Recently in Africa Category

I read this yesterday, and have been thinking about it today. Taxi drivers in Ghana invoke a river goddess, Antoa Nyama, to curse those who aggrieve them. This is like something Rudyard Kipling would have written about in the Hindu Kush 100 years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The author writes:

As an Asante growing up in traditional settings in Kumasi, the invocations of Antoa Nyama normally send tremor and awe. A person cursed with Antoa Nyama lives in perpetual apprehension, until he or she counters it with his or her version of the story to the deity. The belief is that, the river deity can strike you dead instantly or make life miserable for you.

Found in the interesting and depressing blog by a European journalist living in the Ivory Coast.

Whites in Rhodesia, the bread basket of southern Africa, owned the large, productive farms. That proved unpopular. Now the country is black-controlled and -dominated, renamed Zimbabwe, and the people are starving. Whites have been kicked off the land in many places and given to people who don't know how to grow carrots or manage a hamster cage. The Economist covers it.

Yet, sadly, black Africans dance in glee at whites being persecuted. It makes for good politics to take people's eyes off their own incompetence.

Don't forget Ian Smith, one of the greatest men I've ever met. He bitterly spoke at the Heritage Foundation in August 1990 of democracy's course in Africa: "One man, one vote, one time"; then the dictator sets up shop.