sick or life: August 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Africa is rising: "Kiswahili becomes Kenya's official language" (dap @ Jacky)

Language map of Kenya

Asante sana (many thanks) to my good friend and favorite Luo, Jacky, for this article about Kenya's new constitution and the adoption of Kiswahili as the official language of that nation. Sister Jacky reports that there is a "lot of euphoria about the new constitution."

So why does Kiswahili matter?

Kiswahili matters for several reasons. The founding fathers of African liberation touted Kiswahili as the pan-African language of communication and a symbol of pan-African pride. Kiswahili was originally a translocal trade language on the Swahili coast of East Africa. Because it was spoken in several countries and could not be traced to a single ethnic group, so the assumption went, Kiswahili would more likely be embraced by African people throughout the continent. This was a big idea that never caught on because the Founding Fathers were more concerned with protecting their sovereignty and consolidating political power than promoting pan-African ideas that might diminish their individual authority.

There are now over 100 million speakers scattered across East (and to a lesser degree Central and Southern) Africa, but there is little support for the initiative. However, the dream was revived recently when the outgoing president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, delivered his farewell speech to the African Union (AU) in Kiswahili. Kiswahili also has "official working language" status in the African Union.

Beyond East Africa

Kiswahili is taught at the University of Ghana (or at least this was true the last time I checked a few years back). And across the Atlantic, African Americans were introduced to Kiswahili in the late 60s by way of Kwanzaa, an African American celebration of African cultural roots developed by Maulana Karenga and other cultural nationalists. Afrocentric African Americans have adopted the Kiswahili word Maafa (translated as "great suffering") to describe the Afrikan Holocaust of enslavement.

Is Kiswahili an Arabic language?

A major misconception about Kiswahili is that it is an Arabic language. This is incorrect. Kiswahili is an African (Bantu) language with a rich lexicon of Arabic loan words. Languages are classified by their structure (e.g. syntax or rules of word order and morphology which includes how a single word is modified to convey different meanings. For example, adding "s" to indicate plurality in English) and only secondarily by their vocabulary. Structurally, Kiswahili is 100% African (Bantu).

The African Renaissance

I am predicting that this will be Africa's century. The recent events in Kenya will be one of many new developments coming out of Africa. GI

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Kiswahili becomes Kenya's official language

By Wahome Thuku

Kiswahili is now an official language, meaning you can demand to be addressed in it in any office. With the promulgation of the new Constitution, Kiswahili has become one of the two official languages in Kenya. Section 7 of the new Constitution declares Kiswahili and English as Lugha Rasmi (official languages) in Kenya. And under Section 7 (1), Kiswahili retains its previous status as Kenya’s national language. For this language, the journey to its new status has been long and grueling.

Kiswahili had to overcome all odds in the 1960s and 70s even to be accepted as the national language. On July 25, 1969, then Attorney General Charles Njonjo strongly objected to the introduction of Kiswahili as an official language. Then Embu East MP Kamwithi Munyi had tabled the Motion to have Kiswahili declared the official language in Government offices and in the National Assembly.

But according to Mr Njonjo, only 40 per cent of Kenyans then could competently speak in Kiswahili and a lot of work would have to be done to encourage the other 60 per cent to accept the language. Njonjo argued Kiswahili was an Arabic language [this is false. Kiswahili is an African language. see my explanation above. GI] and if all foreign languages were to be done away with then it should be among them. "Nearly every MP has his own way of speaking Swahili and to use it here would make the House like the Tower of Babel where nobody would understand whatever the other said," Njonjo told Parliament. And he could not comprehend how laws would be made in Kiswahili.

On July 4, 1974 President Jomo Kenyatta declared Kiswahili a Parliamentary language, the following day, Parliament was treated to drama as MPs attempted to make contributions in the language. It was even news when Kenyatta addressed Parliament in Kiswahili. Cabinet minister Robert Matano, himself a Swahili speaker, was among those who pushed hard for its recognition.

Read more @ The Standard | Online Edition

tags: kenya, Languages of Africa, african renaissance

Sunday, August 29, 2010

At home

Tomorrow we're going to try and get California state IDs so we don't need to carry our passports around anymore. This will probably take all morning and possibly a large part of the afternoon, as there'll be endless lines and things don't tend to go fast at government offices. We also have some other errands to run and we're planning on having dinner somewhere in Japantown. That's why we stayed home today so that Yasu could get a lot of studying done before his classes start again on Tuesday.

He also played around on his new iPhone and I finally got my sewing stuff out and actually did some sewing, I'm still working on a custom order of horses for a very patient customer. I've missed it!

Archbishop Sarpong: Innovator of the Africanization of Catholicism or cultural imperialist?

Archbishop Peter Kwasi Sarpong cultural innovator or cultural imperialist?

Beginning around 1970, Ghanaian Archbishop Peter Kwasi Sarpong, drawing upon his extensive insider knowledge of Asante customs and Catholic religiosity and his training as a cultural anthropologist, embarked upon a flexible interpretation of Catholicism filtered through the lens of the Asante worldview. Libation rituals, for example, were conceptualized as cultural and not religious, modified by excising the "minor or lesser" deities, calling on the Supreme God and venerating (but not worshipping), the Ancestors and equating them with the Catholic Saints.

Other local cultural elements incorporated into Asante Catholicism include festivals (e.g., adae, a celebration held in honor kings who have become Ancestors); symbols of royal authority (e.g., asipim, ceremonial chair of the ɔhene or “king”); kingly honorifics (e.g., Otomfo, “mighty” or “powerful”); adinkra symbols (e.g., nkabom, “unity” and gye nyame, “except God”—denotes the superiority of God). [1]

Although some local Christians and traditionalists objected to the “mixing” of Catholicism and indigenous practices, Archbishop Sarpong’s efforts have been, by most accounts, an unqualified success. To date, there several million Catholics in Ghana. Sarpong is widely credited with fostering the growth of the Catholic faith in the Asante region and enhancing the profile of Catholicism on the national scene.

But one could also view Sarpong’s “indigenization” as a more subtle form of cultural imperialism. Christianity is rendered timelessly and fundamentally true. Whilst beliefs and practices of Asante traditionalists are folded into Christianity and reduced to non-essential variations on a Christological scheme.

So what are your thoughts? Are Archbishop Sarpong's interventions an example of the "Africanization" of Catholicism or are they yet another variation of western cultural imperialism that undermines African Traditional Religion?

[1] Asante Catholicism: Religious and Cultural Reproduction among the Akan of Ghana (1996) By Pashington Obeng.

© 2010 kwame zulu shabazz

Photo credit: [Enoch stories for graphic]

In the video below, Archbishop Sarpong explains that pouring libations to one's Ancestors is not anti-Christian. He compares African veneration of Ancestors with the prominence of Saints in Catholicism (if viewing from Facebook, click here.)

Archbishop Peter Sarpong, "Ancestors, saints and idolatry." Excerpt from "African Christianity Rising: Stories from Ghana" from james ault on Vimeo.
tags: Christianity, Ghana, African traditional religion, Akan, Ashanti, Asante

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Anchor Light Green

Color/light green (near celeste)
Headset/Hatta Swan Super Deluxe
BB/Hatta R9400
Seat tube/53cm c-t
Top tube/53.5cm c-c
Rear/110mm
Seatpost diameter/27.2
Standover/78.5cm
Model Year/2008
Condition/This NJS approved Keirin track frame has a few chipped paint spots but is otherwise in near mint condition overall.
Price/980usd

Ok, the white guys now say its cool to believe in parallel worlds...

Judge Forman (r) awards Albert Einstein his ce...

Image via Wikipedia

I can't recall who I pinched this from, but it is a fascinating discussion of parallel universes. Apparently, string theory (whatever that was) has gone out of vogue and the latest physicist fashion is "membrane theory" or sumthin' like that. Another thing that jumps out at you is that physics is far less objective than you might imagine. As one (admittedly bitter) commentator notes, the field is driven as much be fads and personalities as it is by objective facts...

In my parallel world I think I am a ghetto physicist. I recall, when I was a student at Compton Community College, being mesmerized by an old dusty copy of a book on Albert Einstein's effort to develop a universal field theory--which is pretty much what the string and membranes folks are pursuing. I can also recall making up my own theorems in junior high school geometry. But public schools in the ghetto have a way of diminishing the potential of their black wards generally and black boys specifically. But black folks and science is another blog for another day...

Oh, and by the way, none of this parallel world talk is really new to us Afrikans who believe in the power of our Ancestors to intervene in earthly matters. Axé (Brazilian Yoruba for "African spiritual power")!

If viewing from Facebook, click here.

tags: Albert Einstein, ancestors, science, the anthropology of science

How To Install kasahorow African language fonts for Mac OSX and PC/Windows

Image via WikipediaLast night I was FINALLY able to download African language keyboards to my Mac! (dap @ Mighty African). I am now motivated to study Akan (Twi) more regularly. I am also hoping to pick up a some Hausa and Ewe. Below is an instructional video for installing the keyboards to Macs and PCs/Windows.

NB: When you click on the link at step 2 on the video, you will both Mac and PC options. The instructions are not difficult and I am not very knowledgeable about computer stuff. At some point the instructions say you have to close and reopen something (I forget what). This was confusing to me. You will get the prompt to close the thingy, which I did. But I didn't see how to "reopen," so I just bypassed that step and it worked out fine. Once you have checked off the langages, look at the up right hand corner of your screen, click on the flag symbol to toggle back and forth between the languages you have selected. You may select "show keyboard viewer" to learn the keys for the characters you need to type. For example, if you toggle to the Akan keyboard, the letter "x"is converted to the letter "ɔ." GI

(if reading from Facebook notes, click here.)

How To Install kasahorow Keyboard for Mac OSX

View more presentations from kasahorow.

If video is disabled, you can view the instructions @ kasahorow Keyboards

Somali man pleads guilty in Virginia to attack on U.S. vessel - CNN.com

Friday, August 27, 2010

"Shooting Cans: The Racist Assault on the 14th Amendment " by Kevin Alexander Gray

One in a series of posters attacking Radical R...

Image via Wikipedia"The Reconstruction-era amendment, finally adopted as part of the Constitution in 1868, ensured that former enslaved Africans and their children were U.S. citizens. Together with the 13th Amendment, which bans slavery, and the 15th, which prohibits the government from denying any citizen the right to vote on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude, the 14th Amendment is fundamental to the whole country's long walk toward human rights and equality under the law."

Kevin Alexander Gray

One of the many racist jokes I heard in the 70s during my time in the military starts with two white soldiers on the rifle range. One soldier asks the other how he learned to shoot so well. “I like shooting cans right off the fence," the other soldier says, "Af-ri-cans, Por-to-ri-cans and Mex-i-cans.”

The joke came to mind when I heard Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina saying, “birthright citizenship is a mistake,” followed by his GOP cohorts’ claim that immigrants have “anchor babies” as a way to tie themselves to the benefits of U.S. citizenship. Graham says he’s considering introducing a bill to rescind Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which generally guarantees U.S. citizenship to those who are born within U.S. borders.

That is not all it does. The section reads:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Also called the "due process" clause or the "equal protection" clause, this part of the 14th Amendment is the very foundation of U.S. civil rights law. The new nullifiers who talk of getting rid of it thus signal the nature of their purpose and the intrinsic unity of those they hold in contempt, like so many cans on the fence.

"Anchor babies" makes for better headlines, and it's diverting. “People come here to have babies,” says Graham. “They come here to drop a child. It's called, 'drop and leave.' To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child's automatically an American citizen. That shouldn't be the case.”

“Drop a child.” It’s as if he were talking about animals.

Graham is not up for re-election, but his child-dropping potshot is designed to appease a right wing that is angry because he's “too liberal,” he’s “no Jim DeMint,” saddled up with the Tea Party and the likes of Ollie North and Tom Tancredo. A Greenville County Republican committee even voted to bar Graham from future meetings and events, censuring him “for his cooperation and support of President Obama and the Democratic Party’s liberal agenda.”

So Graham, once a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, has taken to sounding a lot like South Carolina Republican Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, who while running for Governor in a losing bid, said about the poor:

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

Graham's tack to the farther right concisely illustrates the recent trajectory of politics in South Carolina. Not so long ago, when Fritz Hollings was Senator, there was an unspoken deal that a state delegation of one liberal and one conservative represented. It still left the poor and black mostly behind, but the balance it struck indicated an accommodation to competing views, at least within the pinched terms of mainstream politics. Once Hollings was replaced by Jim DeMint that deal was off. But the forces DeMint represents are not content with a conservative Republican monopoly on the Senate delegation, so ordinary conservatism becomes the new "liberal" and Graham is on the run.

And what better place to run than into the warm ooze of race politics, where South Carolina has led the nation for more than 200 years? As point man for the Senate assault on the 14th Amendment, Graham is also cover for his friend and onetime “moderate” John McCain. McCain’s home state of Arizona is now ground zero in the immigration fight. He’s facing a tough re-election battle, so echoing the call for hearings on the “birth tourism” issue is the shot to fire. The farther right is happy to fall in line. Iowa Senator Charles Grassley said the amendment ought to be “reconsidered.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said, “I think we ought to take a look at it -- hold hearings, listen to the experts on it.” Jon Kyl of Arizona said that the only point of such “hearings” would be to consider the repeal of the provision: “The 14th Amendment [has been] interpreted to provide that if you are born in the United States, you are a citizen no matter what. So the question is, if both parents are here illegally, should there be a reward for their illegal behavior?”

Over in the House, Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio claimed that the nation's schools and hospitals are “being overrun” by illegal immigrants. Representative Gary Miller of California had the jump on all of them last year when he sponsored a bill that would limit birthright citizenship to children born in the U.S. with at least one parent who is a naturalized citizen, legal permanent resident or member of the U.S. military. Ninety-three House Republicans have co-sponsored that Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009. It would change the law by statute rather than by constitutional amendment, but nobody much noticed it until now.

There is a perverse benefit to all of this blatant nativism. It reminds us of our history, and ought to be a wake up to everyone among those groups lined up on the fence who may have forgotten the true nature of the system and mistakenly believed themselves to be Amer-i-cans.

Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and one of those co-sponsors of the Birthright Citizenship Act, argues that “When it [the 14th Amendment] was enacted in 1868, there were no illegal immigrants in the United States because there were no immigration laws until 1875. So drafters of the amendment could not have intended to benefit those in our country illegally.”

Smith is wrong, considering the status of enslaved Africans imported into the country after the 1807 ban against the overseas trade in human beings. Those Africans were brought to the U.S. illegally, so what would be the status of their progeny?

Therein begins the history lesson. On May 30, 1866, Senator Jacob Merritt Howard of Michigan, who drafted the citizenship part of the amendment, said, "This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States." The only exceptions were for children born to foreign diplomats and children born of alien enemies who were detained or imprisoned.

The Reconstruction-era amendment, finally adopted as part of the Constitution in 1868, ensured that former enslaved Africans and their children were U.S. citizens. Together with the 13th Amendment, which bans slavery, and the 15th, which prohibits the government from denying any citizen the right to vote on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude, the 14th Amendment is fundamental to the whole country's long walk toward human rights and equality under the law.

The citizenship clause came as a response to the prevailing legal sentiment in 1868 -- particularly in the South -- which specifically challenged the right of freed Africans to be citizens. The provision intentionally freed the new Americans from the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that people of African descent, particularly if they had ever been enslaved or descended from anyone who had been enslaved, were not entitled to the privileges of U.S. citizenship. The provision, along with other sections of the amendment, attempted to protect the new Americans from having to live under oppressive “black codes,” which restricted access to certain areas and which required African-Americans to carry passes or documentation of their status.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Ghetto Book Notes: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes by Maya Angelou

Ghetto Book Notes: All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes is a fascinating account of Maya Angelou's stay in Ghana during the Civil Rights era. She vividly describes life as an expatriate, including cultural clashes with Ghanaians, her son's transition to manhood, meeting Malcolm X (she had planned on joining Malcolm's new movement, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, prior to his assassination) the death of W.E.B. Du Bois, and a love affair. The event that was most memorable to me was her visit to the Volta region in eastern Ghana (I think it was the Volta region) where local Voltarians insisted that she is a descendant of a woman in their village who was abducted and sold into slavery. You can preview the book @ Google Books.
tags: Malcolm X, Organization of Afro-American Unity, Maya Angelou, w.e.b. du bois, Ghana

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Ats all a hassle.

egyptswildlife2.blogspot.com has moved to /http://egyptwildlife2.blogspot.com/
Hard to understand when I have in the past few days taken 500 pics off here I do not have picasa web
even though its a good programe but not for us bloggers, as it keeps every photo downloaded to the computer,
and stores them sometimes in triplicate, 1 photo from the camera is 4,500x 3250 , one cut for web is 1000x750, the n blogged another 1000x750. so one photo in picasa album becomes 6.500x4.750.

I had to cut and paste this one photo img_7461.jpg to show wats on the next post

,
this is what shows on photo upload on this account,, in a few months it will be back to normal and I can put 500 more photos on.

[failed] IMG_7461.JPG
You have exceeded your total photo upload quota.
How can I get more storage for my images?
Images and photos that are uploaded through Blogger get stored in your Picasa Web Albums, which are part of your Google Account. The number of images you can upload is therefore dependent on the amount of space you are using on Picasa Web Albums. To find out how much space you have available, please see these instructions.
Note: If you have recently upgraded your quota limit, you may have to login to your PWA account, in order for the new storage quota to be reflected on Blogger.

New posts for nile life

Yesterdays blog took almost 2 hours to set up, and today I have been told that I have exceeded my quota.on the nilelife2 blog. and they have give me a list of yearly prices for more space. 4 days ago I prepared this site for my going on travels. I moved almost 300 photos to the nilelife.blogspot to save any hassle while traveling.
anyway as it turns out todays blog is mainly writting and this will be the last post on here.the new posts are on http://www.nilelife.blogspot.com/ my original nilelife blogspot

You will also have to read this post on the nile life post. it apparently takes google 3 months. to off load the photos I have taken off?????????????? they are a law unto themselves no way of connecting to them ,
so what I say is play the game make a new Gmail address and make a new blog as I have in the past. 4 gmail addresses now, nilelife... 1..2....4.. all you need do is take out or add the no and put in 1, 2 or 4

sorry about this but I do hope you will cintinue to follow on the nilelife. blogspot I am off on my travels around Egypt for a few weeks and will be blogging every evening on what I see on my journey.
http://www.nilelife.blogspot.com/

Monday, August 23, 2010

Rastafarian pilgrims still searching for respect: Africa Review

Kwame Nkrumah and Haile Selassie

Just southeast of the celebrated hot springs resort of Wondo Genet in central Ethiopia lies the pint-sized town of Shashamane.

Located some 240 kilometres south of Addis Ababa, the town is on most days of the year a quiet, unassuming if unremarkable town. But around this time of the year, you meet a community of diehard worshippers identified by their overflowing dreads.

They are happily mingling with pilgrims who are in town from all over the world to pay annual homage to Emperor Haile Selassie I, who they believe is god incarnate.

Most of these followers, known as Rastafarians, are heavily bearded and sport a unique mash of green, red and yellow colours that complement their varied dress code. An old Ethiopian monarchy flag flutters randomly in this town of 120,000 inhabitants.

Across the road, images of Emperor Haile Selassie I and reggae king Bob Marley are mounted on the billboards, and variously painted on the walls and fences to announce the presence of the Rastafarians.

In a recent peak of a fluid arrival period, the town hosted some 400 dreadlocked adherents who had traveled from across the world for the yearly pilgrimage.

More than one million followers hold the creed that the former Ethiopian emperor is god messenger to black people in the world, sent to save them.The movement traces its history and origins to the 1930s Jamaica.

Read entire essay @ Africa Review - Rastafaris

tags: ethiopia, religion, Haile Selassie
image source: ethiopian review

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Hope out of Tragedy in Chicago: "Street fight survivor turns life around"

An-Janette Albert, mother of Derion Albert

Quoting from Final Call: Chicago - The brutal death of honors student Derion Albert shocked the world and embarrassed this city. Albert died in the vicious high school brawl caught on tape. But what happened to the survivors of the infamous street fight? For at least one young man, the fight was a turning point -- in the right direction. (If viewing from Facebook, click here).

tags: chicago, crime, nation of islam, redemption, violence, youth
source: Final Call

Thursday, August 19, 2010

The rat trap, is google a rat trap

Yesterdays blog took almost 2 hours to set up, and today I have been told that I have exceeded my quota.on the nilelife2 blog. and they have give me a list of yearly prices for more space. 4 days ago I prepared this site for my going on travels. I moved almost 300 photos to the nilelife.blogspot to save any hassle while traveling.
anyway as it turns out todays blog is mainly writting and this will be the last post on here.the new posts will behttp://www.nilelife.blogspot.com/ my original nilelife blogspot

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Angélique Kidjo Speaks (Nicholas Kristof-NYTimes)

Angélique Kidjo gets down with fan.Image by heartonastick via FlickrMost people don’t know that the pantheon of the “Vudun” Gods from Benin is as rich and complex as the Greeks’. Our rhythms spread throughout Brazil, Cuba and New Orleans during the period of the slave trade. I have been to Salvador de Bahia and Havana and heard people sing songs from my village, all kept alive for centuries by the African diaspora.

Angélique Kidjo

As a French colony, Dahomey provided lots of civil servants for much of the West African region. It used to be called the “Latin Quarter” of Africa because of its number of intellectuals and doctors. And so although I was already making a living as a teenager with my singing career, my parents insisted that I dedicate myself to school because we lived in such a great educational and cultural environment. By the 10th grade, I was already studying philosophy, and debating the merits of Rousseau and Camus with my friends.

One could expect that independence would be an easy path for my country. But Dahomey was plagued with the same problems that affected other African countries. Colonists had drawn the borders of these countries without any ethnic or historical consideration. Different traditional nations were forced to coexist and the French rulers always favored a particular group – in Dahomey’s case, the people from its Southern region – to help them govern the country. I was from the South, and, though my family was not rich, we were privileged.

When the many political intrigues made the country unstable, a military group came from the North and took power in 1972, hoping that wealth would be redistributed equally. This group also thought that eradicating Western culture and influence would be a solution to all of our problems. Marxism-Leninism was officially adopted by the state. Before I could speak with anyone I saw on the street, I had to salute them with “Ready for Revolution, the fight goes on!” Everyone stood behind the revolution when the famous French mercenary Bob Denard, following orders given to him by the French secret service, tried in vain to invade Benin.

But the revolution cut off the country from the rest of the world and almost destroyed its educational system. As a singer, the only thing I could do was to praise the revolution and sing at political gatherings. I felt I could no longer express myself and one day in 1983, without telling anyone, I escaped the country. I realized on that day that the dream of a proud independent Africa had been broken.

Since that day, even though I’ve lived and worked in exile, I’ve drawn almost all of my inspiration from the incredible richness of my culture. Most people don’t know that the pantheon of the “Vudun” Gods from Benin is as rich and complex as the Greeks’. Our rhythms spread throughout Brazil, Cuba and New Orleans during the period of the slave trade. I have been to Salvador de Bahia and Havana and heard people sing songs from my village, all kept alive for centuries by the African diaspora.

Read entire essay @ Daughter of Independence - NYTimes.com

Africa at 50: An Overview | The Zeleza Post

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki (C), Eritrean Minister for Agriculture Arefaine Berhe (R), Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (2nd R), Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh (2nd L) and Sudan's

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir cut a cake to commemorate the 20th anniversary of

the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Kenyan capital Nairobi

March 20, 2006. REUTERS

By Paul Zeleza

1960 is often called the year of African independence because of the unprecedented number of countries--seventeen--that achieved their independence. It might more appropriately be termed the year of West and Central African independence as these countries were mostly from the two regions (except for Madagascar and Somalia). They were also predominantly former French colonies (save for Nigeria and Somalia). In the annals of African decolonization, these countries won independence largely through peaceful struggle, unlike much of Southern Africa and countries like Kenya, and Algeria where protracted armed struggles were waged.

Evaluating the last fifty years for such a large and diverse continent is not easy. The task is perhaps best approached from the vantage point of the goals of African nationalism, the expectations of uhuru. Clearly, African nationalist movements were quite complex and diverse in their development, organization, strategies, and ideologies. Nevertheless, it can be argued that, collectively, they sought to achieve five historic and humanistic objectives: decolonization, nation-building, development, democracy, and regional integration.

Decolonization was one of the great historical events of the twentieth century and a remarkable achievement for African peoples. Over the next 34 years, the winds of independence blew across the rest of the continent culminating in the demise of apartheid in South Africa in 1994. The road to independence took much longer than this; it started in 1922 when Egypt got limited self-government, and gathered momentum from 1951 with Libya's independence, followed in 1956 by Sudan, Tunisia, and Morocco, and in 1957 Ghana.

But decolonization did not often translate into self-determination as the former colonial powers continued to exert strong influence over their former colonies. This was especially the case in the former French colonies, which remained firmly tied to French economic, political, and military institutions, interests and interventions. In addition, the newly independent states became pawns in superpower Cold War rivalries, which often turned into deadly proxy wars in the Third World. The end of the Cold War, emergence of new global powers such as China (which is now the world's second largest economy after having overtaken Japan), and transformations within the continent itself seem to offer new opportunities for fulfilling the dreams of decolonization.

The record of performance on the other four agendas of African nationalism is extremely complex and uneven across postcolonial periods, countries and regions, social classes, economic sectors, genders and age groups, which fit neither into the unrelenting gloom of the Afropessimists or the unyielding hopes of the Afroptimists.

Read entire essay @The Zeleza Post

tags: post-colonial

Duck for Dinner

Yesterday I had a duck nothing special just a duck; I cooked it in the oven and glazed it with honey, did not fancy anything with it, I mean cooking. so I just prepared a salad, tomato cucumber and finely chopped onion, And ate it as I cleaned the kitchen. and I mean cleaned the kitchen everything off the shelves and in the cupboards had a clean . what they might call a thorough going over. I went to bed at 2.30 this morning and woke up at 10.30. went to make a cup of tea in my clean kitchen. and the whole kitchen had a layer of dust. silly ole me forgot to close the windows after the cooking of the duck.

where did all this dust come from? there was no wind for me to know of! then I started todays blog on yesterdays pictures. and decided I need to go out see if I can get some pics of the cats that are in abundance here especially around the meat stalls. just pop out I thought, 3 meat shops nearby; and back in a jiffy to finish the blog.
sods law: did I see a cat, well yes! just as I was in the last street heading back home after travelling all the way around the old market street. The just going out to get a photo of a cat turned out to be a 3 mile trek around Luxor's old market area, and suprise suprise lots of picks of everything but a cat.