My Mali visa experience---heaven!

A few weeks ago, I went to the Mali embassy to get a visa. I was armed with the usual: a bank statement, a valid passport, a copy of my travel itinerary, a letter from the host, a letter from my boss, my payslips - pretty much everything I could think of that could help ease my application process. Oh, and of course the obligatory visa application fee.

Well, imagine my surprise when I arrived at the Malian embassy (or was it a consulate), and behold, no queue. It gets better. I was treated with such courtesy, I would not have been surprised if someone had turned up to ask me if I wanted coffee or tea! First impressions! Anyway, the officer went on to ask me to sign my name, provide my details, and to give her my passport and a letter from my host. Believe it or not, all of my other extra papers were completely unnecessary here. None of that fuss about whether or not you will disappear in Mali or anything. No fuss about why you want to go to Mali, and if you are sure its just a conference. No interviews! No scrutiny of the visa to see if its fake. Nothing. Nada. Just,

"Come back next week and it will be ready". and

"Ah, you are from Kenya. So you speak Swahili?". I nod, smiling generously. She smiles back and says, "Asante."

After paying my low low visa application fee, I left the place feeling extremely good about myself, and Africa! Imagine if all those conferences on Africa or about African studies (within which I am squarely located), took place in different parts of Africa? How hassle free would my life be?

Part of me was perhaps particularly impressed by the Mali embassy experience because of my recently not too pleasant experience at the German embassy. First, I had to get up extra early (ouwwwch) because the embassy operates between 07h00 and 10h00. The embassy is in Pretoria and I am in Joburg, so basically, this means I had to wake up by 05h30. The queues were long, and I later learnt that people began lining up as early as 05h30! 

I remember lining up the first time until 09h30, then  getting to the counter and being told that although my application was fine, I had forgotten to include a letter from my employer. Now, normally, embassies include all these in their websites. In the case of the German embassy, there was no checklist online. I therefore collected what I thought they would need. Of course I did not think of a letter from my employer. I remember feeling extremely frustrated. Not only had I woken up extra early, but I had also paid a huge cab fare to get to the embassy on time. Now I had to repeat the performance. And the application fee was not cheap either.

My Mali experience made me think about the visa experiences both with South -South travels, and South-North travels. I also thought of what it meant to be a North-South traveller. South-South Travels were clearly much easier than South-North travels. Just recently, there has been a raging debate about the difficulties encountered when looking for a visa to France (14 Nov Travel, Saturday Star). That debate is reflective of what most of us have to quietly endure whenever we want to travel outside the country, specifically towards Europe or the US. People speak of the harshness of officers, the cold dismissal in spite of all efforts one might have put into trying to travel etc. It is all so familiar.

Given how horrible some of these experiences can be, the good ones have to be recorded. Bravo, Mali.

My tortured relationship with Face Book

There are two kinds of people – those who like expressing themselves and those who don’t. I have often wondered which category I belong to, given the manner in which I fret over any little thing I write, wondering if people will like it or not, and if not, wanting to find out why. I suppose, like many people who are still cultivating a public image within an ever growing new media scene, to find a personal voice is still extremely difficult.

Given this difficulty, it is quite possible to understand why Face Book would give me, and some people who are just like me, the creeps. This is the one space where all the people you know-some quite close to you, others acquaintances, and others yet, mere net friends-come together, and you are forced to peddle different identities in order to come up with one mega identity of YOU. The difficulty in trying to find a net-identity is that sometimes you come off as quite odd to friends who only know one side of you and not another. As humans,we have what Achebe calls concentric identities, and the way I interpret this is that we each have identities formed by context, but also dictated by context. we have ways of speaking to others that is fragmented, non-linear. So for example, if my friend A only knows me as ‘the calm, cool and collected person’ imagine her shock and horror when she realizes that actually, I can be quite irrational and abusive, this, just by following how I talk and respond to my other friends. Or, if B only sees me as the nerd, then they get surprised at the number of ‘activities’ I engage in and record on my facebook update. It is precisely because of this inability to juggle the many faces i show in public that I find Face Book difficult to deal with.

First, I can never tell just how many of my friends follow my entires. Recently, I was shocked to learn that a note I had written in the heat of the moment during the Semenya Saga was circulated and being used to argue something totally different, and I was perhaps, inadvertently caught up in a debate I had not originally planned to be part of.

I also realised that when you select or allow someone to be your friend, they do not always 'really' know you. This i found out when I attempted to proudly assert my Feminist ideals and to claim that as a major part of my identity. I received one consistent comment from a guy who, truth be told, I have never met and who therefore knows nothing about me, and the strong feelings I habour against bigots etc. The short of it, it got me off Face Book.

I realized I was torturing myself by being there. I was trying too hard to get all these friends of mine to talk to me honestly about issues. It did not take me long to realize that in spite of the 'friendship status', Face Book is just a collection of strangers!

My new philosophy is simple. I have healthier relationships with my friends in real life than online. In fact, I would never want to lose a friend over some debate about whether or not being a Feminist means you are an ungrateful |#$%*! Those are debates \i had when I was a young idealist. Now I am a realist with little time to haggle over meaning.

A Part of me is glad I am a regsitered user of FB and that I can reach as many people as possible and vice versa. But there is a part of me that will just chill...i do not have to update my status for my friends to know they can reach me. and If I have something I have to say, I pretty much still prefer my blog.

But eish...all in a day's work.

The Sensitivity of being blacker

dear bell hooks,

its an honour to finally write to you, you, whose name defies rules and order, you who is fed up with what is supposed to be. i believe that you have brought to my life what i did not have before, for before, i never had the courage to spit into somebody's thoughts and express the anger i feel inside. you liberated me.i do not say these words to flatter you, for perhaps i will never meet you, but i say them to liberate myself, of thoughts, feelings and chains that tie me up so tightly i can only smile politely for fear of crying out loud.i come from a society that is near-free of direct racism. until i travelled to my present country, i had not encountered the kinds of direct racism that i experience here. as such, your words on racist ideologies are new to me. however, i understand discrimination, ethnic discrimination, color discrimination among blacks, for I lived in a society of blacks only until I was more or less a grown woman. i understand black on black discrimination all too well, and like the child in toni morrison's bluest eye, i am the one who one day realised i was different because i was a shade darker than most of my friends, and i learnt early in life to regress and hide in the shadows. i come from a community where dark skinned people have a special place in childhood taunting games called mchongwano. in these games, there is a series of choice phrases used to shoo away the dark-skinned person - dark-skinned people are so black they do not have shadows, or so black, day turns into night when they walk into rooms, or so pitch black that it is possible to see their fingerprints on charcoal. but such games are taken as norm and fun, more like the 'yo mama' jokes/games in the african american community. we all grew up accepting these games, in fact, playing them, embracing them, laughing at ourselves.however, i have asked myself in the recent years, just how dangerously we have embraced white ideology. why do we automatically see ourselves as more beautiful and acceptable because of our skin-tones, why have black people generally bought into the concept of the ‘whiter the better’? and why oh why do i have to constantly be dragged into it? for every time dark skin is scoffed at, i feel it as if it were a personal insult. it does not matter if this takes place in the media, or in song, or in social circles i am part of.

it is our thought patterns of ourselves as black people that have led to such dire consequences as having dark skinned brothers and sisters trying to smear themselves with skin lightening creams, what ngugi wa thiongo so eloquently writes about in his stories, and in the process burning themselves and hurting themselves. often, it is something we experience within our own social groups, the slight disapproval because the many years in the sun has only managed to make you darker, the lack of 'fairness' of skin, that pumps new skin-cream products into the market, the flurry of it all! sometimes i play a game. i watch tv adverts in the hope of catching a really really dark alek wek like model being used to promote a beauty product, or being used as a mark of true beauty, or even in music videos, just one glimpse that we as black people are beginning to realize that we are one, and all beautiful. i lose all the time, but still i try. i remember listening to a radio programme on a local fm station. it was a late night show where callers were being encouraged to use the medium as a space for finding new love. the dj had people calling in to describe what kind of men/women they had in mind. most of those who called had one consistent demand: they must be light skinned! yo! imagine a poor teenage girl or boy sitting somewhere longing for love but never having the courage to go the route others were taking!in your books, specifically black looks and salvation, you suggest that black people have to learn to love themselves from inside. but i am in a society where black people have embraced the violence of oppression so much that it is spilling onto their ability to love and embrace each other. i am in a society where to be of a certain skin tone means people will want your blood at a certain period and point in time. i write this to you, not in a splurge of self-pity, but as an outsider. for i am outside of me as i write, me who has reached a stage in my life where i no longer matter. but certain issues have to be voiced, recorded. i believe if we want to fight the bigger monster called white supremacy that has made sure the black person's lot has remained at the level of destitute, that we have to love one another. but we are all so busy struggling to get better, richer, lighter, better, richer, lighter and standing in line to receive compliments. i trust that we should develop a new way of looking at ourselves, a new way of appreciating ourselves and a new way of understanding, so that the generation that comes after us may begin to understand how we survived in a system as vile as the one we live in now.

yours,

skinless
Posted by dear bell hooks at 5:28 AM
1 comments:
TGWCR said...
She has no place in paradise

Dear bell and skinless

Have you ever read something that made you feel like you’d been punched in the stomach? I felt like that when I read Egyptian writer Nawal el Saadawi’s short story ‘She has no place in paradise’. The story is about a rural dark skinned Egyptian woman, born into subservience, observing her Muslim tradition and Egyptian culture unquestioningly. She served daily, was beaten by her father, given into marriage to an older man who also beat her and showed her no love or care, even she says when he lay on her. Her husband died years before, and the story begins with her own death and entry into what seems to be paradise. This dead woman relates the story matter-of-factly and in the end, she finally she proceeds to the red-brick palace-like house that she sees in the distance and enters a bedroom bathed in light. On the bed she identifies her husband, clothed like a bridegroom sitting between two women. “Both of them wore transparent robes revealing skin as white as honey, their eyes filled with light, like the eyes of houris [virgin of paradise, according to Islam].... Her hand was still on the door. She pulled it behind her and it closed. She returned to the earth saying, to herself: There is no place in paradise for a black woman.”

I can’t explain to you the pain I felt at reading these words. As I mentioned earlier, it wasn’t an emotionally drawn out morose realisation, but I was rather bothered by the ‘factual’ way with which the hierarchy which situates dark skinned women at the bottom was stated. I wanted to scream out against it. I am a caramel coloured woman, not light or dark skinned, but I have long understood the importance of white or lighter skin. My Indian culture is full of racial idiosyncratic behaviour that values the fair skinned woman as a trophy, not only for her ‘beauty’, but for the fair skinned children she is likely to produce. Lucky for me, both the Tamil and Muslim sides of my family are all dark skinned, so skin colour was not an issue (as long as none of us ventured across the racial boundaries, which proved a lot harder as I grew older). But I did notice what friends of mine went through when they were judged by the colour of their skin and was shocked as I gained more black and coloured friends to realise that the fair skinned/dark skinned woman dichotomy seems to plague various communities of people of colour around the world.
Last year I got a group email from a Kenyan man friend which read,
‘I have been to alot of places in this world but honestly, I have never seen a country that is so full of extremely beautiful women as Ethiopia. Got here this morning, going back soon but, honestly, I don’t wonna go home, it’s just too damn much. ...I have never seen a concentration of so many cute light skinned sistas as I have seen today. I swear it’s a wonder. Kama the wildebeest migration in the mara. It’s on that level.’
Another mail recipient answered back, ‘Then, again you need to go to Venezuela & Brazil and see the real wildbeast migration’. At this point I spoilt the party by writing an irritable response to my friend questioning why he had sent me such sexist drivel, not only showing black men still being hung up on lighter skinned women, but then comparing them to wild animals. My friend M. apologised profusely, saying that it was just a lot of ‘jive’ talk between him and his ‘boys’ and that he was sorry he got me involved in any of it and that they were a decent bunch of blokes with proper relationships with their women. What is interesting about this mindset is that the men who hanker after light skinned women are themselves often quite dark skinned but see no contradiction with this. Time and time again I have heard men – and women – from my own Indian community and from other African countries speak of the fair skinned woman as a prize, an embodiment of purity and a signifier of social standing. There is no reference to this women’s intellect, to her deeds, her education, her beliefs.
So what hope is there then for a dark skinned woman in a world that reflects white? My friend D. is dark skinned and I remember when I first saw her, that I admired her ‘ebony planes’ (insider joke). Not because it was exotic, but because it was unblemished, because she was strikingly beautiful, because certain colours that she wore accentuated the contrast and hence her individuality and because she is terribly smart. For the same reason, I have liked the model Alek Wek. When I see her on the pages of my magazine, I don’t confuse her with any other model. She is outstanding and yes, there are many other women from Sudan who might look like her, but there are none on the pages of my magazine. Alek Wek does not sit in some comfort zone of model look-alikes i.e., the light skinned black woman with an acceptably small nose and lips, dyed hair and emerald/light brown eyes. Alek looks like women I see around me, images that I have seen of other African women. She is unashamedly dark skinned, and while there may be a whole Western world out there that might want to exoticise her darkness, there is a generation of black girls that are growing up seeing a dark skinned woman on runways and glossy fashion magazines.
More and more recently I’ve been questioning the genesis of this obsession of Other cultures with fair skinned women (especially within their own culture). Is it simply a matter of colonisation and Other cultures being exposed to the ‘charms’ of blonde hair, white skin and blue eyes? As much as I could understand that, a part of me says that can’t account for all of it. I mean within cultures there have been ranges of skin colour which still value fairer skinned people. I must confess to not knowing literature which could help me understand where this mentality comes from, yet it is so pervasive in so many cultural products and forms. Can we blame the Greeks for this too? Anybody know any good readings out there, please feel free to let me in on it.

TGWCR

February 26, 2009 7:20 AM

Being African is a misfortune

Dear bell hooks,



I am glad this forum exists, for where else would I vent, where else would I show my disgust at the endless gaze of Africa that the rest of the world clings to?



The global media has embraced and standardized Africa's image as the get-away safari destination on the one hand, and the starvation-poverty-disease continent that swims in eternal hopelessness; they have held Africa in this light as proof that Africa, the homeland of most of the world's black population, will never be as advanced as the 'white' continents. Africa, of the inferior race. Africa of the corrupt shortsighted leaders, and of the world's surviving primitives.



This 'dark continent' image has turned my continent into a pityful and sneer-worthy non-deserving continent. This continent where I have lived all my life, been happy in, and successful in, survived in. This Africa, from which fellow Africans have run away, embrassed to be associated with it, in preference for the heavenly west as portrayed in the media. Our young people, barely out of high school, are being ensnared by this image of the West, an image they hold on to, until they arrive in Europe or North America, and realise they are nothing more than modern day slaves. Some exist illegally, in the hope that the system will not detect them. Others live on the mighty green card, awarded to foreigners who have to pay using their lives.



And yet, these people withstand humiliation. Rather this than go back to the motherland and be seen as a failure, they argue. Rather this than the laughter of the damned. If Ben Okri slept in the streets, who am I, a nobody, to think I deserve more? While back home i would have been assured of a warm meal and a warm bed, it is better to be here, where my sense of purpose and sacrifice is sharpened.



But is Africa really that bad? Ought we be ashamed of being called Africans? Ought we be ahsamed of being black? What about the laughter and the education and the cultures? what about the joy of playing in the dust with friends whose names you will always remember even in your old age? What about the normal lives we lead? Are these successes not worthy of the media's precious spaces? What about the fact that Africa produces super-intelligent human beings? How else can you explain how Africans have excelled with minimum resources usually made available to students their ages in the West? What about the punishment of existing in a double life, that of the home and that of school, both heavily demanding and both equally important? The double burden of being the educated one, and the provider? and yet we survive in the same world as kids who have known nothing but over-protectiveness, whose every need has been tended to? If it is about survival for the fittest, who most deserves to survive? whose survival skills has been sharpened beyond question?



And so, while the only sport where Africans have outperformed the rest of the world is athletics (minimum resources required to achieve this goal), it is also the most inferior sport. After all, isn't it defined through funny looking, non-English speaking (hence lacking eloquence) black people from some god-forsakken land whose name periodically pops up to remind us that the world's first black leader hails from a father with humble beginnings.



It is easier for the West to typecast Africa using images of starving children. That is our public image. we are content with this image, because it prevents us from dealing with this complex continent. We marginalize and fragment its narratives, because we do not want to cause trouble, raise the expectations of the masses of Africa, give ideas of possibilities.



If the world is currently geared towards the superiority of capital, how can Africa be integrated into this dream? Easy! By making them give us whatever resources they have, so we can continue being the superpowers; by attracting the best brains using green cards, scholarships anything that will move the most diligent, strongest of them out of their holes, and making them grateful for the opportunity.



Now Asia rises and threatens to become the world's next superpower. Can the West let this happen? This would be extremely bad, because a breakdown of these societies would mean a change of power focus! Now we cannot have that. The under-dog race will edge its bony arse closer to the 'it' and soon we might just become powerless. This would be a big let-down. So we must fight on, we do not want to become the 'empy' continent.



So even now, while African crawls on its knees, hangs its head in shame as it begs for money from the Big Brother, accepts the disguised and sometimes open insults from the west, it continues to hope for release, relief. The West on its part continues to hold an image of eternal desperation and primitivity to measure how far its come and how far it can still go.



To succeed, it needs a failure.



Warm regards,



Hopeful African

The complex issues of sex and gender...A (slightly) different take on Caster Semenya

Sexualities and genders are so complex that to categorize them in the black and white is to create disillusionment. I deliberately pluralize the terms because of my awareness that there are many shades of grey that exist in between and that push us to treat these issues more problematically.

I had a discussion with a friend today, and her take, though she agrees with the feminist readings some us of us have given to the whole Semenya saga, is that Semenya was set up right from the beginning. My friend's argument is that if we are to use heteronormative models that define femininity and masculinity, then Semenya was definitely set up.

She argues from the point of view of the numerous stories that have been traded in the public sphere in the past few days including that :

1) The IAAF were not the first to raise concern about Semenya's appearance, marked and identified as masculine. Her school teacher says he always assumed Semenya was a boy, until she turned 13 (not sure what happened to make him change his mind). Semenya herself says she has often been asked to go to male toilets, because people thought she was male.

The point is really that Semenya's case raises our attention, yet again to the complexity of categories of gender and sexuality.

Being a fun of 'House' a television medical detective series, I know that a person can be identified as a woman, but have a male sex (testis that failed to drop, too much testosterone etc). These things happen.

However, they complicate our lives because we have been trained to see the world in b&w. When something falls slightly out of the norm, in the grey area, then we want to take it out, look at it, study it, and work out why it is different.

But this was not my friend's point. Her point rather was that if indeed Semenya does 'look' masculine, has an adam's apple, is flat chested, and speaks like a man, why didnt the SA sporting association take steps to prevent the kind of attention and consequent humiliation she underwent? Why wasn't she protected from the media frenzy about doubts regarding her sex?

One can argue that her difference (away from the norm-only then can we identify her as different, from what though, not sure) had to confront the world, not so it could be picked on, but so it could in itself confront the world and show that it existed.

But, to continue with my friend's argument, in competetive sports, any reason for unfair advantage, any slight reason, was obviously going to raise questions. Beyond race and gender discourses is the issue of money/prestige. The economic basis of such sports demands that people 'of the same kind' compete and the best wo/man' is given a chance to win. This economic structure demands that people can be identified in certain ways, ways identified as normal.

Semenya entered into the race, performed extraordinarily well, and won her gold medal. But because there was something 'different' about her, the questions came. Why was she better than the rest of the women (common with all outstanding performers - in the same way that people asked what made Phelps different? Was it his swimsuit? did it give him an unfair advantage? What makes the Williams sisters different? Why are they so good?).

In Semenya's case, the questions began with her physical look (again questions that have been asked of Mutola and them who all looked muscly, strong, excellent). The more the look intensified, the more it turned into a gaze.

Fact: Semenya is an excellent athlete. Fact: Semenya has grown up as a woman. Fact: there was bound to be confusion about her because of how she looked.

What my friend got me thinking about is the fact that Semenya's case confronts us with the complexities of gender and sexuality that we have not even began to confront. Where are we at, in the space of dealing with the significant but confusing arena of multiple genders and sexes?

If in fact Semenya is found to have a high testosterone level, what then? where, as gender and sexuality scholars, does this leave us? What will we say? How do we begin to develop a language to say/argue that if Semenya identifies as a woman, then she is a woman? How do we begin to make her story, and that of many other female athletes who have been subjected to these kinds of humiliations, how do we begin to make them part of the norm? Where, in other words, do we go from here?

Thus in reading the works of Prof. Pumla Gqola and others, and how they have engaged with the debate so far, it is important to note that these questions are now being asked, and that we have the opportunity to ask even more questions to change the unidimensional way of looking at people who fall in the 'grey areas.' We need to keep pushing the debate, and look at what it means to exist in a world where gender and sexuality (or-ies) can no longer be seen as black and white.

Semenya's story raises debate about the state of race and power, in the way that the gaze has once again been turned towards the exotic other.

Her story also speaks about the gap of understanding how sex and gender can be grappled with beyond the norm.

My prayer is that Semenya continues to excel in her field and recieve the same kind of glory that other champions have received. I pray that she is celebrated, for becoming one of the best youngest athletes South Africa has ever had. I pray that her story inspires even more similar stories of those who have been sidelined because they look different. I pray that she has her day of glory, and that rather than be treated with suspicion, that she be able to proudly celebrate who she is, has become.

Can history teach us anything?

Reading about Obama's Health care proposal and the fact that it is quickly becoming his archilles heels, is troubling to say the least. At the same time, to read about Kenyan leaders sitting around a table to decide their fates (I believe every single person responsible for the chaos in Kenya, the inter-ethnic wars, the deaths, the displacements, the continued hatred must be tried) is disturbing. But what do these examples have in common? History.

What is the historical explanation for liberal (translated as socialist) leanings of the first black (or is it mixed race) president of America? What dynamics are not projected, are not brought out through the present reports of Obama's apparent 'failure' to meet a promise he made during his presidential campaigns? Is he being 'crucified' by the more conservative news reporters, being held as an example of another naive liberalist whose time has run out? What is the historical context through which Obama's current situation can be explained? Are there issues that one can begin to see emerging from beneath the seeming wholesome blanket of logic and reason contained within the newspaper reports we are reading today?

While this might sound like a defence of Obama, it is in fact one perspective for understanding the large historical meanings of his successes and failures. Yes, it has been said already - he is carrying the burden of the black people on his shoulder, alright. But what is the nature of this burden? Is it not that the success of Obama might just mean a step closer towards closing the racial gap which still boldly rares its ugly head as is the case with the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr.? Would Obama's success in office mean the erasure of stereotypes that have accompanied black people through time, repeated over and over, explicitly and implicitly through narratives, media reports and other cultural sources? Perhaps not, but his success sure means that black people can walk the streets and be proud that they too can, and for once not feel like second class citizens. The issue is of course bigger than I am projecting here, but in many ways, this is what his failure or success would mean, at least to me.

Similarly, should we disregard the fact that the seemingly new found friendship between Kibaki and Raila camps is for the good of the nation? Does this seem remotely familiar and repetetive? Has this not happened before? Severally? I have been following the progress of the 'envelope' issue as it has come to be known. Rather than face the harsh unknown international court for their sins, Kenyan leaders have miraculously, almost overnight, found a new friendship. Kibaki and Raila eating from the same plate in a remote village in Nyanza? Unheard of. Unless of course both are running away from a bigger monster? Reminds me of Moi's popular phrase, 'No stone shall be left unturned'. Often, this phrase was followed by a lot of state secrecy and whatever issue was being resolved would actually end up being burried way deeper, leaving the public guessing and rumor-mongering about truth. But Kenya never has a truth, just a lot of fluid lies. Kibaki and Raila friends? Why didn't this happen a year ago, when lives could have been saved?!!!

Ethnicity, race, class and gender (its not by mistake that everyone sitting around Kibaki's table was male-or were there women in that picture? didnt see) have to be read in the context of history, in which power relations are explained through a careful study of structures and norms that have been created to support the systems that dominate society.

I am not interested in answers right now (it being four in the morning and all, or is it 5) but I am more interested in expressing my sadness at the way events are unfolding globally. My global reality is confined to the spaces I know and I am familiar with. So Kenya, and I guess America (vested interests) become my global realities.


I am saddened by the chaos still going on in Kenya. Even though life is relatively normal now, Kenya still suffers the aftermath of last year's violence. From the increasingly difficult economic situation to the impossible political cul de sac, and what about the homeless people who cannot be properly resettled because of land disputes? Who is the voice of these poeple? But can one understand what is going on without empirical studies of historical facts? Does history help us to acquire a different persepctive on what is going on?

I am sad because if Obama fails, black people will have failed, and no matter how objective one wants to be, this is a truth. Race in America is still so sensitive that Obama has to apologize to a racial profiler just to keep the balance of presidency intact. I am saddened because we still live in an extremely lopsided world. Only history can set this straight.

Perhaps quite unrelated, I am saddened by the rising chaos in the streets of South African towns in the name of strikes. How will this end? What do these strikes potend? Will they end in the same kind of violence we saw erupt last year in March? Or worse? What is Zuma's position in all this? But even more important, how are these recent actions being interpreted? Are these interpretations at face value or do they go beyond?

Obama's speech in Ghana on Africa - afterthought...

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/07/11/obamas-speech-in-ghana-on-african-development/

I am not sure how many people have had a chance to read Obama's speech, but I have and wow! I must admit I began reading it thinking, 'what new thing could he possibly say about Africa?' But as is now well-known, Obama has a natural talent when it comes to making beautiful coherent speeches. I cannot say it any other way.

What was most striking about his speech?

1) That he recognized that the future of Africa lay in the hands of Africans, particularly, and this is most important, on its young people. I particularly liked the line,

'Africa does not need strong men. It needs strong institutions'. Think I will adopt it in my emails and things. Mantra, like.

I so badly hope all these male egos are listening, instead of turning our countries into political hell-holes. I especially hope the message is sliding down to Kibaki, Odinga and all those 'strong' men who think we need them, and who caused the troubles we found ourselves in, in 2007 in Kenya. Especially now that everyone is trying to swindle their way out of prosecution by the International court at the Hague. I still cannot believe they can be so self-centered.

But back to the important speech. As I read, I felt hailed by Obama. He recognized that some of us were struggling against all odds, to contribute towards the building of firm structures that would see Africa soar one day, even though we no longer believed in our politicians and their two-pence politics. He acknowledged that some of us were still willing citizens of collapsed states. I believe that was a bid deal. In his words, freedom is my inheritance. I thought of all the damage already done by the big word tribalism in Kenya, for instance, as I read the speech. I thought of the suspicion that grew out of this word, and how I no longer felt free in my own skin. I also thought of how people killed and burnt in the name of tribe. where is our sense of dignity?


2) Another important issue that Obama raises is the idea of an African partnership. I mean, how cool is that, conceptually? A world where we will no longer be thought of as the unwanted distant poor relation, but as equals. Mmmm. what a beautiful world that would be.

Of course I have a bit of a problem figuring out how this second point would play itself out, especially in our very capitalist world. First, isn't the logic of capitalism built on the idea of hierarchy between the rich and the poor? If Africa joined the ranks of other superpowers one day, who would be the poor relation?

3) The point about the climate change was also especially important. Would have been awesome if he had mentioned Wangari Maadhai though, for everything she has fought for all these years. I mean, I remember planting a tree because of her when I was younger...but let's not digress. Sometimes I wonder how much of our current problems we would be able to solve if we took better care of our environment. All this madness about paving way for civilization has caused such havoc in Africa, once beautiful and green.

4) Obama also spoke of the health situation in Africa, prompting me to think about the state of Africa and its diseases. Statistically, we are lagging behind. Imagine a world where the structures worked so well, that all those malaria deaths would just be a thing of the past. yeah, if only leaders did not feel it was compulsory to slice 20% of moneys earned from the taxpayer etc.

5) Aid- I saw he also mentioned something crucial about our continued dependency taking us back to the point of a partnership with the west as an alternative. I thought about it some more. I think Africa has become comfortable in its status of beggerliness. I mean, leaders shamelessly beg for aid, so they can slice off 20%, and send their children off to some Western countries to 'get the best' of that world. That way, even if their countries are being called shameless, their own futures have been taken care of. Puts a bit of a question mark on what we call the African Middle class or is it 'upper' class, if such a thing even exists? Me thinks this is a roundabout form of money-laundering, this investment of people's (taxpayers' money) on one's children. Of course I am speaking of politicians and in many ways government officials.

Let me stop shooting my mouth like this. I might actually say things I really do not want to say just yet.

I hail Obama, and thank him for his wonderful speech. As always, I think it touches any right-thinking African. Now, if only we could implement his ideas.....

and please, oh please, stop fighting each other, and just damn grow up!