Africa: Slowly moving from the Unthinkable to Policy

Organisations for inclusivity

Four years ago, today, I met up with my colleagues in a bar in London, we were preparing for a march that our company was the headline sponsor of. We were going to be in the front of the parade with a decorated double-decker bus in tow. Barclays Bank has been the headline sponsor of the London Pride since 2014. [Barclays]

Today in my Barclays T-shirt

Now, Barclays did have a progressive diversity and inclusion policy with forums for the exchange of ideas and much else. The new CEO of the bank had a backstory, his younger brother revealed to him in the mid-80s that he was first gay and was also HIV positive.

A bombshell of information and realisation that forged compassion, empathy, and love, first between brothers and then for causes. The causes that have helped the research for and availability of antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. [Wikipedia: Peter Staley]

Governments for equality

This morning, I read that lawmakers in Gabon had voted to decriminalise homosexuality. 48 voted for, 24 voted against and 25 abstained. One of those who voted against decriminalisation said, “Forty-eight lawmakers have shaken an entire nation and its customs and traditions.” [Reuters: Gabon lawmakers vote to decriminalise homosexuality]

Whilst I understand the sentiment, for all the customs and traditions we hold dear, a sense of fairness and justice must prevail to the point that we are persuaded of the better of our humanity, accepting that people might be different without morally impugning them for who they are. The record shows that 48 were persuaded of the argument for decriminalisation, 24 were implacable and 25 sat on the fence.

What was also endearing was that it was the government that proposed the initiative. The Overton Window of policy and persuasion had moved the thinking about homosexuality to the right traversing the Unthinkable to the Radical to the Acceptable to the Sensible to the Popular and now to Policy. A lot of work must have gone into this initiative and I know we are still a long way from same-sex marriage, but this is a good start.

The Overton Window

Blog: Thought Picnic: In Support of Activism

Individuals for justice

Just over a year ago, it was the Botswana High Court that decriminalised same-sex relations, unanimously. It was Letsweletse Motshidiemang, a student at the University of Botswana that filed the suit and won through. Governments, organisations, individuals, and supporters are working on systems, structures, laws, and institutions to address the criminalisation of homosexuality in Africa. It is a human rights issue above all else. [France24: LGBT activists in ‘disbelief’ after Botswana strikes down laws criminalising homosexuality]

South Africa constitutionally affirms sexual orientation rights with same-sex marriage. A feature we hope to avail ourselves of at the earliest opportunity. As human beings, we are spiritual and emotional beings, we seek to live our lives free of persecution and prosecution, loving the people we choose to love without judgement or shame. There is no agenda at play, but freedom and justice without criminalisation on moral grounds is the battle on our hands, one at a time, change will come, and freedom will reign.

Official Scrabble loses to Collins Scramble Allwords

Games for a child

I think I have been playing Scrabble for about 32 years, my uncle has just returned from the UK and he brought us a few board games, Scrabble and Monopoly.

Thankfully, I lived in a home where my parents had a sense of fun, whilst my mother sometimes wanted me to revise my schoolwork, what I learnt in class was enough to get me a good examination result – I am glad they exhibited a keen interest in a lively childhood than many typical Nigerian parents afforded their children.

I do remember that my mother spent her salary raise given in the Udoji review on buying my first bicycle.

The Scrabble lifestyle

In any case, Scrabble became the social ice-breaker, you made friends through battles on the board, in school competitions you won prizes and even played for money.

I am sorry to say, it was not designed for the dyslexic, you had to be able to spell right and if you didn’t, you hoped that your opponent(s) were unaware and you took away the spoils with high scores.

Obscure words, smart placings, multiple words on premium squares and everyone wanted to take you on to serve you a whopping defeat only for you to triumph.

The rules are clear, some house rules too like – timed turns, tiles placed on board must form part of the word for that turn, reusable blanks – anything to give the game a bit of excitement.

The matured player always played within the extents of the dictionary used to adjudge the words spelt out on board, in many cases it was the Chambers’ Twentieth Century English dictionary until we got hold of the Original Scrabble Words where two-letter word plays might just have you storming off in a tirade of four-letter expletives with the confirmation of the four-letter word – lost – as your gift.

No rules for fools

Rules are there for a purpose, any game without rules is a riot, a barbarian’s orgy, a lascivious bounty of reckless abandon to which there can be no restraint.

The news today [1] should have arrived 5 days earlier on April the first when Mattel the copyright holder of Scrabble announced a rules change which was not tactical or functional but just a typical lapse to invite stupidity into the pretence of being erudite, to "introduce an element of popular culture into the game", they said with vacuous glee.

Proper nouns would be allowed – this would include names of places, people, companies or brands – whilst it is not a free for all since it would be restricted to a Collins dictionary word list; woe betide the place, person, company or brand who has not seen the business and competitive opportunity of being able to brag about being a new Scrabble word.

Brand your game

Honestly, that rule change creates another game that could better be distinguished as Scramble as the fashion victims with their trousers halfway down their legs jive with Burberry as chavs, drinking Courvoisier with their LV caps and Gucci teeth wearing a mix-and-match of Crocs on one foot and Jimmy Choo’s on the other – all legitimate words of Scramble.

Only Scramble can best describe this change as a sense of chaos, disorder, the lack of rules and a riot of meaningless jumbles of letter arrangements that would be comfortable in, well, the game Scramble.

To call this game Scrabble would be sacrilegious to the extreme, tantamount to having the players of a typical game of football carry the ball with hands into the net and being able to score in any net for your team – ditch the goalkeepers, they are useless.

Maybe chess might also consider a rule chance, pawns can move in any direction regardless of where they are on the board and the king does no have to bother about being in check.

There is a wisdom that followed the time-honoured rules of Scrabble, just as constutions do not get changed on a whim – those rules have stood the test of time.

Just imagine how cross I would be because my village Ijesha-Ijebu does not appear in Collins Scramble Allwords and Walsall where I was born does, the hyphen is immaterial was we flip the board in unsettled dispute and depart in disgust.

Your name is not in the book of …

There might be the case for discrimination for including certain names and not others because they are Anglophile but Sinophile, Arabic, Asian or African names receive no prominence in the new hegemony of games, gamesmanship and an incipient preponderance of inferiority over those not blessed to be counted amongst the chosen,

No book will be big enough to contain all legitimate names in the whole wide world just because some smart chap thought that was a market for idiots to play Scrabble rather than their consoles.

For once, I wish I were a lawyer; I would be at the forefront of a class action suit and sue the pants off Mattel for this inane insight of faddism that leaves a majority of the global community that is their market place out of the exclusive Collins Scramble Allwords – Oh! Deliver us from this travesty.

I will be back on the matter, I am not finished yet.

* Since Scramble seems to be taken, a synonym might well do like scamper, scuffle or scurry but NOT Scrabble.

Source

[1] BBC News - Proper nouns come into play in Scrabble rule change