E-passports for Nigerians:SA freedom still a debate.

Nigeria is the most populous African country. It may also double up as the most troublesome. Nigerians have incredibly creative but dangerous minds.

What has troubled this globe that Nigerians are not involved? Virtually nothing. Email fraud, theft, corruption, drugs, hostages…Ooh!! May be terrorism.

With a population in the region of 115 million, such crimes never surprise for a nation that keeps world headlines fresh.

In the close weeks, in a bid to curb passport forgery, E-passports are to be introduced with some members of parliament taking the lead.

That means, the new E-passports will have chips with the holders data. Scratching the original picture will no longer help.

Nigerians have been peeling off the data page of the passports and substituting pictures of the genuine owners with fake ones.

While that may take long for a country with a population of 115 million and 470 languages, it’s an impressive thought to fight off fraud a continuous telling tale in Nigeria.

Policy introduced; but how fast will they be in replacements?

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Freedom might have returned to South Africa; However more freedom is still at stake not in the direction of race but same sex marriage.

July this year sent shocking waves to the gay community all over the world when three gay were brutally killed.
Last month, two lesbians in Soweto were attacked and shot dead, their bodies were found in a field.
Later in the month, the body of a naked lesbian in Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal was discovered in a field with multiple head wounds.

Last year, same-sex weddings were legalised in South Africa - the first country to do so in Africa, where homosexuality is often seen as taboo.

South Africa has one of the most advanced and progressive constitution anywhere in the world.

Despite the presence of laws that are favourable towards lesbians and gay men, discrimination remains common in South Africa and black lesbians endure the worst abuse.

In an effort to reverse the wrongs of apartheid, the constitution ensures that human rights, gender equality and gay and lesbian rights are all properly protected.

My question as an African is; Is gay marriage welcome in Africa despite the growing democracies African countries are developing into?

Zimbabwe Shelves Empty!

There is no bread, Butter, sugar, salt; Zimbabwe shelves are getting empty every single minute.

 While the political crisis is scaling to heights, back in the shops, politics has entered an ordinary mans survival ground; business. Shop owners no longer own their own shops. Zimbabwe’s government now takes charge of business as well.

July 3 is one of those days Businessmen and women in Zimbabwe will continue remembering as a day when Mugabe and his government threw up a policy to cut prices for goods` prices by half to cub the ever-rising inflation.

In the face of soaring hyperinflation, President Robert Mugabe’s government ordered a 50 percent cut in the prices of basic commodities. Defiance of the order was seen as a move to topple Mugabe and businesses have been raided and threatened with closure on Monday 2 July.

Two weeks down the road indeed, Zimbabweans want to topple the government after mildly but seriously resisting the Governments move. Many of their shops have been raided by government forces, looted and if lucky closed down.

Manufacturers hardly have outlets to sell their goods and production reducing vastly, a reason for the empty shelves because of a limited supply and a reluctant mood by the shop owners to stock their shops foreseeing economic fatalities.

The climate Zimbabwe is seated on now does not support anyone apart from Government addicts.

Literally courts are supposed to be independent from the state and that is history in the troubled Southern Africa country as courts now openly show sides.

On July 10, a renown Zimbabwe magistrate in Bulawayo openly warned “companies that the courts would impose jail terms for offenders and profiteers who could easily afford fines” while clearing the air on controversial slashing of prices.

Zimbabwean citizens do not have a cave to hide. While courts are supposed to instill justice, fairness and opportunities amongst residence of a given country, Zimbabwe courts now have their side well marked.

Robert Mugabe has gone ahead to accuse industry owners of trying to undermine his leadership boldly referring them to “snakes” who want to tarnish his name a head of next year’s election in which his party ZANU-F to stand cleared him threatening to nationalize businesses, which refuse to comply.

When Mugabe speaks loud, his juniors speak even louder. Robert Mugabe`s Co-Vice-President Joseph Msika never stops barking. “Their (business and industry) actions call for retaliation. We will uproot this rot within us, and if they don’t agree they should close shops, or we will do it for them and take over their businesses,” Msika told irinnews.

By July 10, private slaughterhouses in Bulawayo and Harare were taken over by the government after continuously defying orders to slashing prices of beef.

Announcing the cancellation of licences July10, Industry Minister Obert Mpofu said the government controlled Cold Storage Company (CSC), was the only abattoir granted sole responsibility to slaughter livestock in Zimbabwe.

The one man who has faced all the oppression, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai hardly has words for the ever-improving dictatorship in Zimbabwe.

“When your prices are going up 10 times in one month, as happened in June; when basics are no longer on the shelves because of the Government trying to force prices by half so that business people can no longer make any profit; in a situation like that, people can no longer live, and even his own soldiers can’t live, his own police… can no longer live,” Morgan told ABC.

As the policy stands today, more than 1 500 businesses have been charged and fined over the previous two and half weeks for defying orders to slash prices in half or for hoarding goods.

Inflation in Zimbabwe is pegged at nearly 5000 percent, the highest in the world outside a war zone, and is expected top raise to 10 000 by year’s end. Shops are headed for more crises with an average Zimbabwean set to hold all the burdens.

With the already inflated currency, it’s a misfortune that they can no longer carry these bags of cash to buy necessities for themselves.

Robert Mugabe will continue eating the best foods, he will continue having sleep full nights, Robert Mugabe will not be pinched by his own policies, and the average Zimbabweans are headed for starvation because Zimbabwean shops are deserted.

Robert Mugabe Witch-hunts exiled Journalists!!

“Witch-hunt on for journalists writing for online papers”, ran a head line in the Zimbabwe Times. Those who thought they had a better catch of Robert Mugabe’s throat from the Diaspora should think in terms of their safety now.

News running across Zimbabwe curtails how Robert Mugabe’s government has embarked on hunting journalist streaming news online for the local media.

Zimbabwe is dominated by state media with hardly any privately owned houses existent in a country where outside its borders, only negativity is reported. The mandate as a result to report the good side locally is undebated.

Local journalists regarded to be patriotic are eating big. Its reported that “some of them have been paid $5million as a deposit , with promises of “huge amounts” in return for furnishing the CIO with “tangible information” leading to possible arrest of those secretly working as foreign correspondents under false names or under false accreditation.” According to the Zimbabwean Times.

That said, no body is safe in Zimbabwe. Working for a government institution anywhere in the world automatically rids the aspect of objectivity in subsequent reports. The Zimbabwe brand is not far from these. In fact they are the most affected worldwide.

The government is facing stiff opposition from abroad and taking criticism internally of any kind is no where near acceptance. Most Journalists as a result have fled the troubled country deciding to fight the battle from abroad.

As it stands today, Zimbabwe stands at the summit of the most fled country by journalists totaling to a region of 90 journalists. Ethiopia, Eritrea, Colombia and Uzbekistan follow them respectively.

The Zimbabwe Times as of 28th June; “In Zimbabwe, The CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) estimates that about 90 journalists have fled from Zimbabwe, fearing imprisonment or persecution by the government of president Mugabe, which has launched a deliberate campaign to silence the independent media.”

Prominent of the country’s elite journalist who have found their way out of Mugabe’s threats are Geoffrey Nyarota, the founding editor of The Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only daily newspaper. He Nyarota is the managing editor of The Zimbabwe Times, an online publication.

Others now living in exile include Conrad Nyamutata, deputy editor of The Zimbabwe Times, Mduduzi Mathuthu, editor of New Zimbabwe.com, Wilf Mbanga, editor of The Zimbabwean, a weekly newspaper, which is published in London. Also living in exile and active in journalism are Sandra Nyaira, editor of Zimbabwejournalists.com, and Makusha Mugabe who publishes Changezimbabwe.com, both of them online publications.

“More that 50 journalists have been beaten up, threatened and detained by the police while executing their duties. Journalists are forced to exercise self-censorship in order to survive” flows The Zimbabwe Times.

Journalists are the only avenue through which Zimbabwe can be looked at with the Cinderella mirror. The New York Times tells Bush’s side; The Guardian tells Blair’s side and so the likes of Zimbabwe Times, The Zimbabwe Daily zimlounge.com should tell the good side of Mugabe and his government.

Journalist like any other threatened Zimbabweans who fled to exile to better point out their fingers on Mugabe are now threatened as well.

This may look to be an impossible and rather ambitious plan by Mugabe, however with good intelligence; Zimbabwean Journalists are going to face a continuing life suspicion.

Robert Mugabe is ready to do anything, spend any amount of money, hire the best detectives as long as opposition strongholds are brought down to the ground and possibly to the grave.

He has managed to answer the most respected world leaders, and not just answering but harshly as well; Bush and Blair so to say and so minor attacks from journalist is the last thing Mugabe will accept to undermine his already threatened and ailing government.

Mugabe has likened the two to what just about anything bad one could ever imagine, at least politically. He at one point let loose at George W. Bush and Tony Blair, likening them to Hitler and Mussolini when in Italy.

Several times, the two have not escaped the wrath of being referred to “hang themselves” by Mugabe.

While Journalists have always had the second chance of voicing their throats out through the blessings of internet, the question remains pending if Mugabe successfully splashes money to spy on the most prominent.

It may cost a lot but Mugabe is as rich as his words. He controls every penny in Zimbabwe and so to prove a point to George Bush and now Gordon Brown, am optimistic Robert can do impossibilities.

Zimbabweans in exile at least have heard a voice for some time and this comes as bitter news and worrying times yet again. Could this tactic come to pass? Mugabe knows how to play a game he started from postcolonial Zimbabwe and so with Robert, “you never know.”

Lets get Africa right!

Africans.

  It’s probably the most complicated race. Yes and I mean the most complicated. 

From the time the clock ever started ticking, the African race has been at the wrong side of history, wrong side of the globe, wrong side of thought, wrong side of the media, wrong side of the weather, wrong side of literacy, wrong side of wealth, wrong side of almost everything and may be at the wrong side of colour, at least according to certain selected humans.

  Historically
Africa has not faired even fairly. No one seems to be discovering anything objectively relevant to Africans. 

Scholarly material has been at the dark side of a bright continent, some have maliciously described as “Dark”. What is dark in this continent?

  Lots of books dating plus half a century have been focusing on the pessimistic side of
Africa. Darfur, Sierra Leone, Northern Uganda, South Africa, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, Niger, Congo Brazzaville, Dr Congo, Angola, are just a sip into a vast area scholars have found their foot. 

Getting hold of a book with lines beaming on the noble gear
Africa has is hardly a get and when luckily you run a cross one, it’s a pleasure to read.

  The question then is; how long do these so called “African experts” stayed in this continent before writing all kinds of rubbish? Can one gather sufficient data by just watching BBC, Talking to friends or even coming down here for a two or three week holiday and get what is relevant enough to put in writing? 

Even those who have spent quite some time in
Africa cannot wholly justify their writings to be explicitly African. Millions are then reaped in exhibition shows. Some have gone to win Pulitzers, but what fraction of that money ever comes back to the people where the story was fished out since they claim to have been touched?

  May we be at the wrong side of the globe as well? Whoever ever asks me that question would be headed for guillotine could I have ever fitted in Amin’s shoes? 

Where in the world do you have weather so impartial that you do not need to buy extra words to mention Autum or spring?

  Very hot, hot, mild, cold, not madly cold completes the
Africa weather.

Do we need to hide indoors just because of what I hear is called winter? No! It rains with absolute care for its inhabitants, flashing a rainbow whenever necessary.

  And by the way, do dry seasons exist?  If yes, so what? We need the dry season as much as the rainy season. During the rainy season, we are cultivating. In the dry season which we even request for, harvest is the dominant word. 

In the region I hail from for example, the rainy season are normally for cultivating Cassava, Sweet Potatoes, Millet Sorghum and Groundnuts being the dominant. This leaves the dry season being waited for where millet and sorghum will be cut; cassava and potatoes dug.

  Harvesting these crops almost take the entire dry season. 

One famous scholar not worth a mention in this precious site once said “Africans are grown up boys”. He simply meant; even when they grow to manhood, marry and have beautiful children, they only just remained as grown up boys who cannot constructively posses independent and meaningful thought.

  For that reason, they were enslaved so badly!   

But I want us to think through this critically. Are we that dormant? Do we ever grow? For that reason, do we command a place in the history books?

  Look; if there is a continent where wise thought is the language, then
Africa is second to none. 

In my holidays, the village is where I pocket myself. I don’t just descend there to eat Kwon (i.e. its bread in simple terms. It comes out from mingled Sorghum mixed with cassava .Final colour is brown Aaahhhmmmm!! Tasty!), but to get wise thoughts.

  My grandfather like many other grayed haired men across the globe speaks in the same style. Watch the Nigerian Movies so perilously and try understanding what the “Chiefs” say. You won’t get surprised. 

“The dying of an old man is like the burning of a library”,

“Let them talk, grass is my witness”,

“A goat around your grass thatched house is worth a foot”,

“Help a man once, twice, thrice but for a forth, take over his wife”.

“Buying an alarm clock is a drain in the granary, defiling cocks as well”…….

  These are old men who didn’t’ have a chance to look at the white mans material. If it was all about getting books written to prove an academic point, then book awards would be meaningless for certain races. 

Then poverty shows up. Probably every African in the Western feeling is tagged with a third name; ‘Poverty’. But are we really poor? Or we were and still being forcefully dragged into poverty?

  The African continent has been exploited from the time history was not in place up to this second but riches still keep flowing. Ivory in West Africa, Gold and diamond in the Congo, Oil in Nigeria, Tin, copper, Fish, Timber, money, labour, water, animals, beautiful ladies, and anything that goes for as low as the price of Ug. 50/= or 1$ US cent. 

We still are being exploited. Why is
Nigeria in a kidnap spree? A giant in oil production, all the oil plants are either American owned or any where not less than Western. I guess you know what comes with that.

  All the money is forked out of
Nigeria with taxes the only meaningful pretence. Which taxes quickly find refuge in corrupt typical Nigerian politicians. At the end of the day, a
Lagos villager has not come closer to benefiting. His complaints only end up dust bins. 

Sudan is divided and will be divided as long as Oil keeps flowing.
Libya because of its oil status has not been a favorite to the Western world. DR Congo, “A precious stone” is a mineral war zone. Scramble for the partition of minerals is what is on the ground. Even if Congolese forge peace, artificially made rebels will be curved out some where in the vast country not just in size but in minerals.’ The bed of minerals some call it’. 

  The media has been the rude cooks as far as African matters are concerned. There is a news room saying that goes “when it bleeds, it sells”.
Africa is bleeding. So badly bleeding. Certainly if there is anyone happier because of the current turmoil in the continent, then the media counts first. 

Even where the “big story” is a good reflection of the continent, some how some where, the media will look for the negative side of things. A feeling keeps emerging out there that ‘good things’ happen in
Africa by mistake.

  War, immigrants, HIV/AIDS, malaria, poverty, corruption, deaths, etcetera .The world tends to forget that Africa and
East Africa to be specific could be the origin of man. If you are even more religious, Jesus in his days spent sometime in Africa,
Africa is certainly the home of birds and animals. Unrivaled natural beaches, a tradition as old as man, a unique continent with the highest language dialects … 

Let me lastly fry the issue of religion. This is the most interesting side. The white man brought religion. Ooh! How kind they were. Love and forgiveness Is the principle religion lies. “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” the Bible says.

 

If the white man had put much emphasis here, then African probably could not be what the world sees it today. The authors of this method look to have abandoned it for the opposite of what it’s supposed to propagate. From love to hate, forgiveness to unforgiv ness.

  No wonder African scholars have always claimed: ‘a white man came with a Bible on one hand and a gun on the other’. 

It’s no longer a surprise that some of the countries where religion owes its origin treat Africans like Gods’ only creation mistake. Racist chants are like a cup of daily evening coffee. Do you think
Israel is convivial for an African? How about
Palestine, Egypt…If Israel cannot be hospitable for an African, what can you now say of free style Americans?

  Call us selfish, arrogant, illiterate, boys, children, monkies, baboons, and whatever fits your mouth. Africans are a special race. Whites who have had a life stretching to decades know just how
Africa is a destination. 

We are poor in some people’s lips, uninformed in some scholars’ material, but the fact is,
Africa has a good face. Much bigger than the little people assume to see.  

  The world has got to get their basics right before giving
Africa wrong claims. People have got to stop watching scenes on TV and listening to radio and giving conclusions. Some Heads of State claim to know
Africa more than the inhabitants themselves. Making a trip or two or none at all is absolute rubbish to give final words on
Africa. 

Certainly without a giggle of a doubt, we have Malaria but with glimmering beaches as well. Poverty with towering skyscrapers in our cities. Illiteracy with literates as well. Traditional gods with the Western God as well……..

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