This blogpost was (in the main) prepared some thirteen days ago...
Though strident - including even street - protests seem to have become the norm of late, from New Zealand's halcyonic shores through to the post-revolutionary barricades/bulwarks/bastions of France - and we won't even 'go to' the U S of A, where protest for the mere, sheer sake of protest seems to have become the norm in the Trumpian era, whether directed at Trump, his past behaviour, megalomaniacal personality and/or policies per se or just expressing the pent up faux outrage that seems to be consuming so many of the younger generation there especially...
Better media, such as *the BBC in particular, has - aside from the ongoing brouhaha over Brexit - kept an observant eye upon Africa at large...where such protests have also spread of late (or perhaps just continued is a more apt descriptor)...
...to wit good ole Zimbabwe - and Sudan (alongside South Sudan). As with Tunisia - Libya - Egypt awhile ago - esp. in the much-vaunted Arab Spring - people are quite simply 'fed up'...to the rafters; they've - long since - had enough, (subconsciously even) realized/decided 'enough is enough'... . Much as the dude upon that classic 1970s' film 'Network' succinctly put it: "We're not gonna take it anymore!" No indeed.
And though **Zimbabweans are well used to chronic food shortages and rampant, off-the-wall inflation - quite aside from the ongoing political repression and 'low-level' persecution of regime opponents - as, for that matter, are their continental compatriots in such war-ravaged and drought-stricken lands as Sudan (and South Sudan)...
...the special 'security' measures adopted by authorities in these countries have gone from plain bad to damn awful of late...and need, asap, to be called out and condemned in not only no uncertain terms, but with way more than the usual (United Nations) ***sanctions often imposed; no, let these global do-gooders for once put some actual muscle and meaning behind their oh so high-falutin' language...
But lest I be regarded as myself adopting too flippant and light-hearted an approach here, of using weak-kneed and limp-wristed vocab in championing these much-oppressed and neglected peoples ...I'm frankly deeply ashamed by the conspicuous silence, apparent condoning, even arguable complicity shown by gutless nations like my own of late vis-a-vis the serious and sickening developments in these nations since the news broke of merciless security force-imposed beatings and torture, rapes and even murders of innocent civilians by such insecure, **** 'insane' regimes...
*Yes, let's credit them for keeping us duly and thoroughly informed of the fact that the humanitarian crises in Sudan, South Sudan and Zimbabwe have now been ratcheted up even further - pretty well to the nth degree and beyond...
**To be perfectly blunt, Zimbabwe 'under the croc(odile)' Managua is really just as opponents long predicted. His recent hall of mirrors and game of farce - dressed up as a genuine overseas "We're now open for business again!" invitation to a longtime-sceptical international community - is simply yet another act of hypocrisy played upon the global stage for all the world to see (and turn the other way, effectively giving he and his administration the green light to "Go ahead! - We're not paying proper attention, and couldn't frankly care less, anyway...do whatever you want...")...
...while underneath are - no, not 'The Everlasting Arms' of a merciful, Creator God (in this case), but the rotting carcass-filled whited sepulchres, carefully hidden from public view, of a thoroughly rotten regime...- one, as a caller to BBC's OS Conversations segment (22/1) stated, was actually starting to make (former, longtime President Robert) Mugabe's own administration look better by contrast.
The fella phoning in - adopting the pseudonym 'Jonathan' for security - mentioned that Zimbabweans were finding the security measures imposed under Managua "far worse" than those under Mugabe. The dear folk of Matabeleland slaughtered so unmercilessly three-and-a-half some decades ago under Managua's ruthless fist would hardly be all that surprised...the blessing of hindsight now revealing that Joshua Nkomo's own opposition movement would've doubtless been a much better and safer bet for the nation following their hard-won independence...
***Not that sanctions per se are necessarily lame and ineffectual - cf the likes of South Africa and Iraq - indeed they've often done substantial, including unintended and euphemistically-termed 'collateral', damage and injury to comparatively innocent populations...but they're hardly equivalent to military might (which I'd rarely recommend), and seeing that there is such a thing as United Nations peacekeepers, hey, let's get 'em to work for their keep, don't ya reckon?
****Insane as in utterly awful and outrageous, inexplicable and evil -not as in criminally un-liable.
Postscript: Additional Reflections, Ruminations and Re-balancings
Yet, surprisingly enough, not all is going to hell in ye proverbial handbasket in the great 'ole and venerable continent of Africa... .
While - to round out the picture before visiting some more positive places and perspectives, generally wholly bypassed by a trouble and crises-obsessed Western media - an inventory of African 'trouble spots' would hardly be complete without also including the likes of one-time Ebola-infested Sierra Leone, terrorist-stricken Somalia and, at times, even the - otherwise 'progressive and 'upwardly mobile' - Kenya and Nigeria, the (geographically quite sizeable) Islamist Bloc across the vast Saharan swathes of North Africa - incorporating such nations as Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania - and the trouble-plagued Central and Southern African (geographically and strategically, anyway) 'powerhouses' of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa...plus tiny little Burundi...
(18-some individual countries so far cited, though Tunisia, Mauritania and Kenya are debatable)...
all those places notwithstanding, why do we seldom if ever hear mention made of such success stories (of recent decades) as Ghana and Tanzania...and how about 'famine-infested' Ethiopia, and even the civil war-wracked scene of blood-curdling genocide, little ole (Central African-situated) Rwanda...just for starters, you understand...
And yes, you're not asking me, but I'll proffer a fairly well-informed opinion of an interested and (I'd maintain) quite fastidious observer - of both the African continent over my lifetime, and the mainstream Western media in particular...
...as to why such significant but ever-bypassed nation-states are invariably neglected and ignored...
Hey, it occurred to me long ago that the reason we Westerners hear so little about various nations worldwide -whether throughout Africa, South America and the Caribbean in particular...
...is that, "surprise, surprise", little if anything really bad, ghastly and just plain awful seems to be happening therein...
Yep, that's pretty well 'the long and the short of it', coz if it don't bleed, it just won't and don't lead... End of story! So sorry to burst your long-maintained bubble (of polyanna-erish naivete, folks).
Part Three (to come): Some further details (both negative and positive) upon some of these other 'bit players' on the African scene...at least for the benefit of our 'well-informed' Western populaces...
Though strident - including even street - protests seem to have become the norm of late, from New Zealand's halcyonic shores through to the post-revolutionary barricades/bulwarks/bastions of France - and we won't even 'go to' the U S of A, where protest for the mere, sheer sake of protest seems to have become the norm in the Trumpian era, whether directed at Trump, his past behaviour, megalomaniacal personality and/or policies per se or just expressing the pent up faux outrage that seems to be consuming so many of the younger generation there especially...
Better media, such as *the BBC in particular, has - aside from the ongoing brouhaha over Brexit - kept an observant eye upon Africa at large...where such protests have also spread of late (or perhaps just continued is a more apt descriptor)...
...to wit good ole Zimbabwe - and Sudan (alongside South Sudan). As with Tunisia - Libya - Egypt awhile ago - esp. in the much-vaunted Arab Spring - people are quite simply 'fed up'...to the rafters; they've - long since - had enough, (subconsciously even) realized/decided 'enough is enough'... . Much as the dude upon that classic 1970s' film 'Network' succinctly put it: "We're not gonna take it anymore!" No indeed.
And though **Zimbabweans are well used to chronic food shortages and rampant, off-the-wall inflation - quite aside from the ongoing political repression and 'low-level' persecution of regime opponents - as, for that matter, are their continental compatriots in such war-ravaged and drought-stricken lands as Sudan (and South Sudan)...
...the special 'security' measures adopted by authorities in these countries have gone from plain bad to damn awful of late...and need, asap, to be called out and condemned in not only no uncertain terms, but with way more than the usual (United Nations) ***sanctions often imposed; no, let these global do-gooders for once put some actual muscle and meaning behind their oh so high-falutin' language...
But lest I be regarded as myself adopting too flippant and light-hearted an approach here, of using weak-kneed and limp-wristed vocab in championing these much-oppressed and neglected peoples ...I'm frankly deeply ashamed by the conspicuous silence, apparent condoning, even arguable complicity shown by gutless nations like my own of late vis-a-vis the serious and sickening developments in these nations since the news broke of merciless security force-imposed beatings and torture, rapes and even murders of innocent civilians by such insecure, **** 'insane' regimes...
*Yes, let's credit them for keeping us duly and thoroughly informed of the fact that the humanitarian crises in Sudan, South Sudan and Zimbabwe have now been ratcheted up even further - pretty well to the nth degree and beyond...
**To be perfectly blunt, Zimbabwe 'under the croc(odile)' Managua is really just as opponents long predicted. His recent hall of mirrors and game of farce - dressed up as a genuine overseas "We're now open for business again!" invitation to a longtime-sceptical international community - is simply yet another act of hypocrisy played upon the global stage for all the world to see (and turn the other way, effectively giving he and his administration the green light to "Go ahead! - We're not paying proper attention, and couldn't frankly care less, anyway...do whatever you want...")...
...while underneath are - no, not 'The Everlasting Arms' of a merciful, Creator God (in this case), but the rotting carcass-filled whited sepulchres, carefully hidden from public view, of a thoroughly rotten regime...- one, as a caller to BBC's OS Conversations segment (22/1) stated, was actually starting to make (former, longtime President Robert) Mugabe's own administration look better by contrast.
The fella phoning in - adopting the pseudonym 'Jonathan' for security - mentioned that Zimbabweans were finding the security measures imposed under Managua "far worse" than those under Mugabe. The dear folk of Matabeleland slaughtered so unmercilessly three-and-a-half some decades ago under Managua's ruthless fist would hardly be all that surprised...the blessing of hindsight now revealing that Joshua Nkomo's own opposition movement would've doubtless been a much better and safer bet for the nation following their hard-won independence...
***Not that sanctions per se are necessarily lame and ineffectual - cf the likes of South Africa and Iraq - indeed they've often done substantial, including unintended and euphemistically-termed 'collateral', damage and injury to comparatively innocent populations...but they're hardly equivalent to military might (which I'd rarely recommend), and seeing that there is such a thing as United Nations peacekeepers, hey, let's get 'em to work for their keep, don't ya reckon?
****Insane as in utterly awful and outrageous, inexplicable and evil -not as in criminally un-liable.
Postscript: Additional Reflections, Ruminations and Re-balancings
Yet, surprisingly enough, not all is going to hell in ye proverbial handbasket in the great 'ole and venerable continent of Africa... .
While - to round out the picture before visiting some more positive places and perspectives, generally wholly bypassed by a trouble and crises-obsessed Western media - an inventory of African 'trouble spots' would hardly be complete without also including the likes of one-time Ebola-infested Sierra Leone, terrorist-stricken Somalia and, at times, even the - otherwise 'progressive and 'upwardly mobile' - Kenya and Nigeria, the (geographically quite sizeable) Islamist Bloc across the vast Saharan swathes of North Africa - incorporating such nations as Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania - and the trouble-plagued Central and Southern African (geographically and strategically, anyway) 'powerhouses' of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa...plus tiny little Burundi...
(18-some individual countries so far cited, though Tunisia, Mauritania and Kenya are debatable)...
all those places notwithstanding, why do we seldom if ever hear mention made of such success stories (of recent decades) as Ghana and Tanzania...and how about 'famine-infested' Ethiopia, and even the civil war-wracked scene of blood-curdling genocide, little ole (Central African-situated) Rwanda...just for starters, you understand...
And yes, you're not asking me, but I'll proffer a fairly well-informed opinion of an interested and (I'd maintain) quite fastidious observer - of both the African continent over my lifetime, and the mainstream Western media in particular...
...as to why such significant but ever-bypassed nation-states are invariably neglected and ignored...
Hey, it occurred to me long ago that the reason we Westerners hear so little about various nations worldwide -whether throughout Africa, South America and the Caribbean in particular...
...is that, "surprise, surprise", little if anything really bad, ghastly and just plain awful seems to be happening therein...
Yep, that's pretty well 'the long and the short of it', coz if it don't bleed, it just won't and don't lead... End of story! So sorry to burst your long-maintained bubble (of polyanna-erish naivete, folks).
Part Three (to come): Some further details (both negative and positive) upon some of these other 'bit players' on the African scene...at least for the benefit of our 'well-informed' Western populaces...
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