| John Matshikiza |
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New take on the African Union
So, anyway, I was looking through various websites on the internet, trying to find some concrete information for a talk I had been invited to present on the occasion of the forty-fourth anniversary of Africa Day, May 25 2007. The sacred anniversary had originally been called “Africa Freedom Day”, when it was dedicated as such at the launch of the then brand-new Organisation of African Unity in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on that date in 1963. |
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Reliving a jungle disaster
I heard with a sickening sense of foreboding the news that an airliner had come down somewhere in Central Africa shortly after take-off from Cameroon’s main airport at Douala. Any airliner coming down anywhere in the world fills me with this kind of dread. The feeling is fuelled by hundreds of take-offs and landings across four continents in a long travelling life. |
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The polarisation is complete
I could swear I saw French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy wince a couple of times as a small woman with a big voice launched into the French national anthem right after his acceptance speech. Amplified to fill the open air stadium where Sarkozy’s supporters had gathered in rapturous self-congratulation, the woman belted out the words that had been born out of the bloody French revolution of 1789. |
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Oiling the cogs of sleaze and war
How come all these dots seem to join up? We all go “Ra! Ra! Ra!” because Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela, has cocked a snook at the rich and powerful by nationalising his country’s massive oil fields and refineries, sending the over-rich international oil cartels packing. |
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Natural-born matricide
Heidi Holland’s The Colour of Murder could well make the shortlist for the Alan Paton literary award next week. In my opinion, it could actually win this year. The book tells the extraordinary story of a man who became one of South Africa’s most sensational mass murderers, and his daughter who commissioned one of the country’s most sensational single murders in her own right. |
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Massaging race into cabbage
Contrary to what has been said in response to my recent and not-too-recent commentaries on the New Chinatown in Johannesburg’s Cyrildene, I actually like the place. I also like the people. I buy most of my vegetables there and have a direct interaction with the people who are selling them. Language issues notwithstanding, we come to an agreement. |
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They should be so lucky!
The English tabloid, The Sun, complained, supposedly without their consent, that the British sailors and marines captured by the Iranians on the high seas were sent home in cheap suits supplied by none other than the Iranian president himself. On TV at least, those suits looked pretty good to me. |
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An artful life is lost, Lindelani
Phew. They used to sing: “Soon one morning, death comes a-creeping in the room.” Lindelani Buthelezi’s sudden death from a combined stroke and heart attack (one doesn’t know which preceded which) has taken the wind out of the sails of the rest of the week for me and for many of us. |
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Die Bokke: another broken record
It would be difficult not to get embroiled in the raging debate about the merits or otherwise of Bok van Blerk’s hit single De la Rey. People across the still-unresolved racial divide that is South Africa are up in arms: either about the fact that it should be banned outright for fostering a climate of racial intolerance, backward-lookingness, or as a call for a new Boer War. |
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Winning streak with a Lagos accent
Naturally I thought that I was rich at last. But something gave me pause for thought. It was the fifth time, at least, that I had been told through an anonymous email message that I had earned £1 000 000 (yes, one million pounds sterling, cash) in the space of two years. |
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The queen and him
They should have got Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa to play Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Shilowa at least has the seductive/menacing looks of the fleshy African power-man that Amin became. Forest Whitaker, looking slightly slimmer than he was when I last saw him on screen, unfortunately still just looks like a fat black man from the Louisiana plantations. |
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Sleaze: strictly for 'Chinese'
A friend of mine called me up the other day and said he thought I should check out what smelled like a bit of a racial rat in Chinatown. His experience went like this: having been introduced to a massage parlour in Chinatown by a friend, and having tried it out, he decided he liked the service, the massage, and so on. |
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Do widzenia, Kapuscinski
I was lurking around the lobby of the famous old Hotel Kempinski in Berlin, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous writer and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski and approach him for an interview. I had told the organisers of the Berlin-based Lettres Internationale prizegiving we were attending (this is about three years ago) that this was the hook for me in flying all the way from Johannesburg. |
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Money buys votes, terror buys privilege
I had an interesting conversation with Professor Ernest Wamba dia Wamba and his self-effacing partner-in-crime, Jacques Depelchin, the other week. We were talking, naturally, about the Congo, DRC, call it what you will. Both are from there and are relatively minor players in current Congo politics. |
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No Oscar for our populist hero
We of the “old establishment” are indeed terrified by the advent of Ronald Suresh Roberts on our shores, as he himself puts it. Here is a post-colonial liberator of impeccable credentials, and handsomely endowed features to boot, who, although, again as he says, we have never had a substantial conversation, takes us on as the major problem in his hitherto life of literary fame and glory in his forcibly adopted native land. |
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High noon in Haiti
Size matters. Race matters. It’s sad, after all these years, to have to admit it, but it’s true. The size part refers to those who hold the bigger stick -- in this case the famous international organisation called the United Nations, which, in turn, bows to an even bigger stick wielded by a big country called the United States. |
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Hoe's my China nou?
It’s just one of those Johannesburg phenomena you have to get you head around, I suppose. I currently live in the eastern suburb of Observatory and my nearest friendly shopping neighbourhood for food and such like is the formerly predominantly Jewish suburb of Cyrildene. |
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Unliked, unlikeable and unavailable
If Ronald “Ron the Con” Suresh Roberts had any spine in him, he’d have been present in court when Judge Leslie Weinkove threw as much of the book at him as he could during the Roberts defamation case against the Sunday Times. Instead, according to his lawyers, he was unavailable, maybe even out of the country. |
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What are we celebrating?
Father Christmas goes “Ho, ho, ho”. The bag of goodies slung over his shoulder, hopefully, brings joy and happiness to the laughing faces of children and adults alike. But one has to ask oneself what there is to celebrate at the end of this difficult year. |
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Speak softly and carry a small stick
Kofi Annan finally steps down as from now after 10 years as secretary general of the United Nations. It is a peculiar departure, and makes you wonder how other imminent departures will be handled. It is a peculiar departure because it is one that in normal times and under normal circumstances, should have been accompanied by bells and whistles. |
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| MORE ARTICLES |
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| Over the edge into Death Wish country |
| Where I choose to lay my head |
| Plus ça change ... |
| The lure of the land |
| A bad week for fascists |
| Respect pedal power |
| N1 + exclusive lane = mayhem |
| Choreography of opposite effect |
| Police intuition |
| An anniversary worth marking |
| Who cares if Pluto isn't a planet? |
| A new model of reform |
| His legacy should not be forgotten |
| Where is it all going? |
| We all come from the same root |
| Can you support both sides of a war? |
| Things that go clunk in the night |
| Contradictions of Africa's recent history |
| Genocides can never be repeated |
| By the book |
| Novel scams |
| The black of blackness |
