Karen Bliksem
Have to hand it to The Peacemaker of Zimbabwe... no, scratch that. The Peacemaker of Ivory Coast? Uh, no. That one didn't fly, either. Peacemaker of the Great Lakes? Like, man, splat. Try this for size: The Peacemaker of - drum roll - Darfur! Former president Thabo Mbeki was lauded this week for his work as chairman in the report of the African Union high-level panel on Darfur.
This, you will recall, unleashed (cliche warning) a major paradigm shift away from the oh, so passe attitude that the genocide in Sudan had something to do with the Arab ruling class bossing the mainly Christian southerners. Or - perish the thought - that it was about who got their sweaty paws on all the oil under those sands. (Chinese, of course: they'll get the oil, so it's more a case of who gets the bribes.)
No, The Peacemaker of - drum roll again - Darfur revealed in his report that it was a "manifestation of Sudan's historic problem", for at "independence in 1956, the Sudanese nation inherited a gross disparity from colonial days".
Sure, most things can be blamed on the Brits. As I've noted before: "Why didn't the sun ever set on the British Empire? Because God didn't trust the thieving imperialist so-and-sos in the dark." But to suggest that today's behaviour is all the fault of something that ended - if indeed it had happened at all - some 53 years ago, is deeply demeaning to Africa as a whole. It suggests that 50 years isn't enough to cure the ills of the past. That it's always someone else's fault, and that we Africans are perpetual victims. Germany can be bombed until the rubble jumps, but rebuilds itself into Europe's wealthiest nation. Japan can be nuked and fares similarly. But poor old Mother Africa, cradle of humanity and all that, stays traumatised by those pith-helmeted, chinless-wonder Poms who quit half a century ago?
In the same week that Thabo the Peacemaker was being so praised, the former colonial power, aka the devil, announced that survivors of the Darfur conflict would no longer be deported from Britain. Reason? London was concerned about a deterioration in conditions in the Sudanese capital and said asylum seekers could stick around in chilly Britain for up to five years, or until the situation improves. Sounds like permanent residence to me.
Once upon a time, a columnist wrote in the London Torygraph (sorry, Telegraph) under the byline of Peter Simple. For 50 years he fought what he called "an infamous war on reality". You and I, dear readers, know that reality is for people with no imagination. Comic creations peopling Simple's Way of the World column included a local and lethargic soccer team, Stretchford United, which regularly failed to gain any home advantage from their subsidence-pitted ground down Effluent Road. Sounds rather like one of our local teams as 2010 looms closer.
He would sometimes include among his tri-weekly snippets weird and truly wonderful imaginary "events" from this part of the world. And yet, somehow they never seemed to work, perhaps because, as he confessed, Africa could always be depended upon to come up with something even more absurd and bizarre than the most outrageous of satirists could conjure up. Reality, in other words, always outbid fiction.
Which brings me to darling Rian Malan. Once a crime reporter for our little daily Stellar sidekick, this delicious hunk of hottie muso/ journo/news-ou moved to the US to avoid conscription. Twenty years ago he returned to acclaim for his My Traitor's Heart. That sold almost entirely on word of mouth, as regular reviewers either dissed or dismissed it, or - in one unpleasant case - campaigned to ensure that it didn't receive media notice.
Now I see that he's come up with a collection of articles called Resident Alien, a title that sums up his questing personality. But what links him to the late Simple is the way Malan laments that Seffrica can be depended on to offer up weekly scandals, each equivalent in import to, say, the Watergate affair that sank then-US president Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon. We get exercised and upset by them... only to realise a week later that the revelatory media has since been wrapped around the fish 'n' chips, and thence consigned to the dustbin of history. Nothing, but absolutely nothing, sticks.
- The Brooklyn Bliksems - our US emigré branch - have kept schtum in the nine months since the Obamessiah's inauguration, but this week's little flurry of congressional, state and city elections finally spurred them to e-mailed comment. They suggest that the disappointing results (in other words, Republican wins) had a lot to do with the candidates campaigning heavily on local issues, rather than national ones.
Once again a reminder that with our party list system, there are no such things as "local" issues. Politicians and "deployees" are accountable to parties, not voters. Which leads to the observation that the only effective local-level "campaigning" appears to be by discontented residents of places like Sakhile, in the form of blocking roads, razing libraries and deployees' homes alike. It gets the ANC's attention, which nothing else seems to.
- I thought for a moment that Higher Authority had confirmed it: the ANC will indeed rule "until kingdom come", as "Vader Jacob" Zuma promised. Why? Because when Allan "Flip-flop" Boesak got out of Cope just before being shoved (all the while indicating that he was hoping for a welcome from his former friends in the ANC), dear Desmond Tutu greeted the wandering prodigal with the words: "Welcome to God's party." Turns out "Toots" was thinking of "Flip-flop's" alleged pastoral calling, rather than any sanctified ANC. Whatever, he's still getting it wrong, as "Flip-flop" has shown a remarkable attraction to earthly, not spiritual, comforts (and here I'm not referring to Elna, either). Someone ought to remind the refulgent reverend of that New Testament injunction: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on Earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal." Thieves? Let's not go down that route.
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