urinary system malfunctional.

The judge ordered that he be released immediately to his family and after condemning the whole saga, prayed to God that she never in her whole life presides over a similar case. We are continuously encouraged by such judgements and look at them as a good sign of sanity amidst the madness we live in.

The questions remain: why did the army deny any knowledge of the whereabouts of these men? Why did the government spokesman, Minister of Information and Broadcasting, deny any knowledge by the government of the whereabouts and condition of these men? If any wrong was done, why were the men not arrested by the police and charged, instead of being abducted by the army and tortured? Why? Why? Why?”

Monyane Moleleki

Thabo Thantsi, the abductee who was hospitalised at Makoanyane Army Hospital, has escaped and resurfaced somewhere in South Africa. He came on air on Harvest FM’s “Rise and Shine” morning show and gave a thorough detail of his ordeal at the hands of the army. He is a former soldier himself.

The details of his ordeal are gory and I shudder at the mere recollection. He says he was in the hands of the army and he has divulged the names of the officers who were interrogating him, demanding that he produce the guns taken from ministers’ bodyguards recently. He says another question was why he had resigned from the army (in 2003) and why he is now a bodyguard to Motsoahae Thabane, the ABC leader.

He has named the Minister of Natural Resources, Monyane Moleleki, as the mastermind behind these abductions. According to Thabo, his feet were chained and padlocked, his hands cuffed behind and to the chain around his feet. When his folks came to see him he was uncuffed and unchained and asked not to reveal his condition to them. He further reveals that many of the abducted men, some still actively employed in the army, are at the army hospital in varying conditions of torture.

From what he says he heard while his abductors were talking, the Minister has already paid up and the elite group has two weeks to finish off all members of the ABC who are perceived to be active and dangerous.

I tried to find the name Thabo Thantsi on the Internet, and actually found two links, his voter details (if it’s the same Thabo Thantsi): here, and mention of him in the Lesotho Forum: here. I looked up the minister allegedly involved, and found a Wikipedia mention, an article about the 2006 attack on him, a speech in Iran Daily (scroll down a bit), and a short interview.

This is in response to a blog post I came across. The writer was wondering whether Tutu was a Christian or not. Since I think he’s one of the better public people on this planet, I decided to put my two-cents’ worth. I modified the original comment slightly to turn it into a blog post.

“Elie, No problem for the belated response. I understand what you’re saying, and still I disagree. But it’s a free country, and you can believe what you wish. Ditto for me. I’m not gay. I’m married to a beautiful woman and I have two children. I’m attracted by women, yes. None of your business, true, but I’m trying to convince you of something important.

But that doesn’t mean I have anything to say against gay people. I know gay folks who are godly, and who are most probably going to heaven. I know so-called straight folks who are shits. Pardon my French. Sex orientation has very little to do with anything.I’m a Christian, raised in a Christian family. I’m saying this only to assure you that I do know 1 Corinthians 9:1-12. But do you?

What language do you read it in? French? English? Jesus didn’t speak any of those languages. Man translated the Bible into French and English. Do you know what the word for homosexual in Greek is? In Latin? In Aramaic, the native language of Jesus? If you don’t know, then either you dig and find out, or you ponder who Jesus was/is, and ask yourself if he wasn’t/isn’t all-encompassing in his love and in his understanding, like Tutu says. If you don’t know, how can you be so sure that Jesus “was/is against homosexuality”? Are you just repeating things that are said by other people?

I looked around your blog and didn’t see anything on the war in Iraq. Nothing on Darfur, either. Start there, I say.

That is all I have say. Please keep speaking out on your blog, because it’s important to speak out. But make sure you choose wisely who you speak out against. Don’t shoot the good guys. By the way, you speak out against the parents of little Maddie, as having lost the little girl “because of their strong uncontrollable desire for pleasure.” They left the kids in the flat and went to a restaurant.

But they should be able to do that! The fault is not with the parents but with the criminal who took their child. I and many others have plastered photos of Maddie on our blogs. We’re doing something. Are the people who took Maddie Christians? If not, speak out against them, not against innocent people.

By the way, I have a very good friend in Sucy-en-Brie, which I know is attached to Bonneuil. I had another friend in Bonneuil who worked for the Port Autonome de Paris. But I don’t know where he is, now. Cheers.”

News from Lesotho is disturbing. Democracy and the rule of law are advancing backwards. Recently, a curfew was put up, after attacks were carried out on prominent politicians’ homes. That rings a bell. If you can link to this, or reproduce it on your blog, I would be most grateful. Or tell a friend over coffee. Or just read it and sympathise with us in spirit (or whatever deed). I know I sound desperate — I am. This needs to be talked about and shared. I have just received news from home that:

Thabo Thakalekoala of Seapoint in Maseru, a vocal and prominent freelancing investigative journalist, was arrested on Friday morning (22 June 2007) and charged with high treason. He is appearing in court today (25 June 2007) to be formally charged.

On the day of his arrest he had just read a letter over the air on his popular morning programme “Rise and Shine” on Harvest FM. The letter was supposedly given to him by a group of army men and requested to read it on his show. The soldiers vehemently denounced the rule of one Mosikili in Lesotho who they say is a foreigner and therefore is not elligible to hold such office. This comes after it was discovered that the PM holds a South African identity document (a fact he has publicly admitted), no wonder the rampant looting of state coffers by way of the 84% salary increments and the M4000.00 Kompressors and the M2000.00 Camrys.

We look back in sadness at the deaths of Mahlomola Motuba and Mike Pitso, two journalists who were killed for their brave and fearless reporting of unfairness and prejudice in the past regimes. We have been taken back decades in our learning curve, and are now starting from scratch to plant the seed of unity and true freedom. We take courage from the fact, however, that history has not been kind to dictators who parade themselves as democrats. ‘Nete ke tutulu ha e patehe, or “Truth is ‘unhideable’.” We call on the international media to take note of this heinous act by the Lesotho Government to gag transparency and free access to information, especially as state media is totally not accessible to anyone else but the ruling party.

Re sa lebeletse. Khotso.

Background information:
www.protectionline.org

UPDATE (26 June):
News from The People’s Choice FM: Written by Falla
People`s Choice FM Management, Mr. Motlatsi Majara & Mrs Kholu Qhobela paid a visit to the detained Media Insitute of Southern Africa regional Chairperson and Harvest FM freelancer, Mr. Thabo Thakalekoala yesterday.

The Main aim for the visit was to give support and courage to him as a brother, colleague and journalist at this trying time that he is going through.
Mr. Thakalekoala who is charged with high treason is in police custody and is expected to appear before Magistrate Court today, and on the hand the Regional Director of Media Institute is expected to be in the country today.

He is in the mean time refusing to eat anything (hunger strike), insisting on his liberty and justice.

Submitted by ‘Marafaele Mohloboli

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Links:

• http://khotla.blogspot.com
• http://lesothoforum

all saturday evenings
should be like this, caressing
your thigh while reading neruda
with his odes to matilde’s arms,
breasts, hair–everything about her
that made him
a part of this bountiful earth–
lilies, onions, avocados–that fed
his poetry the way
rain washes the dumb cane with desire
or banyans break through asphalt–
this is the nirvana that the buddha
with his bald monks and tiresome sutras
never knew or else he’d never have left
his palace and longing bride–
the supple feel of your leg in my hands
for which i’d spin the wheel of karma
a thousand lifetimes, more
© Geoffrey Philp

Probable look of Jesus

“There’s a reference in Paul which says it’s disgraceful for a man to wear long hair, so it looks pretty sure that people of that period had to have reasonably short hair. The traditional depictions of Jesus with long flowing golden hair are probably inaccurate.”

Deciding on skin colour was more difficult, though. But the earliest depictions of Jews, which date from the 3rd Century, are - as far as can be determined - dark-skinned.

“We do seem to have a relatively dark skinned Jesus. In contemporary parlance I think the safest thing is to talk about Jesus as ‘a man of colour’.” This probably means olive-coloured, he says. [source]
…………………………

No one took time to tell me that the picture of the blue eyed, blond haired ‘Jesus’ hanging from the wall in my parent’s living room was actually the family member of some European artist from the 16th century who was commissioned by the leaders of the white church to paint the Son of God in the image of a white man in order to enslave and dominate the original people of the scriptures. So I grew up thinking that I was God’s little nappy headed step child. [source]
…………………………

“. . . Jesus and his family spent more than a fleeting moment in Egypt. It is not inconceivable, for example, that Jesus might well have learned to walk and talk right here in Africa. Further, Jesus and his Jewish family, being Afro-Asiatic in colour and culture, would have appeared more chocolate-brown than Caucasian in complexion — more like a typically miscegenated African American, Kenyan Kikuyu or South African ‘coloured’.” (Gosnell L. Yorke, “Biblical hermeneutics: an Afrocentric perspective”, Religion and Theology 2/2 (1995), pp. 145-158; reproduced on-line at http://www.unisa.ac.za/dept/press/rt/22/theol2w.html)
…………………………

In the December 2002 edition of Popular Mechanics, Jesus was shown as looking like a typical Galilean Semite. Among the points made was that the Bible records that Jesus’ disciple, Judas had to point him out to those arresting him. The implied argument being that if Jesus’ physical appearance differed that markedly from his disciples, then he would have been relatively easy to identify. [source]

The image in question is the one shown here.
~Ed.
…………………………

Conservative Christians generally believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. They accept the statements in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived. That is, Jesus’ conception did not involve male sperm, This would imply that God either:

• Created an living embryo with a unique human DNA in one of Mary’s fallopian tubes.
• Created special DNA which fertilized an ovum produced by Mary’s body.

Thus, Jesus would have had DNA that was either 50% or 100% created uniquely by God. If so, then Jesus could have had any height, hair color, eye color, skin hue, style of nose, etc. He may or may not have resembled a typical Palestinian from 1st Century CE. [source]
…………………………

Rethabile’s editorial:
So this is what folks have been saying about the race and colour of Jesus of Nazareth. Will we ever know for sure? Do we care? I’d venture to say we probably don’t. The deal, as far as I’m concerned, is that many of you out there will readily consider close to the truth this image, and not this one. Why is that, considering the region Jesus came from?

Science and computer programs say Jesus probably looked more like the image at the top of this post, than a blue-eyed, blond-haired man. So why is the world flooded with images of the latter and very few of the former? You tell me.

But I digress. I wanted to say that the deal for me is the fact that many use this ubiquitous image to fortify their personal beliefs about race: If even the Son of God is Caucasian, … (please add the rest). As more and more “evidence” piles up about the probable appearance of Jesus, perhaps more than a few racists may look at other races differently, and perhaps with a little more respect.

We shouldn’t really care what Jesus looked like; but now, all of us shouldn’t care. And nobody should use whatever physical image of Jesus is floating around in art galleries to further their beliefs about mankind.

A picture is a strong message, and one that is easily registered and remembered (it speaks a thousand words). Given what we’ve been shown over the ages, does what scientists suggest as Jesus’s image surprise you, shock you, revile you? Or none of the above? Care to tell us something about it?

UPDATE:
I urge you to try a meme that I’ve put up on my other blog. The result may just stun you. Here’s the link: Christ! Another meme.

“Jesus did not say, ‘If I be lifted up I will draw some’.” Jesus said, ‘If I be lifted up I will draw all, all, all, all, all. Black, white, yellow, rich, poor, clever, not so clever, beautiful, not so beautiful. It’s one of the most radical things. All, all, all, all, all, all, all, all. All belong. Gay, lesbian, so-called straight. All, all are meant to be held in this incredible embrace that will not let us go. All.”
~~ Desmond Mpilo Tutu

Thoughts:
Can homosexuality be cured?
An open letter for acceptance
Young Brazilian Catholics Disagree with Vatican

Tags:
Tutu
Homosexuality
Christians and Homosexuality

I was fifteen, but I remember the events of 16 June 1976 like it was last week. Black kids rose against the Apartheid state in South Africa, and refused Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools. They stamped their collective foot and said “No!” And their cry shook the world. Police opened fire and the first kid to go down was Hector Pieterson. I know you’ve seen the now famous picture of his limp body in the hands of Mbuyisa Makhubo, his sister running alongside them.

“I saw that he was bad, but I thought that he was just wounded, you know,” remembers Hector’s sister, Antoinette Sithole. [source]

There were to be many victims that day. Hector’s photo was plastered on the conscience of the world (though few did anything about it), but there weren’t enough photographers to shoot take pictures of the other victims. Hastings Ndlovu was another such victim, and it is said he may have even died before Hector. Here’s the story of his death.

Klein was dumbstruck as to how a school child, in the middle of the morning, was being admitted to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital with gunshot wounds, and questions raced through his mind.

“Children with bullet wounds?” he wondered. “But how? And by whom? A robbery? By school kids? In the middle of the day? Where would the guns come from? Black South Africans are prohibited from owning guns.”

The answer came: “They were shot by the police.”

Klein says a quick survey in the casualty ward revealed that all except one child were shot above the waist: in other words, the police had shot to kill. Then his old high school friend and a neurosurgeon, Dr Risik Gopal, arrived and checked Hastings’ condition.

Gopal confirmed what Klein had suspected: no one could survive such an injury. And indeed, a “short time later, Hastings was dead”, having been in a coma from the moment he was shot, Klein says.

Klein worked in Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital for several years, and had been warned that it would be a “baptism in blood” - particularly on Friday nights. But after years of handling “grisly injuries” from assaults using a range of weapons, he thought “nothing could penetrate the emotional barriers I had learned to erect”.

Not that day.

The sight of “uniformed children riddled with bullets”, accompanied by their “terminal breaths”, left Klein feeling helpless and hopeless, and he could only watch in despair as life ebbed from the “fragile frame” of Ndlovu.

The white hospital administrator walked into the ward and Klein told him to expect trouble that night in Soweto. The administrator replied: “Oh, no, by tonight everything will have blown over.”

Klein, a coloured doctor who under apartheid ethos had no authority to shout at a white person, couldn’t contain himself. He yelled: “In Soweto, you do not shoot children and get away with it. There is going to be shit!” He walked away with tears in his eyes.

Klein had to break the news of Ndlovu’s death to the boy’s friends and relatives, a difficult task not made easier by repeating the news to other relatives of dead children. “I remember the looks of disbelief, the anguish, the tears. And I remember my own grief welling up afresh each time I delivered the grim news.”

Gopal, now the chief neurosurgeon at the hospital, said they stood at the window and watched police shooting children. Some of the staff members saw their own children being brought in with gunshot wounds. “There was a lot of emotion on the day. It was just chaos,” he says.

By late afternoon the government had prohibited blacks from assembling in groups larger than three. Workers, when they disembarked from trains and taxis, got together before walking home, wondering what was happening, unaware of the ruling.

Police opened fire on them, expecting them to know about the prohibition, and they arrived at hospital asking innocently why the police were shooting at them.

Others arrived at hospital with strange wounds, says Klein: small entrance holes in their upper bodies, with larger exit wounds lower down. One man said: “We were sitting in our kitchen, having dinner, when bullets came in through the roof and hit us.” Police were firing from helicopters overhead. [source]

The purpose of this post is of course to remember these children’s sacrifice. I remember the personal friends I made after refugees started flowing into Lesotho from all over South Africa. I remember how we would gather round and sing freedom songs in the evenings, how knowing them made us better politicians at that young age (I was fifteen). I remember how we’d listen to Radio Freedom being broadcast from Tanzania by the African National Congress. I remember how the sound sucked because the Apartheid government was doing its best to kill the signal.

I remember.

The other purpose of this post is to warn us about being inactive in the face of grave injustices. After 1976 and what it brought to South Africa, you’d think the world would do something. You’d be wrong. You think the world might do something for Darfur today? Wrong again. Mention a calamity in the world and ask yourself if the world might intervene, and you’d be wrong to think it might. But America did intervene in Iraq (not in Darfur). Find the error. Did America intervene in South Africa with

1. the mere existence of Apartheid
2. laws such as The Immorality Act of 1950, which stated that no one could make love to anyone outside of his or her race
3. Nelson Mandela and many other leaders in prison
4. the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960
5. the Soweto uprisings of 1976
6. the fact that more than 3 million blacks were forcibly removed from their homes and resettled in black ‘homelands‘.
7. the gruesome killing of Steve Biko in 1977
8. the killing of Ruth First, wife of Joe Slovo, by means of a parcel bomb
9. and many other injustices carried out against a whole people because of the activity of melanocytes in their skin

So, how did the world react? How did the big Occidental powers react? This is part of what happened: “[Chester] Crocker attracted the attention of the Reagan transition team with an article he wrote in the winter 1980/81 edition of the Foreign Affairs journal. In the article, Crocker was highly critical of the outgoing Carter administration for its apparent hostility to the white minority government in South Africa, by acquiescing in the United Nations Security Council’s imposition of a mandatory arms embargo (UNSCR 418/77) and the UN’s demand for the end of South Africa’s illegal occupation of Namibia (UNSCR 435/78). [source]” That’s what happened. The Reagan administration went on to apply and implement its policy of Constructive Engagement.

Let us remember this day with a particular thought for those who died; let us remember it also with a particular thought at preventing it from happening in the future now. So, whatchu gon’ do?

Nkosi, sikelel’i Afrika

Gardening lessons from Lesotho pupils
Jun 7 2007
by Abbie Wightwick, Western Mail

SCHOOLCHILDREN in Africa are helping to teach pupils in Wales how to grow vegetables. The charity Send a Cow has launched an educational resource for schools in Wales that aims to get children growing their own vegetables, with help from youngsters in Lesotho. [read more]

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Lesotho: I’ll Do Anything to Thump Lesotho - Massa
5 June 2007
Posted to the web 6 June 2007

Kampala
UGANDA Cranes’ goal-minting machine Geoffrey Massa has pledged to pull all the necessary stops to ensure Uganda makes next year’s Nations Cup finals as group three winners. The 22-year-old’s scorching assurance is being cultivated from the belief that Uganda’s group rivals Nigeria would struggle winning their remaining two qualifiers. [read more]

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Dual TB and HIV treatment key to Africa AIDS battle
07/06/2007 12:15
By Paul Simao

DURBAN (Reuters) - African, especially southern African, nations must link tuberculosis testing and treatment with HIV prevention programmes if they are to win the AIDS battle, a top World Health Organisation official said on Thursday. Dr. Kevin de Cock, head of WHO’s HIV/AIDS department, told the Third South African AIDS Conference traditional treatments for Africa’s rampant TB problem could worsen the AIDS epidemic and fuel the spread of the potentially fatal lung infection. [read more]

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New hope for the children of Lesotho
By Kate Silverton
BBC Breakfast

Combating the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa remains a challenge for the entire world. The issue will play high on the agenda at the upcoming G8 summit. UNICEF invited me to Lesotho to take a look at a new initiative to help pregnant women avoid passing the virus on to their babies. [read more]

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Rethabile’s Editorial:
There’s a new blog called Lesotho Practicum. Check it out. I read most of the posts and decided that the blog had room for improvement. If you read this, Kathy, what I mean is that your readers are probably more interested in how the Basotho are, not how they differ from Americans or Europeans, cultures that you are used to. Society, culture and language are usually good blogging topics when one’s in a new country.

There are times when I’m shocked by the poverty and undeveloped aspects of the country, and other times when it seems as if it could be a typical city in any part of the world. Some Basotho are dressed very modernly, with their leather jackets and high heels, and then there are others beside them wearing only the Basotho blanket. [source]

The blanketed ones are the real deal, it is them that are the Basotho. The others are a poor imitation of America and Europe. We don’t want Maseru to be like a typical city in any part of the world. No sir. We want it to be a city in Lesotho in southern Africa. Different from London and Los Angeles.

The hotel we stayed at was less to be desired. Apparently showering here is a rarity, as most places are not equipped with such things. I never realized what a luxury bathing on a regular basis was. [source]

That’s a low blow, Kathy, coming from someone who apparently left the very lap of luxury to go “work” with those who are less fortunate. For that is exactly what it is, luck. And even then I think it needs to be qualified, so let’s say it’s financial luck. My people are respectful, patient, understanding and helpful. I can’t say that much for yours. That’s why I felt I had to qualify the bit about luck. You’re rich, and I’m godly. I’m godly, and you’re rich. So what? Does that make one of us better than the other one? You think you’re godly, too? Think again. I at least will readily acknowledge that I’m not (financially) rich.

The reason “most places are not equipped with such things” is that we split dollars, and the bit that everyone has goes for food and other survival necessities. My advice to you is that you should stop criticising my country and feeling sorry for yourself. If you do so, you might learn something about life. I know how nice it is to shock friends back home with how dirty, poor, unequipped, non-western, ad lib, Lesotho is. But that’s not why you’re there, and as for your friends, they’d benefit more from your adventure if you cut out the sensationalism and talked to them about Lesotho and Basotho.

When I was in America (for 7 years straight), I never told my friends about the incredible wasting that goes on in that country, the food fights, the gas-guzzling ocean-liners Americans drive, nor about what I considered awful manners such as the ubiquitous belching, farting and spitting. I did talk to them about language (the southern twang), my host family, food, and other sociocultural matters.

So please start again, Kathy, and post consciously. If the people you’re living among and around read your blog, would they or would they not be hurt? And just so I’m sure it’s clear, saying we’re poor will not hurt us. But going on about how showering is apparently a rarity here will. See what I mean?

I blog here and at Poéfrika.
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Locked in the ogre’s grip, she
Exhales vigour into its nerve
System, breathes in and breathes
Out, according to the season—
Time stands still. She wonders
How she’ll get power to chop
Off the creature’s fingers.
© Rethabile Masilo

“Mankind protects and feeds the panda, but exposes and starves Darfur.”
~~ Rethabile Masilo.

I said that here.

Mosotho horseman

Lesotho’s national anthem’s first verse says Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntatà rona, or Lesotho, land of our fathers. The music was composed by Ferdinand-Samuel Laur (1791-1854) and the lyrics were written by François Coillard (1834-1904), two Frenchmen. The freshly independent Lesotho adopted the tune as its national anthem in 1967, a year after gaining independence from Britain. You can listen to the anthem on the government website.

The two French fellows who penned it did a pretty good job. I quite like the way it sounds. The mothers, though–there are no mothers? We’ll let that slide. Sometime in the future, though, we’re gonna have to tinker with that line so as to include our mothers, who actually do the donkey’s work but always get the lesser of everything. The issue is the same in almost every document written before, and even during, the twentieth century, partly because the majority of human beings believe God is a man.

Is Lesotho the land of our fathers? We know that our fore-parents came from up north somewhere. My very own ancestors, Bakhatla or Bakgatla, came from Botswana. I’ve always heard talk of Ntsoana-Tsatsi, a place where the Basotho supposedly came from.

“Ntsoana-Tsatsi” sounds like “From the Sun”, so it could mean the East or the North-East. When I was in Nairobi, Kenya, I met a guy from Zambia: Mukelabai XXXXXXX. What was funny was the fact that he would stare at my brothers and me when we spoke. We became friends and stayed in contact for many years after that, for Mukelabai was a Lozi and could understand almost everything we were saying.

The Balozi from Zambia, it turns out, decided to go down South, and eventually formed a big chunk of what is today the Basotho nation. At least that’s what one school of thought says. Mukelabai sings the Lesotho national anthem like it was the Zambian national anthem. Why? Because of François Coillard. The anthem author had adventures all over southern Africa, especially in Barotseland, and must have written the tune in Silozi / Sesotho. The group that stayed around Zambia still sings it, as well as the one that trekked south! So who are we? Do we own this land enough to call it Fatše la bo-ntatà rona?

What about the bushmen (Baroa in Sesotho, Basarwa in Setswana) we found there? Isn’t it the land of their fathers more than it is the land of ours? I think we ended up blending with Baroa, which would give all of us together some right to the land and justify some of that first verse, Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona. Apparently

one important site of early settlement was Nts’oana-Tsatsi near present-day Vrede in the northern Free State. Archaeological investigations have revealed that this area was settled as early as 1350, probably by the Bafokeng clan. These were the pioneers of the Sotho groups who settled much of the Free State and Lesotho. They lived closely with the Baroa as well as with the ancestors of the Baphuthi, who were the first Iron Age peoples to settle by the Caledon River Valley. The northern half of the Free State is the true heartland of Sotho settlement. Lesotho, as we know it today, was the southern frontier of this civilization although the upper portion of the Caledon River Valley was very rich and fertile

The above excerpt also identifies Ntsoana-Tsatsi, which is where my mum had always taught me was the origin of the Basotho people. A myth by many standards. But judging by the age of the Basotho nation, I guess we do come from the North-East or the East somehow, and I guess we do have legitimate claim to this land and can go ahead and call it Lefatše la bo-ntat’a rona. The next verse is Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona, or Among worlds it is the most beautiful.

What does one say about one’s country but that it is the most gorgeous of all? I certainly am not going to say that it is the ugliest. Yet, looking at that second verse of the national anthem’s first stanza:

Lesotho, fatše la bo ntat’a rona
Hara mafatše le letle ke lona

I have often wondered what we mean to say. You and I have already agreed that yes, we can lay claim to the land and call it Land of our fathers, the first verse. Which gives us the right to make another claim: Among worlds it is the most beautiful, the second verse. We’re lying through our teeth. We’re lying to ourselves and we’re lying to the world, because we do not believe what we’re singing. How do I know? If we believed what we were singing and really thought our country was the most beautiful in the world, then

We’d do a lot towards keeping it that way.We would be selfless, and go out of our way to help unfortunate Basotho. We would plant trees all over the place, instead of uprooting them. We would not have burned down Maseru, the capital city, because we’d lost an election. We would not be running away and draining Lesotho of its grey-matter. We would not suffer from IPS, Inverted Pyramid Syndrome, but back and support everything local. We would not have killed other Basotho for political gain. We would not throw paper and other rubbish in the street but in the rubbish bin.

That’s how I know. And I hereby ask you, when you hear yourself chanting that second verse of the first stanza, to wonder what it is you are doing for Lesotho that gives you a right to proclaim its beauty before the world. As much as we have agreed that we can safely say the land is ours, I disagree as to its purpoted absolute beauty. Beauty, like love, must be maintained through deliberate action.

“I’m washing my car because I want it to look beautiful.” When you’re done washing it, then you drive it to town to boast, because at that instant you do believe it is beautiful, because you’ve done something to gain the right to believe that it is beautiful. Why should it be different when it concerns a country? You shine your shoes regularly, you whiten your “liteki” (sneakers) and iron your shirt to a crease. When you go out at night wearing those clothes you feel handsome, you feel that you can conquer love, you try to conquer love. Why should it be different when it concerns a country?

We’re lying to ourselves and to the world. One of our common goals must be to ensure that Lesotho remains or becomes the most beautiful we can make it. Beauty rarely comes with the package. How? Look at the list above and start making that 2nd verse of the 1st stanza true.

Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona,
Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona,
Ke moo re hlahileng.

Verse 3 is pretty straightforward. We’ve already talked about verse 1, Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona, and verse 2, Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona. This is therefore verse 3, Ke moo re hlahileng, or It is the place of our birth.

Why shouldn’t it be? I was personally born there, at Scott Hospital in Morija. My parents were born there, in the Quthing district on the southern tip. It is, it seems, the place of our birth. But we are supposed to have come from up north or north-east, if you recall. Ntsoana-Tsatsi, to be exact, and we found Baroa (Bushmen) inhabiting the area that is present-day Lesotho. In Sesotho, “boroa” means south, so that Afrika-Boroa is South Africa. Baroa means People of the South. They were there when we arrived! We were going down south and they were there people of the south.

We were born there but of course one of the prior generations must have got “naturalised.” Oh, it happens all the time. New-comers integrate their new societies frequently, and usually even become more nationalist than the folks that were already there. When the new-comers butcher the already established people, though, and grab their land, naturalisation it is not. New-comers to the American continent hacked and decimated the people they found there. I am told we lived and inter-married with the Bushmen so that we became one: Basotho. Ke moo re hlahileng.

Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona,
Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona,
Ke moo re hlahileng,
Ke moo re holileng.

Verse 4 is in a way a continuation of verse 3. Ke moo re holileng, or It is where we grew up. I personally grew up and became a responsible and conscious human being outside Lesotho. But I don’t suppose that’s what the lyrics relate to, since they are more figurative than Cartesian. I believe that a non-negligible minority of Basotho teenagers either left of their own desire or were driven out¹. Either way they, just like me, grew up outside Lesotho. So what does the verse mean, then?

As far as I’m concerned, it is true that the most visible part of my growing up happened in exile, which means my voice deepened, I grew a beard, I almost doubled the size of my shoes, I got sloshed for the first time, and I became a hopeless fan of woman. But almost every seed was planted, and the seed-bed itself remained, in Lesotho. That’s where I first met hope, felt the joy of belonging, faced desperation, knew fear, and touched compassion.

Perhaps things like these happen in other places, too. But my own seed-bed was no doubt Lesotho, so in essence that’s where I grew up².

Mum and I were driving north up Kingsway, toward home, having packed the Datsun pickup van with stock for the family shop. I glanced at the clock. Maseru was unusually deserted for six p.m. Perhaps there was a curfew that we hadn’t heard about. Or perhaps it was due to the unfriendly looking clouds, stationed across the skyline as far as I could see.

–*It’s going to rain…,* I must have thought aloud.
–*What?*
–*Ah, it looks like it’s going to rain,* I said.
–*Don’t worry. We’ll have finished unloading with the first drops.*
–*I sure hope so.*

We drove past the bakery on the left and the new shopping centre on the right. There was hardly anybody even there! We zoomed past the hardware store where a woman was sitting in front on the pavement with small mounds of potatoes for sale, and headed for Mafafa and the Cathedral roundabout. And Mum jumped on the brakes and brought the rickety Datsun to a noisy stop, and me out of my dreamy stupor. She was looking at me, or rather through me at something I could not comprehend. It was my turn to say what. So I did.

–*What?*

She stopped looking at whatever it was in me or behind me, dipped her hand into her purse and gave me a zoka, a five-cent coin.

–*Get me some potatoes with this.*
For some reason I just took the money and got the potatoes, two mounds, without bringing it to her attention that we had several sacks of the stuff in the van. I did ask her a day or two later, because I was genuinely intrigued. And her answer placed me a step further on my way to becoming a responsible and conscious adult, without actually growing an inch³.

So, yes, in my case, and I suspect in many other cases, I did grow up in Lesotho, although I physically grew up elsewhere. And I suspect this of any place that has such a mixture of seed-bed and seed.

¹ There is no more driving out of Basotho. That nasty bit of our history petered out with the first democratically elected government.
² I’m not suggesting any correlation between this verse and how Basotho children are brought up or grow up. I just happen to believe that I actually grew up in Lesotho, although puberty came afterwards.
³ It is a true story, if you were wondering.

Lesotho, fatše la bo-ntat’a rona,
Har’a mafatše le letle ke lona,
Ke moo re hlahileng,
Ke moo re holileng,
Rea le rata.

Verse 5, Rea le rata, is not yet true. It translates into We love her, or She is dear to us.

1. Lesotho, land of our fathers,
2. Among worlds you are the most beautiful,
3. In you we were born,
4. In you we grew up,
5. You are dear to us.

Anything or anyone that man loves becomes an object of obsession. A car, a pair of shoes, a lover, the self. The latter are pampered and taken care of in unimaginable ways, but Lesotho isn’t on that list and Lesotho isn’t pampered in any way by any man, woman, girl or boy that I know. If you pamper Lesotho the way you pamper things you love, let me know. I’ll pin a medal of honour on your chest.

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Michael Jackson

The other day I was talking to a colleague of mine about music. Sting had just made some claim about how his music would leave a lasting impression on the world. Approximately, we said (R=Rethabile, C=Coworker):

R: I don’t think that’s right. His music was popular in the 80s, but that doesn’t spell everlasting fame.
C: That’s right. Now, people like the Stones…
R: The Beatles…
C: Bowie, surely.
R: Michael Jackson…
C: ?!?!
R: Many people don’t like his music, but the man has influenced a whole generation and brought in a style. I’m sure we’ll be talking about his art long after we’ve stopped talking about Sting.
C: Do you really think so? Michael Jackson?
R: I really think so, yes. I think he’s an incredible artist, an incredible dancer.
C: There’s Led Zeppelin.
R: Stevie Wonder.

And it went on for a while. I was determined not to mention white artists any more, to see if my colleague was gonna ?!?! me every time I came up with a black artist’s name. He didn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t mention Bob Marley and Aretha Franklin and Miles Davis and Fela.

In any case, I realised that it was mainly the mention of Michael Jackson he disagreed with. My colleague isn’t alone, I’m sure. But for me there’s no denying that Michael Jackson revolutionised music all by himself, and did it against the backdrop of rap and hip-hop, just emerging in the 80s. Michael Jackson is

• ABC, I Want you Back, I’ll be there
• Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground), This Place Hotel, Can You Feel It
• Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, Rock with You, Off the Wall
• Moonwalking
• Thriller, the album (the best-selling album in music history)
• Thriller, the video (the best-selling music home video ever)
• Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’, The Girl Is Mine, Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean, Human Nature
• Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, on 25 March 1983
• I Just Can’t Stop Loving You, Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel, Man in the Mirror, Dirty Diana. The album “Bad” still holds the record for generating more number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 charts than any other album [1]
• We are the World
• King of Pop
• Jam, Why You Wanna Trip On Me, In the Closet, Remember the Time, Heal the World, Black or White (The première of “Black or White” was broadcast simultaneously in 27 countries on November 14, 1991 with an estimated audience of 500 million people — the largest audience ever to view a music video.) [2]
• Blood On The Dance Floor, Is It Scary, Ghosts.
• You Rock My World, Cry, Butterflies
• And he dances. He shuts himself up at the house in a room that has no mirrors—”Mirrors make you pose,” he has said—and cuts loose to his own music or to the Isley Brothers’ Showdown, practicing what Dancer Hinton Battle calls “moves that kill. It’s the combinations that really distinguish him as an artist. Spin, stop, pull up leg, pull jacket open, turn, freeze. And the glide, where he steps forward while pushing back. Spinning three times and popping up on his toes. That’s a trademark, and a move a lot of professionals wouldn’t try. If you go up wrong, you can really hurt yourself.” [3]
• Michael Jackson is currently working on a new studio album. The new album has been in production since May of 2006. The album is being recorded in Dublin, Ireland and Las Vegas by Jackson and co-producers will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas, Rodney Jerkins, Teddy Riley, Ron “Neff-U” Feemster, and many others. [4]

So brace yourselves, people, it looks like we’re going to be entertained again. After the conversation with my colleague, I thought it was unfair that the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin should be notched higher than Michael Jackson, as far as music legacy is concerned. Of course, there are tastes but, although I do not dig the music of Led Zeppelin or ZZ Top, I recognise the weight of their impact. The whole idea of legacy really should surpass taste and the colour of the artist. If it was unfair, then I had to write a poem about it. I wrote Keep on with the force. The title for my poem comes from the lyrics of Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. What thinkest thou about all of this?

Keep on with the force

Moon people
Live in souls
On samara wings.

The day the djembe died
I lay on the land and sought
To keep on,

Inter our chorus
In corners, address the need
To act.

At the risk of
Sparking a riot, the dancer
Snaps fingers

With delight and
Dressed like moon critters
We stamp air.

Steps have been hit,
Few greater than what we do
In this crater.
© Rethabile Masilo

Tags:
Malcolm X
Malcolm Little
Shabbazz
Black History Month

The ash moon like a hole
siphoned all flowers
to adorn the other side.

Every plant of every seed
all gone for the sole
glory of hyper-powers;

gone forever is the star’s
confession, where we stood
in lineage a little while,

God’s hope, the life of soil,
the need that feeds my hours
in the night, muddied blood

let for gain. Look at the sons
of slavery among the saints!
© Rethabile Masilo

Tags:
Slavery
Slaves
Triangular trade

Maya Angelou was born on 4 April 1928, as Marguerite Johnson. She knows why the caged bird sings, and is only one of two American poets to write and read an inauguration poem for a president. The other one was Robert Frost for John Kennedy. Happy Birthday to Maya.

Maya has said,

• History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
• I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world’s variety and uniqueness.
• For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.
• Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.’
• Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
• I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.
• Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ - which comes right after being a natural heart surgeon.
• We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.

A short biography of Ms Angelou says, “Internationally respected poet, writer and educator, Maya Angelou has given us such best-selling titles as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gather Together in My Name, Singin’ and Swingin’ and The Heart of a Woman. Multi-talented, she produced and starred in the great play Cabaret for Freedom and starred in The Blacks. She wrote the original screenplay and musical score for the film Georgia, Georgia and was both author and executive producer of a five-part television miniseries, Three Way Choice.

Miss Angelou’s accomplishments have earned her the La Home Journal Woman of the Year award in communication an Matrix Award in the field of books from Women in Communication She received the Golden Eagle Award for her documentary, Americans in the Arts, produced by PBS. She is one of the women admitted into the Director’s Guild. In 1974, she was appointed by Gerald Ford to the Bi-Centennial Commission and later by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year.

Her personal outreach to improve conditions for women in Third World, primarily in Africa, has helped change the live thousands less privileged. Here is where she gives with all her heart and soul. [Source]” And lastly, here is another of her poems:

Tags:
Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Still I Rise

Entirely within the letter of the law, Lesotho’s dominant parties have managed to massively manipulate almost a quarter of the seats in last weekend’s national election. Neither donors nor media seem interested in covering the irregularities. But the trouble is plain in the published numbers for all to see.

When Motorola joined (RED), they sought to work with companies in Africa and found Morija Printing Works in Lesotho to make the beautiful red packaging for their (RED) cell phones. After a visit to the Morija print shop two weeks ago, Motorola sent us some of these amazing photos of people at work and play, and also some candids of the print shop workers and their family members. You’ll also get to see some of the absolutely breathtaking landscape in Lesotho in these photos.

On Sunday elections were held in Lesotho. The small southern African “kingdom in the sky” was the continent’s first country to use a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system, in 2002. Sunday’s election was Lesotho’s second under MMP, and as I am not aware of any other African countries having opted for MMP (as opposed to MMM/parallel, which is used by several countries*), it must have been only the second African MMP election.

Lesotho politics is fraught with fallacies. There are even suggestions that the tiny mountain kingdom should be incorporated into South Africa before its tool late. In fact the only hope for the poor country is its big neighbour where there are more than 50 000 Basotho employed in the gold mines. Lately, its educated citizens are leaving in droves for greener pastures in the SA provinces. Is Lesotho becoming the next Zimbabwe? Is prime minister Mosisili taking after pres Mugabe?

The ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) is headed for a landslide majority as vote counts wind up after weekend parliamentary elections in the southern African country. With results returned in 75 of the 80 constituencies, the LCD party of Pakalitha Mosisili, Lesotho’s prime minister, had won 53 seats. The All Basotho Convention (ABC) of Tom Thabane was in second place with 17 seats. An alliance of smaller parties had won one constituency.

Mokha o tla loantsa khethollo ‘me o tla sireletsa litokelo tsohle tsa mantlha tsa batho joalo kaha li hlaha Molaong oa Motheo oa Lesotho le mehoong ea Mokhatlo oa Machaba a Kopaneng le Kopanong ea Linaha tsa Afrika. Mokha leha ho le joalo, o tla holisa likamano tsa oona le mekhatlo e meng kea kapa kae lefatseng ha feela eba likamano tse joalo ha li hohlane kapa hona ho thulana le sepheo kapa litakatso tsa Mokha.

Five opposition parties (ABC, ACP, BNP, MFP and LWP) have agreed to form a coalition. This, it is said, will give them 30 seats and qualify them to become the official opposition. They are going to sit down and decide on who will be the leader of the coalition and by this virtue, the leader of the opposition.

An ABC song goes…“Bonang le oele lerako, bonang le oele, bonang le oele lerako, lona le re arohantseng!”

The ABC has strived to convince Basotho to shed past differences and see themselves first as Basotho. My hope is that this coalition, more than its main objective of creating a strong, healthy and effective opposition in our parliament, is the first step in that direction.

The song says, “Look, the wall is down, look, it’s down, the one separating us!” This excerpt is from my pal in Maseru. A union! United we stand, divided we fall. Simple dictum, but it’s taken a while for us to understand it. Party politics is by definition counter to national politics. The wager of party politics doesn’t care about the nation, but about his or her own welfare.

You don’t have to look far. Bob in Zimbabwe was fine as long as he was at the helm, his party the government. When his party and his own bitter welfare were threatened, for the good of the nation as a whole, well, the rest, as they say, is history. I’m happy for this rapprochement of forces in my country. It is a good thing.

My friend in Maseru informs me that, “Stay away very peaceful and extremely successful. Abundantly clear is that LCD holds the political power by virtue of winning the election through the rural vote and ABC holds the economic power by virtue of winning the lowland (economic hub) vote. Compromise?

This besides the much awaited court cases which promise to reveal hordes of irregularities with unquestionable evidence. This also besides the questionable proportion by which seats have been allocated in parliament.

Though the administration of the injection is painful (bordering on the unbearable), the medicine would seem to be beginning to take effect, and in my opinion, our future and that of our children has never looked brighter. Praise be to the Almighty!!!” What I retain from the message is the explicit political power versus economic power conundrum. What I do not want to retain is the fact that every election in Lesotho since 1970 has been rocked by violence and dissatisfaction.

Let us invest all power in the king and be done with it. Or let us turn around and actually observe and abide by the rules of democratic elections.

The ANC has betrayed the masses of people, the poor, the vulnerable and most needy sections of South African society both in the urban and in the rural areas. HIV and AIDS are lived experiences for everyone in these areas. As someone said to me – we in the townships, the informal settlements, the rural areas all live with HIV – no one has friends, relatives and family who are either positive or who have died of AIDS – it is everywhere sometimes openly sometimes secretly amongst us but it is there and it speaks [Continue]…

Annielf tagged me. She tagged her readers and I’m one of those. So here goes. First, the rules:

1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday, month and day only
2. List 3 events that occurred on that day
3. List 2 important birthdays
4. List one notable death
5. List a holiday or observance (if any)
6. Tag five of your friends.

Events on June 20 :

1. 1963 - The so-called “red telephone” is established between Soviet Union and United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis. The cold war was on big time.
2. 1967, boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court. Read the NY Times story linked to here-below.
   (Read the story : http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0620.html#article)
3. 1960 - Independence of Mali and Senegal. Two enormous African players in the international arena.

Births on June 20 :

1. 1928 - Jean-Marie Le Pen, French politician
2. 1949 - Lionel Richie, American musician (The Commodores)

A death on June 20:

1. 2003 - Bob Stump, American politician (b. 1927)

An observance on June 20:

1. UNHCR - World Refugee Day.

Tags go out to Stephen and to Chicken Scratches and to you, dear Reader!

21 Hlakubele 1960
Tsatsing leo, batho ba batšo ba 69
ba bolailoe ka lithunya, ba 180 ba ntšoa likotsi*

If when this township
was placed under siege
you were present, you
would have seen life
lamented, batho
wailing, the quick
holding their heads in the
sky to speak incantations
to disconsolate gods,
The dead still, stacked
against the guards, body
upon body, dead
but unbowed in their
steely will that no man
can bend. Quite suddenly
a woman, pail balanced
upon her head, hurls
her soul to the sky, ad
libitum. O Sharpeville!
And her cry rises forever
high – until heaven itself
gives, and what once
was black or white becomes
nil, wherever you look.
© Rethabile Masilo

*This is Sesotho for, “That day, 69 black people were gunned down; 180 were injured.”

Discussion:

1. The Sharpeville Massacre was one of two biggest events that shaped a direction for South Africa’s black citizens. What was the other one, and on what year did it take place?
2. If you went to South Africa today, what would you expect to find in terms of rights and freedoms for the different ethnic groups there (black, white, mixed)?
3. Have you ever read a book or seen a film on South Africa? If not, try (a) The Covenant by James Michener and/or (b) Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton for books, and (c) Tsotsi and/or (d) Cry Freedom for films. There are also many documentaries and other books, including the autobiographies of (e) Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom) and (f) Frederic De Klerk (The Last Trek, A New Beginning)
4. How do say “March” the month in Sesotho?
5. Has your country distanced itself from the problem evoked by this poem?

Let’s discuss it: poefrika thingy gmail thingy com

Literary blog offers free short story and poetry eBooks by Africa writers

Cape Town, 20 March 2007 — South African author Byron Loker has begun a literary blog based in South Africa which features free short story and poetry eBooks by Africa writers. New and established writers can get their work published on www.iBhuku.com which also aims to keep the Southern African book-loving community up to date with regular news on all things literary.

iBhuku.com is working with writers and publishers who can provide short stories and poetry via email for publication. In November 2005 Byron was instrumental in helping the National Library of South Africa design and stage the exhibition ‘Books in Bytes - Reading the Future’. The exhibition was held at the library’s Cape Town campus with the aim of offering an experience of the many innovations that are available to those who want to read for pleasure.

iBhuku.com currently features short fiction by Byron Loker (whose debut collection of short stories, ‘New Swell’, is published by Double Storey Books), promising Johannesburg based young writer Karen Runge and established authors Rosemund J. Handler and Evans Kinyua. Evans Kinyua is the Kenyan author of ‘Flight From Fate’ and runs a media and communications company in Nairobi. His iBhuku.com short story chronicles the antics of two young European expatriates who cosy up to corrupt powers that be. Rosemund J. Handler lives in Cape Town and has had short stories published in South Africa and the USA. Her first novel, ‘Madlands’, is published by Penguin and has achieved critical acclaim. iBhuku.com also features poetry by Rethabile Masilo and Olu Tolu-Omole.

Very few African publishing companies are making the wealth of South African and African literature available in eBook format. iBhuku.com aims to rectify this situation. ‘Ibhuku’ is the Zulu word for book, an obvious adaptation of the English word when it was introduced in colonial times. iBhuku.com denotes a uniquely African identity while maintaining allegiance to the traditional associations of the word ‘book’, as well as alluding to the neologism ‘eBook’. An eBook is a digital version of a print book or document that you can download from the Internet and read or listen to on a PC or handheld device such as cell phone or PDA. There are no postage charges and no waiting. You can buy or download an eBook for free and start reading immediately!

Visit www.ibhuku.com or email editor at ibhuku dot com for more information and submission guidelines. Essays, photography, artworks, reviews, events, interviews, reportage, editorials, news and commentaries are also welcome.

Byron Loker has a Masters degree in Creative Writing (with distinction) from the University of Cape Town and a diploma in film & television production and has worked and travelled in the UK and USA. He is currently a research consultant for MBendi.com – a leading African business, travel and tourism website. His writing has been published on Litnet.co.za, in New Contrast and various South African business publications. Visit www.byronloker.com for more information.

Leaders and MPs of five opposition parties in Lesotho’s 120-member Parliament started an indefinite sit-in at the Parliament buildings on Thursday.

They have called on their supporters and the Basotho nation at large to stay away from work from Monday next week. [Source]

Déjà-vu? Smacks of something we’ve seen? The ballot, contestation, strikes, death. In Lesotho it’s like clockwork, it’s a national gift and an art handed down from generation to generation. We dare anyone to try and beat us at it. We double dare you!

Lesotho voted in February this year, in an election that almost everyone said was free, though most probably not fair. The poll is still up on the side of this blog. Perhaps I was waiting for something to happen, i don’t know, but there you are.

There are promises of police sternness toward anyone disrupting the proper functioning of government. What does that mean? The MPs who will sit-in will receive the wrath of the police? The population that is now surrounding parliament buildings will receive the wrath of the police? What does “disrupting” mean? Here’s what a friend in Maseru told by e-mail yesterday:

LCD made an alliance with NIP behind its leader’s back. NIP won 21 of 40 proportional seats (which are contested by parties and not by candidates) in parliament. The party was declared the official opposition.

Some of the LCD ministers who lost the election were allocated seats in parliament via the NIP, and returned to cabinet. What does opposition mean?

Link: My sista friend Busi!

The fact that African American history, culture, and especially literature means so much to me can be (and probably should be) cause for suspicion. But rather than in futility attempt to submerge into my own motives (and the motives for those motives, and the motives for the motives of those motives), I’d like to offer some quotes (and maybe, maybe not) some later meanderings of my own about specific writers. The latter might even be instructive for someone. [source]

That’s a quote from Jon’s blog. He likes the black writers he mentions, but he’s careful to give us the motives, lest we think he likes black people, full-stop. What’s the motive for liking art? Ehh…, because you like it? because it’s good? Heck, I don’t know. I’m black, and I read and like a lot of white writers. Motive? Awright, I’m guilty. Cuff me and put me away. When I get out, I’ll go right back to reading them good white writer folks, and that’s the honest truth.

I’ll damn well read the black ones, too, but at least there I don’t need motives. Jon, do you need a motive other than talent and enjoyment, to listen to Miles Davis, Ella Fitgerald, Béyoncé, watch Denzel Washington, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, read Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, listen to Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Malcolm X, and so on, ad infinitum? Maybe I didn’t quite get the gist of your post.

Technorati: Black writers

In 2005 I talked of the concept of ABC…D for Lesotho. I still do.

Lesotho’s Test: Jonathan summarises the election with his trademark perspicacity. Check him out.

Selection		Votes
Probably	24%	54
Certainly	30%	66
I doubt it	23%	50
Certainly not	23%	52
222 votes total
Poll powered by Pollhost. Poll results are subject to error. Pollhost does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

Polling stations have closed in Lesotho’s general election. The Independent Election Commission says a voter turnout of 80% can be expected. Rethabile Pholo, a spokesperson, says the voting ran smoothly during the day after some polling stations opened late. Independent election monitors earlier indicated that the poll was free and fair. [Source]

Dear Deity… now what? This country of about 2 million people, independent since 1966 from England, with a 30 to 35% rate of HIV infection, one nation with one language and one culture, with a lot of water to sell in the form of electricity or just plain water, this country with some of the biggest diamonds in the world, this country is one of the poorest countries in the world, this country that is often described as “tumultuous” when it comes to politics, has seen its sons and daughters die for it, this country called Lesotho, surrounded entirely by another country, having the highest low point of any country on the planet…

…having copious snowfall (read Lesotho snow poem) and ski resorts in Africa, having a dinosaur named after it, and therefore ample dino prints, ample cave paintings left by its first inhabitant, the Bushman, this country that has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, as well as, arguably, one of the first novelists on the continent, as well as mountains that inspired the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, as well as the highest pub in Africa…

… and the Aloë Polyphylla, a plant found nowhere else on earth, this country is mine, and it deserves a break. For crying out loud, Lord, I said it deserves a break. There’s a lot going for us — help us capitalise on our resources and on our identity and on our culture. Amen.

Lekhotla la Basotho

Twilight Spider tagged me. I immediately warmed up to the idea of exposing six weird things about me. It is not an easy matter to decide what is weird. What’s weird for you may be completely OK with someone else. Question of culture, I guess, both family and national tribal. Could it be part of why we can’t live together in so many places? Perhaps.

I understand this tag to be light and not at all philosophical or “deep,” which is a good thing because I do not want to venture in that direction. That is where major differences lie, and where gaming ceases to be gaming. So, in what way am I weird?

1. I have no desire at all to follow fashion or to dress in a certain way because it’s in, or because it will please someone else. If my clothes are clean and tear-free, I wear them, and expect everyone to look at me for who I am, what I do, what I say, not what I wear. This is true when I go out or when I go to work. Drives wifey nuts. On the other hand, I, too, am not impressed by what others wear, but by what they say and do.
2. I like to start my meal with dessert, especially if the dessert is fruity. I’ve been trained not to do so in public, and I try not to. I don’t know if this habit comes from my childhood practice of munching fruit straight from the tree before meals, and after school before my “four o’clock,” or from the knowledge that eating fruit and vegetables before the other stuff is healthier and better for digestion.
3. I have flashes of violence a few times per day. I see or imagine the most violent things happening to me or the people I love. This used to bother me a lot, but I try to channel it all into something constructive. I follow the violence and “beg it” to give me a better ending, a more humane dénouement. If it does give me that, I hold the beginning of a poem. Not all poems I write, however, start with visions of rolling heads or dangling eyeballs. And this weirdness is easy to explain. I’ve lost a brother and a nephew to violent political death, and my dad escaped a raid on our home carried out to kill him. Looked at from that angle, I wonder if the flashes I have are that weird after all.
4. I fall asleep in the tub, for quite a stretch at times. It is one of the most relaxing moments I know, and it offers me quietness and softness and warmth, the perfect setting in which to shut the eyes and go away. I don’t take that many baths anymore — I shower. I don’t wanna drown.
5. I’m very uncomfortable in an airplane. Ugh!
6. I sing all the time. What could be considered weird is the fact that I don’t care who’s near or around me. I sing. People smile at me in the street and I smile back. I don’t wail or let it all hang out, I sing to myself but loud enough to be heard by passers-by.

Thanks be to Twilight Spider for tagging me. This was fun. it also allowed me to look at myself in a different way. Cheers for that. I tag you, reader, to try this.

 

My country, my home
(from 70 to 07)

Lesotho fatše la bo-rra, I sing you/ then and now
Each day I sing you/ from mountain to cave I truly
Sing you. Spring is dawning in the valley’s
Old venue for kingly things. Thirty-seven years my love,
Thirty-seven years, and promises-/- the gravestones of our
Heads are cool, too cool for upper rooms in top
Offices, where someone’s already polishing promises-/-

In my dream, hope like a mad river washes the low

Lands, clearing years away/ I hear mothers crying
Over fate/ their tears cleanse my feet and feed
Vrystaat, the fat serpent along Mohokare/ there are
Everywhere men on sticks in silent streets, eyes

Yearning for some sign/ there are faces, violated angels
Outlined in candour beside you, O world, O bright
Unicorn of splendour, prancing in the boorish night.
© Rethabile Masilo

Photo credit and © copyright: Yannick Girardeau

Selection   Votes is not welcome  23% 39 is welcome  34% 57 is highly desired  42% 70 166 votes total Poll powered by Pollhost. Poll results are subject to error. Pollhost does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

In October 2006, Tom Motsoahae Thabane broke off from the ruling LCD party to form the ABC party, or the All Basotho Convention Party. Why? That is the first, big question. The second one is, “Was that the best way of dealing with the answer to the first question?” Apparently so, judging by this poll (NB: it is non-scientific) and by what we hear here and there and everywhere. People want change, it seems. Third question: change from what?
What went wrong? We’re all ears.

Interesting blog: In An African Minute, by Joshua

Okay, I just had to come out with this one. Know the answer? Here’s the question: What place on earth inspired Tolkien to write his famous trilogy, Lord of the Rings?

I’m listening…

Marty informs us that the family of Leabua Jonathan, the 1st prime minister of Lesotho, is suing the new-born political party, Basotho Development National Party (BDNP) over the use of the former Prime Minister’s image.

I rest my case. We still haven’t got any politics in Lesotho. That is unfortunate. What we’ve got, and at a very high level, is leader worship. The leader has to be idolisable, otherwise there’s no party. This should indeed be the case, but there need be something else, for Christ’s sake, some content, some material to sink our teeth into, something else besides idolatry.

Leabua Jonathan was a political public figure. Why can’t his image be used? That’s question number one. Number two, why does the new party hold on to using his image, if there’s something else to offer. I think Basotho are listening and watching, and waiting for the one who actually has something worthwhile to offer. Or at least I hope so.

Then there’s this guy, and he might be well-meaning. He’s just discovered that we exist, and has put out a nice article about us in the newspaper he works for. The paper is The Sun Chronicle Online. Our friend didn’t really know these places: Andorra, Benin, Bhutan, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Comoros, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Maldives, Moldova, Myanmar, Nauru, Palau, Saint Lucia, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

“Why, they are all independent, free-standing countries in this great world of ours,” he goes on to say. “Where was I when the Bahamas became an independent country (July 10, 1973) and Cape Verde, too (July 5, 1975)?” I don’t know where he was. I don’t know where he was when we became independent on 4 October 1966, before The Bahamas and Cape Verde.

But wait just a second here, I think I finally understand, I think if you asked our friend about Basutoland, he’d snap up and say, “Yep, heard of it!” Or Dahomey or Bechuanaland or Borneo. Eh, another second, that can’t be an excuse. Many of the countries on his list have never changed names…

Basotho Democratic National Party. This much proliferation of political parties in such a small country scares me. I’ve already pronounced my sentiments on the issue.

Propos de Pascal Sevran: un dérapage inadmissible.

Dans un entretien à Var matin, publié mercredi 6 décembre, l’animateur de télévision, Pascal Sevran, est revenu sur son dernier livre “Le privilège des jonquilles” où il écrivait: “La bite des noirs est responsable de la famine en Afrique”.

Pascal Sevran, a déclaré : “Et alors ? C’est la vérité ! L’Afrique crève de tous les enfants qui y naissent sans que leurs parents aient les moyens de les nourrir. Je ne suis pas le seul à le dire. Il faudrait stériliser la moitié de la planète ! “.

Le Parti socialiste condamne fermement ces propos, véritable apologie du racisme et de l’eugénisme. Nous demandons également à Patrick de Carolis, Président de France Télévisions, de sanctionner sévèrement leur auteur, dont les déclarations réitérées ne sont pas compatibles avec sa participation au service public de l’audiovisuel.

Nicolas Sarkozy doit aussi dire publiquement s’il se désolidarise de Pascal Sevran, qui compte parmi ses soutiens les plus actifs.

Communiqué de Faouzi Lamdaoui,
Secrétaire national adjoint à l’Egalité et au Partenariat équitable

This is a loose translation of the above quote, with my own comments interspersed. Pascal Sevran is a French TV host. In his latest book, “Le Privilège des Jonquilles,” he says, “The black man’s dick is responsible for hunger in Africa.”

When you hear that for the first time you go… what?, and you try for a second reading. When asked to clarify such an outrageous statement, he said, “So what? It’s the truth! Africa is dying due to all these children being born to parents who have no means of feeding them. I’m not alone to say so. We’re gonna have to castrate half the planet!”

The above quote is from the website of the French Socialist party. The rest of the article just condemns Mr. Sevran and asks him to come out and apologise, as well as Mr. Sarkozy, a presidential hopeful backed by Mr. Sevran.

It took me a while to decide to blog this, and now that I’ve decided to go ahead, I find I have no steam to go full force against Pascal for what he said. My original reluctance of definitely-not-worth-it has come flooding back; and so I’ll leave it at this. The one thought that does keep bugging me, coming back, this little whispering voice in my head, is, “Wow… now they want to slice our dicks off.” Niger has done better than me, Niger has hauled Pascal’s ass to court. His employer has also asked him to apologise or quit.

Tags: Pascal Sevran; Le Privilège des Jonquilles; Racism

Dear Steven,

You said, “We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds.”

They feared you, hence they killed you. The new ideas you were working out jangled their nerves, and you became a problem without a solution, just like we all were. But they couldn’t get the whole black nation to slip on a bar of soap. No. that was reserved for top problems like you.

Why didn’t they just send you to Robben Island, like the other top problems of the day? Perhaps you could have had your own political party, perhaps you could have become president of your land one day. Or vice-president. Or foreign minister. Youth minister would have suited you so!

We miss you, man.

I remember one day thinking how things would have been, had you been around to blog. Biko’s Blog. Biko’s big, bad, black blog. A big, black-green-red weblog emblazoned against our consciousness. Whose nerves would that have jangled then? I wonder what brand of soap they conjured up in their imagination as they declared your death. Sunlight? Lifebuoy? Palmolive? What does it matter? I wonder who made the decision to seal your lips with blows, what in your thinking pushed them over the edge, how many of the top brass watched the fatal beating, what they said to their spouses when they got home (”My God, I killed a man today,” or, “Hi honey — killed another kaffir today.”). They needed your consciousness movement, Steve, in order for them to have a consciousness of their own.

Bantu Steven Biko

BTW, they released ntate Mandela and other prisoners a while ago. He became president, then stepped down to let a younger Thabo take the reins. You remember Thabo, don’t you? Well, you probably know his dad, Govan Mbeki, also on the island prison. Man, so much things to say. South Africa is a real nation, now, with tons of problems like any other real nation. There’s unemployment and joblessness and urban violence. But nobody is being beaten to death and announced accidentally dead in detention, or having committed suicide.

After you died, some looked away, as they had for the very longest time. Most of them now have their guns trained on the ANC government. Paradoxal, huh? But others asked questions: “How did Biko receive the injury that caused his death? Who inflicted it, under what circumstances? Why was he kept naked and chained? Why did the doctors who attended him fail to interpret the undisputed signs of brain injury? Why did the doctors and all the police who were with him from the time he was injured until he died, all fail to notice the wound on his forehead which is so clearly visible in photos taken after his death?”

“And even more: why was the brain-damaged and dying man finally sent off on the long, terrible drive to Pretoria from Port Elizabeth, a big city with adequate hospitals? Why did the police give conflicting evidence, often caught out in contradictory statements or outright lies, none of which could explain the head injury? They had the time and the ability to concoct a story that would, at least superficially, account for the wound on Biko’s head. Why did they not do so? Why was an inquest held, why were details of the way he was treated permitted to be broadcast to the world. Why did the inquest find that no one was responsible for his death?”

No answers. There are never any answers to such things. Unfortunately for us, you were right when you told us that, “These guys - the day they get me - they’ll kill me, because I’ll beat up the guy or make him beat me so that I just die. If my hands are tied, I will spit in his face. I’m not going to answer questions that I don’t want to answer.”

Happy birthday, man!

Bantu Steven Biko, born on 18 December 1946 in Ginsberg, a suburb of King William’s Town.

[More]

Tags: South Africa; Steven Biko; Apartheid

[…] Of course this isn’t really about Madonna. It is about a formula that well-meaning people have adopted in looking at Africa, a surface-only, let’s-ignore-the-real-reasons template that African experiences have all been forced to fit in order to be authentically “African.”

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices. I wonder whether I would know that Africa has class divisions, that wealthy Africans who have not stolen from their countries actually exist.

I wonder whether I would know that corrupt African countries are also full of fiercely honest people and that violent conflicts are about resource control in an environment of (sometimes artificial) scarcity. Watching David Banda’s father, I imagined a British David visiting him in 2021 and I wondered what they would talk about.
Negrophile

I’m a politician at heart. I suckled it from birth. I and the rest of my family have always been involved in politics. I do not live in Lesotho, and the only way I could get involved was through blogging, so I blogged. My aim was manifold: to teach others about us, to provide news about us, to comment happenings in Lesotho, and to expose what happened in the past, to my family and to others.

All this while, I was sitting on another interest of mine, literature, poetry, to be exact. I’d write creatively when I had time, but blogging about Lesotho was first.

As I write this, things are happening in Lesotho. A new party has been formed (All Basotho Convention), and three parties have just come together to form one. This is a welcome development that tells me my country is on the right road.

Given all these, I have decided to spend more time writing than blogging Lesotho. If you linked to this site, or visit it, for Lesotho, please continue to do so. If, however, you linked or visit for the creative writing, please consider switching over to Poéfrika, where I will be most of the time in terms of creative writing.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I — I took the other one.

Lesotho’s King Letsie III dissolved parliament on Friday to pave the way for early elections, with the vote expected before the end of February. A statement released by Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili said a date for the poll in the mountain kingdom would be set next week after a meeting of the council of state.

The council consists of the prime minister, speaker of the national assembly, two High Court judges, commanders of the Lesotho Defence Force and Lesotho mounted police services, one principal chief and two opposition party members of the national assembly.

A member of the three-man Lesotho Independent Electoral Commission, Limakatso Mokhothu, said preparations were advanced.
http://www.news24.com

A Dutch aid worker was killed in an attack by unknown gunmen at the house of Lesotho’s trade and industry minister, police said Saturday. Police spokesperson Pheelo Mphana said that the 36-year-old woman, who has not been identified pending notification of next of kin, worked for the Clinton Foundation, which runs HIV and Aids programmes in the poor mountain kingdom.

The woman, her husband and two American aid workers arrived at Minister Mpho Malie’s house in a taxi late Friday. As they got out of the car, they were attacked by heavy gunfire, Mphana said.
http://www.iol.co.za

I have been overwhelmed with beauty a handful of times in my life. The train ride down Scotland’s coast, in between the blue seas and green fields. Driving through the Lesotho highlands. The fields of Joshua trees on the road to Monterrey, as their praying hands lead up to the Sierra Madres. The sahara sunrise. I think this flight could have beaten them all.
levantine18.blogspot.com

A three day hiking trip up to the waterfalls around Qhoasing in the Mohale’s Hoek district reassured me that the best thing to do in Lesotho is hike. And the best place to hike is in Lesotho. When will the rest of the world discover this?
gregalder.com/journal/blogs/index.php

Lesotho photo

I’ve been tagged. Sokari tagged me to write “works of art that made a difference in your life.” Tough tag, and it has taken me a while to get around to doing it. I will look at it from two different points of view. Without being in any way full of myself, the art that has made a difference is the poetry that I write myself. I’ll tell you why in a minute. The other art is too wide to consider seriously. I have been slapped by music, painting and writing.

I lost members of my family, who were killed at a very early age. I believe that if I had not started writing poetry I would have gone under with grief. Poetry helped me focus and channel my energy correctly. Without it, the outcome is even today unthinkable.

As far as I’m concerned poetry, then, was therapy to me, and continues to play this important role in my life. I’ve exorcised my thoughts and my consideration of death by writing about death (one, two, three, for example).

As I say above, I’ve also been slapped by music (Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Al Jarreau), and by painting (Guernica, Van Gogh’s stuff, Munch’s stuff). Theme albums do it for me, and perhaps the most influential in my life remains Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. It was political and tree-hugging and inquisitive, and yes, soulful and groovy. The message of his theme, protect the planet and love your neighbours, came to me loud and clear, and today when I listen to that album i still hear him asking us to save the children, save the babies.

Stevie Wonder picked up on the theme thing and worked a few messenger songs into his albums. Perhaps the most famous (and least loved by me musically) is Happy Birthday, written for the birthday of Martin Luther King.
[www.blacklooks.org]

Although the kids we met had no toys to play with and very little clothing, they all seemed really happy and loved to play and interact with each other and with us. They loved just sitting by us and observing what we were doing. They also loved eating ’sweets’ and were so excited if they got an empty water bottle to play with. Unfortunately, there are many, many orphans in Lesotho because of AIDS.
wrightadventures.blogspot.com

November 12, 2006
Posted to the web November 13, 2006 Washington, DC
AfricaFocus Bulletin

Search the World Bank’s website section on anti-corruption (http://www.worldbank.org/anticorruption) for “Lesotho” and you will get the following response: Your search - Lesotho - did not match any documents. No pages were found containing “Lesotho”.

But while the World Bank may not be paying attention, the small Southern African country has taken the lead in attacking corruption in the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a giant scheme financed by the World Bank itself.
[source]

Here’s why I’m happier today than I was yesterday: http://lifela-tsa-sesotho.blogspot.com

Hooray! Bloggers on Lesotho have just seen their numbers grow by one. Lesotho Forum has made its entrance.

Lesotho opposition parties forge alliance
Maseru, Lesotho 07 November 2006 11:20 

Three opposition parties in the tiny Southern African kingdom of Lesotho announced the formation of a new alliance on Monday to fight a general election which is due to take place next year. The Alliance of Congress Parties (ACP) brings together three parties –the Lesotho People’s Congress, Basotholand African Congress and Basotho Congress party — which split from the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD). One of the key figures in the new alliance, Basotholand African Congress leader Khauhelo Ralitapole, said the three factions ultimately wanted to become a single party rather than a mere alliance.
[source]

There you go. Instead of forming more parties, form one from many. That’s the sentiment I have about improving the political situation in Lesotho. Having said that, it seems that many Basotho are thrilled at the formation of the new party, the All Basotho Convention (ABC), formed some time ago by ex Foreign Minister Tom Thabane. Check the poll in the sidebar. Things are moving, it seems, and that’s good.

Many of these parties hold the same beliefs. Indeed many of them are “congess” derived, coming from the original Mahatammoho party of the late Ntsu Mokhehle, and I’m sure that the ACP in fact brings together three parties that have very few differences in ideology (if any). The separation is merely a case of who is to be top dog. In other words, if I can’t be leader, I’ll make my own party.

R150 seems a meagre amount, but it has brought an end to backbreaking toil and food insecurity for many of Lesotho’s elderly.

Two years ago the government of the small landlocked country started a pension system for citizens over the age of 70. Today, more than 76 000 people are receiving a monthly pension of approximately 150 maloti (R150).

Whereas such steps in Southern Africa are frequently taken at the behest of donors or the international financial institutions, Lesotho’s government introduced the grant in order to address worsening poverty among the elderly.
[more]

Bushmen have much desert in them;
from birth they hold a manifesto
in their head, a tribal oath, an old
undying truth that we’ve always been
told about, how they honoured the
first-born sun.

The hills hold caverns grandpa Seth
once walked me up to see, to trace
the curved walls with my eye. He said–
he said his dad once made a bushman
jump with a spoken Lumela! from behind,
time when these grottoes lived with
people.

Like — I really want to go to the Kalahari
where children still romp the sand, where
like photons moons move across heaven
meeting shadows halfway, seeking the day.

That image of you, Africa, when to sundown
you settle down beside a fire, is my
rusting photo, the ghost of a song coming
from deep you and bidding jive along.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

PS: Check out Poéfrika

National University of Lesotho

Our Vision is to be a leading African Tertiary Institution for life-long learning and relevant research in order to provide innovative solutions to societal needs.

Our Mission is to employ innovative teaching and learning methods, Research and Professional services to continually develop Human Resources capable of leading and managing development processes in a world increasingly driven by knowledge and by Science and Technology.

LECTURER/SENIOR LECTURER – DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS AND ELECTRONICS (Renewable Energies/Computational Condensed Matter Physics/Applied Physics) (Re-advertisement) POST NO: 2377

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For more information on this post contact Dr N. Rapapa: np.rapapa@nul.ls or nrapara@yahoo.co.uk. Closing date: Open until the position has been filled.

REMUNERATION: The University offers competitive salaries and other benefits. The terms and conditions of service are two years (renewable) contract for expatriates and permanent and pensionable for locals. Applicants are to address the stated qualifications and provide other information to assist the University to determine their suitability for the position. They should also quote the vacancy number of the post applied for, provide current CVs (including telephone, telefax and e-mail) certified true copies of educational certificates, transcripts and three typed references. Applicants should submit their applications together with sealed references to the above address before the stipulated closing date to: The Senior Assistant Registrar (Appointments), National University of Lesotho, P O Roma 180, Lesotho, or at personnel@nul.ls.

National University of Lesotho

Inner city
I want you

They frolic through the empty lot
making a soccer storm, their joy
mirrored in syringes and rust,
hewn into the substance of the place.

Every night I’m like you know
thinking how the world can be so written
on the faces of folks hurrying home,
past the lot, potato and onion bags
swinging from good hands.

There’s a gig, after dinner, behind where
the community centre used to be;
its announcement is a giant-size
poster of the cover of
Marvin’s I Want You album.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

To hear god whisper a prayer, we’ll need to pitch
our tents among the trees where he knelt, each
of us witness to how his elements touched heaven.
Alms will not be delivered unto us; no unleavened
bread nor wine for the parched heart, nor a harpist
of psalms; instead, the sun will sink east and rise west;
crimson drops will fall on our loveless group;
time, at best, will turn around and expel us from the tomb.

Halt the turning of the world, stop terror in the upper room,
the higher-life chamber, wherever it’s found. Make the moon
and the stars shrivel up and end, the ground right
for tracking holy prints from your feet
to ascertain our destination, the promise of hope
upon a mountain, a certain chance for our small troop.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

This is for this week’s Poetry Thursday theme.

In his poem, You shall above all things be glad and young, ee cummings states, I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. And so would I. While this telling declaration is not what I would call a living image, it remains an everlasting one, an image capable of overtaking the reader’s stride and making itself at home.

It uses everyday things that all of us know and can easily relate to, and it could have been uttered by any of us, which is probably why it remains fresh and, yes, telling. It is two-pronged. First is the part about learning how to sing from one bird, learning how to write from reading one book a hundred times rather than a hundred books, each once. That’s how we really get to know something. Practice hip-hop dancing everyday of the week, instead of hip-hop on Monday, tango on Tuesday, salsa on Wednesday, etc, etc.

Secondly, teaching a star how not to dance is an incredible feat in itself, and teaching one thousand stars how not to dance is that much more of a feat. Why? Not only because of the overwhelming number of stars, but also because of the weight of the action itself, teaching a star not how to dance, but how not to dance! Teaching the canary how not to sing. Teaching grandma how not to cook. Teaching Romeo and Juliette how to despise each other (i.e. how not to love each other). That’s damn hard work that, if accomplished, borders on the incredible. But incredible or not, why do it? Mr cummings has decided that learning one good little thing is that much better than doing many less good things, albeit incredible.

To me, these are why this image is everlasting. And boy, did cummings have many of those! Here is the poem in its entirety:

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you’re young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever’s living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation’s dead undoom.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
[Source]

This [August 1968] issue of Glamour model Katiti Kirondi II on the cover features the “Best Dressed College Girls.” This marked the first time an African-American woman appeared on the cover of a national women’s monthly magazine. This issue featured the 10 best-dressed college girls and 100 great fall looks, which included mini-skirts and psychedelic colors. [www.magazine.org]

When my father snores
he sucks in the whole world
and releases it in one pure breath.
At night I’d come into his room
where he would pass out on the bed—
too drunk to change his clothes or
put out his cigarette, which had
burnt itself down to the embers. I pulled
off his shoes and watched him sleep,
smelling his sweet, stale breath
fill the room in waves. He was so out of it
I could put my finger into his mouth and pull it out
before he inhaled.
Once I let my finger linger a second
too long and his tongue touched the flat of my tip.
I thought of going in deeper, first a hand, then an arm;
the tender cutlet of my body swallowed whole by my
father. But I was barely enough to make him cough.
He rolled over on his side, leaving a well in the space
where his body had been. I crawled back into my own bed,
as my father slept the peaceful sleep of ogres, feeling
the house shake with his rhythmic tremors.

© http://poetmom.blogspot.com

I found this poem while surfing. I started with Jilly’s Poetry Hut, where I’m a regular, and where I usually click randomly on the blogroll. I fell on this blog, and this poem. I don’t know what you think, but I was hit (hard) by the simplicity of the style, and the infectious nature of the poem. I want to see more.

Due to this discovery, hey, I’m going to hunt poetry blogs and blogroll them, which should make it easier for me to go read. There are already some I link to, but they aren’t under any specific category, and some put up poetry only occassionally. See Geoffrey, Kojo, Stephen and Suzy, for example, and don’t you forget Canopic Jar.

Dans l’envie de m’abattre
tu m’as nourri, toutes ces années
j’attends ton coup pour vaincre mes craintes,
toi, le bourreau, et ta muleta — moi en taureau.
Tu m’appelles, sans cesse tu m’appelles
pour qu’on danse tous les deux sous ce soleil
vers la fin. Comment y résister?

Cependant, c’est toi en ami
qui m’emmène à la maison où j’écris
ces quelques mots lassés par le temps.
Sache que je n’accepterai pas une mort
à étapes, une déchéance quelconque sans frappe.
Un coup, et tout ce moment est à nous
entre ici et les ténèbres.

Cette épine dans ma chair, elle mérite
les olés du public, c’est un coup de grâce
qui laisse à l’amour seul le soin de fleurir.
J’envisage souvent les grêlons ruinés par
les fleurs sur lesquelles ils tombent.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

Sans doute une info qui est passée presque inaperçue. Elle est signalée dans Le Canard enchaîné du 18 octobre dernier : “Bon nègre”, avait intitulé l’hebdomadaire satirique pour rapporter le “délit de faciès” subi par deux attachées parlementaires noires, l’une travaillant pour le socialiste Yannick Bodin et l’autre pour le questeur socialiste Gérard Miquel. La scène, d’après Le Canard, s’est passée le 10 octobre dans une cafétéria du Sénat.

Les deux attachées parlementaires de couleur sont apostrophées, à leur entrée dans la salle, par un Sénateur UMP du Val-d’Oise Hugues Portelli (en photo), qui leur lance : «Vous pouvez nettoyer, parce que c’est sale ! On ne peut pas se servir, ici, c’est vraiment dégoûtant». Et comme les deux attachées parlementaires, sous l’effet de la surprise, ne bronchent pas, le Sénateur UMP enfonce le clou : «Vous comprenez ce que je vous dis ou pas ? (…) Nettoyez, vous comprenez ou, ou pas ?»

Alors, l’une des deux femmes lance : «C’est vrai que nous sommes noires, et qu’en général les femmes noires sont au Sénat pour faire le ménage. Mais là, nous venons juste nous servir un café. Nous sommes des assistantes parlementaires.» Et comme le pauvre type de l’UMP se rend compte de son impair, il emprunte plus qu’un terrain glissant, question de se rattraper : «Vous savez, je ne suis pas raciste, mon beau-frère est antillais, mais je pensais que vous veniez là pour travailler.»

Allons, allons, avis aux autres qui se livreraient à un tel amalgame : prévoyez un beau-frère de couleur. Mieux encore, vous pouvez trouver un beau-frère de votre beau-frère qui a épousé une personne de couleur… [Toutes les négresses ne font pas le ménage au Sénat]

Alain Mabanckou speaks of an incident that was reported in a French paper, about two black, female, parliament assistants who underwent what I undergo rather regularly. I will accurately translate only what was said; the rest I’ll just summarise for you.

The two ladies had gone to a beverage place to get coffee for themselves when a white MP said, “Why don’t you clean this place up a little, it’s filthy! One can’t even help themselves, it is really disgusting.” They drew blanks — they were either too shocked to speak, or they didn’t know what he was talking about.

He continued, “Do you understand what I’m saying? Clean this place up (…). Do you or do you not understand?”

One of the women said, “It is true that we’re black, and generally, black women set foot in this Senate only for the purpose of cleaning and tidying it up. In this case, however, we’ve come to get us some coffee. We are MP assistants.”

It’s hard to cover up ignorance or prejudice or whatever it is had driven the man to act the way he acted. Moreover, in that specific situation, the wrong-doer always says something similar to what that man blurted that day: “What it is is that I’m not racist; my brother-in-law is West Indian. I just thought you were here to work.” Which they were, but he just couldn’t get used to the idea that their work wasn’t cleaning up or tidying up.

I’ve often blogged about people asking me, in supermarkets, where the potatoes (or the onions) were. About a week ago it happened again. When I told the woman that I wasn’t an employee of the supermarket, she looked at me intently, with not a little surprise, and said, “En plus t’es habillé en rouge.” Or, “What’s more, you’re dressed in red.” Store workers there wear red tops.

What she meant by that was, of course, that on top of being black, I was wearing the shop’s uniform. What a surprise that, with not one (skin colour) but two (skin colour and uniform) traits, I wasn’t an employee of that shop after all?

Alain’s blog always has tidbits like this one. Do check it out (in French).

In need of me dead and done in,
you nurtured me for years and got me here
to make me yours.

Your scarlet muleta flaps a call,
you in the end lead me home
and that is all.

Let us therefore dance to the finish,
the mood of this sunset in abundance,
for I will have no death in stages.

One blow should make this ours,
thorn thrust into flesh, cheers all around,
A coup de grâce for love, for ages.

Often I have envisioned
hail being torn apart by the flowers
it is falling upon.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

My Proust Questionaire, Damnit
I love Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire even more than I do Esquire’s “What I Learned” column. But look, I’m never going to be famous enough to ever merit a page in Vanity fair and even if that miracle happens, it will take years and I don’t have time to wait. So here are my Proust answers, because unlike 99 percent of the people Vanity Fair usually asks, I’ve actually read Proust.

That’s how Marlon James introduced his questionnaire. I got to his blog through Geoffrey Philp’s blog. I got to Geoffrey’s blog through Stephen’s blog. That’s the Internet for you. Virtual communities, some of which are burning to be lived outright. Geoffrey is preparing an interview with Marlon that should be interesting, as such interviews always are to anyone wanting to be a good writer or a good reader. Almost everybody, in other words.

Here’s my questionnaire:

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Connecting with my wife and getting a poem to work in the same time frame.

What is your greatest fear?
That my kids do not get the same chances and opportunities I did. In other words, I’m afraid some idiot will blow the planet to smithereens.

Which living person do you most admire?
For me it’s people: my mother, and Nelson Mandela.

What is the most overrated virtue?
Mother-Teresaism. It should be natural and ubiquitous.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Prejudice fuelled by racism

What is your greatest extravagance?
Music and books. I wish I could afford more of ‘em.

What is your favourite journey?
Going home

On what occasion do you lie?
When my wife asks, “How’s this skirt?”

Which living person do you most despise
South African racists whose only dream is to discredit the ANC

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“How is it going?” and “If I were you…”

What is your greatest regret?
I’m sorry I didn’t become the football great that I could have been

When and where were you happiest?
Maryville College in Tennessee, where I met Mrs Rethabile

What is your current state of mind?
Bitter sometimes, exhilarated at other moments. I don’t know.

If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
I would spend more time writing.

What is your greatest achievement?
Not getting angry at ignorant people in supermarkets who ask me where the potatoes or the onions are.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing what do you think it would be?
Me, but wiser.

What is your most treasured possession?
I own very few things. Perhaps a scrap-book of poetic scribblings that I mean to turn into a book one day.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery
Suicide

Where would you like to live?
Maseru, Bloemfontein or Gaborone

What is your favourite occupation?
Both writing and playing football

What is your most marked characteristic?
Timidity

What is the quality you like most in a man?
Frankness and bonhomie

What is the quality you like most in a woman?
Sexy, non-sexist womanhood

Who are your favourite writers?
Chinua Achebe, Robert Frost, Julie Humpert (she doesn’t know it) and David Diop. There are many others, but let’s stop there for now.

Who is your favourite hero of fiction?
Indiana Jones

Who are your heroes in real life?
Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela and my mother

What is it that you most dislike?
Racist hypocrites

How would you like to die?
I don’t wanna die. If I have to, I’d like to go while making love

What is your motto?
C’mon, you can do it!

Why don’t you do one yourself?

Selection   votes is great for Lesotho  67% 31 is unnecessary  22% 10 is bad for Lesotho  11% 5 46 votes total Poll powered by Pollhost. These results are subject to error. Pollhost does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

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The voters have spoken, and a majority of them say that Lesotho is right to have two official languages. My view is that it is necessary to have Sesotho and English as official languages, but not necessarily great. Let’s face it, it’s getting harder and harder to do commerce without the use of English.

The French can do so quite safely, for many around the world at least understand French. Not too many “get by” in Sesotho.

Despite our two official languages, we’re not bilingual. We speak English and Sesotho. Those Basotho that are truly bilingual have usually followed a path that veers from the usual one, either by studying abroad for a considerable period of time, or actually moving to go live and work there.

There is another factor, however, and it is cultural. And painful. Sesotho is disappearing — slowly but surely. Quick, in Sesotho how would you say, “Last year we borrowed money from the bank, but the interest rates were too high for us.” That’s what I mean. It is becoming easier and easier to speak a mix of both languages, and unfortunately it is English that is winning outright.

Some say, “Learn a new language and get a new soul” (Czech Proverb). True. But I think I’d rather (re)learn my own language and keep my soul intact.

I live in Midville where the sun’s unhappy,
where one answer to what we seek as a folk
is cross-burning; and though madam’s alone today,
the ranch quiet, I’m not taking chances.

Without a squeak I slink from the sill and go
past the tree branch, which has seen men hanged
for less than a peek into a lady’s sleep room
[that tree, btw, should have long become
a monument], and on to the back stables
by the sty.

A steed stamps as I approach,
prances, brooding perhaps over my manhood,
what the purpose of it is, the why to all of that,
and can I explain this pain I hold? On what basis
are people crowned, horses thoroughbred,
while some are common?

I grab the curry comb to groom, to
straighten my thoughts in that stall once and for all,
for I do seek things in life, like justice, and I seek
the knowledge of why the earth is round,
the sky blue, the pygmy small, though above all
it is God I seek [in the end it always is]
so we can speak of negroes and stuff; and won’t God
be aghast?

Man, life here overseas is no oasis,
so lost in the stars, in these concrete deserts
so friendless and vast. But now at last I’ve got
my rendezvous, and I’ll see about completing
the ellipsis, all the way through, at least once.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

Mazisi Raymond Fakazi Mngoni Kunene, poet and activist, born May 12 1930; died August 11 2006

gnalafostohk
ho moholoane oa ka
ea shoetseng jokong

tebello begot the child and stood near
death for it — a boy she at once made man
before he had known how to conquer fear
by himself, warrior of the sotho clan.

he followed certain roads the long way here,
living among castes where the african
spirit endures, a rush of angry tear
turning mere soldier into veteran.

and as he went forth in dreams of his own,
learning how to cope in quest of good
for together with life he was alone,

what prospects he received, at heaven’s whim,
became his with no hopes misunderstood,
all of the rhythm having entered him.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

Memory is unfathomable. It is a slate that cannot and will not be wiped clean. Perhaps it is because memory is built up from different stimuli, smell and sight and touch and taste and sound, which years later remain united enough to evoke memory as we know it. Sound is terrible. I can’t hear a 70s song without remembering and smelling Maseru during those years. Hugh Masekela’s “The Boys are Doin’ it,” Manu Dibango’s “Soul Makossa,” Johnny Nash’s “The Look in Your Eyes.” I will usually even feel the bump jiving.

Those times, however, were also rife with political tension, following the 1970 Coup d’Etat in Lesotho and the imprisonment of opposition leaders. My father was thrown in jail, we moved to a less affluent area of Maseru, and we skimped big time on clothes and on food. I remember that, too, when I hear that glorious music.

Smell can be pretty merciless, too, and roasted corn does me in. At six or seven p.m. on a winter’s night when I emerge from the Paris underground, after work, and see and smell roasted corn, I’m reminded of Maseru and Kingsway street; I’m reminded of blanketed women hovering over coal fires. Oh, the experience is almost always a passing flash, but a temporal knee in the groin it is, to be sure. And I don’t know whether I’d prefer to forget and not be reminded, or whether I couldn’t quite be myself without those oft torturous, regular flashes.

From the time I knew that my elder brother, Khotsofalang, wouldn’t be coming back, ever (it’s a long story), I got into the habit of studying young black men’s faces, in case one of them should happen to be his. In case what I’d heard was wrong. In case he’d in fact been brainwashed and just couldn’t remember where home was. I started doing so in Kenya, and continued in America and even in Canada, for the short while I was there. A cluster of black people, a group of young, black men, would be enough to have me ogling at and eye-balling people.

Nobody ever asked me, “What the hell are you looking at, dork?” What would I have said? It was a certain situation that would tell my mind to start eye-balling young men, a sort of subconscious stimulus, many black people, that reminded me of home, and had me believing that my brother might be among them. And as I say, the experience is usually over in flash. I’d stop ogling, but I’d be thinking about something related to him.

At such moments, for reasons beyond my grasp, I’d usually think of a particular day when we were at Peka High School, and there was a student strike. A strike meant the students weren’t going to class and were basically either beating up the teachers or burning buildings, or both. The local cops had already been called, and there was a stand-off, cops on one side and us on the other. A few friends and I were on top of a small building that housed the toilets, when out of the blue a few tear-gas canisters fell nearby and started hissing out their toxic smoke. I instinctively jumped off the roof into the cloud–the only possibility–landed on my feet, and heard, amidst the commotion and the confusion, “Rethabile!” My brother had been watching me? Over me? I hadn’t even known he was anywhere near where I was. “Rethabile!” he had shouted. I moved out from the cloud unharmed, and went back to the business of throwing stones at the cops.

I don’t know for sure when I stopped eye-balling young, black men. Perhaps it was after I had talked with my mum and found out that she was also doing the same thing.

Memory is a powerful force, indeed, and the five senses, plus the sixth, are there to make sure we can recall a lot of what has been influential and important in our lives.

Okay, it looks to me like this is the last version, without it being the final one.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

Not my all-time favourite poet (I’m not sure who that is) but an excellent one whose works are a joy to read, again and again and again. In the early nineties Sir Stephen Spender came to Paris, where I live, to read some of his stuff at the local British Council. It must have been a Saturday, or perhaps a Sunday, because I was in trainers and a T-shirt. At the time we lived some 35 km north of Paris. So about two hours before the event, we got in the car and drove off to Paris to go and listen to a living legend.

Halfway there I suddenly hit the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road.
“What are you doing, we’re gonna be late,” my wife said.
“We’ve got to go back,” I said sadly.
“What the hell for?”
“The T-shirt”
“The T-shirt? What T-shirt?”
“Honey, the T-shirt I’m wearing has a grammatical mistake. We are not going to see this guy wearing a grammatical mistake!”

And so we turned back and I changed into a plain T-shirt. In France, and perhaps in other Latin countries like Spain and Italy, English slogans and sayings on clothes are the in thing. But then mistakes often creep into such endeavours. My T-shirt had had a bold declaration that said: YOU HAVE DONE THE RIGHT CHOICE!

We listened to some of the sweetest poetry and even got to shake hands with and talk to Sir Stephen Spender. Well, he talked to me. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth and would not come loose, except for one question I managed to squeak out. I asked him what he did when a poem refused to come together. I’ll never forget what he said, because it is probably the ultimate in advice for aspiring writers.

He looked intently at me, a serious smile about his lips, and said, “I just go on.”

We shook hands and I shoved off. I didn’t wash my hand for a good while. For me, personally, and I suspect for many of the people crammed into that hall, the best part of the day, of the week, was when he said,

What I expected, was
Thunder, fighting.
Long struggles with men
And climbing.
After continual straining
I should grow strong;
Then the rocks would shake
And I rest long.

What I had not foreseen
Was the gradual day
Weakening the will
Leaking the brightness away,
The lack of good to touch,
The fading of body and soul
Smoke before wind,
Corrupt, insubstantial.

The wearing of Time,
And the watching of cripples pass
With limbs shaped like questions
In their odd twist,
The pulverous grief
Melting bones with pity,
The sick falling from earth-
These, I could not foresee.

Expecting always
Some brightness to hold in trust
Some final innocence
Exempt from dust,
That, hanging solid,
Would dangle through all
Like the created poem,
Or the faceted crystal.

© Stephen Spender

‘Moments after news of the Super Eagles’ 1-0 victory over Lesotho on Sunday filtered in, a terse reaction to the outcome of the match has come with coach Augustine Eguavoen being asked to resign his position as head of the team’s technical crew.

Chief Jude Ezechukwu is a former member of the board of the Nigeria Football Association, (NFA). The President of Jasper Untied Football Club told Nigeriansportsonline.com: “I tell you with all sense of responsibility and patriotism that beating Lesotho just 1-0 is a bad result. “There is no way Nigerians don’t deserve a wider-margin victory considering the big gap between the two countries.

“Our players are not only playing for top teams in Europe but they are doing well in the top leagues there. “But ask me the name of any of the players of Lesotho and I will not be able to mention even one, because they are not household names like our boys.”’
[www.tribune.com.ng]

A top minister in the Lesotho government has resigned. I can’t look into this immediately, but promise to do so as soon as I can. Here’s the announcement (Group Sotho) and a quick reflection I made concerning the resignation.

Links:

1. www.businessday.co.za
2. www.news24.com

This poem does not want to finish. No poem ever does, but this one is particularly stubborn. I’ve turned out several versions of it, but have never really understood where it wants to go. It is an ongoing project and I publish it here, before it gets to where it’s going, because I tend to understand poems better when they have just been put up for everybody to see.

The latest version is at http://sotho.blogsome.com/2006/10/08/madam-in-the-bedroom-4

Obafemi in Jo’burg, promises hell for Lesotho
From Richard Jideaka, Abuja, Friday, October 6, 2006

Super Eagles top striker, Obafemi Martins arrived the Sandton, Johannesburg camp of the national team with a promise to score in their African Nations Cup qualifier against Lesotho on Sunday.

Martins, who joined the rest of his colleagues in the late hours of Wednesday from Italy, came with injured Ayodele Makinwa and apologized for not making it earlier as promised but added that he is raring to compensate Nigerians for his goal drought in recent times.

“I know my fans have been wondering what had gone wrong with my goals-scoring ability but I want to use this match to assure them that I am still hot as before but only that things have not been working well for me at my new club, Newcastle.

“I am hot for this match against Lesotho and I want to score at least a goal, as well as make goals for my teammates, so that we can beat Lesotho and win the match very well. We shall not underrate the Lesotho boys because there is no longer minnow in football in the world,” Obafemi told Daily Sunsport on phone from Johannesburg.

The Newcastle new signing said that he wants to re-open his goals scoring account with the Eagles, after he managed only two goals at the last African Nations Cup in Egypt from six matches. Meanwhile, the team’s camp can boast of 21 players, following the arrival of Obafemi Martins and Ayo Makinwa. The Eagles are expected to leave for Lesotho today for their match slated for Sunday.

Daily Sunsport gathered form the team secretary, Dayo Enebi, that the NFA Chairman Alhaji Sani Lulu Abdullahi, met with the coaches on arrival, yesterday morning and was expected to address the players later in the day.

Meanwhile, a large crowd turned out to watch the 21-man Eagles team train in Johannesburg. [www.sunnewsonline.com]

Ngoana phakoe, se ipolele, motho o motle ha a boleloa ke batho. You cannot have missed all the threats against Likoena (Crocodiles), the Lesotho football team, made by the Super Eagles, the Nigerian team. The threats are everywhere. To be sure, the Eagles (Lintsu) are a world-class team, with players in Europe and elsewhere.

Martins in action

But to go from there and promise blood and tears is a big leap. Let’s play first, then after the match, gloat about your exploit.

I hope Obafemi scores. But he should be aware that his opponents of the day will try to prevent him from doing so. What a nice victory for Likoena it would be! Primo, Lesotho hasn’t been running its mouth and segundo, two days ago we celebrated 40 years of independence from Britain. A victory against the bis, Super Eagles would be the proverbial icing on the cake. May it be so. May the play begin. May the best team win.

I’m completely biased on this. Many people pump themselves up before a match by running their mouths. Muhammad Ali is a famous example. It’s a normal thing to do for many people. But, you see, this time it’s against Lesotho, Likoena, my nation and my team. So there.

Moreover, they are stars and we aren’t. They have access to the media and we don’t. It’s only natural for them to exploit what they have. By the same token, it’s only natural for us to exploit what we have, namely, swift talent and the element of surprise. Just like a crocodile in a swamp, waiting for prey, an eagle, say, to land at the edge of the swamp and preen. Our talent is to have just our eyes barely making the surface of the water.

Then, BLAM!
Lunch, munch, lunch.
Feathers and all.

‘Mohlabani Serobanyane: You may not pass this on but it’s good to read.

A friend asked me to pass the following article on and ask others to
pass it on so all Basotho, wherever they may be, can read it too and
make their comments on the issue:

“The Government of Lesotho, in response to a growing wave of public
outrage over the controversial sale of vehicles to Ministers and
Principal Secretaries by Imperial Fleet Services, commissioned a
high-powered delegation of six Cabinet Ministers to convene a televised
press briefing, supposedly to “set the record straight and diffuse
further misinformation” on this matter that has dominated national
discourse in recent times.

My own assessment of how the Ministers performed brings to mind a
beloved fairy tale that most children will know of The Three Little
Pigs. With all due respect, the Ministers huffed, and they puffed, and
they huffed again, and they puffed again, but they could not blow the
house down!! And indeed, they will never blow the house down because all
the huffing and puffing in the world cannot remove or erase the fact
that acquiring vehicles in this way is *fundamentally wrong. *I now wish
to present an irrefutable argument in support of this claim.

Imperial Fleet Services leases vehicles to the Government of Lesotho
(not Ministers and Principal Secretaries in their own person).
Imperial’s customer is therefore the Government of Lesotho. This is a
very important point. At the end of the lease period, Imperial Fleet
Services, being the owner of the vehicles, has the right of disposal.
One of the Ministers explained the fact that a clause was included in
the contract between Imperial Fleet Services and the Government of
Lesotho, such that at the end of the lease period, the State official to
whom the vehicle was assigned would have the right of first refusal to
buy the vehicle.

This is where the waters were muddied. The right of first refusal should
be and ought to be that of the Government of Lesotho, and *not *of
Ministers and Principal Secretaries in their own persons. *They are not
the Government of **Lesotho. *If the Government of Lesotho elects to
acquire the vehicles, it will then dispose of them through the systems
and procedures that govern the disposal of Government property.* *The
fact that the contract is framed as explained herein demonstrates a
serious weakness, which needs to be rectified as a matter of urgency.
*It is fundamentally wrong. *What is alarming, however, is that the
delegation of six Cabinet Ministers actually believes that it can sell
this misguided and crooked contract to the nation and pull it off, “to
set the record straight!!”

The price at which the Ministers and Principal Secretaries acquired the
vehicles from Imperial Fleet Services is also a matter of great concern.
One of the Ministers explained the fact that there are various methods
of depreciating assets, and that the price that Imperial Fleet Services
charged for the said vehicles was determined by the depreciation method
used by Imperial. Honourable Minister, and your esteemed colleagues,
depreciation is a *book entry *in the Income Statement of a company to
account for the erosion in value, over time and/or the useful life of an
asset.

The world over, the accepted basis on which companies and organizations
dispose of assets is *market value. *That is the only credible measure
of the fair value of an asset, and that is to say, what would the
*market *pay for the said asset. Book value, through whatever
depreciation method does not come into play at all.

The fact that Imperial Fleet Services has sold off vehicles whose market
value, at the very least, is M150,000 for *M4,000 *is alarming. The fact
that the beneficiaries of this sale are individuals who, through their
statutory positions in the Government of Lesotho, will individually and
collectively be the very people who *decide* on the contract between
Imperial Fleet Services and the Government of Lesotho, in terms of
renewal and whether or not Imperial Fleet Services should be the
supplier in the first place, is not only even more alarming, but corrupt
in the extreme. *It is fundamentally wrong.*

How will Ministers and Principal Secretaries *objectively *exercise
their statutory duties of due diligence when the issue of the renewal of
the Imperial Fleet Services contract is tabled before Cabinet. Are they
all going to recuse themselves in that all of them now have a conflict
of interest, by virtue of them having benefited so shamefully in their
own persons? In the first place, why should a contract between the
Government of Lesotho and a supplier, funded by taxpayers, be used by
Ministers and Principal Secretaries for them to acquire vehicles, in
their personal capacities, from the same supplier at give-away prices?
Once again, this is where the waters were muddied. However, once again,
what is most alarming is that the delegation of six Cabinet Ministers
actually believes that it can sell this misguided and crooked act of
sale to the nation and pull it off, “to set the record straight!!”

One of the Ministers who attended the briefing and who was very vocal in
the briefing, namely, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Honourable
Monyane Moleleki M.P, holds the dual position of being a Cabinet
Minister and the Chief Information Officer for the ruling Lesotho
Congress for Democracy (LCD). In the latter capacity, the Minister
writes a regular column in the Party newspaper, *Mololi*. It is now
common knowledge that the Honourable Minister has an uncanny habit of
shooting from the hip. Excuse the pun, Honourable Minister, I know that
your recent personal experience has added to the growing list of
unsolved crimes in Lesotho.

Minister Moleleki has used his column in the Mololi newspaper to make
some unfortunate and irresponsible statements, coming from a man of his
position, on this matter that the nation views extremely seriously. The
Minister made statements such as ” *khalapa lia buseletsana*” {*Hands
wash each other/tit for tat/I rub your back, you rub mine*} and
challenged The Honourable Kelebone Maope M.P and Honourable Ntsukunyane
Mphanya M.P to state whether ” * bona ba ne ba tla li hana likoloi ha
ba li rekisetoa ka bo-chipi*”{*would they refuse cars if they were sold
to them cheaply*}. These callous statements by the Honourable Minister
confirm and endorse the very essence of why the public has such
deep-seated anger and revulsion over this crooked scheme, namely, it
represents corrupt behavior. *This is the truth of the matter, pure and
simple.* This again is where the waters were muddied.

*It is fundamentally wrong.*

It is apparent that the Minister has a very short memory, because in a
recent column of his Party’s newspaper, he cited the fact that people
holding statutory positions needed to be accorded a certain level of
respect, by virtue of the positions they hold. What is the level then,
Honourable Minister, that we as the public should pitch our respect for
you as a Minister of State, when you make such statements?

The Honourable Government Secretary (or Government Spin-Doctor, whatever
tickles your fancy) was given a mountain to climb by hosting a program
on Radio Lesotho to explain this crooked scheme. In his desperation,
since he was clutching at straws from the word go, he said not
verbatim):- ” *Mong’a rona* {*Our owner/boss*}(whoever he or she is) *o
ile a ea ho Imperial ‘me a re ho bona, re le Muso re le fa business e
ngata benghali, lona ha ho le tje le re etsetsa’ng?”* {*went to Imperial
and said to them: the government gives you a lot of business gentlemen,
what do you in these circumstances do for us?” *}

As he frantically tried to keep his head afloat, he descended to the
lowest level of integrity by relating the story of how he noticed a
former Minister of State when the National party was in Government
walking down the street wearing shoes that had deteriorated beyond
recognition, because he/she had left Government without owning a
vehicle. *The inference from his statements is that this crooked scheme
has been implemented to ensure that the current Ministers of Government
do not find themselves in this predicament when they are no longer in
Cabinet.*

An unfortunate program indeed, and the Honourable Minister of Finance,
in a later program, tried in vain to do some damage control by citing
the driving force behind this crooked scheme as being the clause in the
contract as mentioned earlier herein. Now the Right Honourable The Prime
Minister has sent the big guns, in the form of the high-powered
delegation of six Cabinet Ministers to deliver the knockout punch. This
certainly was the intention of Minister Moleleki when he stated that
those who have misgivings about this scheme are at liberty to resort to
the Courts of Law for recourse. Do you not think, Honourable Minister,
that to do so would be ” *ho qosa thokolosi lekhotleng la moloi*”? {*To
sue a hobgoblin in a witch’s court?”*}

This country has won international acclaim for its stance on corruption,
through the infamous Highlands Water Scheme case. This crooked scheme
has, with one brutal swipe, pulverized this legacy. It is funny that
currently, an official of the National Assembly has appeared in court
with a supplier for having inflated the price of an asset that was to be
procured for the National Assembly, for which the State argues that the
official would derive material benefit.

By the same token, the delegation of six Cabinet Ministers would have us
believe that the act by a supplier of Government, of *willingly*
deflating the price of assets for sale to individuals who are materially
important in deciding on its (the supplier’s) future in Lesotho, in
order to derive the benefit of assurance of continuity of its (the
supplier’s) business operations, is *not *improper. Conversely, the
delegation of six Cabinet Ministers would have us believe that the act
by a supplier of *unwillingly*deflating the price of assets for sale to
individuals who are materially important in deciding on its (the
supplier’s) future in Lesotho, in order to guarantee its (the
supplier’s) security of tenure, is *not *improper.

If indeed the delegation of six Cabinet Ministers *actually *believed
that they would sell this soppy story to the public, and that we would
believe their story, then, with all due respect, the Honourable
Ministers, and their cohorts, individually and collectively, are as
stupid as they are nave. Perhaps unintentionally, this is the record
that they have succeeded in setting straight. If however, which is the
more plausible possibility, the Honourable Ministers, and their cohorts,
know in their own hearts and minds that this crooked act is
fundamentally wrong, and their mission with the media briefing was to
tell the nation that “come hell or high water we are not going back on
this scheme and those of you who are bitching and moaning about it can
go to the nearest hell and back again”; then, with all due respect, the
Honourable Ministers, and their cohorts, individually and collectively,
are as insensitive as they are cold-hearted. Again, this is another
record that they have succeeded in setting straight.

At the end of the day, when the dust settles and the sun sets, all the
sugar-coating, spin-doctoring and bullying in the world will not remove
or erase the fact that the acquisition of vehicles by Cabinet Ministers
and Principal Secretaries of the Government of Lesotho from Imperial
Fleet Services in the manner that has happened is *corrupt and*
*fundamentally wrong, that history will judge that it was corrupt and
fundamentally wrong and that it will remain corrupt and fundamentally
wrong for all eternity. *Just as I started by citing a fairy tale, it is
fitting at this juncture to close with a well-known nursery rhyme that
goes like this;-

“The integrity and moral fibre of Lesotho’s Government sat on a wall
*Ministers and Principal Secretaries kicked it and it had a great fall*
*All the gold and silver that money can buy*
*Could not pay penance for the integrity and moral fibre that sadly, has gone by”.*
*A Concerned Mosotho”*

Thabo Andrew Motlamelle *
P.O. Box 12112
Maseru 100
Lesotho *

Phone: (+266) 2231 3704 (home), (+266) 6306 4440 (Mobile) ‘

[source]

PETROL HAIKU © Copyright ask angelodelosangeles.blogspot.com

Please vote here: geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com. It is important. The surveyor, Geoffrey Philps, writer and educator, would love to hear from Basotho and from Africans in general, but insists that everyone’s participation is vital. So there, go and vote, and please ask a friend to vote, too.

Lesotho to unfurl new ‘peace’ flag to mark 40 years of freedom
By Thabo Thakalekoala MASERU

The tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho celebrates its 40th anniversary of independence from Britain on Wednesday by unveiling a new flag to replace a martial one introduced after a 1986 coup.Deputy Prime Minister Lesao Lehohla said the flag — whose unveiling will cap national celebrations — showed “a nation at peace with itself and at peace with its neighbours.” The new flag has three colours: blue for rain, white symbolising peace and green indicating prosperity. It will also sport a cone-shaped hat, worn by the country’s indigenous Basotho people. [citizen.co.za]

We have been independent for forty years, Jack. Be nice to me, today. Gimme five. High five. Send me flowers and a cheque in the mail. Embrace me when you see me in the street. Pat me on the back. Kiss me, now, and wish me — us — luck in the coming years. “The road will be muddy and rough, but we’ll get there,” I feel like saying.

It has been forty years of petty thuggery and thievery for the most part, and killings and nepotic rule by some. But there have been flashes of real nationhood, and that is where we need to throw our weight and build from. We’ve caught and denounced big-company bribery, and we’ve had free and fair elections a few times in a row. In this regard Lesotho is a trend-setter.

But there have been many more low moments, such as the recent automobile fleet scandal, whereby ministers and other high-placed civil servants could buy government cars for less than nothing. That was wrong and was addressed by this blogger and others. Government officials should not be rewarded for serving the nation — especially when those officials are elected members of government.

It has been forty years of misery for many Basotho. We basically failed to heed the warnings coming from farther north, as Africa became independent. The words we used then were boipuso (independence), self-rule, self-determination, tokoloho (freedom, and my kid sister’s name).

But as soon as we became independent, we replicated the same, stupid mistakes, inevitably falling into the trap face-first. Funny, when one looks at it, though. Lesotho is homogenous. It is a one-people/one-language nation. But we had to fish for things to differ about.

It has been forty years of digging in the dirt to survive. Basotho men have traditionally worked in South Africa’s mines, living there for long spells without their families and sending money home. The effect of this was at least three-fold: men had no education, the HIV virus prospered, family life was broken, and the country’s economic woes worsened.

The mine-working men, of course, bought flesh and contracted AIDS, then went home and spread it around. Their spouses back home would sometimes sell flesh in order to make ends meet, and they, too, would contract the virus. Then South Africa decided to send migrant workers home. We suddenly had a terrible influx of hordes and hordes of uneducated men looking for and not finding work. Crime soared, and domestic violence shot through the roof. Then China entered the textile industry, effectively shutting out Lesotho’s own textile industry due to cheap labour. And that’s when the drought arrived.

We’ve gone through a lot, and we’re surviving. But that’s no excuse for shoddy governing. Lesotho has about twenty political parties. Looking at those twenty or so parties in Lesotho, one wonders whether we, as politicians, will ever learn. The lesson is that we need to live for the betterment of the nation and not for the betterment of self (and of a few cronies and family members). There is no justification that I see for that many parties, other than the desire for each leader of those parties to be at the helm, pull the strings, be the head honcho. I dare you to find me twenty different political points of view to justify the myriad of parties.

I’ve lived more than half of those years abroad. A painful experience, as any Mosotho living abroad will concur. I never wanted to leave my country and make my life elsewhere, I was forced to do so. Like many of my country-people who are away from home, I wanted to be successful at home, for home, through home.

During these forty years there have been killings and other thug republic tactics. I think we must hold reconciliation meetings in the fashion of South Africa’s own. I recently saw Bishop Tutu mediating between a former IRA combattant and family-members whose relatives the combattant had killed. Why not in Lesotho. The pain and bitterness won’t go away by themselves. As my mum would probably have said, Re iphapantse joalo ka beng ba lifariki (we’re looking the other way as if nothing had happened).

It has been forty years of squandered resources. Ask me, and I’ll tell you that for a country of 1.8 million people, Skiing, Diamonds and Water are enough to keep everybody happy and sated. I haven’t even mentioned other tourist related sources of income. If 1.8 million people can’t be kept happy and sated with these three resources, then we need to look upwards in the hierarchy and see where things aren’t happening right, and make them happen right.

The people do not need to reward elected government officials. Their job is to serve the people and go home at night. No applause, and certainly no bonuses of any kind. Otherwise, quit the public service and start your own company. Idland says this better than I do. Bookmark his blog.

It has been forty years of dashed hopes for many, and success for some. We want food and jobs, peace, and a little bit of land to live on and cultivate. Is that so much to ask? This request, in fact, is embodied in Lesotho’s motto, (Peace, Rain, Prosperity) Khotso, Pula, Nala. We are looking forward to nothing less, and not much more.

I’ve worked on this poem some more, and moved it. Click here.

Members of the senior national team, Super Eagles will begin arriving in Johannesburg, South Africa on Tuesday as the team camps there ahead of Saturday’s Ghana 2008 Nations Cup qualifying game away to Lesotho in Maseru.
[www.vanguardngr.com]

Let them come. We’re waiting for them, and we gonna have us an eagle barbecue. Let ‘em come…

“Gem Diamond Mining Company of Africa Ltd (Gem Diamonds) has announced that it has received final shareholder approval from JCI Ltd (JCD) and Matodzi Resources Ltd (MTZ) for the acquisition of a 76% stake in Letseng Diamonds (Pty) Ltd, the operator of the Letseng Diamond Mine in Lesotho (Letseng).

Gem Diamonds now owns 76% of Letseng and the Government of the Kingdom of Lesotho owns the remaining 24%. In terms of an agreement reached on the future operating regime for Letseng, the government will receive an additional 6% equity, which will result in Gem Diamonds holding a total of 70% equity in Letseng and the Government of Lesotho the remaining 30%.

Letseng is a well known mine in the Maluti Mountains of Lesotho, famous for the quality of its diamonds. Since commencing operations in April 2004, it has achieved an excellent production track record, with 90% of diamonds recovered being of gem quality and a significant number graded as D, the top colour for a white diamond. Its revenue per carat is currently unsurpassed in kimberlite diamond mining.
[Sundaytimes.co.za]”

Ed’s note: Letšeng is written with an S-caron (š) for the purposes of the way it’s pronounced. I don’t know if journalists are unaware of this fact or if it is difficult for them to print Š.

1858 Cape Governor Sir George Grey arranges peace between Basotho King Mosheshwe and Free State at Aliwal North. [Pretorianews.co.za]

Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, a South African sangoma, insists that George Grey is “the founder of apartheid and racial discrimination in Africa in the mid 1800s.” On 29 September 1858, Sir George Grey arranged peace between King Moshoeshoe and the Orange Free State Boers at Aliwal North. “The peace brought to an end the First Basotho War or Senekal War with the Free State. [Sahistory.org.za]” However, the peace was short-lived and the second Basotho war or Seqiti war followed.

If you remember, Moshoeshoe is the founder of the Basotho nation, and a statesman who meted out justice with mercy, and encouraged his enemies to sit down and talk. He had previously met and befriended three French missionaries, Eugene Casalis, Thomas Arbousset and Constant Gosselin. It was the three young men who were exerting pressure on George Grey, through the central authorities in London, to negotiate on behalf of peace, which Moshoeshoe called his sister.

ROMA VALLEY © Copyright Lenka “Soare” Thamae

On a rainy day Melissa and I arrived to find only 15 to 20 children, and no teachers. So we sang some English songs with them for a long time and then they treated us to some Basotho songs.

‘Basotho Bana’ means ‘Basotho children’ or ‘children of Lesotho’.

Actually it’s ‘Bana ba Basotho’ and it does mean Basotho children. One thing we do in Lesotho is sing all the time. Everyone belongs, or has belonged, to a choir. Everyone sings as they walk or work. And within the group, everyone knows which voice to sing: bass, tenor, alto, or tsoetse, the high-pitched tone typical of young lads. See a previous post on music in Africa.

The Eagles of Nigeria are out to kill the Crocodiles of Lesotho. I’ve been encountering articles left, right and centre about how Nigerians should go for blood. Kill, kill, kill! I understand that it is important to motivate one’s squad, and I understand that it is important to grab three points and run, increasing the chances of qualification for the 2008 Nations Cup in Ghana.

In the death-to-Lesotho outcry, however, aren’t the Super Eagles forgetting something? Lesotho wants to win, too. Lesotho will try to score goals and prevent Nigeria from scoring goals. Onigbinde rightly mentions that there are no more minnows in football. But alas, it sounds like he’s saying so out of courtesy only, not out of real observation.

FIFA and CAF technical instructor, Chief Adegboye Onigbinde has urged the Austin Eguavoen led technical crew to go for victory in their next Nation’s Cup qualifier against Lesotho.

The former Super Eagles coach expressed that nothing should be spared by the team in their quest to clinch a qualification ticket for the 2008 Nations Cup in Ghana.

Onigbinde, who was speaking on the 22-man list of invited foreign-based players pointed that there are no minnows in football, hence Eguavoen decision to invite the best materials at his disposal.

“Football has changed all over the world; there are no minnows any longer. Since all team [sic] have the same opportunity to play at the World Cup as we saw in Germany 2006, then you need to play your best players in order to get result [sic]” he said.

[…]

“In other words, I don’t see it as killing an ant with a sledge hammer; rather he’s being guided by what posterity will say.”

[…]
[Source]

I told you so. He doesn’t see it as killing an ant with a sledge hammer. Perhaps he sees it as killing a bacterium with a bazooka. To be sure, Nigeria is an African powerhouse and Lesotho is not. But that all boils down, not to better footballers, but to better-organised football. If the machine works right, the bacteria of Lesotho can beat Nigeria and South Africa and Uganda, the latter of whom recently won 3-0 at Lesotho’s expense.

Let the football begin, I say, and may it be a grand match. May the best team win. And may the best team be Likoena!

LESOTHO HILLTOP © Copyright Yannick Girardeau

A United States (US) expert in African studies has lambasted the government of Botswana for using its judicial instruments to violate the rights of indigenous people. The Basarwa tribe living in Central Kalahari Game reserve outside the capital Gaborone, have taken the government to court for what they say is forced removal from their ancestral land. Dr Kunnie of the University of Arizona says the rights of indigenous groups need to be respected. "This is a very important principle that we must recognise that the indigenous people like the San people are among the oldest people in the world. They are people from whom we need to take some cues," says Kunnie. He says the indigenous San people should be left alone by the Botswana government. [SABCnews.com]

The Basarwa (Baroa in Sesotho) deserve to live on their land, as did the native American, in the same way they have been living on it since the dawn of man. In effect, the Botswana government can only put forth weak-kneed arguments for adopting and enforcing a removal policy, as could the US government from 1930 on.

If my comparison is a low blow, it is the only tool in my arsenal to show some of my readers that yes, it’s happened before and that yes, it did happen in the United States of America. As a result, those readers and I start off on a clean slate and consider the naked facts, unclouded by any paedagogical intentions and/or holier-than-thou aspirations. 

I’m sure you’re wondering with me if Botswana is being blinded by the prospect of riches, for the land of Baroa is apparently equivalent to forcefully whispering the word, diamonds. The answer is, I don’t know. Mud is being slung from all sides, with the government insisting that it is taking action to precisely protect Baroa populations, and people like the present writer countering that it is probably to get richer.

In the past, new arrivals to somebody’s land — i.e. those who arrived because thanks to their technological superiority they could arrive — these always screwed the locals, and then, years and years later, well established and rich, they’ll usually screw newer arrivals. When compared to American history, the case of Botswana is still at the first phase: screwing the people whose land it legitimately is and was. And then soon it’ll be the turn of immigrants, people usually driven toward such a country by economic want. The excuse given for the abuse meted out to such immigrants is that they don’t adapt, they don’t fit in. Jeneane dismisses this second phase nicely: "Your ancestors weren’t the first ones here and no one saw their asses assimilating to the customs and language of the Cherokee [Source]." Touché.

Before I start this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you
To offer up a moment of silence
For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned,
disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes,
For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the
hands of U.S.-backed Israeli
forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people,
mostly children, who have died of
malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,
Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of
concrete, steel, earth and skin
And the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people,
not a war - for those who
know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their
relatives’ bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of
a secret war … ssssshhhhh….
Say nothing … we don’t want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia,
Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have
piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.
An hour of silence for El Salvador …
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua …
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos …
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found
their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could
poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of
sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west…

100 years of silence…
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half
of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand
Creek,
Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the
refrigerator of our consciousness …

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be. Not like it always has
been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then:
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971.
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977.
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison,
New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and
Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window
of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the
Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all…Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing…For our dead.

© Emmanuel Ortiz (published on 11 September 2002)