Coronavirus streets in Cape Town - LIV

Electric menace with stupid

There is nowhere in the world where the riding of e-scooters is not a menace. In fact, any electrically powered vehicle that shares a pedestrian walkway or a pavement and in this case the promenade has usually inconsiderate riders whizzing past oblivious of others with literally no control or direction.

I had to jump out of the way of one hurling down at speed and in 10 metres, he crashed and fell. Whilst he got up and dusted off himself that we onlookers did not have to ask if he was alright, there have been casualties and fatalities after such accidents. The only word that came to mind was stupid, and we all to an extent have a proclivity for stupidity when the circumstance presents.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu

This morning as we contemplated and vacillated about going to church, which we eventually did not do, as I had a rotten night and his own was hardly any better with insomnia, we learnt that Archbishop Desmond Tutu had passed on, at the age of 90.

So many things will be written about Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I would leave that to the eulogists. To me, he was an exemplary man of God, who understood that his calling and cause was greater than self to the service of humanity, challenging the entrenched, the absurd, the hidebound, the acceptable, the untenable, the reprehensible, the unnecessary, the prejudiced, the judgemental, and the bigoted to see a greater value to our common humanity rather than our diminished individuality in the church, in our communities, and in society.

He enters the pantheon of the exceedingly illustrious, in the class of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and Nelson Mandela. Our world was by all means blessed by his ministry and empathetic wisdom in his life and living in our time, that his passing, though a loss cannot expunge his footsteps in the eternal sands of time as a record of human history.

In the seat of his priesthood, his archbishopric, and in his heart, he gave Christianity a beating heart, a human face, a loving message, a welcoming sign with embracing arms, revealing divine purpose in mortal and flawed vessels. Rest in peace, Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu and may eternal light shine upon thee.

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The old men say, talk with the enemy

Learning lessons from the past

If they before us have anything to bequeath to generations after them it would be a history of how they lived their lives and hopefully some insight into making the best choices by learning from their mistakes.

There are people today now in their 80s who seem to have a wealth of experience about politics, economics, social policy and general participatory or observational view of changes that have created the world we have now - we would do well to heed their views – they can neatly count on 50 years of experience at the least on world affairs.

They may not be relevant in terms of having the power to change things now but their opinions are anything but irrelevant.

Gore Vidal – Beyond the perceived view of history

I had the pleasure of watching Gore Vidal (82) on BBC World Hard Talk last weekend, he was quite excoriating about George W. Bush but he gave some perspectives into contemporary American history. The interview on BBC (RealPlayer).

A week earlier, he was at the Los Angeles Times – Festival of Books – and he was interviewed by Amy Goodman, the transcript of which reads almost like the Hard Talk interview.

Much as John F. Kennedy is revered in America and the world over, he does not believe JFK did much more than polarise the world even more, JFK did not achieve much but his assassination created a legend of renown.

It is amazing that it is mainly intellectuals that seem to see the way the state is running roughshod over our privacy and liberties in the quest for security whilst breaking every law in the book on the premise of being at war – no greater indictment can be made of a President than to say that the America constitution has been shredded by the sitting President.

The Congress is also culpable in this travesty of democracy that was hard-won in the 20^th Century, some way into the interview Gore Vidal indicated it was better to be a writer than a politician considering the way elected people seem to be marionettes controlled by lobbyists.

More on historical perspectives

Vidal is considered one of the foremost commentators on American socio-political life, his despair with his country is exemplified in the phrase United States of Amnesia - the collective inability of Americans to learn from history to know when they are being cajoled.

That brings us to the speech that President George W. Bush gave on the 15^th of May at the Knesset in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel where he labelled as appeasers in the context of the appeasement of Hitler those who advocate talking with American enemies.

This is no doubt a distortion of historical context and Bush is no scholar of history as he is both making history and failing to learn from history.

Worse still is to forklift historical events from one time in history to accentuate a flawed logic, that is unconscionable and disingenuous.

President Bush appears to be living in a glass house casting boulder-like stones considering some records of history which had his grandfather Senator Prescott Bush “unwittingly” involved in businesses and banks that “inadvertently” bankrolled the Nazis and helped bring them to power in Germany.

You can read into this research and report what you like, but the mere fact that one of those company’s assets where he was a director were seized under the Trading with the enemy Act in 1942 is interesting enough though Senator Bush was not cited for wrongdoing.

Hero or heroics?

That speech has been criticised as an attack on Senator Barrack Obama who as Democratic Presidential candidate aspirant has suggested that the United States talks unconditionally with its enemies, most especially Iran.

Senator John McCain took on this speech and used it to ram home a few points about Senator Obama’s naivety about world politics, but before we get carried away with the perceived war credentials of John McCain; Gore Vidal does not think John McCain is a hero in the same class as John Kerry.

He says John McCain smashed his plane which would normally attract a court martial; interesting because I would reckon that would not be the case if your father and grandfather were four star Navy admirals – though this is not to discount anything about his political life and savvy.

Then the Financial Times takes Henry Kissinger (85) to lunch (interview); Kissinger who could well be a war criminal in some countries is quite well received in many other countries as a proponent of realpolitik and probably an authority on global diplomacy - a rather busy travelling man he has been, lately.

It is all well today to view some of the ideas and actions in the 1970s and draw conclusions that give us the benefit of hindsight, but it does not detract from the fact that a changing world required some tough and sometimes illegal activity to keep the world at peace.

Comprehensive negotiations with Iran

Mr. Kissinger, is German-born but also a Jew says during a discussion about diplomacy and the way the world has changed – “I have advocated that the United States have comprehensive negotiations with Iran ... We need to have an open discussion of all differences.”

The difficulty comes when he says that Iran has to decide whether it is a nation or a cause – now, that is a difficult, the nation has to defend itself against its enemy on both sides in Iran and Afghanistan and it has a cause which is to remain seriously relevant in the Middle-East where the possibility of having nuclear weapons is looking like a national cause. This is the Iran we are told wants to obliterate Israel.

Talking with the enemy

The Economist in its leader last week pooh-poohed the President Bush’s slanted view of appeasement with the byline; when talking to the enemy. “Sometimes it makes sense; sometimes it doesn't; sometimes not talking can be appeasement”.

Appeasement is not so much the talking but the action that could follow the talking, like how Chamberlain sold Czechoslovakia down the river. And no one would call Secretary James Baker talking to the Saddam Hussein regime after the invasion of Kuwait appeasement; however, if America had not driven Iraq out of Kuwait, it would have been appeasement. Should I mention North Korea?

There is no way real dialogue would happen between America and Iran, if preconditions that give America the upperhand in negotiations are doggedly insisted upon.

In fact, talking to the enemy might well be the best way of keeping with the proven policies of containment and deterrence, if not engagement to secure the peace and eliminate threats.

President Jimmy Carter (83) visits Syria in April and insists that Syria and Hamas are integral to the peace process, they need to be involved.

Then Archbishop Desmond Tutu (76) visits Gaza and sees the international appeasement of Israel that allows for the blockade of Gaza to continue without any condemnation from those who can really change things. He called it an abomination.

But the most important statement he made was “conflicts were resolved through talking to enemies not friends”, surely; the man of the cloth knows something about this kind of thing.

It leaves one in no doubt that we have to talk before we can decide on what conditions are necessary to keep talking – a difficult thing for the Bush administration to comprehend because they probably have no knowledge of history to be able to make any sense of history and hence learn the lessons thereof.

Surely, these old men can not all be speaking nonsense.

John Sentamu - A true African Leader

Dramatic gesture

When the news came on air that the Archbishop of York – John Sentamu – had cut up his dog-collar, what went through my mind was the break away of the San Joaquin diocese from the US Episcopal Church yesterday because of the consecration of one homosexual bishop – Gene Robinson – in 2003.

Homosexuals split the church

Whilst I have my views about churches engaging in social activism there are worthwhile causes where the church should be at the forefront – a split over homosexuality where a majority of selfsame homosexuals have been alienated from the church and find no spiritual succour or guidance from where the expression the love of Christ could have made the church a sanctuary for healing broken people is sad indeed.

Beyond this, there are more problems that should have gained greater priority in the vision and mission of the church like reaching the unreached (with might include homosexuals), poverty alleviation, community regeneration in areas of combating disease, rural development and education – there is almost too much work to be done and never enough hands, minds, people and funds to tackle these “Great Commission” issues.

But these are too difficult as energy is being expended in their obsession with homosexuality – Archbishop Desmond Tutu – and it would appear amongst all the critical issues facing the Church and Christianity today that finds the most activity.

Clergy activism for the good

This morning Archbishop John Sentamu’s actions are better placed as what the church should be involved in, born in Uganda, first appointed a High Court judge by Idi Amin and the persecuted by the despot for being judicially independent – the Archbishop was well acquainted with the tyranny of rotten African leadership and is well aware of his history and roots even though he has settled into the comfort of the English establishment his preaches a gospel that has meaning and relevance to our times.

Zimbabwe once had an Archbishop in Pius Ncube who was one of the few who were untouchable by the grubby hands and machinations of Robert Mugabe’s henchmen; the learned clergyman however lost his vision and vocation by engaging in activities that diminished his integrity, authority and credibility – the state security apparatus produced evidence of the Archbishop engaging in adultery.

This meant the voice in support of the people from the body of the clergy had to come from elsewhere, so this morning on the Andrew Marr Show (the transcript) in answering questions about Robert Mugabe, the Archbishop demonstrated that he wears a dog-collar to identify himself; taking it off, he cut it to bits saying these words.

“You know ... you see as an Anglican, this is what I wear to identify myself that I'm a clergyman. Do you know what Mugabe has done? He's taken people's identity and literally if you don't mind, cut it to pieces. This is what he's actually done, to a lot of - and in the end there's nothing. So as far as I'm concerned from now on I'm not going to wear a dog collar until Mugabe's gone.”

The new image of Africa

The sooner Mugabe is gone either by geriatric expiration or by a putsch that would allow us bring him to The Hague to face human rights abuse charges, the better.

He was hosted at the Africa-EU Summit in Lisbon, Portugal that Gordon Brown has boycotted and other African leaders had threatened not to attend if Robert Mugabe was not invited – It was nice to hear that Angela Merkel laid into him and stated “The situation of Zimbabwe is damaging the image of the new Africa”.

Dishonest African Leadership

Some African leaders would have us believe that Zimbabwe is not near collapse and Mugabe is not on his way out, they seek to patch a completely broken situation where even the country’s chief statistician cannot determine that rate of inflation in the country anymore because there aren’t enough goods on the shelves to create a viable dataset.

If the reality of the situation in Zimbabwe is being distorted by the media, according to the aspiring mediator in the person of the Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade as he visited Zimbabwe recently; I would suspect part of that is because of the lack of the freedom of the press in Zimbabwe, but more truthfully it is because we are not being seriously honest with each other; the destroyed townships are no mirage; the illegal immigrants and refugees flocking to South Africa are not animals in seasonal migration; the inflation figures that read 4,000% at one time are not plucked out of the air; the battered faces of the opposition leaders were not make-up – see the Q&A. Those, if I may be allowed the use of the word "coincidences" add up to a country with serious, serious problems.

However, this stance represents the great problem with Africa; the fear of seeing true democracy unseat unpopular leaders, the excitement or perverse black-man thing about seeing countries wrestle with their old colonial masters without any particular gain but notoriety leading to ruin and the inability to decisively tackle the matter of transparency, corruption and poor governance because it would mean everyone has to straighten up. It is no wonder that Africa that was well ahead of Asia in the 60s is now a basket-case in the 21^st Century.

In the end, the Africa-EU Summit, the first in 7 years was just another reactionary move by Europe very much like the Scramble for Africa, only this time, it is not for the partition of land but access to Africa’s resources. A meeting of equals in word for the economic colonisation of Africa – a success.

So far, it has been the clergymen who have gauged the situation well and not the disgraceful and shameful politicians; we have Archbishop Pius Ncube, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and now Archbishop John Sentamu to thank for being true, truthful and honest about Mugabe and the problems in Zimbabwe and Africa at large.