Conflicts in Africa: any good news

On the …..i attended a seminar/session on the above mentioned topic organised by the UN reasearch and training agency, the panel consisted of various individuals such as Mrs Fraser-Moleketi – the minister of public service and administration in South Africa, Mrs Sydnes – head of Church Aid in Norway, Mr Edusei – Ambassador of Ghana to the US and Mr Mkandawire – a world acclaimed academic.
I must say…to my surprise, there were more europeans in the room than Africans, any way the points that I highlighted as they impressed me were that:

• For the 4th conservative year, in 2007 Africa’s real GDP growth rate exceeded 5% ….with growth becoming more broad based, of which; 25 countries achieved GDP growth rate of above 5% and 14 countries achieved GDP between 3% and 5%.


• When you talk to the people on the ground, the notion is about getting better….


• Most wars are over, but fear that lingers is that wars will come due to new themes of the world such as terrorism.


• Africa is in good track of most Millennium Development Goals


• Atleast leaders are not comparing medals on the chest but how fast economies are growing, and new definitions were given: Dictators – count civilians who can be put into military use and Democracies – leaders count people in the country and where they can be placed on the needs of country.


• Africa deals with diversity more than anyone i.e. we appear as one during the day and manage tribalism at night, but we do need a platform for diversity management to avoid the kenyan and now recently South African rapture.


• All African wants is fair and free trade and fair press

All this have been due to good policies in recent good time where better economic was managed, there were more competitive exchange rates, better institutions and governance and fewer conflicts – although we do acknowledge that there will always be conflicts as the continent is large with many different tribes and dialects.

Ps: I found diplomats to have no meeting etiquettes despite their job being to attending meetings. In us embracing communication/technology - I still find it offensive for one person to answer a phone in the middle of a session, its disrespectful to the speaker on the floor and/or presenter on the floor. I don’t know if it’s a subtle behavior amongst ‘this’ community or they are just not used to being told if something in inappropriate in a direct manner!

South African (S.A.) xenophobic attacks!

You might have realized the xenophobic attacks that had erupted in S.A. in recent weeks – which made headlines all over the world….they temporarily over-shadowed Zimbabwe’s elections, China’s Olympics and any other disasters around the world. I must say I was not impressed by my country and the violence did not improve our image at all. In Switzerland we are on all communication materials you can think of…from TV, newspapers and even tabloits (20minute is a tabloit!). South Africans need to think about what they are doing, imagine if I had to be chased around in Switzerland with fear that I will be burned to death…. I have had to be the undesignated spokesperson of SA lately with questions fuelling from Canada, Germany, Kenya, Brussels, and mostly Switzerland and I told them that ‘i hate the violence ...i think its plain stupidity of a violent uneducated and unknowledgeable minority’….why didn’t they just march and burn Home Affairs department if they had problems with immigrants and the government….what happened to Ubuntu (humanity)?

…I have been thinking about the whole saga and why it started, and it still comes back to one thing – economic refugees – mainly coming from Zimbabwe, here is the reason why; South Africa has always been a country of immigrants, the countless mines that brew diamonds, gold, platinum and all other metals we have in abundance were not just dug by South African men from the 1900…..they were dug by men from Lesotho, Swaziland, Angola, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Botswana, Zambia – there are even trains and buses from this countries coming directly into South Africa known to have transported mine workers mostly. With history you would know that most settled in especially around Johannesburg and made that home, that’s why joburg is an extremely mixed city….most children actually cannot speak one pure language because they grew up speaking all of them at once…you will find that a typical joburger in a conversation has switched to atleast 3 languages and is still understood perfectly by a recepient.
Listern to the song: Stimela by Hugh Masekela, you will understand what I am saying to you.

So with this in mind, something else must have been brewing behind to have come to this and to me economic refugees made sense… With our next door neigbour’s (Zimbabwe) drama ; with South Africa hosting 2010 soccer world cup and our president refusing to acknowledge there is a crisis in Zimbabwe plus opening our border gates as wide as possible without proper policies for refugees like intergration, status clearance, etc (…for an intellect, he is such an idiot sometimes) – Zimbabweans have found South Africa a safe heaven. Even before I left to come to Switzerland in most restaurants around joburg…most waiters and waitresses were Zimbabweans (…you can hear their proper British English with that unique accent) and I believe this has caused the chaos because there is very little resources in the country even for South Africans hence the high unemployment rate, then you have illegal immigrants treated as cheap labour by most businesses (…and what are the poor people supposed to do in Zimbabwe when there is nothing left to even put into their mouths) and this salad caused the unemployed to march and take out immigrants as they believe they (immigrants) are taking their jobs…..no employed right person who has a proper job can run around during the middle of day in pursuit of immigrants.

As I said; I do not believe in violence, we have come so far in the world to be able to find solutions for problems just by conversing (except for the US), things should never carry on like this…that is why politics are such a bore! And I hope S.A. is taking hold of the situation as competent people should, atleast a majority of South Africans marched to the government to condemn the attackes…. Check out - www.mg.co.za .

Obamatopia....comedy

Chill in Brussels and party in Amsterdam

I took Friday off as i was planning to spend a long weekend in Brussels with a friend and former colleague – Chituru. Since I missed the easyjet special, I had to take the train which took 6 hrs through north of France, Luxembourg and finally Brussels. When the train arrived at the central station….I was a bit surprised by the abundance of black people at the station – it felt like I was in Africa again. . . the train station did not look that ‘pretty’ though and trains were very old aswell . . . I guess having been in Switzerland for this long has spoiled me to a certain level as the stations are more organized and cleaner – owing to the fact that they never got bombed throughout history, the trains are not that old (not German magnificent either) and the fact that there are not that many foreigners in Switzerland as in other European countries due to restrictions has created a sort of bubble for me.

Went to a festival at about 17h00, a celebration of spring with all kinds of music….but listened to a lot of Arabic music through-out the day, quite a cultural experience and had a watermelon – which seems to be a delicacy this part of the world. Came back @ 00h20 or so, had water to dilute our alcohol intake and then continued to talk about world issues until 05h00….and the main issues were an African point of view about Zimbabwe & Mugabe, Democracy versus dictatorship and being a foreigner in Europe.After all those deep discussions, my head was dizzy so I went to lie down a while, awakened later on that Sunday morning to have breakfast @ 11h00, slept again to gain more rest during the late afternoon

At about 23h00, left Brussels for a club in Amsterdam and stayed until we were escorted out. Instead of going home at about 04h00 – headed for a bar 100 meters down the road and waited until sunrise…..then we headed back to Brussels 4 hours later. When we got to Brussels we went straight for my luggage, even though time was not on my side - had to wash the necessary parts though cause I was to have another 6hrs sitting down straight.

I feel I am still recovering from last weekend, but that is not happening as I am in the middle of a conference about new generations and demographics organized by the economic commission for Europe where in lay men’s terms they are talking about why Europe east and west are not making anymore babies and what should be done to assist the process of reproduction….another story for another day….right now I shall continue with my book Hannibal, pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham – on that note I learned on my train trip to Brussels that Carthage people are what we call Tunisians from a Tunisian who was sitting across me.

Dinner in France....24hrs later dinner in Sweden!

Sounds like a life of the rich and famous, right…but believe me even nomads can have their way…here is what I mean.
Team days (time when national office members of AIESEC in Switzerland get together outside of the office space) this time had been scheduled to be together in Sweden, and that meant that I had to apply for a schengen visa to travel outside of Switzerland, and since I work in Geneva; my immediate thought was applying at the French embassy in Geneva – but since I live in bern I ended up applying in Zurich instead, nevertheless I had my visa posted to me with no hassles.
I was told that my fist entry into any schengen state would have to be the country that issued me with the visa so that I do not experience problems while travelling to other states. On Monday 21.04.08 I made a trip to the nearest town in france from Geneva called Thoiry so that I can receive a stamp to prove to the authorities that I was there, I waited for the bus for about an hour i.e. from 18h59 and caught it at 20h11, The bus ride was pleasant and when we arrived I was the only person in the bus except the bus driver, he stopped for 10minutes in Thoiry – I had a little chat with him and we went for coffee and a burger at Mcdonalds, I found out that he is from Cape Verde and has been living in Avian for 14 years now – sounded like a nice, genuine person, but communication was hard as he mastered only French and Portugese and I only English 
When I got back to Geneva I realized that I had left my mobile phone in the bus, I called my phone and the driver answered, for 10 minutes I was trying to understand where I should meet him to collect it – we finally understood each other that I should meet him at 23h45 at the station, during this time I stepped into an internet café to get numbers of people I knew in Geneva to house me for the night as I was going to miss my last train back to Bern, I ended up chatting with Emily in Canada who contacted Regi in Switzerland who phoned someone in Geneva who then phoned Nicole to come pick me up at 00h30 when I got back to town – I was scared of having no accommodation for the night but things worked out thankfully. I woke up at 07h00 to catch an 8h45 train to Bern, on arrival I packed my clothes and headed for another train going to Basel – one hour away, where I caught Rynair which took 2hrs & 20min to arrive in Stockholm Skavstra airport.
Stockholm, a beautiful city surrounded by water, went out to discover the city with my new found friends from Sweden (Himanshu - Indian, Joao – Brazilian, Joanna - Swedish and Linn - Swedish). This was my first Scandinavian travel and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
…..Last day with the Swedes was spent with a national dish called köttbullar i.e. meat balls, boiled potatoes, and canburry sause/jam, the conversation last light – me and Himanshu kept on with our common wealth connection in trying to detect the commonness of our cultures until about 23h30.
Since our flight back to Basel was at 07h50, and getting to the airport took an hour and half, we had to wake up 02h45 for breakfast, catch a taxi at 03h20, then caught a bus and later at an odd hour of the morning we arrived at the Stockholm Skavstra airport.

….when I landed in Stockholm, the customs security check guy singled me out of a group of people passing-by and then asked me where am I coming from and what am I doing here; my response was ‘I just flew in from Switzerland,’ and he let me go, I wonder if I had mentioned I am originally from South Africa – would I have been stripped searched?
Then on my return again at customs, the security guy let my workmates pass and stopped me, demanded that I put all my belongings on a scanner – he even scanned my passport! I wish to understand what the criteria is for picking out people at the airport for inspection, how do you explain being singled out on a queue and being the only one to be humiliated by being double- checked while other people just simply pass-by . . . it must be disappointing for them not to find any drugs in my bag.

Kick Off 2008

Last week i was in fiesch (high on the Swiss beautiful mountains) engaged in a conference with about 300 people talking about world issues and our impact as individuals and communities. There were people from different parts of the world and it was really interesting, below is a clip of what happened.

Shoot the bastards!

...that is what the South African deputy safety and security minister said the police should do to criminals if they feel their lives threatened. The statement has received an enormous publicity attention from the media all over and attracted human rights activists and so on and so forth…
There is always an issue of human rights, the constitution, etc, one has to consider when it comes to such statements from a public representative but all of this issues are debatable under 2 perspectives for me i.e. from those who’ve experienced violent crime and those who have not!
When you have been pickpocket you last transport money at the age of 12 by 3 guys, had your laptop stolen from your bag at gun point in the middle of the night in a place thought to have been safe, had your house ‘broken-in’ that they even stole your room-mate’s underwear because she packet them in a fancy bag (they did not bother to look inside) in your absence then I suppose it would be automatic for one to support the deputy minister because one’s life has been threatened on many occasions!
But there are others who have not experienced such brutality and would advocate that giving license to shoot is not proper – we should look at the root of the problem and do ‘the right’ thing and not a ‘good’ thing and that is have a highly trained police force, get an efficient and effective justice system and get competent human capital to execute this tasks. hmmm…this reminds me of the argument: the right to life vs the limitation clause (every right is limited) – this discussion is very interesting and can get really heated when you talk about abortion – does life begin at conception? …anyway this is discussion for another day!
Personally because of my above experiences I choose the first option. Hypothetically – if someone jumps over my wall at odd hours of the morning then drags me at gun point, fastens & blind folds me to help themselves to my hard earned furniture and food that I continuously pay for and they just come and take (they invaded my right to privacy & psychologically scared me about safety in my own yard. I might forgive them but I won’t forget) but if someone jumps over my wall at odd hours of the morning, drags me and my family at gun point and rapes my kids then I will shoot the bastard and forget about who has rights in which circumstance.
…Yet again I don’t want the country to emulate the US where people have killing spree paranoia even in high schools by advocating that guns solve the issues but what is the short term solution that will benefit a long term solution of re-educating a criminal mind? Ohh and I don’t think offering a job is a short term solution – some criminals prefer not to work hard for their money.
….so if you look at this was the minister really wrong in saying what she said, I think she spoke from a parent’s perspective and let down her guard as a minister.