Fiat Lux
Dember 24 2015 – I doubt there is a place on earth where people’s names praise God as much as they do in Rwanda and Burundi. All the Kinyarwanda and Kirundi names ending with “Imana” are talking about God. These are names such as “It-is-God-who-creates”, or “ I- trust-in-God”, or “It-is-God-who-saves,” Or, even, “What-I-have-more-than-you is-God”. Then you have names which do not mention “Imana” directly but allude to him, such…
September 1 2016 We now find respite to pause on the verge of a plunge, and ponder just what might have been. Or, imagine just might be after the pause ends and the perilous race to the abyss resumes. We have had a shrill shouting match between the authorities – President John Magufuli, his assistants, the Police – and the main opposition Chadema party on whether the latter could go…...
Pardon me if I’ve already told you this one, but it’s a favourite of mine from a film I watched as a young man. It was based on Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King”, and starred Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Two young English adventurers arrive at the gate of some Western Asian town, probably occupied by the Pashtun. This is an area forever in thrall to the…...
April 7 2016 It was a foregone conclusion; it was not going to succeed, and it sure as hell failed. The move by a section of the South African parliament to impeach President Jacob Zuma over the so-called Nkandla scandal was always going to flop, because of the lopsidedness of the House, which still has a huge majority of African National Congress (ANC) members. The political organization which spearheaded the…...