Unwrapping a brand new year

Like flipping the page

We ushered in the New Year quietly, no fanfare or gatherings as we were under a curfew in South Africa. The ban on alcohol sales also meant there was no bubbly to click glasses to and without live television there was nothing to keep us prompted on the passing of time.

With an eye on our watches, we lit a candle each o reflect on a year we could never have anticipated, to remember the many who we lost to the pandemic and other causes along with the blessings and grace that has kept us, and to resolve to live, tell, and write better stories.

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Not a paradise for many

When it struck midnight, some people came out of their houses to hail in the New Year, a lady above us was beating a pan and hollering at the top of her voice. We looked out to see what was going on, acknowledged and exchanged celebratory greetings until the persistence from street level indicated something else.

The man was pleading for alms and others were already lining up to ask for something if I acceded the first request. There is grinding poverty in Cape Town, it is difficult to look into the eyes of some people and not feel your heart go out to them, but there is little you can do. Once you give to one, literally out of nowhere many appear acting completely oblivious of the fact that you had just been generous. Suffering has no nuance, survival scrapes for anything.

Not too ordinary a day

At that point, we kept away from the window until the police dispersed the people whilst we made to retire and go to bed. When we eventually woke up, we went out for brunch before making for the V&A Waterfront. Finding a quiet spot by the Mariner’s Wharf, we soaked in the sun, at a large harbour of yachts all overlooked by the natural emblems of Cape Town from left to right, Lion’s Head, Table Mountain, and Signal Hill.

On our return home, I fell asleep on the couch, it was another day, an auspicious day by the calendars we share and with it we close the chapter on a year that was yesterday and begin to plan to a different tomorrow. Most of all, I did all this with my fiancé, Brian, the love of life and amazingly wonderful man.

Where shall we put our hope?

In plenty and in poverty

There is no doubt that we love Cape Town, but we visit a city of stark contrasts. The opportunities and privileges we have brings into a Cape Town of luxury, of access, of comfort and a relative sense of safety and security.

Yet, around the hotel where we are staying, we cannot miss or ignore another face of Cape Town, not so much that of the poor, but one of the destitute. I differentiate between the poor and the destitute from a personal viewpoint of the poor having shelter and sustenance, those who have basic needs met, but are stretched to consider wants.

In the case of the destitute, they have no shelter or live in makeshift settings prone to changes in nature and the abuse of authority figures, they cannot determine when or where their next meal will come from. Some are in threadbare clothes and probably have no access to basic cleaning facilities.

Great policy minds required

The other day, I walked into a convenience store and I was accosted by two people, not for money, but things, I acquiesced and by the time I was paying, there was milk formula, baby diapers, soft drinks and basic foodstuffs at the checkout. One of the men, knelt in thanks, I was quite embarrassed as I asked him to get up.

It was an opportunity for them, and for me, there was both the means and opportunity to affect a situation, though, it was nowhere near the solution. There are no easy answers to the poverty and destitution issue in South Africa. You can’t even begin to think of jobs before you have installed a kind of welfare system to make these people suitable for any work environment and this is if they have the skills required to do the jobs.

Either way, there would have to be some poor laws and institutions for the poor to give them a sense of human dignity to raise them to some kind of opportunity. It would take some creative and inspired policy-making to address the destitution problem and this would should be different from policies to address basic poverty, accommodation, access to services and the broader unemployment issues with the matter of giving the majority the skills to exploit opportunities that arise.

Is there hope for the many?

Another cohort is the pre-teen street kids, in any progressive society, these kids should be in school and cared for by responsible adults in some setting. I fear residential institutions because of histories of physical and sexual abuse. However, society does owe these unfortunate young members the possibility of a bright future. This requires selfless humanitarian work for which the government should be a major sponsor and supporter.

There is much that ails South Africa, not everyone has a voice or one that must be heard and acted upon. This especially for the poor and destitute for whom the wasted Jacob Zuma years and the preoccupation with the state capture machinations have left them further behind than humanity should countenance for much longer.

We who come to appreciate the beauty of South Africa do contribute to the growth of the economy, but we are not the answer to the question that many South Africans have been asking since 1994. Where shall we put our hope?

Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

Fuck #Brexit, there are people suffering

This is Britain today

As I descended the Playfair Steps towards the Scottish National Gallery after work, I first heard him before I saw him. He was asking for change, his voice weak, not particularly dishevelled, by the tear in his jacket and his trousers meant he was in rags.

I could not look away and I did not have loose change, I had decent money and an open hand, that was what I did as I secreted a note into his hand. He noticed and called after me to thank me and shake my hand.

That is the reality of life of some of my fellow Brits, they have nothing, not an inkling of where the next meal is coming from, not a place to sleep, not a prospect for a future beyond the now, if something radical does not happen from individuals like you and I, from civil society groups and fundamentally from the government and we are choosing one in a week.

Complex waffle at simple problems

On April the 30^th after Theresa May decided to gamble with our lives by calling an unnecessary and unneeded general election, Andrew Marr posited that nurses were using food banks and this is what she said, “There are 'many complex reasons' why nurses were using food banks, but 'not having enough money to eat' was not one of them.” [Independent]

No Theresa, the reason why people use food banks does not involve any complex reason, it is a simple reason, they do not have the money to buy food. Full Stop!

This whole preoccupation with #Brexit, ‘Strong and Stable’ and whatever rhetorical mantra that has become a cacophonous jumble of the governing party in the mouth of Theresa May, does not once address these fundamental issues.

Why are people sleeping rough everywhere I go in the UK and why are nurses using food banks and what are you going to do about it?

She can’t do it, simples

These events are fundamentally the bread and butter issues that keep people on the lowest rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, they have basic needs now, the psychological needs and the self-fulfilment needs are hardly on their minds. #Brexit is not front and centre of their minds.

With a 7-year term as first Home Secretary and now Prime Minister, Theresa May has had the scope, opportunity and privilege to implement many of the new promises she is trotting out as electoral pledges and failed dismally as achieving any, be it on immigration or social policy. What she could not do then, she has not done now and will not do hereafter, let us not be carried away and cajoled by this political talk.

Theresa May is completely out of touch with the pulse and the heart of what ails the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, she is just on an opportunistic jaunt projected on a #Brexit negotiating stance in the hope that we are scared enough to trust her.

#Fuck Brexit

Now, negotiating #Brexit is important, but at the expense of national real life issues that affect everyday lives is where the Tories campaign gets it wrong and much as the prospect of Jeremy Corben as Prime Minister is a hard concept to countenance, I dare say, he knows where people are hurting, needing and ailing – in social welfare, in services, in making the country work for everyone, even if it would hurt some of us to help the people who appear to have been left behind or forgotten altogether.

Whilst, I commend Amber Rudd for standing in for the Prime Minister at the debates just two days after she lost her father, I sympathise, but politics is about the living, I have no sympathy vote to give, I have a vote that makes a difference in my life and the lives of others that I see as I walk the streets of the UK.

I say it as it needs to be said – Fuck #Brexit, there is more to life than that at stake.

The life of Mother Theresa in a London exhibition

A mother of excellent service

As I walked up Charing Cross Road just after Foyles but before Tottenham Court Road Station on the left where it is a construction site with diversions and a modicum of inconvenience, I was handed a leaflet for the official exhibition of the life of Mother Theresa.

If I remember correctly, she died in the week following the death of Princess Diana as if she chose the occasion to slip away with pomp or ceremony as the world was distracted by the celebrity and sad end of the fairy tale of this other famous woman.

The exhibition in a church just off Soho Square had a chapel with a statue of Mother Theresa in prayerful pose with a notice for all to pick a prayer card from a bowl beside the statue. I in fact thought the statue was real at first.

Features to see

There is was a 55-minute documentary about the life of Mother Theresa, a corridor with pictures of events in her life and a hall with about 100 posters illustrating and describing her life from birth, through her ministry to her death.

There was so much to read of this remarkable woman, her faith, her service, her Christian piety and her deep commitment to the suffering of so many, her example puts to shame too many Christian leaders reaping their rewards already that they might naught when heaven comes.

Profoundly, I was moved by her response to aborting by getting involved, she offered to care from the unwanted children pleading that they be brought to term. It is a lot different from those who pay lip-service to being pro-life but are not there to really bear the burden that comes with the good-intentioned activism but absence of requisite charity to back those agitations.

There were panels of effects of Mother Theresa to view much of which I believe when she is made a catholic saint will be put in reliquaries for veneration and supplication.

Elsewhere in the church a replica of the room where Mother Theresa lived was constructed for viewing too.

Getting there

The volunteers were helpful, friendly, knowledgeable and nice, they exuded temperance and soothing affection, you could not demand too much of them.

The exhibition runs until the 15^th of September from Tuesdays to Sundays between the times of 11:00AM and 7:00PM at St Patrick’s Church, Soho Square, London W1D 4NR. The entrance to the exhibition is at the corner of Charing Cross Road and Goslett Yard.

Those requiring wheelchair access should call 07719 927 419, it is also the number of other enquiries and you can also email MotherTheresaExhibition@gmail.com – visit if you do have the time, donate to the church and write in the register of visitors.

Nigeria: Tackling the Northern Complex

It is not elementary

Nigeria is a complex conundrum and for all the facets of life that come up for discussion it is easy to end up with a series of single stories which might skew the issues but they all add up to the narrative called Nigeria, its history, its problems, the solutions, the criticisms from nasty to constructive to the outlook to the future.

One typical example of the jumbled narratives is the North, taken as a homogenous entity in terms of religion, ethnicity and economy for simplicity sake and packaged as such for media consumption but it has probably the most diverse and heterogeneous demography of Nigeria.

Child Hunger of the Almajiri

Recently, I clamoured about [1] the fate of the Almajiri from the perspective of human and child rights, suggesting that certain controls and inspection regimes need to be put in place to arrest the unconscionable and despicable case of children and adolescents being in boarding schools of a certain persuasion but having to be beg for food.

The more heart-rending aspect was the case of a boy ill with malaria and typhoid fever that was not in hospital and had not eaten since the night before; to suggest the head of that school was criminal and irresponsible would have been a heartless understatement – it is a pervasive problem.

The Borno State Government has taken the first step towards addressing this problem by supporting 10,000 Tsangaya schools [2] to tackle the problems of feeding and to take the Almajiri off the streets thereby curtailing the begging menace.

If government money is going into such institutions it should then translate into gaining control to regulate their activities, inspect their facilities and introduce a curriculum that will allow the Almajiri who in that setting will now be pupils and students to learn a trade or some vocational skill along with their religious schooling. If successful, one will hope that this concept will spread out to other states pulling Tsangaya schools into a structured educational regime that upholds child rights preparing them for viable and productive careers.

Talking Poverty Alleviation

In the Nigeria Poverty Profile released by the National Bureau of Statistics, we are presented with the stark detail that relative poverty has increased between 2004 and 2010 with the North-Central, North-Eastern and North-Western zones revealing increasing levels of poverty compared to the three zones in the South.

Courtesy of the National Bureau of Statistics - Nigeria Poverty Profile, Page 17 [3]

The Northern Governors then thought to redress this imbalance by demanding a review of the revenue allocation [4] from the centre; this threatens to draw a dangerous fault-line giving credence to that age-old North-South divide that has become the basis for analysing problems in Nigeria.

Looking at the numbers, there probably is a case for a review but the problems are more fundamental than that. The Niger Delta oil-producing area probably has the highest per-capita allocation but the governors have not been judicious in the use of the funds for the development of their states. Most of the communities are poor, their lands polluted, infrastructure lacking and the travesty gave rise first to activism and then militancy without much improvement towards tackling the environmental disasters or the future prospects of the masses.

Likewise, governorship in the North has not taken up the responsibility to create enabling environments and offer the essential impetus for development that can pull their people up from abject poverty and it is unlikely that throwing more money at the region with yield the results required but that is a subject for negotiation and debate between all affected parties.

Stilling a brewing storm

The demand however called for cool and wise heads to comment from the Presidency. Until recently on matters of security, power or policy, the President has been handed speeches that has left a good many readers and listeners in despair, complete forlorn as to where the country might be going that clueless had become the description of President Goodluck Jonathan’s grasp of issues.

One can only suppose the President had sacked his uninspiring speechwriter and acquired one that could capture the mood and set out a range of opinions that make sense and give people, especially the governors a sense of responsibility and purpose, though we still have to wait and see what comes of it.

However, in response to this demand, the President in a speech recently given [5] on a visit to Makurdi had this to say.

"We have resources in all parts of the country to sell. All states of the federation have products they can export. The governors should work with private sector operators to produce and sell what they have not only to Nigerians but also to export."

"Nigeria is an agro-based economy even before the civil war and that is why they did not borrow money to prosecute the war. We should be able to revive this process like it happened in those periods when oil was not an issue."

"If we create the enabling environment and liaise with the private sector, people will not need to steal or go into 419 before they can make it."

Making governors more accountable

In other words, state governors should work better at realising potential in their states and seek to exploit such as if there were no oil revenues to rely on.

The national cake is no more big enough to go round effectively, the states that to generate more income internally by doing the best with the resources they have and seek markets for their goods for their states to prosper.

One interesting element of history that we seem to forget about Nigeria that the President alluded to in his speech is that Nigeria might well be that only country in the world to have prosecuted a civil war without running into debt, it harks back to a can-do spirit of fiscal prudence that Nigeria apparently once had, which means it can be rediscovered again.

In all, all governors have serious work to do having escaped the fury of the people during the #OccupyNigeria protests and deep scrutiny of their policies until after their tenures the President has laid down the modalities on which governance accountability will be based, this should be the first of many to get them to sit up and start delivering solutions to their people.

Sources

[1] Nigeria: Letting Our Children Live Like Dogs | Akinblog.nl

[2] Borno Govt to Support Tsangaya Schools

[3] ACF backs northern governors on revenue allocation review | Punch Online Nigeria

[4] Nigeria Poverty Profile: [Image Captured from Page 17 of PDF] | The National Bureau of Statistics

[5] Jonathan tasks governors on revenue generation | The Nation

Other references

Nigeria Poverty Profile [PDF] | The National Bureau of Statistics

Editorial: Nigeria - The North, Religion and Politics | Akinblog.nl

Nigeria: #NigeriaDecides Election Review X - The North | Akinblog.nl