Is a Mercedes yet to be Zuma`s Achilles Tendon?

With less than two weeks into office, President Zuma`s government has been caught in a storm over yet another Mercedes. Zuma himself, who is not a stranger to controcersy, was fired from being V.P. because as part of the corruption charges against him, he had received a Mercedes ML from Thint, a French Arms Company which the SA government was purchasing weapons from. Now his newly appointed Minister of Transport has also just received a Mercedes from an assortment of transport contractors as a gift for his appointment to head the transport portfolio. These guys went further, they threw a lavish party at the hand over ceremony.

We have always suspected the Zuma administration would not be above board. I warned the South Africans before going to the polls to be very careful with their vote. I strongly feel, South Africans are yet to go through what most of us in Africa have gone through. They are still new to this game. And as such they still vote with emotion, rather than reason.

There is a pattern that most African nations have travelled. A country gets independence, and at that time it is endowed with all the instruments you can imagine, perfectly capable of cataputing the country into prosperity. Between ten and twenty years afterwards, people vote with their emotions, and dictatorships take root. It is only after a devastating downward spiral that African nations begin to realise that they need real leaders with vision rather than emotional personalities who they hope to use to spite their past with.

I wish "Shower Boy" very well. I just hope he will not take South Africa down the same route that we have all travelled. I dare him to prove me wrong!

The power of language

When the colonialists set foot on this gene-rich but technology-deficient continent ages ago, they started taking away more than just our resources. They took away our languages, and with it our culture. I always get irritated when you read or hear international news media saying "...Portuguese speaking Mozambique or Angola, French speaking Cameroun or English speaking Uganda..." The connotations behind these labels reach far beyond merely labelling one sovereign country with a language of an erstwhile forceful colonial master. It represents, me thinks, a perpetual, permanent and irreversible mark which we are being made to carry for centuries to come.

Africa has so far managed to unlock political free will, independence which to some extent now encompasses economic sovereignty and other freedoms to the exclusion of our freedom to our languages. I remember when I was in Primary School in the 1980s, our teachers suddenly passed a rule that all indeginous languages had been banned from the school grounds, and we were expected to start speaking in English. Those found wanting were sent for punishment which often included hard labour. When I look back now, I get the feeling that we have been battered so much that we are no longer proud even of our own selves.

In the United Kingdom alone, I know of many African families whose kids cannot speak any word of their mother toungues to the total preference of English. In Africa, you still get respect and high societal positions by being merely eloquent in English, or French, or Portuguese. The more you "break" your own language the better.

Language encompasses more than just a means to pass messages from one person to another. Language is a heritage. Language is culture. You are who you are because of where you came from, and where you came from is characterised by language. We must begin to be proud of our languages, our cultures, our heritage. I have heard of the argument that you cannot express certain scientific methods or processes in some languages, but that argument falls flat if you look at the Chinese, the Japanese, the Asians, and the Arabs. Language, like culture is dynamic, it evolves and adapts to circumstances.

Be proud of who you are!