Uncle Tom has been preoccupied with pictures lately. First there was the one of the happy young men who had reached a Greek beach after crossing the Mediterranean from Syria. They made victory signs and took a selfie. With a stick. That stick caused a tsunami of comments in the European media. (See on of the articles here .) Where did they get this selfie stick from? How did they pack a selfie stick when fleeing their burning, grenade-shelled homes in Syria? They had all the time in the world then,...
Uncle Tom has been preoccupied with pictures lately. First there was the one of the happy young men who had reached a Greek beach after crossing the...
NGOs in his country are not the benign civil society activist groups they purport to be, says Nigerian satirist, former lawyer and novelist Elnathan John. Elsewhere in this issue of the ZAM Chronicle you launch a biting attack on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Nigeria. You compiled an ‘instruction manual’ for those who want to start NGOs, full of tips for getting the most out of donors and doing the least for the people you pretend to support. But surely not all NGOs are like that? There...
NGOs in his country are not the benign civil society activist groups they purport to be, says Nigerian satirist, former lawyer and novelist Elnathan...
On Wednesday 16 September the military in Burkina Faso –or rather an armed gang of 1,300 men who consider themselves above the law- staged a coup d’etat in that country. The Régiment de Sécurité Présidentiel (or RSP), intimately associated with Blaise Compaoré, -the autocratic ruler the Burkinabè people chased from power in October 2014-, clearly feels it needs to be back on top, if only to avoid ever being called to account for its many crimes. Ever since the demise of the dictator, and the...
On Wednesday 16 September the military in Burkina Faso –or rather an armed gang of 1,300 men who consider themselves above the law- staged a coup d’etat...
In his biggest undercover project ever , Ghanaian ace investigative journalist and ZAM partner Anas Aremeyaw Anas has recorded 34 judges –among whom a High Court judge and a Human Rights Court judge- promising to throw big cases in exchange for money. The thirty-four now all face impeachment. The high profile judges were videotaped and audio recorded in separate conversations with suspects, or persons acting as agents of suspects, before them to compromise big cases. Video footage to be released...
In his biggest undercover project ever , Ghanaian ace investigative journalist and ZAM partner Anas Aremeyaw Anas has recorded 34 judges –among whom a...
Thousands of Cubans working in Angola feel let down after the government of José Eduardo dos Santos has failed to pay a debt of 300 million Euros to their country. The money was meant to cover the salaries of the skilled workforce who worked in the African country as doctors, university professors and technicians in the water and energy sectors. But, with oil prices falling, Angola's state coffers are empty and water plants and hospitals, once staffed by Cuban comrades, have been abandoned. Having...
Thousands of Cubans working in Angola feel let down after the government of José Eduardo dos Santos has failed to pay a debt of 300 million Euros to...
Anti-FGM (Female-Genital-Mutilation) campaigners in the West use shock tactics (often pictures of screaming and bleeding girls, held down by ‘cutters’) to canvass support. True, the practice in the pictures is horrific. But sometimes the ‘do-gooders’ don’t accept that the wrong they are fighting is close to being righted. In Somalia, for example, -historically one of the worst ‘FGM’ countries-, the old practice has been replaced in 75 % of cases by much more benign clitoral hood removal, comparable...
Anti-FGM (Female-Genital-Mutilation) campaigners in the West use shock tactics (often pictures of screaming and bleeding girls, held down by ‘cutters’)...
Last week my home girl Jeanie, who is now making it big in New York, Rome and Monaco as what I fancy to be the wealthiest escort-girl of all time, sent me this link to the story of a migrant woman . The intro was catchy. The woman had come from poverty, crossed borders, defied challenges and made many sacrifices to provide for her own needs and those of her family. But as soon as I saw the sentence “I am called illegal, disease spreader, prostitute, criminal, trafficking victim,” I knew what Jeanie...
Last week my home girl Jeanie, who is now making it big in New York, Rome and Monaco as what I fancy to be the wealthiest escort-girl of all time, sent...
A story taken from the AFP news agency by the South African Sunday Times, last weekend, highlighted how desperate prosecutors pass stiffer and stiffer sentences on poachers of rhinos in the country’s famous Kruger Park –without much hope that poaching will actually get any less. Interviewed by the AFP reporter, prosecutor Ansie Venter –who is attached to the Skukuza Magistrates Court inside the Kruger Park- confessed to be close to despair in this regard. “Somehow we have to believe that passing...
A story taken from the AFP news agency by the South African Sunday Times, last weekend, highlighted how desperate prosecutors pass stiffer and stiffer...
A sharp attack on US President Barack Obama in an Al Jazeera column by Ugandan media owner and opinion leader Andrew Mwenda went viral yesterday on social media. Following Obama’s recent visit to Kenya and Ethiopia, Mwenda, founder and owner of the Ugandan newspaper The Independent , accused the US President of being a ‘colonial headman’ who came to tell ‘the natives’ how to behave. "Obama, being of African ancestry, is a puppet used by the US to disguise its contempt for Africans," Mwenda wrote in...
A sharp attack on US President Barack Obama in an Al Jazeera column by Ugandan media owner and opinion leader Andrew Mwenda went viral yesterday on...
American-Nigerian writer Teju Cole on the Bill Cosby candal: 'We (men, Ed.) must be allies in this, in a subsidiary but vital role, to the generations of women who have been fighting it (rape, Ed.) since forever. Why should it be easy? It can't be. We have to face even the complication of confronting those few women who are themselves invested in perpetuating rape culture. It will cause us extreme discomfort, but our discomfort will be nothing compared to the pain of being a victim of rape or...
American-Nigerian writer Teju Cole on the Bill Cosby candal: 'We (men, Ed.) must be allies in this, in a subsidiary but vital role, to the generations of...
If Africa was a bar, Nigeria would be the guys manning the toilets and making more money than the bar itself; South Africa would be that light-skinned girl who is haughtily refusing to mix with anyone else and Uganda would be the drunk uncle repeatedly asking his neighbour Kenya to return his ‘stolen’ cows. In turn, Kenya, whilst unable to pay for own drinks, would keep droning on about how his countryman Obama made it in the USA. And Zimbabwe would be daring a white guy to step on his toes. If...
If Africa was a bar, Nigeria would be the guys manning the toilets and making more money than the bar itself; South Africa would be that light-skinned...
Never mind Fox News’ remarkable phrasing of the Charleston church shooting as an ‘attack on Christianity,’ or lists of mass shootings by mentally ill individuals such as this one . If ever there was a massive gun murder by a white male that cannot be explained as an ‘individual act caused by mental illness,’ this was it. Sure: normal, mature, balanced people don’t generally go out and bomb or machinegun civilians. One would guess that most other violent extremists of the kind that guns down...
Never mind Fox News’ remarkable phrasing of the Charleston church shooting as an ‘attack on Christianity,’ or lists of mass shootings by mentally ill...
Uncle Tom finds out about fund raising in the Gambia. I was interviewing activists in Banjul, Gambia, about their careful efforts to mobilise against that ‘fat white chicken’ dictator Jammeh , when one of them suddenly suggested going to the beach. I was game and so were the others in the group. The regime and its secret service might be oppressive and vicious, but, hey, the place is also just all beaches and palm trees and sunshine. And even the most dedicated guerrilla fighter needs some fun...
Uncle Tom finds out about fund raising in the Gambia. I was interviewing activists in Banjul, Gambia, about their careful efforts to mobilise against...
A ‘gay revolution’ in Africa. Very likely, states Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina in Boldly Queer, African perspectives on same-sex sexualities and gender diversity . The book, published by Hivos, was launched in The Hague on Friday 5 June 2015. Mozambique has already joined the revolution. President Filipe Nyusi signed a new penal code decriminalizing homosexuality. Congratulations to Lambda, the activist group, who fought against anti-gay-legislation introduced in 1887 by the Portuguese...
A ‘gay revolution’ in Africa. Very likely, states Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina in Boldly Queer, African perspectives on same-sex sexualities and...
Martin Bosma, MP for the extremist Dutch anti-immigration party PVV, has reinvented the idea of South Africa as an empty land at the time when the white settlers arrived. In his book Minderheid in eigen land (Minority in own country) he presents South Africa’s transition to democracy as a forecast for his doomsday scenario: the low lands' takeover by Muslims. In a fact check, Bram Vermeulen, correspondent for Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, investigated Bosma’s 'empty land' claim. Find one of his...
Martin Bosma, MP for the extremist Dutch anti-immigration party PVV, has reinvented the idea of South Africa as an empty land at the time when the white...
ZAM congratulates Mikhail Subotzky (1981, South Africa) and Patrick Waterhouse (1981, UK) on winning the prestigious 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. A six year journey into Johannesburg's 54 stories landmark building Ponte City resulted in a book (Steidl Publishers) and exhibitions from Paris to Lubumbashi and from Edinburgh to Cape Town. Subotzky started his career as a photographer in post-apartheid South Africa. His work reflects the multiple complexities of a society in transit. ‘Ponte’...
ZAM congratulates Mikhail Subotzky (1981, South Africa) and Patrick Waterhouse (1981, UK) on winning the prestigious 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography...
Uncle Tom takes issue with afrophobia. Visiting my family in Crossroads, Cape Town, we came to talk about xenophobia. That was because it was on the news all the time and because my aunt Dolly had bought some new curtains from Congolese Susie who sells in St George’s Mall in town. Aunt Dolly likes Susie’s fabrics because they are cheap but good, “in a way that you can’t get here, it’s straight from China.” She says this as if ‘China’ is a hallmark of excellent quality, but I let it rest. When Dolly...
Uncle Tom takes issue with afrophobia. Visiting my family in Crossroads, Cape Town, we came to talk about xenophobia. That was because it was on the news...
In a column in the South African newspaper Business Day, University of Rhodes-based historian Nomalanga Mkhize took issue with the label ‘xenophobia’ that is used to separate good, foreigner-and-human-rights-friendly South Africans from the ‘bad ones’ who have attacked immigrants in that country in recent weeks. She argues that the ‘rainbow nation’ image does not help to deal with South Africa’s history of brutality. But surely the burning and looting of shops, the storming of people’s homes with...
In a column in the South African newspaper Business Day, University of Rhodes-based historian Nomalanga Mkhize took issue with the label ‘xenophobia’...
I sure had to giggle when, last month, Muhammadu Buhari was elected President of Nigeria as a ‘candidate for change.’ For heaven’s sake, the man already did rule Nigeria, ages ago, and we didn’t see much ‘change’ then, did we? He was a military dictator, cantankerous and authoritarian, though he was never –we must grant him that- as bad as the guy who came after him, the oppressor and plunderer Sani Abacha. But a change maker Buhari was not. More like a humourless old schoolteacher. He used to send...
I sure had to giggle when, last month, Muhammadu Buhari was elected President of Nigeria as a ‘candidate for change.’ For heaven’s sake, the man already...
ZAM tries to make sense of the massacre at Garissa University in Kenya on April 2, 2015 in which 147 young students died. Here’s what we came up with. 1. The movement that claimed responsibility for the pre-Easter mass murder of mainly Christian students, the Somali islamist Al Shabaab, is not solely fuelled by ‘jihadi’ fundamentalism. Al Shabaab (meaning “the –rebel- youth”) has its origins in an independence struggle against the Ethiopian and Western occupation of Somalia that started in 2006....
ZAM tries to make sense of the massacre at Garissa University in Kenya on April 2, 2015 in which 147 young students died. Here’s what we came up with. 1....
Was Mozambican constitutional lawyer Gilles Cistac murdered because of ideas that upset the country’s ruling Frelimo party? Listening to Frelimo’s vehement denials and silly remarks about how the real motive for the murder could have been to ‘make Frelimo look bad’ one would almost conclude that that’s probable. Those who have studied the Mozambican state’s descent into criminality, however, have a slightly different take on the assassination of the much respected French-Mozambican lawyer who...
Was Mozambican constitutional lawyer Gilles Cistac murdered because of ideas that upset the country’s ruling Frelimo party? Listening to Frelimo’s...
