it is an ethnic conflict, but also it is about Coltan oreColtan (short for columbite–tantalites and known industrially as tantalite) is a dull black metallic ore from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. The niobium-dominant mineral in coltan is columbite (after niobium's original American name columbium), and the tantalum-dominant mineral is tantalite.[1]
Tantalum from coltan is used to manufacture tantalum capacitors which are used for mobile phones, personal computers, automotive electronics, and cameras.[2] Coltan mining[3][4] is widespread in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[5][6][7]
DR Congo has 70% of the world's coltan and it comes from the Kivus.
.In a region already plagued with militia violence, M23 rebels launched a major new offensive in March 2022, sparking a conflict that has led to military intervention and mediation efforts by East African regional leaders. They brokered a ceasefire last year but it has been repeatedly violated.
Clashes between the rebels, army forces and self-defence groups that support them have escalated recently, forcing entire communities in Masisi and Rutshuru territories to flee to perceived areas of greater safety on the outskirts of Goma.
A United Nations report found that Rwanda created and commanded the M23 rebel group.[12] Rwanda ceased its support because of international pressure and the military defeat by the DRC and the UN in 2013.[13]
In 2017, M23 elements resumed their insurgency in the DRC, but the operations of this splinter faction had little local impact.[14] In 2022, a larger portion of M23 started an offensive, which eventually resulted in the capture of the Congolese border town of Bunagana by the rebels.[15][16] In November 2022, M23 rebels got close to the city of Goma and forced about 180,000 people to leave their homes after the Congolese Army had withdrawn from the region near the village of Kibumba.[17]. In June 2023, Humans rights watch reported human rights abuses by M23 rebels in the democratic republic of Congo, including unlawful killings, rapes and other war crimes.
To understand the story of immigration in the United States, one must delve into the experiences of these men, @simonateba and @elonmusk.
Both were born in Africa. Elon Musk, the son of an electromechanical engineer and a dietitian/model, had a relatively privileged background.… pic.twitter.com/4ALZmjoDDC
Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group are committing war crimes in Darfur, says the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor. https://t.co/DOFsCYL0oq
Mohamed said the RSF “militia” is committing large-scale, systematic attacks which aim “to force ethnic cleansing and identity killing” of Darfur’s Masalit ethnic community. He said it is up to the prosecutor to determine if this amounts to genocide.
* The RSF evolved from so-called Janjaweed militias that fought in a conflict in the 2000s in the Darfur region, where they were used by the government of long-ruling President Omar al-Bashir to help the army put down a rebellion. More than 2 million people were displaced and as many as 300,000 killed from 2003-2008. International Criminal Court prosecutors accused government officials and Janjaweed commanders of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Beginning in 2015, the RSF, along with Sudan's army, began sending troops to fight in the war in Yemen alongside Saudi and Emirati troops, allowing Hemedti to forge ties with the Gulf powers.
the saudis are opposing the Houthis in that civil war. So essentially they are mercenaries for Saudi
the article describes their part in the present civil war in the Sudan which is tribal, and is about who gets to keep the gold.
and Russian mercenaries, the Wagner group, was involved because they wanted some of the gold.... are they still involved? Last article a couple months ago.
in the last week, we saw Iran hit Balochi rebels who hid in Pakistan, and now Pakistan hit them back. And today there are reports that Jordan is hitting drug smugglers in Syria.
so although Gaza dominates the news, a lot of other stuff is going on in the Middle East and is spilling into Africa.
if you really want your head to spin, check out what is going on in Sudan, where recent fighting has displaced 7 million people.
It's about gold and petroleum. The Wagner group of Russian mercenaries were there, and the local so called Rapid Reaction force is busy spreading war all over the region, including helping the Saudis fight the Houthi.
Apparently the NYTimes finally got around to noticing that the African bishops were sort of angry at the so called Pope for pushing the gay agenda by blessing irregular sexual relationships.
Of course, in Africa this would impact polygamists who want to convert, but the real push back is against the homosexual part, for many reasons
NYTimes is behind a paywall, but the blog GetReligion who reports on the western media's inability to get religion correct in their reports, has a summary here.
NYT puts in the word fear, implying the evil idea of homophobia, but GR asks if maybe they are talking about fear of Islamic attacks.
And of course the NYTimes doesn't see what Cardinal Sarah has pointed out: that this so called blessing a threat to the institution of the family, which is the core of Africa, (and is already under attack from a capitalism that forced men to work away from family, and under attack by various NGOs and UN treaties that are pushing contraception, abortion and promiscuity including in the schools).
Left out of most western press stories quoting him: The part where he says Africa will defend the family. (a recent book by African bishops essentially said the same thing: That Africa will be the ones who defend the family just as Africa protected the Christ child and Holy Family when they fled to Egypt from Herod).
No, here is how the NYT frames the problem:
Home to 236 million of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics, Africa accounted for more than half of the 16.2 million people who joined the church worldwide in 2021. As bishops and other church leaders on the continent deal with the fallout among their parishioners over the declaration, broader concerns have been raised about whether it could lead to a rift between Pope Francis and a region that is a demographic bright spot for Catholicism.
yup. it's about politics and power.
The GR article then notes something we also see: African priests in the USA who are missionaries. When I lived in Oklahoma, we were essentially mission territory and yes we did have African priests.
this recent USA Today headline: “African priests fill American pulpits as 'reverse missionaries,' revitalizing parishes.” Why are so many priests from Africa ending up in America? That’s pretty simply: African Catholics have more children, more converts and more new priests than Americans.
After decades of U.S. missionaries traveling to Africa to convert and preach, the trend is reversing: Across the country, parishes now rely on the ministry of international priests, many from East Africa and Nigeria.
...
working in the black areas? Well maybe. but the culture is different.
Actually, there are also a lot of Polish and Vietnamese priests, who seem to be Catholic, out there too. Why?
Meanwhile, the number of American priests is tumbling: there are 10,000 fewer priests now than there were two decades ago.
maybe because a lot of seminaries were hostile to men who wanted to be Caholic. Goodbye Good Men...which we saw in the Altoona diocese when I worked there. Is it still that bad? Don't ask me: I live in the Philippines where those leading tend to be into green theology and hip stuff but here in the rural areas, are still into traditional fiestas etc. but alas many are now joining Protestant churches to find Jesus.
But the push of the gay agenda into churches is also splitting other churches,such as the Anglicans and Methodists, including those in the USA.
We Asians are aware that growing rice causes methane release.
Asians have long been blamed by the global warming crazies because we eat rice.
Flooding rice paddies and plowing weeds etc into the mud to rot and fertilize the crops results in methane, a greenhouse gas. So we rice farmers are under pressure to limit the flooding of the rice paddies.
dirty little secret: this method lowers methane release, but increases Nitrous oxide release, which is another greenhouse gas even worse than Methane.
But now Nature magazine is blaming Africa because they too are busy growing rice.
Africa has been identified as a major driver of the current rise in atmospheric methane, and this has been attributed to emissions from wetlands and livestock. Here we show that rapidly increasing rice cultivation is another important source, and we estimate that it accounts for 7% of the current global rise in methane emissions.
so what is their answer? Stop growing rice and starve you peasants.
Continued rice expansion to feed a rapidly growing population should be considered in climate change mitigation goals.
This will alert the western green NGOs to stop Africans from doing this.
getting them to plant hybrid rice with a higher yield, and helping with loans to update their farming practices.
The article goes into details how they are doing this, including finding which type of rice grows best and making a rice institute there to grow seeds for locals to plant.
More than 20 African countries are planting hybrid rice, and China continues to provide agricultural technical support to countries and regions in need, helping countries strengthen agricultural capacity building related to hybrid rice.
they note that it favors Europe in a way that could undermine local industries and even agriculture.
The EU-ACP treaty could exacerbate existing trade imbalances. The EU, as a highly developed economic bloc, may have the upper hand in negotiations, potentially leading to terms that favour European interests....
Signing the EU-ACP treaty may expose local industries to stiff competition from more advanced European counterparts. This could jeopardize the growth and sustainability of Nigerian industries, leading to job losses and hindered economic diversification.
... The agricultural sector, a crucial component of Nigeria’s economy, could face challenges under the EU-ACP treaty. The influx of subsidized European agricultural products might undermine the competitiveness of local farmers. This could have detrimental effects on food security and the livelihoods of those dependent on agriculture.
and I suspect the protect the environment types will pressure their farmers to stop growing food because global warming...
Holdouts cast shadow over new EU pact with African, Caribbean and Pacific states
The EU this week finally sealed an agreement on a new treaty that will govern relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) community, but the refusal of 35 of the 79 ACP states to sign it has cast a shadow over its merits. ....
so 45 percent of those supposed to sign the agreement refused to go along with it.
The new treaty is designed to serve as a legal framework guiding relations between the EU’s 27 nations and 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries for the next two decades.
However, at the formal signing ceremony in Samoa on Wednesday (15 November), 35 ACP countries refused to sign the agreement which will provisionally enter into force in January 2024.
The holdouts include 20 African countries, 9 Caribbean states and six in the Pacific.
The repeated delays have been a growing source of frustration for EU officials, with many worrying that the bloc’s failure to ratify the treaty would be viewed as bad faith by its partners.,,...
Obey the EU or else? who died and made them king?
The article says they won't sign because these countries are mad at the EU's position on the Ukraine and Gaza, but you know, those two wars post date the writing of the treaty.
So maybe it's about something else.
Warsaw had withheld its signature in protest at the treaty’s language promoting non-discrimination, LGBT+ rights and gender equality, while a handful of African states had previously indicated their reluctance to ratify the treaty over its provisions on non-discrimination which, they say, promote homosexuality....
.
so the problem is that these countries just won't agree to being bullied into the EU's gender agenda, which they hide by using the language of human rights.
it establishes “common principles” in key areas such as human rights, climate change and migration...
“Now it’s imperative that both the EU and ACP states translate their commitments into concrete actions, involving youth and civil society organisations in working towards the achievement of shared goals,” Goerlitz said.
shared goals? No, the goals of the EU.
Pope Francis once called this cultural imperialism.
But one Trad Catholic source pointed out that maybe Pope Francis arranged his brand new dogma chief who has only had the job for a couple months to quickly put out a pro gay blessing to impose this on the African church.
...Fiducia Supplicans – the Vatican Declaration approving blessings for same-sex couples. This has nothing to do with pastoral sensitivity, and everything to do with politics, Agenda 2030, the SDGs of the United Nations, and the EU-ACO Treaty between the European Union and seventy-nine poorer countries...
So why are the African Catholic Bishops resisting Pope Francis to his face? Because forty-seven African countries will be most negatively impacted by the EU-ACP Treaty, which will force African nations to embrace the ... European Union position on human sexuality.
With the Vatican signaling change to the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, African bishops will be cut off at the knees.
the African bishops are of course refusing to sign off on the Pope's so called blessing of gay couples, (and divorced people living with another spouse, and polygamous couples). But no one in the west is listening to them.
So will the prophecy that Africa, who nurtured the Christ child when Herod persecuted him, also nurture the Catholic church faithful when the world decides to persecute them by destroying the faith?
The Sudanese-Arab militia worked its way systematically through the tents, shacks and mud houses of the Ardamata camp, shooting male residents. The settlement in western Darfur was home to about 30,000 non-Arab Sudanese people who had fled earlier bouts of fighting in the country’s civil war, which started nearly seven months ago.
The United Nations Refugee Agency said Friday that around 800 people were killed in the camp and the surrounding community between Nov. 4 and 6. Local activists said the number of victims could be above 1,000.
The killings, these activists and international officials say, raise the specter of a repeat of the bloodshed inflicted on Darfur two decades ago, when Sudanese-Arab militias killed an estimated 300,000 people, most of them members of the region’s non-Arab minority.
follow the money: The area is full of gold reserves.
And the govt is supported by the Russian mercs, aka Wagner group who want the gold.
CNN Article 2022: They were plundering gold to pay for the war in the Ukraine.
“The Rapid Support Forces’ latest episode of ethnically targeted killings in West Darfur, has the hallmarks of an organized campaign of atrocities against Massalit civilians,” said Mohamed Osman, Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The UN Security Council needs to stop ignoring the desperate need to protect Darfur civilians.”
This CNN report notes how the Wagner group is backing the RSF
“What is not in doubt is Wagner’s role in this, it has been supplying the RSF with arms and supplies through Darfur,” one Western intelligence official told CNN.
“It follows Wagner’s modus operandi. Create chaos and seize power,” another intelligence source active in the region
just a reminder to the left in the USA who blame the CIA and Israel for all the problems in the world: Lots of bad guys out there oding their thing. And the UN, alas, is pretty helpless to stop it.
Not my area of expertise, but these reports are about several recent coups in the southern Sahel which used to be French colonies, and where the French usually kept the peace, but now we see the Wagner group manipulating the local military and of course the Muslim charity money that is diverted into jihadi groups.
=======
.........
Strategypage has an article on what is going on in Mali:
apparantly the Wagner group, is now considered as formally Russian troops, and the government will have to deal with the Russian Government
Backstory is the head of the Wagner group attempted a coup against Putin and died in an accident (/s).
so what is important about Mali?
Gold
Mali is a major producer of gold and the Russians have always been willing accept payments in gold. Russia maintains a huge gold stockpile (about 2,300 tons), the fifth largest in the world. The Russian gold is an emergency fund that is now being tapped to pay for military operations in Ukraine.
backstory:
The military government in Mali had hoped that hiring Russian Wagner Group mercenaries would enable Mali to maintain control of northern and central Mali. ...
The problems began when the military government ordered the independent French Barkhane counter-terrorism force out of Mali and it was gone by the end of 2021. Since then, Mali forced the 15,000 UN peacekeepers to start withdrawing.
The government forced the French and G5 peacekeepers out by the end of 2021.
lots of details at the link. cated article on what is going on in Central Africa.
again not my area of expertise.
But this part is about refugees in Malawi:
August 10, 2023: Malawi is seeking emergency funds and donations to feed more than 50,000 refugees who are crammed into the Dzaleka Camp. This is the only refugee camp in the country. Most of the refugees in Dzaleka are from Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia and Somalia. The government says the camp will run out of food by December 2023. Foreign aid groups have already cut food supplies because of funding shortages. The government says it needs an additional $6.3 million in order to feed the refugees through June 2024. There are also about 8,000 refugees living outside the camp and are regarded as illegal migrants by the government that they are trying to relocate.
sigh
Refugees are a world wide problem.
I wonder how many of those the fleeing to Europe is due to such disorder.
a new elected government, opposition yells fraud, counter story is that the USA/West is trying to manipulate the opposition, and the elephant in the room: What did China do behind the scenes?
I congratulate President Emmerson Mnangagwa on his re-election. I wish him and the people of Zimbabwe well for the upcoming term.
— Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦 (@CyrilRamaphosa) August 28, 2023
You have consistently denied summoning polling officers to the command center for the signing of new V.11 forms. However, to expose your dishonesty, our team was deployed this afternoon to Nyika, where they witnessed the opening of ballot boxes in the absence of… pic.twitter.com/yGpCOhSX6s
— Citizens' Coalition for Change (@CCCZimbabwe) August 28, 2023
most of the article is behind a paywall, but here is how it starts:
Registering to vote in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, isn’t easy. The only registration centre is two bus journeys from the most populous suburbs. Nationwide there are just 71 voter-registration centres, or one for every 216,000 people (though some mobile ones are operating ahead of a general election next year).
And this is not the only worry. Since 2018 Zimbabwe has collected fingerprints, photos, addresses and phone numbers to clean up the voters’ roll, which was reportedly full of “ghost voters”. This frightens many Zimbabweans, especially those belonging to the minority Ndebele ethnic group, much of which is concentrated near Bulawayo. In 1983 some 20,000 mostly Ndebele people were massacred by the army. Emmerson Mnangagwa, now the president, was head of the security services at the time. Now, people fear data collection “is a way to re-identify and target us,” says Rodwin Sibanda of the Habakkuk Trust, an ngo in Bulawayo.
China is Zimbabwe’s biggest foreign investor and kept the nation afloat amid Western sanctions, but is now estimated to control 90% of Zimbabwe’s mining industry (with the largest lithium reserves in Africa) and helps keep the economically disastrous Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in government.
Over the years, Chinese interests have been a power behind the throne — once again, ZANU-PF triumphed in national elections last week; once again, amid accusations of rigging the system — with a hand in making and breaking its leaders.
Strategypage has a long essay on the implications of the coup in Niger and points out that often military coups are to fight corruption in civilian governments, but that it leads to a loss of western aid until they restore democracy.
But the bad news is that the problem is corruption and that corruption is so widespread that the military reforming government doesn't work.
part of the essay is about the Amreican and French military in the area trying to fight Islamic terrorism.
This is mainly a technical article outside my area of expertise, so if you are interested read the whole thing.
African governments had also been caught in a delicate balancing act between the shadowy mercenary group and the Russian government.
The Malian coup-makers continue to refer to the armed group as “Russian instructors”, though CAR authorities are more forthcoming.
“CAR authorities have always been uncomfortable,” Charles Bouessel, senior analyst on CAR for International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.
“They did not know who to praise for Wagner’s assistance. Sometimes, they are thanking the Russian authorities and sometimes, they are thanking Prigozhin. But what they want is that the Russian assistance continues, and they would be cautious in expressing their opinion [on Prigozhin’s death] intimately.”
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and this is similar to what I have posted on several blogs about the pushing of the sexual agenda on small countries:
About a decade ago, the US had laws like "Don't ask, don't tell" in their military. In the US, LGBTQ is not accepted by everyone. Why do the US and the west think they can force Africa to accept LGBTQ? Let the west keep pushing us like slaves. We will embrace Russia and China.
Globally, there is a growing need to address the sexual abuse of children. Taylor said that there has been an explosion of sexual violence in the digital space. This includes an increase in the number of sexual images of children.
Main factors behind this were changes imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased use of the internet by children. In some cases, sexual violence against children takes place via live streaming.
Currently, one in eight adults worldwide experienced sexual abuse as a child, according to one statistic. That rate is increasing in the digital age. Already one in five children has experienced sexual abuse in the digital space in a country, a survey funded by GPeVAC found. The survey was conducted in 13 countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.
then you have the attacks on Christian villagers in Nigeria, which the western MSM pretends is poor cattle herders burning down farmers villages so they can feed their cattle, but in reality it is a persecution of the Christians.
and here is a more up to date report from EWTN News:
No, I don't know much about Mali, but StrategyPage notes they produce gold, and are using gold to pay for things that foreign aid used to pay for. But of course the common folk aren't getting much benefit. And they note that ordinary folk are doing what we call mom and pop gold mining (They do this in the Philippines, and it is more dangerous and more polluting than professional companies, but, again, I don't know much about this).
But they note the Wagner group, a mercenary group of Russians who are notorious for their work in the Ukraine, are there and trained local soldier to keep the government in place.
and they are paying them in gold.
The article explains that Mali threw out the French and UN peacekeepers partly because they reported on atrocities by the Govt troops and the Wagner group
But the peacekeepers are there to stop Islamic groups who are terrorists and also who threaten the government.
it's the corruption of course
The Mali peacekeeping operation costs about half a billion dollars a month and that is about the only foreign aid Mali gets now that the military government is in control. Most foreign aid was halted because the government was stealing so much of the aid. It is difficult to steal any of the money spent on peacekeepers but the government seems to be trying to do just that.
and of course the problem is that the Islamic terrorists are growing and threatening nearby states
this report from DW last week discusses the good and bad points of the Wagner group
it notes the charismatic movement in Christian churches is now influencing Islam.
well, nothing new here: Sufi Islam stressed a personal relationship with God, and this was partly due to Hindu (Gita) influence I believe. So a pentecostal revival in Islam might pressure the more rule oriented/terrorist inspiring version of Islam pushed by the Saudis to be less influential.
I don't know how accurate this report is, since it is by western reporters who believe polls (uh, people will tell pollsters what they want to hear, out of politeness guys, but never mind).... and these reporters seem to think that the Islamic vs Christian wars can be blamed on local Christians (or even local Muslims) whereas it was actually inspired by Saudi/ISIS etc. snf is something new: Islamic slave traders of the Sahel decimated these tribes for centuries (heck, the slave trade goes back to the days of ancient Egypt and is more about cuture than religion per se).
But I am not an expert here.
Also missing: How African churches are pushing back against the gay agenda in the large Anglican church, and it is local Evangelicals (not the western bigots as the western press always seems to accuse) that is pushing against the US push toward so called gay rights/ birthcontrol/ sex education that approves of premarital sex.
Right now there are confusing stories about the Wagner group turning against the Russian military.
BBC stories LINKLINK2 and a lot of people are following it on Twitter.
A lot of the civilian atrocities in the Ukraine are blamed on the Wagner group. I have no idea how much is true because the propaganda from that war is so confusing.
However, the Wagner group has worked as mercenaries in Africa, and were suspected to be responsible for atrocities there.
When abuses were reported in recent weeks in Mali – fake graves designed to discredit French forces; a massacre of some 300 people, mostly civilians – all evidence pointed to the shadowy mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group.
Even before these feared professional soldiers joined the assault on Ukraine, Russia had deployed them to under-the-radar military operations across at least half a dozen African countries. Their aim: to further President Vladimir Putin’s global ambitions, and to undermine democracy.
Analysts estimate Wagner operates with only a few hundred to 2,000 mercenaries in a country.
Many are ex-Russian military intelligence, Siegle said, but because it is a private force the Kremlin can deny responsibility for Wagner’s actions.
The real price is paid by ordinary people.
the Wagner Group has been active in the Sudan and is suspected to be meddling in the military coup there, but without neutral observers on the ground it is hard to verify this.LINKLINK2
a
lots of folk in the west are aghast at claims of CIA interference in foreign countries, but they ignore that there are other folks doing this too.
I just got notified that an essay I posted in 2012 has not met community standards.
Sorry about that.
as usual, there is no way I can easily find a post that old, and since no one complained about it or commented on it in the last 11 years, my opinion is forgtaboutit.
So who went back 11 years to find something and complain about it?
Heh. Wait til they start scanning my medical blog where I posted graphic illustrations of FGM....
GetREligionblog reports that the Anglican bishops in Africa have rejected the leadership of the bishop of Canterbury, essentially saying the see of St Augustine is empty. (St Augustine of Canterbury evangelized the Anglo Saxons and reestablished Christianity in England. The See refers to the seat/location i.e. area governed by the bishop).
The Anglican site VirtueOnLine has several reports about this:
a similar schism is perculating in the Catholic church, and Africa might have a major part of that rejection of PC sexual morals. From Cardinal Sarah to CNA in 2015 essentially rejects how western government are pushing gender ideology on Africa. He has written several books, including one with some other bishops in Africa stressing that Africa will save Catholicism from these anti family trends.
the so called synod on synodality is being pushed with the idea to let people talk about what concerns them: but of course these meetings are not with practicing Catholics as much as with those eager to change the church, and like most institutions that practice wokeness, there is a danger that it will push out true believers who feel their voices are being ignored.
thanks to Mother Angelica, despite Catholics leaving the church en masse in the USA (some to no religion, but about half to other Christian churches), about half the bishops remain faithful to Christianity. This is similar to the few Anglican bishops in the UK who oppose these trends, but who are slowly being replaced by those obeying the non Christian reformers.
Alas, due to liberation theology and Pope Francis' shennanigans in adding pachimama pagan rituals, there is also an exodus to evangelical churches in Latin America and in Hispanic immigrants in the USA.... there, similar to that in the Philippines, where out bishops push a green agenda that will make poor people poorer, help China, but hey it will get them praise from the elites here.
The various civil wars, insurgencies, careless mining practices that exploit people, and outbreaks of disease in Central Africa have been going on for years. So who cares about what is going on there?
Interview: Behind the scenes of Netflix/UNESCO's African Folktales Reimagined
Netflix and UNESCO are supporting a new generation of African storytellers
On March 29, the films “Enmity Djinn” by Mohamed Echkouna from Mauritania; “Katope” by Walt Mzengi Corey from Tanzania; “Zabin Halima” (Halima’s Choice) by Korede Azeez from Nigeria; “Anyango and the Ogre” by Voline Ogutu from Kenya; “Katera of the Punishment Island” by Loukman Ali from Uganda; and “MaMlambo” by Gcobisa Yako from South Africa will premiere globally on Netflix.
A report from GlobalVoices, from a local independent blogger:
Zimbabwe's cyberpunk cities fueled by China
Interrogating the narratives behind Zimbabwe’s smart cities
The government is making a suburb. aka New Harare, with full internet integration. The companies behind this are Chinese government linked companies such as Huawei.
New Harare’s plans for omnipresent facial recognition tech combined with AI will usher Zimbabwe into a dystopian era. The technology will be able to match a person’s live images with centralized databases and alert law enforcement when a suspected criminal is detected.
In Zimbabwe, where freedoms are harshly curtailed by the regime of President Emerson Mnangagwa, there are also politically-motivated ulterior motives for this technology. In fact, CCTV (Closed-circuit television) cameras are already being placed in Zimbabwe’s cities where opposition movements are strong.
I lived in central Zimbabwe. We had paintings on rocks where they were split and so the area was flat and sheltered, and the local hill where the baboons lived was where they buried chiefs.
But I was too busy treating people and learning the culture and language to go into these ancient sites: Until I got sick and the sisters arranged for me to spend a week vacation in a mission near Umtali.
Nearby, the local mountain was terraced, with stone walls every couple of feet.
No one knew exactly who did this, but it inspired stories such as King Solomon's mines and the idea that the ancient Phonecians settled there and built these terraces: completely fiction of course and racist because it suggested only white people could do this, not the primitive natives. And indeed, there have been comparisons of the terraces in Zimbabwe to those in Yemen.
The beliefs of the Lemba tribe and DNA suggest there might be a splinter of truth in this, and of course, there was active trading via the Red Sea in ancient times, and later with Arab traders: elephant ivory, gold and slaves: something that is only now being recognized.
But anyway, the site of a mountainside terraced was impressive, but hard to find the history of who did this or why this was done. And yes, this was racist because no one wanted to recognize that Bantu farmers would do that.
What inspired this post however was that archeologists discovered "clay pits"near the Zimbabwe ruins complex, and after ignoring them, someone has said: Hey these are in an area that could be used to collect rainwater and the pits used to save it so it was there during the dry season.
AARHUS, DENMARK—According to a statement released by Aarhus University, a new study at Great Zimbabwe, the eleventh-century capital of the Shona kingdom located in what is now southeastern Zimbabwe, indicates that the large depressions in the landscape surrounding the city’s surviving stone structures may have been used to store and manage the city’s water supply.
It had been previously thought that the depressions, which are known as dhaka pits, were made when clay was dug to build the city. However, remote sensing surveys and excavations conducted by an international team of researchers led by Innocent Pikirayi of the University of Pretoria suggest that the pits were positioned to collect surface water in areas where water runs when it rains, and collect and store seeping groundwater. The stored water would have allowed the people of Great Zimbabwe to manage their livestock and crops during the two dry seasons of the year, the researchers concluded.
The article mentions local stone masons. Yes, when I was there, they could make bricklike pieces of stone by finding a flat rock, and placing a fire on top. After a day or two, they would throw cold water on it, and the top layers would come off in slabs of rocks, which they then chisled into bricks very similar to the walls and towers in the Great Zimbabwe.
a photo of the walls to see how the flat stones were used:
But the terraces of eastern Zimbabwe? Were they related? Done by the same tribe?
and why?
I looked for information for years, until I read Brian Fagan's book Elixir, where the author has a long section on East African water systems and noted these were similar to those found in Zimbabwe and on Drackenburg moutain in South Africa.
To understand a lot of this, you have to realize that rain is seasonal in Zimbabwe: so for months you might not have rain at all. So like other cultures, in the Middle East, Egypt, India, and China, these cultures managed the water supply.
Until the Sahara got so dry to make crossing it difficult, sub Saharan Africa was in touch with these civilizations, and of course, ideas spread via trade routes.
So back to the actual terraces. ZimFieldGuide has an article on them, noting the earliest terraces were dirt, but later they were made of stone.
In some areas, whole hillsides are covered with thirty or more lines of terracing. For example, at Ziwa Ruins, it has been estimated there are 800 kms of terracing in an area of 30 square kilometres. Examples of terracing patterns are observable from Google Maps at GPS reference: 18°08'10.13″S 32°38'15.50″E which is the position of the Ziwa Site Museum.
Alas, I can't find a decent photo of the terraces. But then, even when I was visiting and we walked up the mountain with the terraces to our right, we couldn't get a decent photo due to the brush and trees that almost hid them from a distance.
Robert Soper in his book The Terrace Builders of Nyanga presents detailed plans and sketches showing that the terraces show how the agricultural community grew crops on the terraced hillsides, raising livestock in the pit structures in the Nyanga highlands initially from about AD 1300 and then moved down into the lowlands by AD 1800 leaving the remains of their efforts over an area of over 8,000 square kilometres. He acknowledges that terracing is used in other parts of Africa, such as South Africa, East Africa, the southern region of Ethiopia and in Sudan, but nowhere are they used as extensively as Nyanga.
There are differences in use however; Sutton observes that the terraces found in Tanzania were designed for irrigation, whilst the ones in Nyanga were mainly for soil conservation purpose,
The ruins represent the remains of family homesteads and extensive stone-built agricultural terraces. Successive stages of development have been traced, starting with settlements on some of the highest peaks around AD 1300 and expanding gradually for five centuries to cover an area of over 5000 square kilometres. These stages show how the farming community adapted to and exploited the opportunities offered by the varied environments of the Nyanga highlands and lowlands to develop a specialised agricultural system integrating cultivation and livestock.
I would like to read the book, but alas it's not available on ScribD, and I can't afford 30 plus dollars plus postage to buy it from Amazon.
that oneThe Archaeology of Nyanga, Eastern Zimbabwelocked
Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi from oxford press:The Nyanga district is however particularly famous for its stone constructions that come in a variety of forms, consisting of stone terraced hillsides, which extend for almost sixty-five miles from north to south and cover some twenty-three hundred square miles, as well as stone-lined pit structures, hilltop forts, stone-walled enclosures, and trackways. Dating from the 14th to the early 19th century, the culture is one of the Later Farming Community cultures of Zimbabwe. The stone architecture and several other cultural aspects differ from those of the more famous Zimbabwe Culture, such that, although the two entities partly overlapped chronologically, Nyanga represents a separate cultural development in Zimbabwe’s history. The purpose of the stone structures has been a subject of archaeological debate for some time. The majority of scholars generally agree that the terracing and pit structures were constructed for agricultural and animal herding practices.
with the covid strictures on travel being removed, and with Zimbabwe becomeing more peaceful, the tourist industry should reopen: not just to Europeans but to South Africans and from China who want to see the beauties of that country.
BBC:A banner marking the 300km walk was unveiled to welcome the pilgrims
A group of about 60 Catholic pilgrims are recovering after spending nine days trekking through war-torn South Sudan to see Pope Francis in the capital, Juba....
One pilgrim, who was shedding tears as she arrived, hinted at the trauma the years of fighting have brought to this country.
"When you have smelled and seen death and hopelessness, then you will search for peace with all the might that you have," said the woman, who did not want to give her name.
"I have lost enough, but along the way I saw love and we all spoke one language - that of peace. I really pray that even after the Pope leaves, we will still be like that," she continued.
"He is a prophet and whatever he prays in the next few days, while on our soil, will come to pass. Things will be different. We are going to be one people."
...Pope Francis is spending three days in the country and will hold a Mass on Sunday.
In a historic first, he travelled with two other Christian leaders - Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland Rev Iain Greenshields.
...........
Many years ago, in 1980, I worked with a physician from the South Sudan.
He had fled to a refugee camp to escape the fighting, and the Seventh Day Adventists rescued him and arranged for him to study abroad. He became a physician and hoped to help his people, but the war there made that too dangerous, so he was working in our clinic in Liberia for awhile until he found a job at a nearby Lutheran hospital.
Alas, I lost contact with him because I had to leave that country, and shortly after that, there was a coup that resulted in chaos and civil war for years.
The story of how charities try to rescue some of the refugees to resettle and get an education in the USA is told in this film:
StrategyPage has a long essay about the various tribal wars in Central Africa/DRC area, and how a Russian mercenary group is looting gold and diamonds to sell via the UAE.
But they do have this good news in their report:
November 30, 2022: In western Uganda, the Ebola outbreak that began in September has seen a decline in cases because of rapid medical response. Reported cases have declined but despite that decline, Uganda has closed schools nation-wide in an attempt to curb the spread of the Ebola virus. In November eight children died from Ebola in Uganda. The spread of Ebola to neighboring Congo seems to have been halted.....
Andrew Wefwafa had a series of videos about this
.....this was caused by the Sudan variation of the virus, and the problem is that the vaccine that helped stop the previous epidemics in central Africa were for a different strain.
Just recently, a new experimental vaccine for this Ebola strain has been sent there. LINK
The doses are from the Sabin Vaccine Institute (SVI), according to Reuters. The SVI vaccine is a modified chimpanzee adenovirus (ChAd3) vector vaccine.
note: The adenovirus vector is what was used in the british AZ vaccine for covid, and for previous Ebola vaccines .
Health officials had earlier cleared plans to study three candidate Ebola Sudan vaccines. The others are from Merck and Oxford University.
In the middle of November, a WHO working group recommended that ring vaccine trials prioritize the Merck candidate first, owing to the safety and efficacy of the VSV-EBOV platform used for the Zaire Ebola vaccine, followed by the SVI vaccine, then the Oxford vaccine.
A sharp decline in Uganda's Ebola cases presents an obstacle to ring vaccination trials.
essentially the disease was stopped by isolation etc. so we will not be able to prove the vaccine works. /sarcasm.
it's not about religion, or even local politics since most of the terrorists are not from the area: It's about money
Since 2019 the violence has increased to the point where most foreign natural gas operations have been shut down and neighboring countries have organized a peacekeeping force to restore order until local security forces are reformed and upgraded to do it themselves.
,,, The Islamic terrorists, most of them from outside the country, are not seeking to control territory but to disrupt economic activities. The purpose of this is to establish an environment where they can extort money from foreign firms
