Hotspots, Coldspots and G-spots.

This is the page where I cast my eyes over news stories and topics in the wider world. On many occasions people complain that a conflict  has arisen "out of the blue". As a historian, I know how impossible this would be, as there are always precursors to any event. One may have to look a long way to find them as they are often buried in one-paragraph news items or they are mere fillers on the nightly news. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that this will be some form of crystal ball, or that I have the skill of a clairvoyant - we all remember Jasper Carrott's joke about the letter he had received from the British Association of Clairvoyants complaining about a sketch in the following week's show.

Mobutu’s Congo.

Email users are continually plagued by Spam. One variety that has emerged recently has a subject line such as "Business Proposal" or "Urgent Response needed". It usually involves a proposal to get involved with disposing of huge sums of money siphoned off from fictitious developmental aid projects in Africa. The soul behind the scam isn’t known; the sender usually shares a surname with a former African head of state. One of the most common is Sese Seko.

Mobutu Sese Seko ruled Congo for over three decades. "Ruled" is an inadequate word. Congo has lots of natural and mineral resources, but its people are amongst the poorest in the world. Until 1960 it was ruled by Belgium whose permanently split national vanity was swelled by controlling territory seventy times the area of the mother country. The Belgians used the Congo as a huge quarry; they took and gave very little back. When they granted independence there were less than two dozen university graduates out of a population of twenty million.

Mobutu used a cocktail of methods to stay in power. There was the traditional terror. He had his secret police, his torture chambers and his overcrowded prisons. He also used the old Divide-and-Rule tactic for dealing with opponents. He would grant some requests for political liberalization, and sit back and wait for the opposition to squabble and self-destruct. But sometimes none of this was necessary. A nice fat bribe was often enough to keep people quiet and happy. Jobs with big salaries and perks were always on offer. The last thing anyone lucky enough to get one of these was expected to do was work - What a silly idea! The people in Mobutu’s court were called by ordinary citizens Les Grandes Legumes – the big vegetables.

Mobutu and his circle controlled everything. He was the government. Anyone who wanted a mining licence had to buy it, either with a lump sum or with a share of the profits. The same went for exploiting tropical hardwood forests.

Mobutu liked to put his own stamp on things. He changed the country’s name from Congo to Zaire. He changed his own name from Joseph Desire Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbanda etc etc (It is supposed to mean the cock who covered many chicks - no wonder he ended up with a Prostrate that was on the blink.... The names of all the countries’ cities and natural features were also changed. This was in the name of promoting African "authenticite".

He also did some of the usual narcissistic stuff. His image was on the country’s increasingly useless banknotes. The nightly television news began with a picture of Mobutu descending from the sky.

Mobutu was at the forefront of acquiring international aid. So insistent was he that there was a joke that country’s motto had also been changed to "Donnez-moi de l’argent" (Give me some money).

Congo/Zaire is a big country. Communications are not easy. The infrastructure inherited from the Belgians was left to decay; roads became rutted, railway lines rusted. The natural highway of the Congo River couldn’t deteriorate so readily. It was also a thousand-mile long catwalk for Mobutu to appear on, in his presidential yacht, bethroned on the helm in a cheetah-skin mantle. Wherever it went the yacht had right-of-way. Mobutu was fleecing them, yet his passage was always cheered. Government officials were given expensive cars, yet the roads to drive them on didn’t exist.

Mobutu’s greed was insatiable. All big payments had to include an informal donation to the president’s coffers. Chunks of international aid money "disappeared", Any officials asking too many questions got reassigned to other projects. And still the World Bank and the IMF gave him money. But he had so much money he didn’t always know what to do with it. He built a replica of Versailles in the jungle. Once it was finished he found it was just too large for comfort. After all it doesn’t matter if the halls are lines with marble if you have to walk over a mile to the sitting room. Its airstrip was extended to accommodate Concorde. This came in useful at the reception for his daughter’s wedding, when fresh croissants and cakes were flown in from Paris.

Michaela Wrong in her wonderful account of Mobutu’s Zaire In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz suggests that he needed more and more money simply to stay on top. The loyalty of his subordinates had to be bought. Naturally, his generosity attracted more and more support, but this had to be maintained. He operated a type of golden spider’s web. Opponents who fell foul went into exile, but many were lured back by promises of a nice well-paid job back home. Unlike Saddam Husain Mobutu always came through on these carrots. There was room for everyone in Mobutu’s House of Cards, even former opponents. Robert Walpole, the first British Prime Minister, once remarked that every man has his price. The problem was he reckoned without inflation.

In the 1990s time ran out for Mobutu. He has survived by playing one superpower off against the other. "I maybe the biggest thief of all time – but you need me." With the end of the cold war, they didn’t. He was redundant. He was also in bad health, unable to control everything. Many of the big vegetables found they could gain access to loot by themselves, without Mobutu, so naturally they increasingly cut out the middleman.

In 1996 an obscure rebellion broke out in the far east. Nobody paid much heed to it, let alone Mobutu. It was led by a former Maoist, the chubby Laurent Kabila. But after a few months the rebels controlled over half the country. His badly-trained army was a national joke. Its officers enriched themselves at their men’s expense, so they could hardly be expected to do any real resisting. Mobutu tried employing mercenaries, but they refused to fight, no matter how much they were offered. The house of cards was falling down. With the rebels at the gate Mobutu decided to flee. He feared, probably the rightly, that both the rebels and his own unpaid soldiers might want to settle a few scores with him, He died in exile a few months after leaving.

Michaela Wrong describes wandering around one of his deserted villas. The place was full of Ming vases, Louis XV furniture, Aubusson Tapestries – only none of it was authentic. They were all cheap copies, sometimes with the price-tag still attached. At another villa the plumbing for the fountains and gold taps had broken down. The place was flooded. On the water floated vast numbers of incontinence pads. This Gothic image sums up so much about Mobutu, and about greed. Mobutu may have been loaded – but he couldn’t bring it with him. He couldn’t buy off the inevitable decline and decay that awaits all human beings.

Mobutu’s legacy is a country, once rich, but bled of its resources. It is a country that is still in shock, like the victim of a series of traffic accidents who isn’t brought to hospital but wanders, dazed, along the highway. Healthcare is minimal in the bigger urban centres; non existent elsewhere. Aids, Ebola and a spectrum of killer-diseases are rife. Guns and lethal equipment is freely available. Ethnic and tribal grudges over land and access to resources, once settled by sticks and bows and arrows now lead to violent conflict. A multi-national force had to be deployed in the early summer of 2003 to separate tribal fighters in the east of the country. They had been indulging in orgies of massacres and mass rapes. All sides in the various conflicts don’t see civilians as non-combatants but as potential victims. Children as young as six are forcibly enlisted in the killing machines. They are taught how to kill, never how to read or write, or to grow food.

The greatest miracle in Africa is that the country still holds together at all. The countries’ borders were drawn by European statesmen, with little or no regard for their viability. Some embraced vast resourceless swathes of desert or savannah, others an Eden of minerals, but a Pandora’s Box of ethnic and tribal tensions.

Uganda

Ireland has recently paid host to a visit by a Ugandan government delegation. This was prompted by criticisms of Ugandan government policy, but also of the Irish government’s contributions to Uganda. One of the most vocal critics was the director of the charity Goal, whose work and contribution to Africa over many years deserves much praise.

The role of the Ugandan military in eastern Congo must be condemned, as should its continuing military and financial support for the various tribal militias who often use child soldiers and who terrorize non-combatants. But Mr O’Shea must surely realise that it is just too facile to blame the Ugandans for everything that is amiss in the Congo, or for the 5 million deaths that have resulted there through conflict. We must remember that the government of Rwanda has played its own part. The fact that Rwandan government policy has been dictated by a desire to defend the country against elements of the Interahamwe militias, who soaked the country in the blood in 1994, should not prevent us from criticizing their arming of ethnic militias in the Congo. But we must not forget that the country is still reeling from Mobutu’s legacy. Mobutu was kept in power through the assistance of the US, France and Belgium and the generosity of the World Bank and IMF.

Uganda is far from a perfect western liberal democracy, but it is stable. Its human rights record is cause for concern, but there is nothing like the systematic terror that for so long characterized government activity in the country, and which continues to characterize government action in countries such as Zimbabwe or Equatorial Guinea. President Museveni’s rule is autocratic, but it is not geared towards his personal enrichment. Many of his policies, especially in the area of AIDS prevention, have been successful and have earned wide praise. They are also home-grown, and stand in marked contrast to the ideologically-inspired delaying tactics of South African president Thabo Mbeki, who only after how many HIV related deaths is reluctantly recognising the role that anti-retroviral drugs play in combating the pandemic. But Museveni’s policies are based on the common sense reality that drugs alone cannot combat AIDS. Education both to improve people’s awareness of infection, and to dispel many of the myths about the disease, does work. Uganda has shown this. Many other deadly diseases stalk Uganda. There have been recent reports of a re-occurrence of Plague. At independence Uganda had the potential for a decent network of health and social services. Obote and Amin erased that potential, and countries like Ireland have a moral duty to help rebuild it. But yet Mr O’Shea would deny the Irish people the opportunity through their government, to aid these and other projects. And we must not forget that Uganda must confront a domestic insurgency, that led by the Lord’s Resistance Army in the north of the country. Let no one be in any doubt that the LRA draws absolutely no distinctions between civilians and combatants. Indeed they might be glibly described as Cavemen with Kalashnikovs. The LRA wishes to introduce a state whose laws are based on The Ten Commandments. I must profess a certain confusion here. The Ten Commandments that I know do not sanction the abduction of children, the mass rape of women or the mutilation of civilians. They do forbid the taking of life. Maybe the LRA is inspired by Hippo’s most famous son, St. Augustine who once wrote: "Lord make me perfect, but not yet."

Minister Tom Kitt is thus correct in my view to agree to disagree with John O’Shea and to approach this issue with one eye on the Ugandan government and the other on the Ugandan people.

Change at a price in Cote D’Ivoire.

The troubled recent history of Cote d’Ivoire shows all too well what can happen when the admittedly rotten applecart controlling events there gets overturned.

For over three decades the nation was ruled by the paternalistic and autocratic Félix Houphouet Boigny. He was no firebrand anti-colonialist, being an admirer of all things French. The version of his surname was a Frenchified version of the Baulé ufua bwanyi or white ram He also pursued a generally pro-western foreign policy, which was as friendly as any African nation could be to Apartheid South Africa and hostile to more radical leaders. He also built up a formidable power structure, though his one-party rule tended to depend more on cronyism than terror.

When he died he was succeeded by his Prime Minister Henri Konan Bédié. All seemed tranquil until Christmas Eve 1999 when a group of disgruntled soldiers staged a mutiny over back pay. Nothing really remarkable in this, except that it led to the fall of the government. Whether because of Christmas spirit or internal rottenness, the rulers put up no resistance, and the mutineers found themselves endowed with an unexpected Christmas present – a country to run, and none of them had much idea how to do it.

They turned to General Robert Guei, an estranged military ally of the old regime. When he was introduced on national television as the new boss he looked more startled that statesman-like. He announced "democratic" elections, though it soon became clear that his understanding of democratic was that he should win. However a very ham-fisted attempt at stealing victory in the face of defeat led to a popular uprising. Guei fled and a long-time political dissident and former student leader, Laurent Gbagbo assumed the presidency.

Gbagbo faced continuing discontent from elements in the army. There was also the position of Allassane Ouattara. A former government ally, Ouattara had founded his own political party that attracted massive support especially in the north of the country. But because of uncertainty over his citizenship – his mother was from Upper Volta now Burkina Faso – he was ruled ineligible to stand for public office. The economy was also in a weak position and strikes were common.

Last September Guei, with the backing of some of the army, staged a coup. As a result of other sections remaining loyal this was unsuccessful and Guei was murdered at a roadblock. However, rather than the insurrection dying a death it spread from the commercial capital Abidjan to the second city Bouaké. Within weeks other rebellions had taken place throughout the country and the government controlled less than half the nation.

The rebels in the west were augmented by Liberian army units and elements of the Sierra Leonean Revolutionary United Front who found the atmosphere of peace and brotherhood in their own country more than they could stand. Some of them, like Sam Bockarie, were also suspected of involvement in the most barbaric acts of the Sierra Leone civil war. In the south of Cote D’Ivoire northerners, natives of Burkina Faso and anyone suspected of sympathy with the rebels were targeted, often disappearing without trace.

And so the country, once lauded as an example of stability in an African maelstrom, slid into civil war. Western media commentators, ever dominated by cartographic niceties, described the conflict as being between the Christian south and the Muslim north. Now while the vast majority of Ivoirien Muslims live in the north of the country, they do not form a majority of the population. It was perhaps better to see the conflict as underpinned by ethnic and regional tensions. The areas which gave greatest support to the rebels were inhabited by Baulé speakers, who had dominated government in the years since independence but who had seen their primacy challenged by members of ethnic groups from the coastal south.

After much fighting, needless loss of life and tortuous negotiations a peace deal was finally signed. It would perhaps be better to describe the present climate in Cote D’Ivoire as the absence of outright conflict rather than peace. A national unity government was agreed upon with important posts going to the rebels. This deal is shaky to say the least.

Cote D’Ivoire is one of the world’s leading cocoa producers. It has vast swathes of fertile land as well as mineral resources. For decades it attracted immigrants from other states, including landlocked and impoverished Burkina Faso. Like so many countries in Africa diseases like Malaria, Polio and Meningitis break out into epidemic proportions. The standard of living that most people could look forward to was basic, yet very few were starving, and levels of impoverishment seen in other parts of Africa were rare. The country’s rulers were definitely corrupt, and much money ended up in people’s Swiss bank accounts rather than going where it was needed. It was a one party state with little or no opportunities for disseminating discussion. Yet the levels of political violence and repression so widespread in other African nations was absent. I am not condoning low practices in high places, but there must be a worry that the conditions into which Cote D’Ivoire has sunk may discourage reform or change in other West African states, particularly Togo.

 There's Gold in dem dere Icebergs.

Life is cheap in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Most westerners would agree, having observed the aftermath of the massacre of the innocents in Moscow's Palace of Culture. The fact that most of those slain died through application of the security forces' mystery gas does not detract, at least it would not detrace according to western legal norms, from the liability of the Chechen hostage takers for legally causing the hostages' deaths.

Life may be cheap, but it still has a high price. The Nice Referendum may have distracted us from a very important event that occurred in Moscow on October 18th: the assassination of Valery Tsvetkov, governor of the north-eastern province of Magadan. The province is larger  than the combined areas of France, Germany and the Benelux but is thinly populated by semi-nomadic reindeer herders and the descendants of Stalin's prisoners. This was the Botany Bay of the Gulag, a Gulag within the Gulag, from which few ever returned. The area is, however, a vast treasury of gold, silver and oil, while the icy waters that lap its shores contain vast quantities of fish, a commodity in growing demand in the west with its heavily depleted Atlantic shoals. If I might burden my readers with a marine analogy: Wealth of any kind in Russia attracts sharks, whose knowledge of business ethics tend at best to be somewhat basic. In Magadan there are many "unregistered" gold mines, and since the authorities don't know about them, no taxes are paid. In the hunt for gold many bodies dating from the Stalin era are found, but they are seldom reported, for to do so might attract official attention. Governor Tsvetkov had decided to clean up his region; it was so rich, but yet little if any of this wealth came to its people. Infrastructure is in many areas is non-existant, while wages are seldom paid on time. In the winter many provincial residents must shiver in darkness, which can in some areas be total, because either insufficient quantities of  fuel have been delivered to the province, or the power utility companies have not been paid.

Although it is too early to affix a motive, it does appear that Governor Tsvetkov made one too many enemies, and paid the ultimate price.

Hunger haunting Southern Africa.

Much of southern Africa, in a broad swathe embracing Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, is in the grip of serious famine as a result of crop failure brought on by lack of rainfall, a lack which is cruelly ironic as areas of neighbouring Mozambique have suffered the damaging effects of flooding. In Zambia drought and hunger has led some people into poaching, and some of the world's most endangered species are under threat, even in national parks.  In Zimbabwe the natural catastrophe has been worsened by the idiotic policies of President Mugabe, while in neighbouring Malawi, where it is estimated that between a third and one half of the population is suffering from malnutrition, the government continued to export large amounts of maize, even though there were warnings of impending food shortages. The "reason" given was that the country needed the money to pay demands made by international creditors. Now it is widely accepted that many of these institutions are hard-hearted, not to say immoral, but I doubt if any of them would have run the risks of being portrayed as latter-day Shylocks seeking their weight of flesh and thereby casting hundreds of thousands into the ever-widening jaws of imminent hunger. And as children are stunted in their growth by hunger and disease, Malawi's rulers are responding by changing the country's Constitution, so as to allow the president to stay in power for as long as he wishes. Furthermore, they are trying to stifle those launching protests. The people can, of course, vote for someone else, but they will probably have other, more pressing issues to attend to, like survival. 

Malawi is but the latest country in Africa whose ruler has fallen victim to the allure of holding onto power for life. This has been criticised by the Tanzanian president, Benjamin Mkapa, who was speaking in Mozambique where President Joaquim Chisano had announced his intentions not to seek re-election. Both countries are amongst the world's poorest, yet both leaders seem to have their people's welfare at heart, more than the pursuit of narrow vanity.

Along with malnutrition stalks disease, and it is estimated that nearly a thousand people have already died due to cholera.  Malawi was the fiefdom (and I don't use the word lightly) of Sir Hastings Banda, the Church of Scotland-trained doctor who as president instituted a form of malign, paternalist dictatorship for over thirty years in which all forms of modernity were kept beyond the borders. Education was rationed in effect, being granted only to the fortunate (and loyal) few who received the same form of education President Banda had received from the missionaries, including instruction in classical Greek. Banda is now dead, but the present ruler, Bakili Muluzi, was once a supporter. Recently a leading official of Banda's Malawi Congress Party apologised to the Malawian nation on television (prohibited during the Banda era) and radio for the brutality of those years. Maybe this was a political ploy, but the official response - to arrest the contrite politician and throw him into prison - seemed somewhat heavy-handed. None of this matters to a starving mother looking at her children die of hunger.

AIDS: Africa's latest plague.

South Africa has the highest number of people suffering from HIV. Estimates vary but some are that over a quarter of the population is affected. These are in general the youngest and most energetic members of society, in the 16-34 age group who are looked upon as being the engine of progress and movement in other countries. One would assume that everything humanly possible would be turn to extirpate this problem and prevent its spread, yet the South African government, especially president Thabo Mbeki, is a prisoner to a half-baked theory which says that AIDS is not caused by HIV. Theories are all very well, but when they flutter resolutely in the face of reality they are absurd; when they cause harm and death they are dangerous.

No panacea for AIDS has been found, yet there exists a class of drugs called retrovirals, which may slow down the multiplication of HIV. One of them, Nevirapine, may be effective in curtailing the transmission of the virus from HIV positive pregnant women to their babies, a major problem in South Africa. The South African government refuses to provide this medication, claiming worries about harmful effects on users - worries which are not shared by the medical world - and perhaps more importantly, cost. The government has been ordered by the courts to make it available, and each judgment has in turn been appealed. Such appeals are costly, and the money could perhaps be spent better. The highest court in South Africa has now found against the government, which intends to implement the judgment in a restricted, blinkered "letter of the law" approach.

Had we been dealing with a South African government of twenty years ago this policy would have been rightly seized upon by anti-apartheid groups (of whom I am proud to say I was a member) as further proof of the inherent evil, quasi Nazi and genocidal mentality of the regime. That it is a policy pursued by a government whose installation we fought so hard to bring about is nauseating. President Mbeki's attitude is reminiscent of the medieval friar telling his congregation in the midst of a church overrun by rats that the Black Death was God's just punishment on mankind for its wickedness.

Recently the government has announced a "relaxation" of its policy, announcing that nevirapine will be made available to HIV positive women and girls who have been sexually attacked. How many more people will die or have their lives blighted before this insane "drip-drip" attitude is replaced by a humane response to a human disaster?

The response to AIDS elsewhere in Africa has often been ludicrous. The authorities in Zimbabwe have launched a national Virgin Certification Scheme. At a recent ceremony the first certificates were handed out to a selection of girls aged between 12 and 30. It is difficult to see the utility of this scheme. Will these certificates be redeemable against basic foodstuffs, something in increasingly short supply in Zimbabwe?

But what of King Mswati III of Swaziland's project to stamp
out promiscuity? Coloured cords to be worn by virgins not only as a sign of their chastity but as a "Don't touch me" warning. It's a bit like the "hanky code" of the early '80s in reverse (no pun intended there). This one would certainly not work in Cavan. It would put The Springs into liquidation.

King Mswati is turning into a southern African killjoy with such hair-brained schemes. In the space of a week recently he increased his number of wives from seven to nine, and it was rumoured that the weddings' celerity reflected the need for speed, if one gets one's drift. But where were their cords? And recently there has come the news that His Majesty is on the look-out for Spouse no 10. He is using the annual Reed ceremony to "suss out the talent" - some as young as seven years' old. But it makes a change from sending a letter to Paschal Mooney's "Lonely Hearts Club". How could he? What would he say?

Obviously the king, who views his power as absolute, sees himself as above his own laws, and much else. His country is slipping inexorably into famine, amid estimates that up to a quarter of a million people are facing death. One thing King Mswati probably heard during his public school education in England was the anecdote about the emperor Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned. Actually this story was untrue, and Nero seems to have been genuinely concerned about the fire. The same can hardly be said of His Royal Highness, who has reportedly ordered an executive jet aircraft - price? $45 million. A snitch probably. It will seat 18; so there will be seven free places after the king himself and his nine wives!

Official discomfiture on this issue reminds me of a story I heard in the early 1980s from the local branch of the Bring-a-Bottle party. An exceptionally timid attempt at legislative liberalisation of contraceptives had unleashed the usual vehemence from the flat-earthers, not to mention downright scare stories about the imminent collapse of morality. A leading figure in the local party told a meeting that he had heard there were twelve johnnies being imported into Ireland for every man, woman and child. ‘What I want to know’ he asked ‘is where’s my twelve?’ Such a scheme would not work in Ireland, least of all in Cavan-Monaghan, for a local representative (a member of the Cheese 'n' Wine Party) would announce that there were 'bogus' Virginity Certificates in circulation - and he'd know.

But seriously, AIDS is a scourge. one of the best official responses has occurred in Uganda whose president, Yoweri Museveni has his democratic short comings, but who also demonstrates how an effective, pragmatic policy involving health care and education, implemented by government and foreign aid organisations, can have a real impact on the spread of HIV/Aids.

What the African continent, beset as it is by this plague as deadly as Europe's Black Death, needs is help at all levels, both in the long and short term. Drugs and improved medical infrastructure are vital, but so too is education. It also needs leaders with vision. Sadly, the news reports I quoted above, however worthy the particular projects might be, are only seized upon by the "Developed" world's gutter press for some nudge-nudge, wink-wink titillation. 

Aithnionn ciaróg, ciaróg eile.

Speakers of Gaelic will recognise that this proverb means figuratively: ‘One rat knows another’. Speaking of rats, old Robert Gabriel Mugabe must feel that the whole of the British establishment (including those cricket-playing gentlemen whom he once urged his people to emulate) had turned on him and his few remaining friends in England. I am referring of course to the Crown court decision to find Robert’s buddy Nick the Prick Van Hoogstraten guilty of manslaughter. Nick’s sending down will cause few tears to flow, especially around Poole, Brighton and other areas where he exercised a reign of terror over his slum tenants. Indeed most are now probably more convinced in the existence of British Justice when such a loathsome piece of loud-mouthed filth finds himself awaiting a long prison stretch. His performance in court – his low, whisper-like voice quivering with emotion and in syncopation with his lower lip – showed that he had learned well the lessons provided by the Robert Maxwell School of Curial Thesbianism, better known by its unofficial acronym of FUCKRADA.

Van Hoogstraten owns vast swathes of land in Zimbabwe, as many as nine ranches. Would such a behemoth as he not be the archetype of the evil colonialist white thief who had caused so many of Mugabe’s supporters to live in bitter penury? Far from it. Van Hoogstraten was a major donor to Zanu-PF. When the "War veterans" started squatting on white-owned land those who arrived on Van Hoogstraten’s property quietly disappeared, and the amount of land taken by the government was insignificant. But Robert G. knew what side his bread is buttered on, or, to use another frightfully banal cliché, where the beef is. It is beef from Van Hoogstraten’s herds which have fed members of Mugabe’s military forces in Congo, making old Nick a few more hundreds of thousands of spondoolies, while many in Zimbabwe starve.

Mugabe used to be a Marxist, so one can only ascribe Van Hoogstraten’s description of tenants (his own included) as a critique of the role occupied by the lumpen proletariat in the British housing market.There are some who still support Robert Mugabe's policy, as seeking to redress the remaining imbalances of white rule in favour of poor blacks. However, a report which leaked out in mid August alleged that, in return for Nick van Hoogstraten underwriting Mugabe's purchase of 14 MIG fighters, he was earmarked to receive 500,000 - that's half a million - hectares of prime farming land. He would at a stroke become Zimbabwe's largest landholder. Maybe he can use his time "inside" to reverse his melanin deficiency. As such a big landholder in the country he surely qualifies for Zimbabwean citizenship. We might well see Mugabe seeking his extradition, perhaps in return for the many hundreds arrested and tortured for daring to call Mugabe the fraud and gangster he is.

But what Robert G really likes about Nick is his "no-nonsense, say it how it is" rhetorical style, for he had described those farmers facing eviction in Mugabe’s land-grab as "white trash" – a comment redolent of the "good-ol’ days" when the world was owned by "good ol’ boys – none o’ them negro-lovin’ east-coast liberals".

Zimbabwean Land Reform: The Real Winners.

The sight of "War veterans", many of whom had never been involved in the War of Liberation, terrorising farmers from their property in Zimbabwe seemed to many an act of madness. The farming sector helped to feed the country, to wheel its economy and provide jobs. Mugabe made an appeal to a rather fusty and frankly outdated anti-colonialism to justify this policy. Let us be benign and say that it was a common belief in such an ideology, however outdated, that enabled some African leaders and politicians to tacitly support Mugabe and his illegal hold on power.

The scope of "land redistribution" though, is starting to become clear. Some observers, myself included, had an inkling of what it was really about. Mugabe seemed to be behaving like a madman, a latter-day Don Quixote jousting at windmills. But Mugabe is no madman. It appears that many of the best farms taken over for land redistribution are not going to be given to the landless and destitute, of whom there are sadly far too many scraping a living from the African soil. No; they are going to be handed over to prominent ZANU-PF functionaries and Members of Parliament, as well as police officials, army officers (some of whom threatened a coup were Mugabe to be ousted in the elections), and even journalists in pro-ZANU-PF publications. These people all have the requisite qualities for farming life, to which they are no doubt being drawn by a desire to get back to the land. So it is a case of "Land for the Boys". The Ministry of Agriculture has announced that it is reneging on an earlier promise to compensate dispossessed farmers for improvements, such as irrigation. The farmers would now probably have a good case under legitimate expectation of such compensation. It will be interesting to see how farm workers will be treated under the new regime, and whether their pay and conditions are at best equal to those they enjoyed under the previous occupiers. If they aren't they won't have too many avenues for complaining in a country whose rulers are incredibly intolerant of dissent. As for the "War Veterans", their role is now at an end in this rather crude land-grab, so they can return to the prisons, the mental hospitals and the re-hab schemes from which so many of them originated. Their mental imbalance has alarmed even some government supporters, and it was a generally pro-Mugabe newspaper that recently carried the reports of mutilations of domestic pets by "war veterans" on farms abandoned by their owners. Where is the ideological base for maiming ponies and poisoning dogs? Zimbabwe, like so much of southern Africa, faces famine, yet farmers have been compelled to leave crops to rot in the fields. What is the ideological justification for this?

The regime of the late Mobutu Sese Seko was characterised as a kleptocracy. Mugabe is nearing his eightieth birthday and so no doubt hopes to die in his own bed and in his own country. Surely he doesn't want to share the fate of Mobutu, whose legacy included, along with a despoliation of his country's wealth) the sordid image of incontinence pads floating amongst the discarded shell of his garish marble palace at Gbadolite after he and his cronies had fled. Its ostentatious rooms being reoccupied by encroaching jungle: a vivid representation of how the follies of man are taken over by the force of nature.

It never rains but it pours.

Residents of the city of Goma must have asked what they had done to deserve it. As if life wasn't hard enough, after enduring decades of Mobutu's kleptocracy, civil war and occupation by Rwandan soldiers, and then Mount Nyiragongo decides to erupt, spewing their city with molten lava, which destroyed hospitals and what passed for infrastructure. Although the mountain seems to have shot its load lava wise there are still problems facing those brave enough to return. Gasses from the lava are often toxic. Some of the lava flowed into Lake Kivu where is quickly cooled, but not before killing off the fish, upon which so many of the residents depended for food. As a result of the destruction of running water, cholera has raised its demonic brow. The city is in ruins and much of the surrounding farm land has been destroyed. Let us not forget this is still a rebel-held area, under the de facto control of the Congolese Rally for Democracy. Even before the eruption there were concerns about the state of the environment. The area contains rich sources of the valuable mineral coltan (without which, it seems, mobile phone would not exist). Coltan is not so much being mined in the area as snatched and grabbed, often by concerns linked with governing circles in neighbouring countries (who have also helped themselves to the rich timber resources). This is happening in national parks where mining is supposed to be off-limits, but as the central government is in far-away Kinshasa, and it isn't recognised anyway, there is no problem. Pity the poor mountain gorillas whose habitat is being destroyed. It all reminds me of a story from South America. God had created the continent, but in St Peter's eyes it was all just a little too good to be true. 'Listen God' he said. 'You have created paradise on earth. Aren't you shooting yourself in the foot? Who will want to come up here'. 'Don't worry' answered God. I haven't populated it yet'.
    And it has since begun to rain - heavily, causing landslide and flooding. Estimates, which are inevitably incomplete, say that dozens have been killed in the Uvira region of Sud-Kivu province alone. But rainfall and indeed restless volcanoes may be the least of the problems faced by residents of Lake Kivu's banks. A recent documentary on BBC television described Lake Kivu as a time-bomb waiting to overflow, or more correctly overturn. The lower water levels, it seems, are saturated with carbon dioxide seeping through cracks in the earth. A sufficiently violent disturbance in the water, for example a volcanic eruption's lava flow or mudslide, could cause this CO2 to escape from the lake and flow over surrounding areas in a suffocating cloud. The lake's waters would briefly overflow its banks in a giant tidal wave. The numbers who would die would be conservatively in the hundreds of thousands. Surreal science fiction? It has already happened at a small lake in the Cameroons, killing 1,800.

Meanwhile the far from Democratic Republic of the Congo is still locked in a bloody civil war. Peace talks under the aegis of the South African government were held in the South African resort of Sun City, the former fun capital of Apartheid-era white South Africans. They progressed at a pace which would make an overweight snail nauseatingly dizzy. Brought together were the Kinshasa government, opposition parties and representatives of the various rebel armies. When the talks actually started there was much bickering of the hair-splitting variety, but eventually a peace agreement was signed between President Kabila and the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), whereby the MLC''s leader Jean--Pierre Bemba will become prime Minister of a transitional government pending elections. However, the more powerful RDC rebel group have refused to have anything to do with this agreement, and have shown every indication that they will keep fighting. So peace, so badly needed and longed for, will elude the Congo for some time to come alas. 

In late April a group[ of locals in the Kisangani area of north-east Congo attempted a rebellion against the Rwandan occupiers and their local accomplices. A   radio station was briefly seized and some Rwandans and RDC supporters were lynched by an enraged crowd. The retribution was swift and unceremonious. Suspects were summarily massacred, their bodies dumped into rivers. Other corpses were thrown into mass graves.

The Comgo is one of the richest countries in the world, in terms of its mineral wealth, its soils, and most importantly, its people. For so long the historical response was to pillage its wealth and enslave its people, a process begun by his Most Catholic Majesty, Leopold II of the Belgians, but continued by Joseph Desire Mobutu, and attempted with no lack of verve by those squabbling over the shattered country that he left behind.

That time of the month again in Turkmenistan.

Turkmenistan is a huge, thinly populated nation. It is made up mostly of desert, but there are reservoirs of natural gas and other hydrocarbons beneath its territory. The Turkmen themselves speak a language not too dissimilar from Turkish.

President Saparmurad Niyazov is noted for the more bizarre aspects of his personality cult. He is better known to his people as Turkmenbashi, though the many who have suffered at his hands would call him Turkmenbasher. In his native land, this former refrigeration engineer made good is omnipotent and omnipresent; cities have been renamed after him, while his face pops up everywhere. Go into a shop, maybe to buy some Turkmenbashi after-shave, and you will pay with notes bearing Turkmenbashi’s portrait. Turn on the TV and there in the corner is the permanent image of the president. Plans have existed for years for a larger-than-life statue of Turkmenbashi in the centre of the nation’s capital Ashgabat, which will revolve every twenty-four hours, its course manifested by a spot-light, so that even in sleep people would know that Turkmenbashi watches them. Rumours have existed that there will soon be Turkmenbashi condoms, as well as Turkmenbashi tampons. Turkmenbashi – reaches spots other tyrants can’t.

President Niyazov wants to revive authentic Turkmen culture, with Guess Who? as the arbiter of all things Turkmen. His thinking is contained in a volume called Rukhname, allegedly the Turkmen for bovine diarrhoea. This is compulsory reading for applicants to higher education facilities, who must demonstrate a deep and profound grasp of the tenets of Rukhname, as well as a thorough knowledge of the biography of the president.

Recently his attempts to reclaim the country’s identity for its rich heritage has gone one step further, with a decree renaming the days of the week and the months of the year. January (the big cheese’s own birth month) has been renamed, perhaps not surprisingly, as Turkmenbashi; April has had its name changed in honour of the President’s mother; while September has been retitled Rukhname, in honour of its position at the beginning of the educational year.

A day will surely come when ordinary forms of greeting, whether in the street or on telephone will be replaced by a salutation to the top honcho; something like "Turkmenbashi yaboya" accompanied by an upraised index finger. This would translate as "Long life and happiness to Turkmenbashi and prosperity to his grateful people". Soon Turkmen dictionaries will have only one word entries. Angry disputants will tell one another to "Turkmenbashi off". Those eavesdropping on the tender cooings of young lovers after an evening getting tanked up on Turkmenbashi mare’s milk liqueur and Fesh-fesh grass might hear an exchange like this:
"I’m goin’ to really Turkmenbashi your brains out darlin’ when I get you back to my tent…"
"A don’t feel like it luv tonight: I’m havin’ me Turkmenbashi."
An embarrassed party guest may attempt to excuse an unpleasant odour wafting from his direction with the apologetic: ‘Oops I think I’ve just Turkmenbashied myself"; while youths will admit to their horrified mothers that they had nipped out for a quick Turkmenbashi. They may well earn a clip ‘round the lug hole for this, accompanied by the admonition: "Turkmenbashi sees everyone, whereas you’ll see nothing when you go blind you little…Turkmenbashi."

At the end of November President Niyazov's motorcade came under an armed attack, interpreted as an assassination attempt. Turkmenbashi was quick to point one of his grubby fingers at political opponents - mostly estranged colleagues, and to "round up the usual suspects". These unfortunates have already suffered monstroust violations of their human rights. But the assassination attempt has struck many observers as odd. Who, in Turkmenistan would wish to harm the man who watches over them like a father, who has decimated their health and education system, closing hospitals and schools throughout the country? Perhaps he felt that his membership amongst the club of tyrants was under threat because he hadn't survived at least one assassination attempt.

The scourge of Racism: Ireland's latest shame.

Like most decent people I am sickened and appalled by the death of a young Chinese man in North Dublin, following a racist attack. Our green and pleasant land is being besmirched anew I fear by such acts. We are so good at professing our "Pro-Life" credentials in this land, yet a large minority, often with very strong "pro-life" credentials, have never been overly worried about taking human life, especially if the target's basic right could be brushed aside because he was a 'legitimate target'. There are alas too many politicians with no moral scruples who are practically prepared to grovel to the basest elements for a few lousy votes.

The Irish police and courts are to be congratulated on the apprehension and subsequent jailing of an individual for shouting racist abuse at a man from Sierra Leone. The racist seems to have belonged to that set of middle-aged loudmouths. He wouldn't have known where Sierra Leone was, let alone be aware of its very recent troubles. Furthermore, he would be proud of his ignorance. The Police were on the spot, so they were able to deal with the incident in an efficient manner. What of the many instances where people are subjected to racist slurs and where there is no member of the police force nearby? I am often ashamed of my timidity, as I recall with cringes the occasion when a visitor to my home began a disgusting tirade against "black bastards". When I think back upon it my blood reaches boiling-point and I am ashamed I did not immediately show him the door.

There is a danger in the gardaí's actions. There will be many from those quarters that have traditionally been hostile to the rule of any law but their own, who will feel justified in coming out of their racist closets.

I hope the man from Sierra Leone knows that he is welcome here.

I told you I wasn't feeling well

Yes, this is indeed the great Spike Milligan's epitaph. Those who watched his unequalled contribution to British Comedy in programmes like Q in the 1970s may well remember, probably with horror, the way in which the airwaves of the times were beset by medical dramas. There was Owen MD, General Hospital, Angels, All Creatures Great and Small (sorry, that wasn't humans). Well, spare a thought for the viewing public in Turkmenistan who are regularly treated to in-depth reports about the health of their dear leader, President Niyazov. Turkmenbashi had a cardiac bypass a few years ago (hasn't every powerful person?) and ever since, his heart specialist has to fly in from Germany to the desert republic to give him his check-up. The specialist then has to give numerous interviews on Turkmen television to assure President Niyazov's loyal citizens that their big cheese's ticker is on form and that he is in remarkably good health considering his never-ending exertions on behalf of the Turkmen people. Professor Steiner is a sure ratings winner on Turkmen TV - there's only one channel, yet he has so far rejected offers to appear on the Turkmen equivalent of The Lyrics Board. Just to make sure Turkmenbashi's gnashers are in tip-top shape a dentist also flies in regularly from Bavaria, He too has to appear on television with the results of his examinations.

One can't help fantasising as to whether this could be tried here in the Emerald Isle. Imagine what would happen if medical specialists had to give detailed reports on local radio about some local bigshot's swine fever, or the state of his piles (aka haemarrhoids as they've been called since we went metric - another Milliganism). This could be accompanied by diagrams in the local paper - maybe a pull-out wall poster, while one of his arse-lickers with a superiority complex could give a series of "lectures" on the world's finest collection of suppositories, anal wipes and male tampons.

PS. The net's closing in - vide Redmond.

    Will ya bury with my people?

        People from beyond Ireland's shores may not recognise the above, as the olde worlde way in which an Irish male would propose to his prospective bride.  Well, marriage, which has thankfully fallen out of fashion here has always been a complicated affair, fraught with terror, especially for Irish males who were still virgins. But marriage, especially royal matrimony, can be a troublesome affair in Swaziland. King Mswati III already has about eight or nine wives. An annual event takes place where prospective additions to the stable have to dance topless and then cut reeds for the Queen Mother's kraal. It is all a bit like Winning streak. Well none of the contestants raised the king's ... desires, but undaunted he decided to adopt a more direct approach. Having spied a tasty bit of Swazi crumpet he sent some of the lads out to bring her in - a sort of cash'n'carry, only without the cash. The idea of seeing her daughter kidnapped, even by agents of the king, was outrageous, and so she began proceedings in the courts. The eighteen-year-old girl at the centre of this imbroglio is now stating that she will become the king's wife with pleasure and alacrity, and so there was no question of kidnapping. However, the king is not best pleased, not so much by the attendant publicity but by the fact that his officials failed to carry out the mandatory virginity tests on the girl. There are reports that his Royal Hymenness went on a little sneaky-peaky feely-feely up her skirt and discovered that his prospective spoure would have been Her Royal Hymenless. In Swaziland for the king to even consider marrying a female who had belonged, however briefly, to another man would be contrary to the Swazi royal prerogative of zweququ - literally "first poke".

Don't Forget To Remember Me...

Life can be tough for people in the Russian Federation. There were those who thought that the age of disappearance ended in March 1953 with the death of the Great Leader. But it has transpired that over two dozen villages in Karelia, north of St Petersburg, have ceased officially to exist. As for their residents... well they're still there, but because their place of residence has gone, local government agencies no longer provide them with running water, heating, indeed any service. Now why hasn't someone thought of that in Ireland.

Residents of Sergiev Posad 16 are in an even worse fix. Unlike the villages in Karelia, they never existed at all, because the place was a secret rockets research centre. When the old Soviet Union collapsed, they were transferred to the control of Moscow province, which is hundreds of miles away. The Moscow authorities then said they didn't want to be responsible for such a distant city. However, their local province continues to ignore the city's existence. As a result any paperwork, driving licence, marriage certificate - you name it, is impossible to get, because where they live does not officially exist. Honestly, it's like something from Gogol.

Life in the city of Partizansk, in the Russian Far East, are wondering why it never rains but it pours. Last winter they were denied hearing because some local bureaucrat pocketed the money allocated for the fuel budget. In August the area was hit by heavy rain causing widespread floods, and as a result they have no running water.

But perhaps the most bizarre news story is a proposal by the governor of Volgograd province to revert to the old name, no, not Tsarytsin but Stalingrad. The proposal is thought likely to attract the support of President Putin. Now if a German or Austrian Burgermeister were to propose changing the name of his town to Hitlersdorf, there would be a storm of justified condemnation. The idea that a monster who was the cause of the death of millions, of the suffering of millions more, would be on the map of the world is nothing short of perverse.

For some past items go to the Lukewarm Spots page.

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