Blair Underwood Has Living Relatives In My Village

See full video here.

Incompetence and Witchcraft In Africa

I do not like reporting on stories of witchcraft in Africa but this one is so dumbfounding that I cannot help but comment on it. The new witchcraft story from Africa is from Ghana but it is not being promoted by Ghanaians. It is being promoted by Ghana's losing soccer coach, Goran Stevanovich, a Serb. After a dismal performance in the just ended African Nations Cup, he is now complaining that the poor performance was due to witchcraft. How come that it is only in Africa that bad performance is attributed to witchcraft rather than incompetence? The man should be fired - immediately.

What Is Democracy?

It is what happens before, during, and after elections - from local to national level. Democracy has been popularly understood by some African leaders as elections and so the electioneering has come to represent the most important element of democracy in much of Africa. However, what happens before, during, and after elections are critical to democracy. In fact, elections do not matter if dictatorial tendencies are the modus operandi before, during, and after elections. I have increasingly come to see that where people are not allowed to express their disapproval of governmental actions openly, especially after elections, there is no democracy. When democracy is defined as elections it begins to give the impression that anyone who wins an election, even by crooked means, can do whatever they want with the country, as people like Paul Biya, Mugabe, Yaya Jammeh, Abdoulaye Wade, and others are doing. They become kings after elections rather than listening to people. Democracy exists where politicians can be forced to change course of action even after elections. Where people are not given the opportunity to vent their displeasure with government actions, as is currently the case with Senegal, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and a host of other such rogue states, there is no democracy. Democracy happens where people are free to protest without the government sending the police to teargas and bludgeon them. In Africa, therefore, dictatorships are passing for democracy because the ruling elites have come to define democracy as elections.

Abdoulaye Wade is Crazy

How else can I explain a person who built a monument to African Renaissance, harped about democracy, and is now doing this. Also see the video below.

Nigerian Billionaire Helping Widows and Orphans

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Afropolitans: "Young Africans With A Global Outlook"

CNN has the story.

Paul Biya's Emasculation of Cameroon

Most Cameroonians agree that someone like Biya would not be president in any other country but Cameroon. If it were in countries like Guinea Conakry, Liberia, Nigeria, or Kenya, Biya would no longer be presidend. These are countries that have learned not to tolerate the rapacity which regimes like Biya's perpetrate against their people. On top of the fact that Biya has repeatedly rigged the electoral process in Cameroon to impose himself on the people, it was recently reported that he gave a national address from a foreign country. That is, his February 11, 2012 address to the nation was a taped address. At the time of the address he was somewhere in Europe and the people of Cameroon did not know why. It is only in Cameroon that a purported leader could address his people from a foreign country without any explanation. It is now being reported that Cameroon, a very resource-rich country in Africa, is now begging for international aid to feed its starving people. That Paul Biya has taken such a rich country and turned it into a beggar is astounding! It is only in Cameroon that such travesty can happen while the people just sit on their misery. It is often said that a country gets the kind of leader it deserves. This may perhaps be correct. However, I am not quite sure what Cameroonians have done to deserve a rapacious plunderer like Paul Biya. Perhaps their docility and willingness to settle for the lowest common denominator is to blame. Perhaps Biya has effectively taught them to think so low of themselves that they now think that their proper place in the world is to be beggars, in spite of their enormous wealth. How else can one account for such an apparently thorough emasculation of such a proud people?