God Save the Queen

Of course I have something to say about the repugnant institutionalization of the suppression of the media by Uganda’s cabinet ministers led by the benevolent leader YKM.

 

Of course I have something to say about the shameless posturing of National Guidance and Information Minister, Kirunda Kivejinja, at a news conference in Kampala today who dared to compare the media in Uganda to the pre-genocide media in Rwanda.  According to him, things have spiraled out of control and tougher regulations are not only necessary, they are mandatory.

 

 

When Me Hates Me

Why do they hate us?

 

I am trying to wrap my mind around the complex and bizarre xenophobic attacks in South Africa perpetrated by a small, but scary section of the population .  The why, the why, the why … it just doesn’t add up.

 

I know we Africans are as different as the languages we speak and the cultures we represent, but I assumed that we were united by the brotherhood of a continent in upheaval and the spirit of ubuntu.

 

Now, I just don’t know.

 

When I first visited Johannesburg in 1999 as a young reporter covering the All Africa Games, the general dislike of Africans from outside South Africa was evident in some sections of the society.  I was told by several black South Africans about how Nigerians were the cause of the rising drug abuse in the country, how gangs of Zimbabweans – even before the economic crisis there – were behind gun crime, how Mozambicans were pests. However I did not witness any blatant acts of xenophobia. 

 

Or maybe I did.  Maybe the seeds of the past 10 days of violence were sown more than a decade ago.

 

I don’t know.