Sotho

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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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

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…]

“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

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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“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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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

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.

“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

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.

“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?

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)

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

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…]

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]

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

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.”

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

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

Our bowls clanking
like ghost vessels,
we stand against sun and wind,
and death that loops over
to take our vision;
when all else has deserted us
in the blankness of the hour
the horizon, our last scene,
comes at us
from where no sun
will ever rise.
© Rethabile Masilo

This poem is in memory of Kevin Carter, and that little Sudanese girl in his snap.

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.

My Technorati Profile

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

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]…

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

Why do you suffer the look of my eyes
with such intent/ does their brutal blue

inspire you somehow? Why do you
flaunt the curves of your brown body

to the whip of my stare/ does it make you
a star? There’s your mind whose soul,

like the singing wind, can never be
possessed/ beauty is no excuse for love/

with crimson and mocha, let’s fashion this
union, and bond in a mosaic ampersand/

let my white sea trap the isles of your eyes,
and your sun’s vitamin thaw the polar caps

about me/ let’s do it now, feeding from
one another, whatever may come.
© Rethabile Masilo
Technorati: Bi-racial love, Lesotho poetry, African poetry

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

A Tourist in Maseru
(summer valentine)

Love from the start was touch and go
when both our hands
at that
bazaar
opted for the sole, ripe mango/
we grinned, then
pandered to
a gay
valentine in my Sotho world/
after you left
with your
guitar,
ending summer, no single word
from you to me,
until
today

© Rethabile Masilo

Tags:
Valentine
homosexuality
Lesotho poetry
Global Voices poetry contest

Lekhotla la Basotho

Interesting blog: In An African Minute, by Joshua

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.

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

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…]

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?

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.

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.

I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives at the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915.

That’s the passage in Elif Shafak’s book "The Bastard of Istanbul" that got her sued. The charge? Belittling Turkey. I mean, shite, it’s a book of fiction, for crying out loud. Big muzzlers they are. Ms Shafak realises the danger she is in, but still has enough spunk to say the whole situation is grotesque, which it is [Source].

UPDATE: Hooray, they dropped the charges against her! [Source]

Some of my family members shun the microwave oven, and insist that preparing food with it is tantamount to nuking ourselves, albeit gradually. But what exactly are microwaves? Why did we start using them? Are they, or are they not, dangerous? What does the scientific world think of them? What does the consumer world think of them?

Frequency is the number of complete cycles per second in alternating current direction. The standard unit of frequency is the hertz, abbreviated Hz. If a current completes one cycle per second, then the frequency is 1 Hz; 60 cycles per second (cps) equals 60 Hz.

A microwave is a magnetic field caused by an electric current (electromagnetic energy) with a frequency above 1 000 000 000 cps (or 1 000 000 000 hertz, or 1 gigahertz), corresponding to a wavelength shorter than 300 millimeters.

Okay, so a microwave is electromagnetic energy that oscillates more than 1 billion times a second, and whose waves or cycles are not longer than 3 centimetres. Think of ocean waves. They move through water and transport energy, and have cycles of 200 centimetres or more (when one wave is 200 centimetres away another one comes in). Perhaps ocean waves have a frequency of 2 hertz, depending on the calmness or anger of the ocean. When two ocean waves bash against the shore, 1 billion microwaves in the oven sear through your food.

Why did we start using microwaves to cook?
Like most things we do today, we started cooking with microwaves because it’s easier than with conventional methods, and it’s much faster, too. Progress, if you will. I think the question is equivalent to asking why we started using the gas-stove and not the wood-fire. Microwave ovens also heat or cook only the food, and nothing else, which implies that they save energy.

Cooking food with microwaves was discovered by Percy Spencer while building magnetrons for radar sets at Raytheon. He was working on an active radar set when he noticed a strange sensation, and saw that a peanut candy bar he had in his pocket started to melt. Although he was not the first to notice this phenomenon, as the holder of 120 patents, Spencer was no stranger to discovery and experiment, and realized what was happening. The radar had melted his candy bar with microwaves. The first food to be deliberately cooked with microwaves was popcorn, and the second was an egg (which exploded in the face of one of the experimenters) Wikipedia.org.

How do they cook food?
All liquids and foods are made up of molecules, as are most other things under the sun and beyond. These molecules have positive and negative particles, so they usually behave like microscopic magnets, for magnets also have polarity (a +ve side and a -ve side). Microwaves, too, have a positive and a negative half cycle. Imagine the ocean wave again, and imagine that what is above sea-level, the peak, is +ve and what is below, the trough, is -ve.  When the peak (+ve) of the microwave reaches your chicken, the negative particles of the chicken molecules are attracted (opposites attract) and attempt to align themselves with this +ve field of energy. But when the microwave alternates to the trough (-ve) half cycle, the opposite occurs: the -ve chicken particles are repelled and the +ve chicken particles are attracted. This causes a back and forth motion and allows the molecules to rub against each other to cause friction, which produces heat, the heat that cooks your chicken.

In other words, the microwave energy shakes the water molecules in food hard enough to get them to brush against one another; this brushing against each other produces heat, just like rubbing palms together when we’re cold; this heat cooks the food. 

This means that heat is produced inside the food, as opposed to conventional cooking where heat comes from outside and enters the food. That’s why microwaves just warm or cook the food without heating the container or the oven itself. Since the waves that hit the chicken are instantly converted to heat energy inside the chicken, there can be no question of radioactive contamination. In other words, when you switch your oven off and remove your chicken, it has absolutely no radiation on it. Bon appetit.

I will add a few more thoughts to this post, mainly, the hazards of using microwave ovens improperly, and my favourite microwave recipe. I hope my favourite food experts (from both ends of the fork!) Jeanne and Brian won’t mind my veering off tradition too much, if they do mind at all.

Should a police officer who’s a member of a recognised "racist" group be left alone, or should such an officer be thanked and let go? Don’t we all have the right to think what we like and act how we like (within the confines of the law) in private? Suppose it were indeed so, would such a police officer not be tempted to act differently toward other "races"?

These are questions that eventually led to the sacking of Omaha, Nebraska’s State Trooper Robert Henderson. He had joined the Klan because his wife "divorced him for a minority." [Source]

Authorities insist Henderson wasn’t fired because he was a member of the KKK, but because he couldn’t "uphold public trust while participating" among the groups he disliked. If I were white and my house was being burgled, I don’t think I’d want a cop from a Caucasian hating group to answer my call and show up. I just feel like it wouldn’t be a very good idea.

Many law enforcement officers may indeed belong to this or that hate-group, but they probably don’t announce it; and when asked, they probably won’t say it’s because their spouse dumped them "for a minority." I’m glad Henderson was axed. He should go drive a cab, and pick passengers up according to whatever criteria he used when he decided to join a hate-group.

Webster’s 1913 Dictionary describes nymphomania as

Nym’pho*ma’ni*a, n. [Gr. ? a bride + ? madness.] (Med.) Morbid and uncontrollable sexual desire in women, constituting a true disease. [Source…]

The word is obviously a combination of nymph and mania, or bride and madness. Female madness. Men again. It is interesting to learn that most medical experts reject the word — or perhaps it is normal, seeing as to how it is an unclear and subjective word. What do you call a "morbid and uncontrollable sexual desire in men, constituting a true disease?" I thought so. I suggest, or rather resuggest, nympholepsy.

Coined in 1775 (by Richard Chandler, in "Travels in Greece") was nympholepsy, on model of epilepsy, with second element from stem of Gk. lambanein "to take;" defined as "a state of rapture supposed to be inspired in men by nymphs; esp. an ecstasy or frenzy caused by desire for the unattainable. [Source…]

The truth is, nymphomania doesn’t really exist, because there is no standard to measure it against. And if it did, it would be a largely masculine pathology. In order to say that something is excessive, we have to have an average value, and in the case of sex, there isn’t one. What is excessive for one is low for another. Somebody has said that a sex drive is considered excessive if it prevents one from living a normal life. Fair enough — but does that extreme really exist? If it does, what is the e-mail address of the woman who has it?

 

The same source also says that "in men the disorder was called satyriasis." Was because together with nymphomania, the condition is no longer considered a pathology. Carol Groneman’s book, Nymphomania: A History, should make for fascinating reading. The CNN.com review of the book is a good start. Ms Groneman says, in part, that

the standards of behavior for women were, of course, much stricter than those for men. And some doctors recognized the role that social strictures played in limiting women’s sexual expression. At an 1869 meeting of the Boston Gynecological Society, a woman diagnosed with nymphomania was brought before the gathered doctors. Typical of these medical presentations, the patient wore a mask, presumably to protect her identity. Even so, we can assume that exposure to a roomful of physicians must have been excruciating for this unnamed Victorian woman. One doctor responded to her in a patronizing, but possibly sympathetic manner: "If this woman could go … to a house of prostitution, and spend every night for a fortnight at sexual labor, it might prove her salvation." He hastily concluded that, of course, no physician could recommend such a course of treatment. [Source…]

So what’s a nymphomaniac? The woman next door, or the one on an advert billboard? The image is certainly used to full effect to sell, with the implicit understanding that if you buy that car you’ll have more sex, or if you buy that perfume men will eye you as a nymphomaniac and will therefore desire you. Notice that my wisecrack in relation with an oversexed woman’s e-mail address would make less sense if it was an oversexed man whose address was being sought. And that’s about where the whole idea of an insatiable woman, a nymphomaniac, peters out, with neither an acceptable social definition nor an accepted medical identification.

 

1. http://128.241.192.81/2006/07/fuck-off-neil-watson.html
2. http://southafricamoving.blogspot.com/
3. http://itisthequestion.blogspot.com/2006/07/what-drives-you-mr-watson.html
4. http://hoox.wordpress.com/2006/07/08/102
5. http://www.realsouthafrica.co.za/
6. http://www.joblog.co.za/2006/07/how-to-keep-tourists-out-of-the-country
7. http://commentary.co.za/archives/2006/07/05/crime-exposed/
8. http://www.africans.co.za/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1022

Got a link? Something you’ve said against the idea that tourists should be kept away from South Africa? Send it in, I’ll add it to the list.

Going to work that day
after the sunrise that morning wore, I saw a heap
on the street, and a crow, before commuters could
conquer the morning air. What a scene!
 
[See, in last year’s act the law encouraged
frisking corpses to extract all clues,
all evidence that’s good to share ;-]

Soon it was time when the cops came
[hurrah!] for the crow and I to go,
without aim if not to see that bloke buried somewhere.

I pulled from the crowd to leave and withdraw into myself,
shut out what I’d seen, grieve silently for that heap,
and send a prayer.
Then I caught the first buxi
into town, and managed to reach Maseru on time.

© Rethabile Masilo [more…]

It’s conical, it’s handwoven, and it’s everywhere. The Basotho Hat is the supreme symbol of Lesotho. Up to 8 out of 10 companies may have the hat in one form or another as a logo. It’s absolutely ubiquitous. But that’s because we can’t live without it, as we need the hat as well as the kobo (Basotho blanket) to face the forces of nature in Lesotho. These may be a blazing sun during the day and a chilly breeze after sunset.

Mokorotlo used to be on the flag, but that particular flag was too closely associated with Leabua Jonathan’s party and regime, so in the name of reconciliation we designed the present flag. One of the most refreshing local scenes is to see a line of ladies sitting on the ground, Sesotho style, weaving different objects, mokorotlo (Basotho hat), moseme (floor mat), seroto (dish), and other household stuff. Mokorotlong, in Maseru, is a handicrafts centre. Very easy to burn. Which is what some hooligans did during the 1998 riots.

The -ng suffix means "place of". Joala is beer, joaleng is a bar, a shebeen. Bolo is football. Bolong is the stadium. Here are some eyefuls of Mokorotlo: Happy Mosotho girl — Mokorotlo alone — Man wearing a mokorotlo — Mokorotlo on a Lesotho number plate — Qiloane, the mountain supposed to have inspired the shape of the hat. The pictures you’ve just seen belong to their respective owners. Their websites in themselves are quite interesting and worth a visit.

1. If Africa’s rich, why is it poor?
2. Would it help Africa if its regional communities (eg SADC) grouped into much more than monetary entities?
3. Why do white people think they are superior?
4. Would you let your child marry a person of a different colour?
5. Why has there been no retaliatory bloodshed in South-Africa since apartheid came to an end?
6. Affirmative Action, like communism, does mean well, but unlike communism, does it do well at all?
7. What exactly is the role of the United Nations, apart from what the United Nations says its role is?
8. What cruelty is this: to put man on a planet, and let him savage it?
9. What is the contemporary American’s stance on what happened to the native American?
10. Why are there so many coup d’états on the African continent?
11. Why do other African countries not hold Truth and Reconciliation sessions to heal scars, like South-Africa did?
12. I understand why America went into Afghanistan. But why did it go into Iraq?
13. Does having a lot of money dull the spirit and the senses?
14. What are the three greatest songs of all time? In other words, which three would you need to have with you on the proverbial exile to a desert island?
15. If God exists, why are we going through what we’re going through?
16. Did Albert Gore win or not win that fated election?

(more…)

If you circumcise a man you reduce the chances of his acquiring AIDS, so says the results of a three-year study conducted in South Africa. It is true that the inside of the foreskin and the glans that it covers are a breeding ground for many a germ. Completely removing the foreskin should therefore do the trick.

Initiates from traditional African schools are/were normally circumcised, but apparently under sub-optimal conditions, so much that some die/died due to the act. The hospital may provide the answer, but only if there’s enough staff and equipment and space. “In Swaziland, which has the world’s highest HIV rate at 33.4 percent, men wait for months to undergo circumcision due to a shortage of surgeons. [news.yahoo.com]”

We need everything we have to hurl at AIDS and prevent its onslaught. The UN has just announced that the disease seems to be losing speed: it is no cause for jubilation, but for striking back and protecting ourselves. That will have to do until we find the virus’s Achilles heel. And we need to remember that whether circumcised or not, wearing or not wearing a French letter when having sex is still a matter of life and death.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission refused to reconsider on Wednesday its decision to fine 20 CBS Corp. television stations a total of $550,000 for airing pop singer Janet Jackson’s breast flash in 2004 [Source: Reuters.com]

Two years later Janet Jackson’s boob is still making headlines, while a three-girl tongue-kiss on the telly has been just about forgotten. Even as it happened, the kiss raised no eyebrows, while the boob raised eyebrows and everything else that the FCC could raise, including money: the FCC wants its fine paid.

Two months ago I speculated as to whether the difference, in the way the two cases were handled, was because Janet Jackson is black, or a Jackson. Or whether it was because Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are white. I’m still speculating.

Jeneane Sessum (thanks Mike) talks about the present immigration chaos in America. Let me assure Jeneane that America isn’t the only country going after immigrants. France is, too. They have even made a law for it, referred to in the street as l’immigration jetable, or disposable immigration, and “l’immigration choisie” in the halls of power. Use them, abuse them, but at election time tell ‘em to go back “home” since they are occupying jobs that real nationals could be holding.

Jeneane’s post asks a basic question: Did the Red Indian require the arriving European masses to assimilate or integrate or learn the language of the Cherokee? She says

your ancestors weren’t the first ones here and no one saw their asses assimilating to the customs and language of the Cherokee; and number two, a very large and distinct portion of America’s ancestry is made up of people who were bought, chained, flogged, and shipped here, where they were sold, chained, and put to work to build this-land-is-your-land without pay in slavery. Assimilate THAT.

In France, the new bill tabled by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy went through parliament easily. Piece o’ cake. The new law comes at a time when France is examining itself for different uncool phenomena, like discrimination at the workplace. The law stipulates that,

:: Only the qualified get “skills and talents” residency permit,
:: Foreigners only allowed in to work, not live off benefits,
:: Foreign spouses to wait longer for residence cards,
:: Migrants must agree to learn French,
:: Migrants must sign ‘contract’ respecting French way of life,
:: Scraps law on workers getting citizenship after 10 years,
http://news.bbc.co.uk

So I feel like saying Madeleine Albright, Isaac Asimov, Charles Atlas, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alexander Graham Bell, Irving Berlin, Andrew Carnegie, Charlie Chaplin, Claudette Colbert, Albert Einstein, Gloria Estefan, Patrick Ewing, Michael J. Fox, Greta Garbo, Andy Garcia, Marcus Garvey, Bob Hope, Al Jolson, Henry Kissinger, Ivan Lendl, Martina Navratilova, Mike Nichols, Hakeem Olajuwon, I.M. Pei, Sydney Poitier, John Secada, Levi Strauss, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Van Halen, Elie Wiesel, for America, and Guillaume Appollinaire, Charles Aznavour, Josephine Baker, Michel Berger, Patrick Bruel, Manu Chao, Georges Charpak, Michel Coluccci, Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret), Dalida (Yolande Christina Gigliotti), Joe Dassin, Marcel Desailly (Odonkey Abbey), Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Johnny Halliday, Marie-Antoinette, Rethabile Masilo (yes, me), Tony Parker, Mary Pierce, Nicolas Sarkozy, Tintin, Sylvie Vartan, Patrick Vieira, Zinedine Zidane (زين الدين زيدان or our very own Zizou who is a kind and talented fellow who promotes racial and religious tolerance) for France. Voila.

I discovered the site Without Sanctuary when I was researching for my post, Dear Mr & Ms Racist. The site disturbed me and worked me up to a near frenzy, all of which was positive, because what I saw charged me with the energy to never want to do, to another being, anything remotely similar, let alone to another human being. If you’re sensitive, turn back now and do not visit the site. If you feel you can handle it, and if you want to learn, then please proceed. But learn? Learn what?

It is important for all of us to know the history of our species that is pertinent, so that we may better understand most of today’s reactions from some members of that species. A week does not go by when someone on the South African blogosphere wonders why there’s such a thing as affirmative action, or someone on the American blogosphere wonders why it’s OK to profess black pride but not really white pride, or someone on the global blogoshere wonders why Jews don’t stop talking about the Shoah. Learning about these happenings will usually lead to a better understanding of these why, why, whys?

When you get to the site in question, look left. The menu suggests Overview, Movie, Photos, Forum. It is good to do them in just that order. The flash movie doesn’t contain all the images, but gives a good intro with narrative commentary just before the photos which are more numerous and contain each a text commentary, and sometimes an inscription by the photographer or the postcard sender. "Coon Cooking" is one such
inscription on a postcard showing the lynching and subsequent burning of John Lee on 13 August 1911, in Durant, Oklahoma [Without Sanctuary]. Poet Jake Adam York puts it this way,

NEGATIVES

      Townspeople gathered for the burning of John Lee. August 13, 1911,
      Durant, Oklahoma. Gelatin silver print. Real photo postcard. 5½ x 3½”

You cannot see the body
each eye fixes, the focus

of the plume that angles every head,
John Lee, curling skyward

from the fire,
a town’s worth of bullets

searing white in the char
that was a man, gunned down

and set ablaze. John Lee
will burn till sundown,

till ash and a few charred parcels,
till the crowd disbands and spreads

to the corners of the town
now shut of every black,

and poor Miss Campbell’s poor white soul
drifts, avenged, to heaven

till the photographer bends to his film
to darken the postcard caption,

block letters that will blaze white
COON COOKING — the barbecue

one will later describe
on the opposite side. But for now

you can see only smoke
and the appetite on the faces

closest to the heat,
the desperate arching of a body

eager for a glimpse of the gravity,
the magnetism of this powerless man.

But let us imagine
just afterward, the camera slung

on the taker’s shoulder,
and at its heart a thousand blacks

staring into this cloud of light,
for a moment neither

gathering toward nor
descending from heaven,

but waiting in their adoration
and blessing each with its glow —

a vision of these thousand whites
turned dark for an hour

and praying, terrified, to this pillar
for the rectifying light

and then imagine,
their prayer, the paper

slowly darkening in the light
until they are restored, white from dark,

but the cloud now a dark tornado
caught on the verge of breaking through,

ready to consume each watcher
until all there is is this plume,

the body enlarged,

its ash, a thousand postcards
of a world he dared not dream he dreamed,

signed with the names of all who watch,
ready to inscribe the scene

Wish you were here.

The introductory page to Without Sanctuary says,

Searching through America’s past for the last 25 years, collector James Allen uncovered an extraordinary visual legacy: photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout America. With essays by Hilton Als, Leon Litwack, Congressman John Lewis and James Allen, these photographs have been published as a book "Without Sanctuary" by Twin Palms Publishers. Features will be added to this site over time and it will evolve into an educational tool. Please be aware before entering the site that much of the material is very disturbing. We welcome your comments and input through the forum section.

Experience the images as a flash movie with narrative comments by James Allen, or as a gallery of photos which will grow to over 100 photos in coming weeks. Participate in a forum about the images, and contact us if you know of other similar postcards and photographs [Without Sanctuary].

I wrote Madam in the Bedroom a few weeks before discovering these troubling images and the story behind each one of them.

Shock Treatment:
With reference to your behaviour in these past few years, I’d like to inform you that more and more people are waking up to the fact that the premise of your beliefs rests on scorn. For example, today more and more performing artists and others are spreading the message, and it seems to me that you’re more isolated now than you’ve ever been. One of your complaints is the practice of affirmative action, usually observed in places where you have recently been, like America and South Africa. You say that qualified white people are not getting jobs while unqualified minorities are. In America, affirmative action “can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white, or for a manager to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man" [www.washingtonpost.com].

One thing that’s clear is that as long as we’re physically different, racism and discrimination will never leave our world. Unless something enormous happens. Something more threatening than an ominous cold war or a murderous hot one, something bigger than a natural catastrophe, something deadlier than any killer virus or monstrous organisms, more unthinkable than any evil you can imagine. Wars and viruses have so far not been able to right the world, and I doubt they ever will. We could bring up "religion" at this juncture as a possible solution but frankly, "religion" has been one of the bigger dividers of men and remains so, even as I type these words.

The truth is that humans and most other animals are conquerors. Dogs piss out a territory; humans kill or enslave those they find on a territory. Throughout their history, those humans with more advanced technology were able to travel wide, and wherever they did, they killed or conquered other humans they found there. It is amusing that as we plod onward as a species we’re only just beginning to realise the value of protecting other species. Protect and feed the panda, but expose and starve Darfur.

In the face of adversity, folks have come together before. In Africa, villages would be foes and nations enemies; they would fight wars and struggle against one another until something big and unexpected came along, whether slavery, colonialism or apartheid. Then they’d suddenly come together as siblings, in Africa, America or the Carribean, one against a common enemy. That is why black people call one another "brother" or "blood". No one else that I know of does. European tribes fought amongst themselves, too. They have just never had to deal with unimaginable adversity. Too bad Hannibal failed to make it all the way across.

In order to realise and thus combat racism and discrimination, humans need an unimaginable shock, right here, right now, something to pit earthlings against a common enemy, preferably one with more firepower and with nasty, malicious intent. Unfortunately for me I don’t believe in flying saucers and little green men. Not today. So I don’t think that kind of threat is on its way here. But I’m afraid it’ll take nothing less to knock sense into humankind. For a few weeks the East Asian tsunami had the world acting as one, for the benefit of other fellow humans. At that time, there had just been danger that was unpredictable, that was far superior in strength to humans, and that could potentially have hit any other human. So we bunched together.

Similarity of Whites and Blacks:
So, if racism and discrimination will never leave the world, you’re perhaps wondering what I am prattling about. Well, my potential friends, I happen to believe that all humans harbour discriminatory thoughts, drilled into them by culture and through other means. You’re not the only ones. However, the question isn’t whether or not to harbour such thoughts (all humans do, whether they like it or not), but how to overcome them. You’re walking down the street and you see this Latino spitting. How could you not think or say, “Dirty Spic,” like so many would? How could you be told by a black person that you smell bad and not think or say, “Fucking nigger. Needs to be put in his place," like so many would? How could you hear, “We don’t serve your kind here, boy" and not think that “honkies” are all the same “fucking racists?” It’s hard, yet humans need to see other humans as just that: humans — and not as colour or as belonging to a group. People will always be outwardly different, which unfortunately puts other-feature humans in their vicinity on guard. With practice, this habit could go away, white ladies could stop switching their purse to the other side when approaching a black man.

There are more genetic similarities between blacks and whites than among whites themselves. Black people in one part of the world differ with those in another part in a significant way. And that gap is wider than it is between blacks and whites. Simply put, the criteria that you, Mr and Ms Racist, usually refer to when you distinguish race, are but skin deep. Is the place of origin sunny, snowy, windy or what? Is social life there calm, turbulent or what? These are what determines your criteria for distinguishing race.

“Race is a social concept, not a scientific one,” said Dr. J. Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md. “We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world.” It is timely that scientists are now realizing what many indigenous people and our history have been saying to us. The scientists did not set out to prove the interconnectedness of us humans. They were searching for European greatness; they were searching for products to further exploit the sick, and this allowed for the unearthing of fundamental truths. www.trinicenter.com/sciencenews

Race is terribly relevant to life outcomes. The likelihood that toxic waste has been dumped in your neighborhood, your ability to get a home loan, the quality of your kid’s education, connections to job opportunities, whether or not you’re likely to be followed in a department store or pulled over by police, are all influenced by your race. Race does matter. Not race as genetics but race as lived experience, what sociologists call “social” race. Social race is an important variable for health researchers and epidemiologists. www.newsreel.org/guides/race

What Exactly is Racism?:
It is different things to different people. To see what I mean, think of the idea of terrorism. To one group it’s fighting for freedom, to another it’s terrorism. Racism is somewhat similar. Answers dot com says,

rac·ism (rā‘sĭz‘m)  n.
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
rac‘ist adj. & n. [www.answers.com]

Notice that the definition does not declare as racism acknowledging differences among people. You can’t help that, and I know of no one who can. It is what you do with that acknowledgement that makes you a racist (or a non-racist, in other cases). An Arab job-candidate who thinks, "Uh-uh… white interviewer? Goodbye job" is a racist. No matter how many times white people have denied  Arabs jobs on the basis of colour, those white people were individuals as much as the present interviewer. No individual can act for a group, and it is wrong to see what an individual does and think that others with the same physical traits would act similarly.

Racism is the Ottoman massacre of Armenians, it is slavery, it is the holocaust, it is apartheid, insults, cruelty, lots of cruelty, stupidity, cruel stupidity, cruel insults, and blind opposition to laws like affirmative action. Clinton was probably right when he said of affirmative action, mend it, don’t end it. Following are some comments by various speakers on the subject of racism and discrimination. The aim of the passages here is to get you to see a variety of views, and to ponder the situation with a maximum of opinions before you.

"Black pride" is said to be a wonderful and worthy thing, but anything that could be construed as an expression of White pride is a form of hatred. It is perfectly natural for third-world immigrants to expect school instruction and driver’s tests in their own languages, whereas for native Americans to ask them to learn English is racist. [www.stormfront.org]

Of the many sorry things about the contemporary United States that the Katrina catastrophe has exposed, perhaps none is more depressing than what it showed about the abiding divide in American thinking about race and racism. The televised and photographed spectacle of Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans in particular revealed that the vast majority of those worst affected were black, in numbers disproportionate even to the large percentage of blacks within the city. [http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org]

Today in the United States and most of the White world, as soon as a White child is old enough to understand language, he is told that he should feel guilt for the crimes of his ancestors. Guilt for finding, conquering, enslaving, and killing off non-Whites around the globe… and littering in the process. Guilt, not for his own crimes, but for the crimes of other people of the same race. But he is also told that he should feel no pride in the amazing achievements of his race. No pride in the pyramids and the Parthenon, no pride in the arch and the dome, no pride in White science and technology and medicine, no pride in the glories of European painting and sculpture and music, no pride in Plato and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, no pride in the exploration of the globe and the conquest of space. Pride, not in his own achievements, but in the achievements of other people of the same race. [www.nationalvanguard.org]

You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction.You call me "Cracker", "Honkey", "Whitey" and you think it’s OK. But when I call you, nigger, Kike, Towelhead, Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink you call me a racist. You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live. You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day. You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day. You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma’uled Al-Nabi. You have the NAACP. You have BET. If we had WET(white entertainment television) we’d be racists. If we had a White Pride Day you would call us racists. If we had white history month, we’d be racists. If we had an organization for only whites to "advance" our lives, we’d be racists. If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships, you know we’d be racists. In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists. You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you’re not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists. You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug-dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist. I am white. I am proud. But, you call me a racist. Why is it that only whites can be racists? [www.snipeme.com]

In stark contrast to Martin Luther King’s advocacy of nonviolent resistance, the Black Panther Party believed in arming for self-defense against police brutality. While arming provided protection, it also led to incidents that ended in violent standoffs with the police. [http://afroamhistory.about.com]

I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver–no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare [www.socialistworker.org]

Former South African President Nelson Mandela, who Bush has praised as a hero of human rights, joined the chorus of critics by calling Bush arrogant and implying the president was racist for threatening to bypass the United Nations and attack Iraq. "Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white," Mandela said. Most pronouncements of racism I can at least understand, though usually not accept. This, though, makes very little sense to me. Why did Mandela choose to call Bush racist, instead of one of the many other possible pejoratives which would be at least a bit more relevant to the topic of discussion? I don’t agree with most of the criticisms of Bush concerning Iraq, but if people are going to criticize him, I’d think they’d at least choose a criticism about Iraq. [www.discriminations.us]

France was Europe’s fourth largest slave trader after Portugal, England and Spain and transported about 1.25 million slaves. France abolished slavery in 1794, after a successful revolt by slaves in the island colony of Haiti. This has already sparked debate about France’s colonial past and immigrants from most of its former colonies. There is also a question of French citizens who are direct descendants of slaves who have felt they are being marginalised. However, these groups also feel that the commemoration is too little and too late. On 10 May 2001, France passed a law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. The law requires schools to include lessons about slavery as an important part of class curriculum. [www.andnetwork.com]

Today is the 10th of May. Children are not the only ones who need to learn about history. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely
Rethabile

We the Basotho, call the specific odour of brand-new clothes and other objects White folks’ fart or bosulu ba makhooa. Don’t ask me why. If you do, then I’ll have to venture a guess, and here is my guess.

Our traditional clothes never had that smell, no matter how new they were. The leather had always been beaten, washed, scraped, hung and processed, which left it smelling… nothing, really. We discovered White folks’ fart with the advent of factory clothes that arrived, of course, with white folks. Hence the name.

The consciousness of colour and race spilled over to us from across the surrounding borders of South Africa. In Lesotho, Indians are referred to as Makula, or Coolies. Merriam-Webster describes Coolie as “an unskilled laborer or porter usually in or from the Far East hired for low or subsistence wages.” It is an offensive term in my book.

We refer to nectarines as Marete a Makula, literally, Indian Testicles. This time even if you ask, I wouldn’t know what reply to venture. Do Indians have glabrous nuts? Nevertheless, I’ve always found the integration of Indians in Lesotho, from the point of view of native Basotho villagers, utterly complete.

Barotseland, Lesotho’s cousin. Learn about it to learn about Lesotho, Basotho and Sesotho.
PS: This post has been imported from another of my blogs. I decided to copy and paste comments to the original post.

Morabaraba is a Sesotho boardgame played by shepherds to while away the long hours. They carve it out of flat rock and use coloured pebbles for “cows”. I had the priviledge of playing morabaraba extensively at Peka High School, with people who could pick the winner after the first few moves. It is a fun game and I’m happy to see that it isn’t dead, like many of our customs. Bravo to those who continue to play it. There’s hope.

Download the game. And if you like the game please support the programmer. That’s the whole point of the shareware and freeware systems. I wouldn’t wanna have to get my morabaraba from Microsoft for hundreds of Maloti. Bravo to the programmer.

Morabaraba has also been compared to the Somali boardgame called Shax, so it’ll probably be easier to learn for those who already know Shax.

I’d be happy if anybody could tell me about mohobelo and mokhibo (dances), liketo, khati, lesokoana, and other games. Are our children playing them or has Nintendo taken over?

Further Information:
www.suntimes.co.za
http://users.iafrica.com
www.shimbir.demon.co.uk

There we were — after celebrating an afternoon birthday party, after the meal, the cake, the champagne and the rest — watching music videos on the telly. The singer, Pink, came along and left, with that reprise of Eurythmics’s Sweet Dreams (are Made of This). Mary J. Blige came next, and one of the comments uttered was, elle n’est même pas belle. She isn’t even pretty. "Holy Jaysus!" I thought. "Pink is pretty?"

Granted, the comment was made by a pre-teen, but what is this pre-teen a victim of? A victim of the telly, and the image it spreads of what beauty is? Past images and snippets of conversation rushed through my mind. Sistuhs wearin’ straight hair. An acquaintance telling me the reason Ethiopians are a beautiful lot is because their traits stray but little from European traits. Meaning: Blacki Africans are ugly. The television, its commercials, society, are ripping us off by telling us white people are more beautiful than other peoples.

My 6-year old daughter, a beautiful "zebra-kid", wants pony-tails and an even lighter skin. Stop the bloody world and let me off, or keep it going and let me wage my fight. I spent a good quarter of an hour this morning on the way to school telling her how proud I was of my blackness, and her mum of her whiteness. And that she (my daughter) should be proud of her light-brown skin and of her double heritage.

I’ve never met Mike Golby. Well, I’ve never met him the traditional way. Otherwise we met a long time ago and have spent virtual time together. He’s conscious of the world around him, all of the world around him, all of the facets of the world around him, and all of the nooks and crannies of each of the facets of the world around him.

Mike has a crystal clear roadmap in his head. OK, I’ve never met Mike Golby, but when I do, he’d better have in his possession some braaivleis, a gramophone, Maluti beer and a ping-pong table.

In the meantime I wish him, and those he cares about, a good anniversary, and more of the glue that binds people together.

“In a country where fighting misinformation is a major part of the battle against HIV/AIDS, I am not sure these crusaders have picked the right side. The sad thing is, I don’t even think they are ill-intentioned. I am willing to bet Angley and his gang are here at a loss, funded by their church in Ohio. It’s not a scam: they really believe in what they are dispensing. (Though I bet their home church in Ohio is not doing too shabbily…) No matter how many people show up to a crusade in Maseru, an offering plate passed among the poor here is not going to make a dent in the airfare or hotel budget of Angley and his friends.”
http://wakanaka.blogspot.com

“Whatever the case it was clear that he’s using the Aids pandemic to make as much money as possible, promising people that they and their entire families can be healed of Aids through him.”
http://www.tashitagg.com

This morning, like on most days, I took the tube to go to work. I entered a wagon and saw a true spectacle. A black lady was standing in the middle, talking to the seated travellers, or rather scolding them.

“Wake up, people! You must get involved otherwise the world is going to pot, starting with poor countries. We live in the same world, yet we don’t share it’s resources equally. African school children sit on the floor and scribble on that same floor. Richer countries have cheated poorer countries of their right to the planet’s resources. Wake up and do something today. Don’t look to politicians, they are crooks. Come together in God and do something, I beg of you. Thank you.”

And she got out when the underground stopped. The whole speech, which was already on when I boarded, was a clear message from a person who has been deeply hurt, or a person who sees the world is heading for disaster, unless we “do something” now. It was a powerful moment for me. The rest of the passengers dug deeper into their newspapers or books. Many kept their headphones on.

www.46664.com

Black & White

“Scientists said Thursday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology’s most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity’s greatest sources of strife. The work suggests the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person’s offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe. […] In fact, several scientists said, the work shows just how small a biological difference is reflected by skin color. The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome.”
http://www.chron.com

MSN Music Entertainment have got this Compact Disc of Sesotho music that stunned me with both the quality of the sound, and the authenticity of the music. If you miss mangae and other songs, or if you want to dicsover them, don’t hesitate. It’s on sale for $8.91, which I thought wasn’t bad at all. Here’s the info as it appears on their site:

Music of Lesotho
Various Artists
Jan. 1, 1976
Smithsonian Folkways

It is true that it sounds more benign when called thus: capital punishment. But it is ‘killing’. Let’s call it not capital punishment, not the death penalty, but killing. Stanley Tookie Williams died today after being injected with a lethal concoction. Let us not say that, either. Let us say, Stanley Tookie Williams was killed today. Tookie had allegedly taken the lives of four of his countrymen. That sounds too soft, too; he had allegedly killed four people with a shotgun at point blank. So he deserved to die. Or did he?

Who killed these people? If we kill Tookie for killing, who kills us for killing Tookie? Who kills the person or people who killed 30,000 civilians in Iraq, plus about 2,150 American soldiers, plus non-civilian Iraqis? Tookie had no right to do what he did. What right have we to “do to him what he did to others?”

The pain of family and friends must necessarily come into play. Tookie’s victims had family. The pain must be tremendous, even after such a long time (The crime occurred 26 years ago). Twenty-five years ago someone pressed the trigger of a machine gun and blew my sleeping, three-year-old nephew to bits, brain and all. A few years before the same person or someone else had snuffed out my brother’s life. We don’t know how. We were never given the body.

I’m in no way trying to compare pains, but rather to make my statement more understandable. It is the statement that “if those who kill your loved ones are killed for it, your loved ones do not return.” If you quote that, credit it to me, Rethabile Masilo. What’s more, I feel that the perpetrators of those crimes against my family are now in deep shit, both as human beings, full-stop, and as human beings before God. If my family and friends had gotten them killed, and then gloated, wouldn’t we be the ones in deep shit today? Besides

I know from talking to many others who have shared that chamber with me before that when months or even years have gone by, there will be no real closure or peace after what we saw Tuesday morning. Williams will not be alive for the supporters who wanted to save him, and the people he was convicted of killing will still leave huge empty spaces in the hearts of their loved ones. [Source]

Killing is wrong, no matter who does it and for whatever reason. Let’s start from there, before we even think of working our way out toward whether Tookie should have been pardoned, or whether the killer of 30,000+ people should go scot free, or whether the system is or is not flawed, killing innocent people, or whether the system is or is not racially biased, killing more minorities than other Americans, or whether religion gives us the right to play God and kill, or whether killing criminals lowers the crime rate… Let us start from the beginning and gently remind ourselves that killing is wrong. Now, what?

Relevant reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com

“Styles Phumo’s side not only failed to defend the Cosafa Cup in Durban at the weekend, but they also lost their pride after crashing out in a penalty shootout with Lesotho after a goalless semi-final.”
http://www.news24.com

“I urge all Basotho to know their status so that they can be able to manage their lives and receive treatment in the case of those affected.”
http://www.fortwayne.com

Lesotho is a small country, in size. With the present AIDS scourge, it’s becoming small in population size, too. And with the ongoing and relentless drought, it’s becoming even smaller economically. Many in the world are beginning to wonder if the AIDS/Drought combination will not cripple the country completely, making it sparsely populated, unproductive and ungovernable. Perhaps they’re right.

Otherwise Lesotho is a big country of blanket-clad, horsepeople smiling down at you, literally. It’s a proud country with an amazing number of firsts, or of onlys. The last first is this month, where the government decided to test the whole population for HIV, the AIDS-causing virus. It’s big in that unmistakable but unmeasurable way. I guess everybody’s country is big in that way, too.

With Thabana Ntlenyana (beautiful little mountain) at 3482 m, Lesotho is the highest point in southern Africa. Lesotho is landlocked and therefore has a coastline that is 0 km long. Lesotho had the Lesothosaurus, and today the country has plenty of dino footprints to show off. In 2004 more than 30% of Basotho were afflicted with the AIDS virus, making the country the third most affected in the world.

Wait, there’s more. It has been alleged that on 16 September 1995 a UFO crashed in Lesotho and that there was a subsequent cover-up by authorities. I don’t know of a similar “incident” in sub-Saharan Africa, so even there it looks like we’re unique. Lesotho has the highest diamond mine in the world: the mine is Letšeng-La-Terai (3200m). Lesotho’s lowest point is the junction of the Orange and Makhaleng Rivers at 1400 m. It is the highest low point of any country in the world. In other words, Tibet and Nepal have lower altitudes than Lesotho. In still other words, no part of Lesotho is below 1400 m. Central Lesotho boasts the highest waterfall in southern Africa, the Maletsunyane Falls near Semonkong (Place of Smoke), which pours down from a height of 192m.

That’s a lot of first country in this and only country in that, but it isn’t nearly all. Lesotho is the only constitutional monarchy in Africa. 85% of Lesotho is mountainous terrain. Lesotho has the highest pub in Africa: the Sani Top Chalet (2874m). Lesotho is one of the rare countries in which more girls go to school than boys. You can ski in Lesotho in winter, from mid-May to early August. In fact, Basotho are the only Africans who are accustomed to living part of the year in snow. The Aloë Polyphylla is indigenous only to Lesotho and does not naturally grow anywhere else. Sesotho is one of the first African languages to be expressed in writing. The first written form was worked out by French missionaries of the Paris Evangelical Mission whom Moshoeshoe I welcomed in 1833. Lesotho has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa:

At 83%, the literacy rate in Lesotho is amongst the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, at 93% the female literacy rate is well above that for men (72%)

Six hours from Johannesburg and several wrong turns later, Lexington resident Tara Loyd and UK medical student Nirmal Ravi inch through the Lesotho border after sunset.

This seedy town near Ficksburg, South Africa, resembles hundreds of nameless border towns: dilapidated tin-and-plywood shacks line the dusty, cracked asphalt and groups of curious bystanders hunch into faded wool blankets, their faces hidden in shadows and their eyes lit from the fires of trash barrels. (more…)

What if people became gay because of neither nurture nor nature, but something else? My theory is that gay people are gay because they are gay. The same theory stipulates that heterosexual people are heterosexual because they are heterosexual. But reasons have always been sought for same-sex preference.

Nurture has been proposed: the way the parents and the siblings behave(d) with the person in question is pointed at as the reason. I guess it means dressing a boy up in girlish clothes and letting him play with dolls. Freud belonged to this school of thought. Nature has also been suggested: the genes contain information about sexual preference and we can'’t do much about it. I belonged to this school of thought.

But what if it was neither?

Elsewhere, a study has “shown that natural body scent plays a key role in determining whether we find somebody attractive.” What? Wait, it goes further and also shows that gay men are good at detecting the scent of other gay men.

They found that homosexual men and lesbian women prefer different body odour from heterosexual men and women. In a second study using brain scans, researchers showed a chemical in male sweat stimulated the brains of homosexual men and heterosexual women in the same way.
[…]
The Monell team asked a group of 82 straight and gay men and women to sniff underarm sweat collected from 24 donors of different gender and sexual orientation. The preferences of gay men were strikingly different from those of heterosexual men and women, and lesbian women. Gay men preferred the odours of other gay men, and of heterosexual women. The smell of gay men was the least liked by heterosexual men and women, and lesbians.[Source]

What could all that mean? It certainly disqualifies nurture. Finding a “reason” for homosexuality may in the end convince some people to ditch their homophobia, if that reason proves to be biological. Gay bashers, on the other hand, would probably be unhappy if such a “reason” were found. In effect, “proving people are born gay would give [such people] wider social acceptance and better protection against discrimination [Source]”

NIGGERS (PTY) LTD

This picture and its accompanying story were sent my way by Hubert, a long-time friend. Please get the full story: over here. I have always heard the word used by blacks when humourously referring to other blacks; I have always heard the word used by rappers, a lot, as well as by stand up comedians. The points that David Sylvester makes may seem common and unimportant, but ironically, that is why they are all important. Thanks for the article, Hubert.

The whole thing is tantamount to calling a shop KAFFIRS or COOLIES or CHINKS. Or any other word meant to degrade.

The girl moved up the queue, politely thanking each person as she passed them. As she got to the front, the apology guy finished and went off with waves and goodbyes. The girl took his place and started explaining her needs in Sotho, calling the clerk ntate (Mr.) in every sentence. Apparently it was fairly lousy Sotho, because the clerk switched to English - he was explaining express services - and she was clearly relieved.
[ More… ]

Want some tips to straighten your hair? Carolyn M. Rodgers has a poem called For Sistuhs Wearin’ Straight Hair. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find it online. Yesterday I saw a sistuh with curly hair… an afro, in fact. She was beautiful. A sight for sore eyes, because my eyes were sore from all the straight hair sistuhs are wearin’ these days. Every single morning as I ride the metro to work I’m reminded of the late sixties, when it was hip in Lesotho to have straight hair and a light complexion. My mom and her friends smeared a product called Ambi special all over their faces and necks, while an iron comb was in the fire, waiting to sizzle their hair straight. Every single morning, as I go to work, that oily 60s smell of burning hair hits me, hard.

Ambi Skin Discoloration Fade Cream gradually fades dark areas for even, natural skin tone. It is specially formulated to treat skin discolorations such as freckles, age and liver spots, and pigment in the skin that may result from pregnancy or the use of oral contraceptives. use on affected areas as directed, it will help restore beautiful, even-toned skin.
[ Source… ]

The blurb is politically correct. It mentions freckles and other spots, yet the product has a smiling sistuh on its box. Freckles aren’t very common among sistuhs. But back to our topic. Was it to look like baas? Well, what else would it be. The issue is the same wherever one people oppresses another, and manages to blatantly or subconsciously convince the oppressed party that it is ugly. In Lesotho’s case, it was a blatant declaration related to both colonial and South-African racism, and subconscious by way of adverts, barbie and the sight of all the rich, glamorous, white folks in hotels and casinos. So we set about scouring our skins and sizzling our hair. Some people have tried to console me by saying “The grass is always greener on the other side.” White folks scorch their skins on the beach or by means of creams or artificial light. Maybe. Hell, it doesn’t even matter much, does it? It hardly means that if a sistuh’s wearin’ straight hair she’s a slave. The fact remains, however, that every morning I’ll never be able to help staring at all of them with their straight hair, wondering how they’d look with a kinky hair-do.

When I was at Peka High School in Lesotho, solar power was beginning to be the in thing. Our principal, ntate Mabote, had even had some panels attached to the dormitory bathroom roofs so that water could be heated thus. It didn’t last long, however, and it never picked up steam enough to convince anyone else. Why was that? Solar energy is ubiquitous and cheap, once the installations have been effected. I’ve just read a paper that partly explains why. Some hardy folks from the University of the Cape went to Thaba-tseka, in Lesotho, in order to introduce solar powered ovens to the villagers, or to conduct a potentially helpful experiment on a human scale, if you will. A laudable undertaking, in my book. It was a flop, however, like the Peka High School experiment. But this time we are told why, and the reasons may or may not be applicable to the Peka attempt.

a group of foreigners arrived in the village of Thaba Tseka in the center of Lesotho. They carried with them forty-five odd-looking boxes which they said could use the light of the sun to cook food. The boxes were a gift for the people of Thaba Tseka. We could write an essay about why the people of Thaba Tseka did not adopt the solar cookers brought to them by those well-meaning foreigners from the University of Cape Town. [ http://solarcooking.org… ]

The paper further states that the endeavour breached law N°1 as far as the adoption of innovations is concerned. That’s any innovation by anybody. That particular law is the law of relative advantage, "which means the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it supersedes." Basotho said that they already heated their rondavels with wood fire, so they might as well go ahead and cook their food on it. Eh… yes… and no. The problem is, I think, the law applies to people who are aware enough of the pros and cons of the innovation, as well as how the thing functions, in the first place.

For the Basotho of Thaba Tseka, any low tech innovation such as a solar cooker requires two categories of information: software and innovation-evaluation. Software information serves to reduce uncertainty about cause and effect relationships involved in such questions as whether the food gets cooked and how. Unfortunately, many of the Basotho don’t have what is called "principles knowledge." Principles knowledge consists of the underlying ideas or concepts of how things function; for example, how germs spread and debilitate people, which underlies the need for vaccinations and latrines in village sanitation and health campaigns. Eberhard reported that "Despite a prevalence of clear skies there was widespread belief that the solar ovens would not work in the colder winter weather." The Basotho in the experimental group had little if any understanding of the basic principles of light waves and the capturing of infrared rays by the glass cover of the solar cooker. Nor did they understand how the insulated walls of the cooker diminished conduction and convection of the heat inside the unit. [ http://solarcooking.org… ]

The paper also brings up a particularly basic notion, but without the respect of which no innovation can successfully integrate a group, especially a village in Lesotho. The innovative idea has to be introduced and championed by someone local, one of the boys (or girls), someone the villagers know isn’t out to make a fast buck or a fast reputation, and split. This is capital. Otherwise the attempt remains just another one of those things white people are trying to get us to adopt for their own benefit, like condoms. A sore issue, this last one, because here we are, dying because of AIDS, but refusing all the same to don the condom because it’s "a white man’s thing." I’ve even heard talk of folks thinking condoms are destined to render black men unproductive as a means of reducing the population of black people. Of course, the village stallion isn’t going to put a condom on. But if the condom had at first been introduced and championed by a fellow village stallion…? If…? PS: This post has been imported from another blog of mine.