THE MOST ORIGINAL STREET CHRISTMAS DECORATION

A tree of paint tins in downtown Windhoek. 10/10 for originality, about 3/10 for visual success.

Amusing to think of the mini-treefurore last year, when a beautifully decorated tree in African theme was torn down by the precinct owner in Swakopmund, because it was not 'traditional' (German?) enough.

Anyway, not much of the traditional Christmas here, if you are thinking of the European style. No Christmas pudding was anywhere to be seen, and only a few Brazilian frozen turkeys - more well-travelled foodstuffs, though not as eco-idiotic as the prawns, caught in England, shipped to Thailand to be cooked and peeled, then sent back to England again. No reason why they should be (turkeys to be seen, I mean) - who wants to stove over a hot slave when you can have a braai and a few beers on the beach, with some ice cream for afters.

Now all that's over, and we are at Dec 29th - perhaps because it's rather a ominous prime number and what I always thought of as the dead date - the nadir of the year - with life and activity at an ebb. The slack between Noel and Sylvester. In the northern hemisphere, frantic post-Christmas sales are in full swing under frosty, leaden skies: here, in Windhoek, by contrast, nearly all the shops are closed., and the population fled to the coast or south africa, depending on their budget. Not even the local newspapers are published - not that anyone would miss them. Not much happens here before Jan 15.

A soporific, sultry afternoon, duck-egg blue sky and fluffy white clouds - maybe some rain later. A happy 2008 to all our readers.

CAPE TOWN INTER- NATIONAL AIRPORT



doesn't look like this any more. In the apartheid days known as D.F. Malan (always pronounced Def Mlon by the then Seuwth Effrican Airways announcers) after the unpleasant first apartheid prime minister; latterly and blandly Cape Town International Airport - there seems to be no agreement over a politician to name it after - but surely Nelson Mandela, for his eternal association with Robben Island would be fitting?

Anyway, it used to be a friendly little airport, with wood panelling, and one room for arriving and departing, but now it is International, and is a huge construction site with multiple concrete double decker roller coasters going up. All because of 2010 obviously.

There is therefore a huge section for International Arrivals and International Departures, both called Terminals, but since the country's main hub is Johannesburg, they are not very busy. Not until a couple of weeks in 2010, anyway. I hung around all day waiting for a flight to Windhoek, leaving at 1600. I turned up to check in, but all counters were deserted - all 48 of them. The reason, looking at the board, on a Saturday afternoon, was that there were no 'international' flights out of Cape Town between 1400 and 1930, except for my one. I passed through into the equally deserted departure lounge, except for a sprinkling of fellow passengers - all such in the world are now identical - a broad glass and concrete corridors flanked by identikit flight-versions of high street shops. I always wonder at these 'duty free's- hasn't everyone tumbled to the realisation that the 'duty free' prices are approximately three times the prices with duty in any of the shops in town?

On this Saturday afternoon, nearly all were closed. There was one cafe open - I wandered over and inspected the R28 ($4) sandwiches and R32 ($4.50) slices of cake and decided I'd wait for the plane. A sign was erected on the steps leading down to the departure gate (another question - why does every passage through an airport involve a 2km trek through numbingly boring corridors and empty little lounges? It said. "There are no facilities beyond this point" At least it was honest. It should have added - Or anywhere else for that matter.

Finally the flight was called. The Air Namibia plane was clearly visible outside the window. But it would have been too simple actually to walk to it - we had to get on a bus, waiting till everyone had checked through - then the bus trundled to the end of the airport and back again. Security regulations, you know.

So my humble nomination for the World's most boring airport - CTIA. Until 2010 at least.

"Alcohol destroying Namibia"

- headline

These Namibian drinking statistics are fascinating. Does it mean that Vision 2030 will be in double-vision? It’s true there are lies, damned lies and statistics, and that we have to be careful about the assumptions, the dodgy maths and the dubious conclusions. Take the factoid that 69.9% of Windhoekers ‘drink’. What is drinking – a bottle of brandy a day? One shandy a week? However, there are some interesting logical titbits to be extracted. For instance, that 55.6% of adult Namibians drink 33 bottles of beer a week. (Can we say then that the average consumption of beer is approximately 35 bottles a week?) .

But if so, assuming a normal kind of ‘bell curve’, and that 35 bottles is the centre of it; and further assuming that there are at least a few resolute lonely souls in Namibia who do not drink (0 bottles), it must mean that there are some celebratory citizens who drink 70 bottles of beer a week! No wonder that on a Saturday night, the city loses a substantial proportion of its lampposts. Also, you may rest assured that your investment in Namibia Breweries’ shares is fairly safe.

[No seriously, I must stress that NamBrew is a brilliantly managed company; a David that is driving the Goliath over the border crazy. I’m also very impressed to see that NamBrew has a Customer Care Centre in town – what have they got there – beds to sleep it off, and bottomless black coffee on offer?]

What about other kinds of alcohol – do they come on top of this, or are we just using beer as an alcohol measure or equivalent? It would be more useful to count in alcohol units – one unit being the equivalent of about 250ml of beer or one glass of wine or a small tot of spirits.

It is difficult to compare consumption with other countries. In the UK, statistics are kept of the percentages drinking above the recommended limits. These limits are 21 units per week for men and 14 for women. For men, that would equate to about 14 normal bottles or cans of beer a week (only two a day – sorry, chaps!).

The Namibian study does not distinguish between males and females: the capacity of women to deal with a given quantity of alcohol is less than men due to smaller body mass and lower water content. Anyway, the British figures (last available for 2002) show that the percentage of men drinking on average per week above the recommended limit is about 26% and for women 23%. There are also figures for different age groups – in young people (up to 24) the level of drinking is declining, which may be surprising in the light of football hooligans and lager louts we see on TV. Women’s drinking however, shows a sharp increase.

To recap, about 25% of Brits drink over the medically recommended limit every week (probably similar in other European countries). By comparison, in Namibia, over DOUBLE that percentage drink over TWICE that recommended limit each week. Scary stuff, indeed.

Even more disturbingly, the figures seem to relate solely to official commercial alcohol, and do not include at all the consumption of home-brew. The city of Windhoek’s printout declares that there are 15 shebeens in the city – the most extreme disconnect between official theory and on-the-ground reality, I think, in the history of civic administration. Multiply by 100, more like.

To see if I could get a handle on citizens’ balance of interests, I did a quick yellow-pages survey, combined with other estimates, which indicate that the whole Windhoek conurbation offers:

1 specialist educational toyshop
2 public libraries
2 public swimming pools
3 tertiary education establishments
4 bookshops
and
1500 drinking places.
The drinking statistics are thus not surprising. It’s another reason why the move to bio-ethanol fuels would not work in Namibia – the product would be consumed by the human population before it could reach the vehicle population.

MURDER!

So we have another horrific murder, pieces of woman’s body turning up in the dustbins of picnic stops along the main B1 road traversing the country, with supplementary disgusting detail, like the body parts seeming to have been stored in a fridge or freezer before being dumped.

But even more depressing, if possible, is the nebula of knee-jerk reaction, verbal detritus and media sensationalism surrounding it.

This is wearily familiar and predictable : very soon there will be a fourth rate politician calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty, which in turn “sparks a debate” in the media. A hell-fire preacher will “reveal” that the murders are God’s punishment for the debauchery of society (and for failing to pay church dues on time). Someone, as in the cretinous ramblings of “Concerned Namibian” in last week’s letters to the Editor, will alight on the true cause – criminal illegal foreigners. Hence, clamp down on immigration. The “I’m not xenophobic, but…” school of thought.

The police’s lack of resources will be blamed. Even if the police had hundreds of helicopters, there would still be murders.

Violence on TV will be blamed, Long before there even was TV, thee were murders.

Worst of all are the screeching spreads and sloppy logic of press coverage. A front page spread from Google Earth (!) showing the road from Rehoboth to Okahandja, which of course takes in the entire area of Windhoek, indicating the discovery of four bodies for the last three years, conveys the breathless announcement that the possibility of links between the murders “cannot be ruled out”. Well, the possibility that my great-grandmother was a Martian cannot be ruled out either (I never knew her). Whether the unsolved ‘B1’ killings of the past couple of years are connected is a matter for sober investigation, not for “Jack the Ripper” type hysteria.

The bit about bodies in the freezer also seems highly speculative. It's the middle of winter, with temperatures dropping near zero in the Windhoek area, so that body parts found outdoors early in the morning will be 'chilled'.

“B1 Butcher” scream the headlines, from a subber who has discovered the power of alliteration. A leading article declared “we are at war”, an absurd non-sequitur, reminiscent of course of the fake “war on terror”.

Likewise the lurid press cartoons of ghouls, demons and bizarre biblical devils, with the greatest respect to the cartoonist, are not helpful. I say this because, as likely as not, the murderer(s), when caught, will look not like a demon but more like the shy quiet little shopkeeper from across the road. I am of course casting no aspersions on shopkeepers. The biggest mass killer in history in the UK was a family doctor. “The banality of evil” as somebody expressed it.

Then there is the effort by that journalistic abortion which amazingly is still Namibia’s only weekend publication. It splashes in disgusting detail every photograph from every angle of every body part, under no other pretext but sheer blood lust. Where does it get this material? Is there a corrupt relationship between this paper and police forensic or pathology units?

The media vultures swarm round this event, but what about the “normal” murders? What about the women killed in the “comfort” of their own homes, and other Saturday night victims? They may not be dismembered in rubbish bins, but they are still just as dead. Their passing hardly rates an inside two-liner in the weekly crime round up.

We need to put a couple of sometimes-subconscious assumptions straight. First, that such barbaric incidents occur only in ‘backward’ countries or regions, and among the lower, illiterate, lawless ‘classes’. A recollection of the cases of Lord Lucan, O.J. Simpson, Charles Manson and currently Phil Spector make this fallacy very clear. Secondly that they are caused by rampant ‘evil’ in society. This is meaningless, anyway. No, such things can occur anywhere, in any social environment.

I am no psychologist, and the analysis of the reasons for these attacks on womena and children is hugely complex. It seems that they must have to do with the erosion of traditional male prestige and authority, frustration, sexual and otherwise. There is innate violence in human character. Give anyone untrammelled power over his community or neighbours, and he will start to behave like a Nazi.

There is the perverse urge to draw attention to oneself. He who disposes of body parts in picnic dustbins is not so much trying to dispose of them but to draw attention to them and himself. There is a grim distinction between random, alcohol-fuelled murders and those planned to the extent of reserving freezer space for the victims (if this is what happened).

Not that any of these are an excuse or justification for violence, and killers need to be found, prosecuted and removed from society by the full force of the law. But these horrors need to be confronted with more rationality, and fewer clichés.

I see the Anti-Corruption Commission,


long derided as a toothless tiger, is at last swinging into action. First they moved into shiny new offices. Then they arrested the chief accountant of the national assembly, and now they are going to go around the country arresting all the other Chief Accountants, which is a good starting point. But why stop there? Once the momentum is going, they should slap the ‘cuffs on every corrupt official and member of government they can find. Many would applaud these measures, but there are two problems:

a) We would have no Government left
b) Where would we keep all the arrested officials?

Let me deal with the second point first. Obviously there is no space in Namibian jails for all the corrupt officials, but we could ask the US if we could borrow their secret prisons in Romania and Poland, and there might be still some room in Guantanamo. This would have the added advantage that the corrupt suspects would simply disappear for ever, and we would not have the bother of trying them.

If we have no Government left, we would be in a similar state to Somalia which has had no government for 15 years, but we might do it better, since we do not have the trouble caused by Islamists and clan factions etc., and we have a bigger tourist industry than Somalia. Provided we can avoid being invaded by Ethiopia or the US, we might achieve the ultimate in what some political theorists advocate – small government, in fact a government so small it has vanished.

Of course, the members of the ACC would still be around, so they would become the de facto government. Maybe that is what they are working towards – their ‘hidden agenda’.

STOP THE PRESS and cancel the above! On today's news we hear that the top brass of the ACC are under investigation for accepting unentitled salary bonuses....we might have guessed.

The war veterans

are protesting and marching again.


They are camping outside parliament, getting tear-gassed and causing great embarrassment to the powers that be.

Will this issue never go away? Actually no, because it is part of a human condition which has been going on for centuries. It boils down to the fact that war veterans are usually a minority; wars and the reasons for them, especially foreign wars not fought on home territory, are soon forgotten; not even understood by the younger generation: and most importantly, dead soldiers have no votes.

It is sobering to remember that up until the Napoleonic wars two centuries ago, even so-called civilised countries did not honour their war dead. In fact, their bodies were abandoned where they fell, left for the locals to clear up, or even sold for fertiliser. Not until the founding of the Red Cross by Henry Dunant, and the political lobbying of Florence Nightingale, both appalled by the fate of soldiers sent to fight in far-off lands, was any awareness raised of the possible obligations of countries to those hailed as heroes but quickly buried (literally) when the glorious war did not turn out quite as well as expected.

In the First World War, millions died under atrocious conditions, and the survivors were promised (by the British) a land “fit for heroes to live in”. Didn’t quite work out that way. In the US today, seas of red white and blue patriotic fervour celebrate and god-speed their brave forces on their way to Iraq. When the coffins draped in similar colours return home, coverage on TV of the event is forbidden. Messages of sympathy to families are written by computer. Funerals of victims are low profile. Relatives are not encouraged to run to the media. Failure is embarrassing. And how does President Bush help to finance the ongoing war? Of course, by slashing funding to veterans’ programmes, both of the current war and previous ones. Veterans don’t have that many votes: certainly not as many as the Jewish or Cuban exile lobby in the US.

So those who fought for the liberation of Namibia were indeed heroes, but once freedom has been achieved, don’t expect too much gratitude from the newly installed government. Or at most, gratitude will consist largely of platitude. The new government are busy with better things to do, like lining their own pockets. The veterans have done their job, so they should do the decent thing and vanish from the political scene. (Don’t even think you are going to get to Heroes’ Acre – that is for the well-connected boys). We should achieve closure, and move on, as the clichés have it.

The moral of the story is that we should think carefully before politicians whip up a patriotic frenzy: that we must save our country by sending our sons to the glorious war on (tick which does not apply): Terrorism, Communism, Colonialism, Capitalism. There are just wars, wars worth fighting, and the Namibian war of independence was surely one. But they are not as many as the wars engineered with manufactured crises, fought on false premises, against fabricated enemies, for profiteers to make fortunes, and vain politicians to try to look like great statesmen. Wars are exciting: good for media viewership, and votes. But their veterans are boring, yesterday’s news.

So there you have it. There is of course money for those protesting veterans. Replacing the solid gold taps in the new State House with mere gold-plated ones should fund a comfortable improvement in their pensions. Though unfortunately that would be out of the question. We are grateful for those who sacrificed, of course. But please, when we are on our way in shiny new SUV’s to smart cocktail parties, don’t confront us with your rags and amputated stumps. It really is embarrassing.

Cuban doctors

in the spotlight again

According to the IHateCastro blogger, who may be a little biased:

Cuban Doctors are slaves for the Cuban State..."In any case, the truly humiliated and offended people are the Cuban doctors, those 65,000 fine professionals -- generally devoted and selfless -- who usually work and live under miserable conditions in Cuba. They are the comandante's favorite slaves: He rents them out, sells them, gives them away, lends them, exchanges them for oil or uses them as an alibi to justify his dictatorship."

Well anyway, the issue of the Cuban doctors in Namibia is that some of them have limited enthusiasm for returning to Cuba (the Cuban government know that, which is why their passports are confiscated by the Embassy while the doctors are working in Namibia, and only given back to them on boarding the plane home!). To overcome this, they have obtained US-produced international travel documents; which allow them to leave whatever country they happen to be in, and enter the United States. The US embassy of course is more than delighted to issue these documents to the Cuban medicos.

The next step is easy to guess - the Namibian government, independent in most respects except that in dealings with Cuba, it behaves as an abject and subservient colony - refuses to recognise these travel documents, so that the Cuban doctors are trapped and apparently have gone into hiding.

The over-riding factor is that no-one in the Namibian administration will ever breathe a word in criticism of Cuba (did they pay that important a part in the liberation struggle, or why do we owe them an uncapped obligation?)

But it's a no-win situation for Namibia. If the government bows to the norms of human rights and international law, it accepts the legality of the documents and lets the doctors leave to whatever destination they want. But if they do that, they upset Dr. Castro (or whichever nepotistic sidekick is now running the country) and Cuba will send no more doctors. Since no indigenous or White doctors will go to work in the rural areas, because the salary will not keep them in the golf clubs and Range Rovers to which they are accustomed, most people in the rural areas will die. So we have to have the Cuban doctors. So...

The Namibia Tourism Expo

has just come to an end.


Held at the historic (we mustn’t say tatty) Windhoek showgrounds, it is an impressive testimony to the growth of the tourism industry in the last few years.

There was also an attached motor show, but with the famed laid-back attitude of the Namibian motor industry to customer service, most of the stands were deserted. A friend of mine had an interest in a N$ 900 000 Range Rover, but could not find a salesman to talk to.

But back to tourism. In formerly empty landscapes, luxury lapas, lodges and tented camps have sprung up. (It’s always amusing to think how foreign visitors are prepared to pay twice as much to sleep in a tent as in a proper room). Roads that once stretched deserted to the horizon are now obscured by dust cloud trails from packed 4x4 conveys, rushing equally packed Italianos from one end of the country to the other for their photo-ops.

The country’s unspoilt and undiscovered areas are becoming more and more discovered (maybe not yet spoilt) and the wildlife attractions have been exploited to the hilt. Every self-respecting member of what is irritatingly known as the ‘big 5’, plus nearly every other photogenic animal has been game-driven past, innumerable times.

I wonder if the game animals know what a heavy responsibility rests on their sturdy shoulders. Does that lion know that hundreds of human jobs depend on him? Is each eland aware that he personally is responsible for 0.05% of annual national tourism revenue? Does each zebra realise that it is his task to provide each German visitor with a unique game viewing experience?

I’m not so much into animals – I earnestly support their preservation of course, but to me, once you’ve seen one damara dik-dik, you’ve seen them all. But tourists can never get enough, bless them.

And the luxury lodges. So many of them – the catalogue is a centimetre thick, and soon, like the phone book, you won’t be able to list them all in one volume. You would think that the country must be becoming seriously over-lodged, but apparently not: there is enough business for all of them. Is it necessary to sample at least most of them to gain a complete picture of Namibian hospitality? Actually no, because they are very much alike. The vast majority have tasteful stone-built walls, high thatched ceilings, dark-wood four-posters and a remarkably consistent décor.

Then there is the food. Just as geneticists can show that all the variations in the modern human genome stem from a single source – a common ancestor, not of course to be confused with the creationist’s Adam and Eve, it can be shown that all lodge chefs ultimately derive their training from one single exponent of tourist ur-cuisine. The evidence for this is that, wherever you stay, lodge food is identical with only small variations. For instance, for dinner the starter is always either butternut soup or smoked game salad (sometimes ‘carpaccio’, depending on the tariff level of the lodge). Main course is oryx steak (or ‘roulade’, again, depending on the price range) and the pudding is chocolate mousse or lemon meringue slice.

Not that this affects ordinary Namibians - they would have to take out a second mortgage to stay at such establishments.

I do hope then, that tourists visiting Namibia for four weeks or more don’t develop indigestion. But they love it and keep on coming. Just so long as we keep growing those butternuts, and the lions and elands keep pulling their weight.

Some of our bad guys

last week stole an old Nissan bakkie (pickup), concealed it for a while, then, in a desperate attempt to retain their ill-gotten gains, tried to rush the road block on the way to South Africa. The Police, with information systems commendably on the ball, intercepted the vehicle and killed its occupants and thieves in a blazing Bonnie and Clyde style shoot-out.

Was it legal? Probably not. But the guys are dead and would not have been able to afford lawyers anyway.

The owner expressed his regret that two men had to die for this bakkie. Indeed. I could imagine someone selling his soul to the Devil for a new 350Z, Murano or Navara (I've even thought of it myself), but sacrificing yourself for a 1400 diesel with 85000 on the clock? Ridiculous.

may

is of course not the start of summer in Namibia (wrong hemisphere) neither is it then the season of mellow autumn. The weather here doesn't really do mellowness - it's a simple blowtorch climate 10 months of the year and 2 months freezing, with an abrupt transition in between.

No, it's the month of Public Holidays - four of them at last count. Cassinga day, May 4, commemorates the Fallujah style massacre of refugees by the South African air force in 1978, and must be kept.

May Day is another story. Year after year it's a non-event - this year I stayed alone in the house, never once venturing out, never seeing a soul - the universe might have come to an end, beyond my suburban horizon. But year after year, on the day after, politicians bemoan the pathetic attendance at the 'mass' rallies which were organised for the workers. Where were the workers? The politicians cannot understand it.

Let me attempt an answer. What does any genuine worker do on a holiday? That's right - he stays in bed. Should he rather get up, struggle out to some dusty stadium where some minor trade union official or some deputy minister will show up an hour late to deliver some rambling attack on imperialists and demon employers? I don't think so.

Anyway, this writing effort has exhausted me. Roll on the next holiday on Thurday (Ascension day), and then, to get over that, the week after, Africa day...?

ZIMBABWE

is elected to chair the UN commission on sustainable development.

Just one question (out of many): Could someone explain how an inflation rate of 1400% is 'sustainable'. Or actually another - how sustainable is the flight of maybe 20000 people a week from the country (braving razor wire, croc infested rvers, you name it)?

We can wait now for the chair of the Commission for Religous Rights and Toleration to be awarded to Saudi Arabia, for the chair of the Commision for freedom of political self-expression to be awarded to China, for the Commission for International Peace and non-Intervention to be filled by the United States, and the Commission for the Reginition and Combatting of Climate Change to be filled also by the United States. I think the Commision for Human rights, seriously, is headed up by Sudan, at least it was at one stage?

It's only logical after all.

We get a lot of eminent people

and advisors visiting Namibia. Some a bit long in the tooth. Lately there has been one from Finland, apparently the former chief technical advisor to to country's best-known cell phone company, which cannot be named here. Amidst much ballyhoo, he was introduced as a man who had actually had a satellite named after him. This turned out to be an asteroid, but when I checked the Minor Planets directory for asteroid Neuvo, it seems that it was discovered and named in 1938, a few years even before our expert's birth. Anyway.

He gave a guest lecture at the Polytechnic, at which all staff and students compulorily attended. Alarmingly, he appeared to have a terminal case of ephysema, unless it was an unusually thick Finnish accent, so it was difficult to make him out. The talk was mystifying entitled "Leadership in the 21st century" but was more in the nature of a rambling commercial for his present or former company. Wonder why N****a shares went down 20% during 2006?

Next day, he was the guest speaker at the Polytechnic's graduation cermony, at which again attendance is obligatory. Here again, on the subject of technology in national development, it was difficult to make much out - the hundreds of students at the back didnot got anything, and were on the verge of muttering revolt. To the extent to which anything could be heard, he managed the feat of making the technology of the coming century incomprehensible and boring.

So maybe a few fewer superannuated experts in future.

The Minister never suspected



that there might be anything dodgy about a squat man with jet black shades, double breasted suit, going under the moniker of Roberto Von Palace Kolbatschenko but with real name Vito Palazzono, and a native of Sicily. Scary, huh? And this is not Andorra’s minister for seaweed reclamation but Namibia’s Minister of Mines and Energy, Mr. Erkki Nghimtina, formerly also Minister of Defence.

Over the past few days, information has been unfolding over local politicians’ dealings with the Mafia – not even the new Russian or Asian Mafia but the old-fashioned Sicilian kind. Much of this has been disclosed by the excellent (and free) newspaper Informanté, presumably paid for by the loyal policyholders of Trustco, who are subsiding a good news service to the rest of us. Many thanks, and acknowledgments to them for the picture. (There are persistent rumours, by the way, that on the days when bundles of the newspaper are placed in distribution bins for the public to help themselves; teams from various government offices rush around, removing and destroying them before they can be read. After the latest issue, I wouldn’t be surprised).

Anyway, the story of course revolves around mineral rights, especially uranium – as soon as the price of yellowcake rose above $75 a pound, every crook from Albania to Nova Zembla, and every brass plate ‘mining company’ from the same area was attracted here like flies. Equally obviously, all our local ‘business consultants’ got in on the act. The cast of characters is wearily familiar – senior politicians and VIPs together with the usual gaggle of their brothers, sons, spouses, sisters, cousins and aunts.

Specifically, it seems that our Minister upstaged the interests of a fairly legitimate mining company in favour of (surprise surprise) an outfit led by the son of the First President. At some stage, our Mr. Palazzono aka von Whatever appeared – he did not have far to travel as he was on the run from South Africa - and advanced US$ 10 million to said outfit, in return for what? Presumably for a slice of the action, and a slice of the yellowcake. Mr. Nghimtina of course did not think anything was amiss – this advance was just a goodwill gesture and get-to-know-you present. Mr Palazzono is now believed to be house hunting for a suitable des res in Windhoek. Heaven help us. The questions I would like an answer to is: How much of the US$ 10 million have the Minister and the Founding Father’s son put respectively into their capacious back pockets?

It may be a relief that the Mafia has some competition in the race for the ‘cake. The Prime Minister has evidently had some secret meetings with his Russian counterpart, who presumably did not visit Namibia solely to see the Welwitschias. Also present, (surprise surprise again), were reps of the Russian technical ‘assistance’ and export organisation, and Vneshtorgbank, the Russian state-owned banking behemoth. To what extent have Namibian uranium reserves been promised on fixed price forward contracts to fuel (literally) the Russian mini-reactor export programme? How much was in it for the Prime Minister?

Of course, uranium may be something new for the mafia but they do not neglect their traditional interests. Diamonds especially. No surprise again that Mr. Palschenko has a Namibian diamond dealing and cutting licence through one of his front companies. Actually, the Namibian paper published a list of the diamond cutting licensees, and some surprising names emerge. The mayor of Windhoek for instance, Mr. Matheus Shikongo. I thought being the Mayor of Windhoek was a full-time job. What is he doing with a diamond cutting licence? Does he make nice anniversary presents for his wife in his back garage?

The underlying problem is that, despite all the anti-corruption talk, the fact is that if you provide a senior politician with a new Merc, a mining concession and/or fishing quota, and organise for a street somewhere to be named after him, he is yours for life. 10 million dollars helps as well, of course.

Many people have been debating the potential of nuclear energy for Namibia. Maybe the question is a non-starter – by the time we are ready to seriously consider this question, all the uranium will have been sold off to the Mafia (Russian or otherwise), and we will be back to burning firewood, or obtaining electricity from Zimbabwe ({:>? )

The egg cup

another interesting ad on the skyline.

Yes, it's the new cell provider to be launched in Windhoek today. (Windhoek only, so that anyone travelling around will need to stay with MTC).

The attractive logo, for which the company paid some dodgy ad agency ten of thousands of dollars, was originally attached to the side of the building, but the Municipality thought it was liable to come crashing down and therefore a hazard, so ordered it to be erected on top. Allusions to Humpty Dumpty will not be appreciated.

The company claims there will be no start up costs for clients, and no premium for calling fixed lines; greater competition and reduced prices for customers etc. Good news for Very Important politicians, since the new arrival means big kick-backs., and free cell-phones all round, including the State President. But I think all it basically means is that, in the absence of anti-monopoly legislation here, the two providers will enter into a cosy cartel between themselves to rip the customer off even more. This has already happened, when they made a 'joint' (!) objection to hobble Telecom's much superior CDMA mobile service, with much cheaper calls to fixed lines.

Yes, so whereas in the 18th century, highway robbers preyed off all those needing to communicate, the same job today is done by cellular providers. All of them. So we shall see.

Shades of "In cold blood" !

What would Truman Capote have made of this? Namibia has a reputation still of being a sleepy, underpopulated, safe and out-of-the-way place. Not so. Acts of bizarre violence happen in the quietest of settings. Outside the really sleepy town of Mariental, the farm manager and family including the pregnant wife, were tied up and shot, but not before they had been coerced to phone the owners of the farm in Windhoek, luring them to return urgently as there was a problem (some problem!) When the unsuspecting middle-aged owner couple arrived, they were seized, tied to beds, and burned alive. Why? Not all that senseless - it seems that a hired thug was obtained by the otiose son of the farm owners to dispose of them and claim 'his' inheritance. The trial with its grisly details continues. Will a famed Namibian novelist (with which the country is also rather underpopulated) arise to tell the story, like Truman Capote?

The picture above incidentally is taken from the Windhoek Observer, a unique smudgy broadsheet edited by a local legend armed with an English dictionary circa 1876 edition. Sample prose (can be seen if you have enough zoom): "Chief Inspector Manfred Sass, that brilliant virtually incomparable police sleuth, who also, unknown to all, had an appointment with an unnatural death, being a road accident, only a few months after this photograph was taken!"

But modernisation cannot be denied - the paper has now an email address! When I first saw the 'publication' I thought it was a spoof, but as with many other things.........

"Namibia silent"

on the violence in Zimbabwe

says the paper today, featuring an alarming picture of a smashed-up leader of Zimbabwe's opposition.

Yes indeed. What would you expect of a place which maintains diplomatic and/or friendly relations with :

• Cuba
• Venezuela
• Algeria
• Libya
• Iran
• North Korea

That's about it (the latest Westerm ambassador to ship out being that of Sweden) - but of course including Zimbabwe, whose President was feted in the country a scant two weeks ago. All countries whose representatives are unlikely to be invited to President Bush's birthday party.

Even South Africa and Zambia have made some mild demurrings.

So what is the matter with for instance the US military. Instead of getting bogged down for years in Iraq, they could have made themselves an easy job - a Zimbabwean regime change (from their well-equipped bases in Botswana?). Everything could have been finished by morning coffee-time and President Mugabe could have met an unfortunate mishap by accidentally jumping out of a 6th floor window. What about continuing their flight to rubble-ise the new State House, which is of course a site and a front for the North Koreans to continue their nuclear research ( > ).

Will never happen of course. Zim has no oil.

#37 in a series of

puzzling advert- isements

- seen on a billboard on a sunny morning in Windhoek today.

What is SGA – a kind of computer monitor? The tyre trails in the red dunes – must be an ad for a 4x4 ad or SUV then? Especially as it says something about driving?

No, SGA is the new politically correct name for the local branch of the world-wide KPMG firm, a brand I thought would be worth preserving. Who would guess this? In any case, the picture of ephemeral tracks in the shifting sands, petering out in the distance, is not the image I would have thought right for a cutting edge management consultancy. What have we missed here?

President Hu to President What?

President Mugabe visited Windhoek today. The freshly printed beautiful Zimbabwean flags replaced the rather dreary Chinese banners from the lamposts, but flew in stark contrast to the condition of the country it represents. Although one post displayed the apt symbolism of the Nam flag standing proudly square, contrasted with the Zim flag and presidential portrait sinking at a Titanic angle.

The visit was thankfully relatively low key. The only noteworthy feature and 'agreement' was the extremely puzzling offer from Namibia to pump between 20 and 40 million US dollars into a power station refurbishment in Hwange, Zimbabwe, thus almost entirely depleting the cash reserves of the state power utility Nampower. I thought this reserve was to develop new and alternative energy sources for Namibia, Epupa, the Kudu gas field etc. Can one suspect it is a political handout to President Mugabe, desperate for foreign exchange and sources of power. The alleged trade-off is that namibia will derive power from the new station? Seeing that Namibia has only a mathematical border with Zimbabwe - a point in the middle of the Zambesi - how will this power get to Namibia? Via Cape Town? How much of our 2 billion namdollars (sounds much worse like that) will we ever see again?

For the meantime, what I was mainly worried about was the hot water supply situation in the capital, where a large number of the population might wish to take a bath immediately after PM’s departure.

My carpenter and I

(a phrase to conjure with) visited Pupkewitz Megabuild, touted as the largest hardware and building materials centre in the country, looking for some timber to build a staircase. Paid in advance, as required, and went out to the cavernous yard. Plenty of wood, but after half an hour’s search, not a single straight piece. Eventually got our money back, and found what we wanted at a much smaller place down the road. Frustrating, but when you come to think of it, you would not have expected to find anything straight at Pupkewitz, would you?

PMB is part of the Pupkewitz empire, which used to encompass everything from bedside rugs to cell phones to structural steel. Luckily, South African chains have made some inroads into this, but he still has a stranglehold on the motor industry, successfully lobbying the Namibian Government some time ago to basically ban the import of affordable Japanese used cars. Reason- he has the distributorship, strangely enough of both the leading Japanese marques, so that if you want one of these you have to deal with Pupkewitz Nissan or Pupkewitz Toyota respectively, whose customer policy implies you have to manage the tricky feat of approaching them on hands and knees with the required cash in hand. Well worth the trouble of heading to South Africa and bringing one back (saving yourself a few thousand Nam dollars).

Some say it is not nice to refer to a 90 year old as a thieving c_unt. I respond that this simply makes him a very old thieving c_unt.

As a recent visiting SA stand-up put it: “I had a pupkewitz on a sensitive part of my anatomy, but luckily it received medical attention in time…” Indeed.

All you culture vultures,

hold your breath.

André the Hilarious Hypnotist is coming (back) to Namibia. Yes, this idea of hypnotising subjects to perform tricks on stage to the wild hilarity of a cerebral-challenged audience, last seen anywhere else in the world from the back of a chuck wagon around 1888, is returning to us. And must be illegal anywhere else in the world?
At least on this visit, André is being confined to some of the more obscure village and school halls in the rural parts of the country, whereas last time he occupied the boards of the National Theatre for a week.. one still cringes at the thought. (Whenever I go backstage at the NTN, I gaze at the fading posters of shows performed in years gone by, and wonder what happened). Enjoy.

I'm hoping that the following

a) was not a spoof

and

b) was correctly reported.

If it wasn’t and was, respectively, then the decisions made by the Ministry of Education merit a mention in the Encyclopaedia Idiotica, which lists the most bone-headed ideas of all time. Here for instance we read of the cost saving measure of the Austrian government in 1914, to economise by dispensing with a body of armed guards for their Archduke on his visit to Serbia. This led to the unfortunate Archduke being promptly assassinated, which led to the outbreak of the First World War, which led (among other things) to the annihilation of the Austrian empire.

Back to the worthies at our Ministry of Education, Messrs. Beyleveld and Ankama, who have come up with a brilliant idea for cutting costs: schools will have to pay their own water and electricity bills, and teachers’ salaries will be delinked from their qualifications: yes, you understood it right: teachers will not receive any increase or recognition in respect of further professional qualifications they may be training or studying for, often at great cost and stress to themselves.

There will therefore be now no financial incentive for teachers’ self-improvement – in the example mentioned, an M.Sc. teaching in a primary school will earn less than a three-year diploma holder at a secondary school. Science labs will be curtailed, and computers switched off whenever possible, since they use lots of electricity. Learners will be encouraged to wash less or use less water, to keep down the bills – more risk of hygiene problems or disease? And cynical, bored, or demotivated teachers will turn out thousands more badly educated, unemployable school leavers into society.

I think that will prove more expensive than the Min of Ed’s salary or electricity bill. What do you think?

President Who?

The Sweet and Sour of the Chinese Pres’s visit

President Hu of the PRC arrived in Namibia yesterday, slightly early apparently having cut short his visit to Zambia, not being used to facing protests. The protests planned were over mistreatment of Zambian workers by Chinese companies. People’s opinions, especially those of foreign people, do not count for too much in the People’s Republic.

Anyway, President Hu arrived safely, being greeted at the airport by the obligatory traditional dancing troupe – one being uncomfortably reminded of turkeys celebrating the arrival of Christmas. Because the reason for the visit was not to distribute largesse, as one burbling reporter had it, but to ensure China’s call on commodities to drive its economy. Thus his itinerary, otherwise geographically rather confusing, defined itself: Sudan for the oil, Liberia for the iron ore and rubber, Zambia for the copper, Namibia for the uranium and South Africa for most everything else. At least, President Hu was a bit more subtle than to spend his time visiting the uranium mines, although the main one at Rossing is spectacular enough.

The amounts of ‘largesse’ involved are hardly massive – N$30 million (less than US$ 5 million, for ‘projects’, and a similar amount as an ‘interest-free loan’).

What would President Hu made of Namibia? It’s difficult to say: the 40 degree sun blazed down, and the both the flags and the scrub grass wilted by the roadside.

There still remains the impression, as voiced by a BBC listener, that China is mostly or exclusively interested in sourcing its raw materials from Africa while in return opening lots of no-name shops which sell Chinese products, such as shoes which fall apart on the first walk and can openers which succumb to the first tin of beans. China can of course make very good products, when the price is right.

But there is no doubting that China is the country of the future, and will be a superpower when the US is forgotten (as it was a civilisation before the West was even thought of). And it’s true that the great Chinese exploration fleet discovered Africa seventy years before the Portuguese (but don’t add the part that they sailed around Africa without really stopping – not too much of interest there – and that the admiral was fired on his return for wasting time exploring useless foreign countries).

So we need China, and thankfully, due to U308 , they need us. Greetings and welcome.

The Nation is agog

according to reports


All I can say is, that the Nation is easily gogged.

This relates to a “Cellphone porn devastates family” story yesterday. The technology involved is certainly 2007, but the moral issues and outrage – a maiden’s honour besmirched etc – are pure 1807. Basically, a cellphone vidoe clip is circulating about two local teenagers enaged in sexual activity, which of course is shocking and unheard of.

Many commentators are debating the social impact of universal cellphone-camera ownership, especially in the wake of the Saddam execution debacle. In this case, we have a clip of a girl blowing her boy friend - presumably that’s what it was, seeing he must have have at least one hand free for filming. The technological problem is, that when at one time activity was performed by consenting adults or teenagers in the privacy of their parents’ homes, now this activity appears within 15 minutes for the world’s inspection on YouTube. Embarrassing yes, when the participants are identified as locals.

But the participants are of legal age, and I have to blow the secret to our more sheltered compatriots, that this is the sort of thing teenagers do these days. In other words, a similar operation will have taken place up and down the country hundreds of times on any given day, filmed or not, and dozens of similar video clips may have been posted on YouTube (and dozens of other sites). By this time tomorrow, dozens more clips will have been posted, and the ones from today will be history.

And the kids involved, if in the US, would be nearly old enough to be sent to die in Iraq, but not old enough to indulge in a bit of nooky.

Hardly reason, I think for a family to be ‘devastated’, the girl taken out of school (a ‘courageous action’, according to some cretin), and banished to another country; the distraught parties contemplating suicide etc etc. ‘The police are involved’ – don’t they have other things to do, like finding comet murderers etc?

No, as I said, this is not 1807. Bring her back, put her back in school (hopefully at 17 she is nearly finished by now, though she may have been neglecting her grades with extramural activities): with advice to be a bit more discreet in future, and ensure that cameras are switched off.

As for the boy, he seems to show a fair degree of computer literacy in successfully processing a digital video clip, networking it and uploading it to the internet. In time, he should get a good job in IT and be an asset to the country.

I don’t know what

gets people fired up over comets (the celestial kind). Maybe the pre-scientific astrological belief that they are portents of drama and disaster – notably the appearance of Halley’s comet in the year 1066 that preceded the Norman invasion of England.

In previous centuries, there were certainly some spectacular ones, stretching right across the sky. Nowadays, perhaps because of light pollution which drowns out celestial objects in urban areas throughout the world, these are almost non-existent – in fact, the more astronomers hype the arrival of the ‘brightest’ comet this century, the more you can bet the object will turn out to resemble a minute blob of cotton wool, visible with good binoculars on one night if you are lucky.

Comet Mcnaught (comets are usually named after their discoverers) however, made a decent spectacle over Namibia last week, watched by hundreds of people crowding the hilltops around Windhoek.

Comets are actually not very interesting – they are the proverbial ‘dirty snowball’, a few kilometres across, much smaller than a self-respecting asteroid, hurtling round the sun in a highly elongated or even open-ended orbit, which means they visit us only once. The tail is a cloud of dust blown out by the rays of the sun when the comet is closest – the tail fans out ahead of the comet, and is not dragged along behind like the tail of a cat as some people assume. When I said they are not very interesting, comets are of great interest in the formation of the solar system, but that is only relevant if you have a budget of a billion dollars or so to send a probe up to one.

It’s strange that on any clear moonless night, even in Windhoek (at least before the new State House switches on its thousands of fence lights), there is much more to see – the milky way arches overhead, either Orion or the Scorpion glitters down, and you have a clear view across the galaxy. With the naked eye, you can even see our neighbour galaxy – Andromeda – two million light years away. But the hilltops of Windhoek are empty.

All this would be just passing-the-time talk, except for tragedy. Mr. Swiegers, a well-known local auto dealer, was watching the comet with some friends on the outskirts of town, when armed robbers emerged from the darkness. They were of course after the observers’ digital cameras. A shot was fired, and Mr. Swiegers was hit and killed. Despite the easily identifiable cameras, no arrests have been made.

So Namibia is the one country where amateur astronomers need to go armed. We said at the beginning that the idea of comets being a portent of disaster was just an astrological superstition, but for poor Mr. Swiegers it was the literal truth.

A great cartoon in the paper today



of the Devil inquiring (in Afrikaans) about citizenship or at least temporary residence in the hellish climate now being experienced. [ack to Republikein]

It struck me, though, that the best solution in coping with the heat would be to abandon the ‘North European’ style working day, in favour of a siesta based arrangement. How about if the Namibian working day started at 0500? People would work until a brunch break at about 1000, then carry on until about 1330 when the heat is really beginning to kick in. But by then you will have done the equivalent of a normal working day, and you can go home to sleep it off. The afternoons would be quiet as the grave, under the burning sun, left to ‘mad dogs’ and the informal sector.

Shops would keep to a similar schedule, but if necessary, they could open for an evening session for shoppers from say 1800 to 2000. People could eat dinner after 1900, when things are cooling off, and be in bed by 2100. This is not only healthy, but would give time and opportunity for some romantic interaction with your partner. (Not to mention that you could have had similar opportunity in the afternoon). You are not losing out on anything, seeing that there is **** *** to do in Windhoek at night anyway.

Other advantages – think of the saving in office air conditioners switched off in the afternoon (and in electricity at night from people going to bed early). Consider the benefits to our captains of industry, who are big in import/export to the Far East, seeing that by 0500 in Namibia, Delhi and Beijing are well into their business day. And because America is still slumbering, Internet speeds are amazing.

Of course in winter we could reverse things – get up at about 0900 on dark mornings……

There was a

light plane accident over the namib desert yesterday (in Namibia there seem to be a distressing number of them). The plane made a forced landing near the ghost town of Kolmanskop, near Luderitz.

What was different this time was that the passenger complement consisted of entirely of four lawyers. The lawyers emerged unscathed - the pilot was appreciably injured. A great opportunity missed to answer the question: What happens if you line up four lawyers end to end ??

[pic with acks to Republikein]

According to today’s rag, Namibia’s deputy Minister of Health, Ms. Petrina Haingura

saw a vision in which she was taken up to heaven and was greeted by an angel. The track record of God revealing Himself to politicians is not a happy one, after all, both President Bush and Mr. Blair were convinced that God had told them to invade Iraq. It’s a pity, while God was on the line, that He did not inform BB that there were no weapons of mass destuction, or that (seeing as he is omniscient) what a foul-up the exercise would prove to be. Still, there we have it – several hundred thousand dead as a result of the Godly instruction.

Apparently the message that the Angel had for the Deputy Minister was that all should repent, always a good idea for those practicing corruption, cooking their wives etc. But a bit unoriginal – seeing that the heavenly guest is a health minister, would it not have been more helpful (and more convincing) if the Angel had dictated her a recipe for a cure for HIV/AIDS?

In an earlier vision (the deputy Minister has apparently had several) she was taken up into heaven, where she saw a sleeping leapard. The only connection I can think of here is the legendary spoonerism where the tongue-tied priest announced the subject for his sermon: “The Lord is a shoving leopard…”
No, I think Ministers are more to be entrusted when they have their feet on the ground and their heads firmly connected to the earthly problems in hand.

There was a letter

in the ‘Namib-

ian’ paper

(the one which aroused the ire of the Founding Father, by criticising some fatherly pronouncement, and thus still suffers a ban on government advertising)

from a presumed UK nuclear enthusiast, who congratulated Namibia on ‘opting’ for nuclear power. I don’t see it’s any of his business, and anyway the country has not ‘opted’ for nuclear power (a sloppy headline) – it’s just one of all possible options for future energy needs. Fine. Nuclear power is great, but it does have some limitations, like the inability to power things like cars, trains and planes. Then there is the waste problem. The letter writer’s suggestion to bury the highly radioactive waste where the ore was first mined, is rather bizarre. Anyone ready for a Swakop which glows in the dark, even without the Christmas lights switched on?

Beyond this, there is a worrying tendency of some politicians and writers, who did not quite make it past Std 8 science, to assume that because a country has widespread deposits of (rather low grade) uranium ore - see pic of awesome pit at the Rossing mine - the country can produce heaps and heaps of nuclear energy for itself. This is not necessarily so. (On another level, consider the example of Ghana, which for a hundred years has been about the largest producer of cocoa beans but which has yet to manufacture its own chocolate bar). Namibia actually might be better off selling uranium ore and buying electricity. Because nuclear energy is difficult, much more so than chocolate. First you have to enrich your ore. This is technically and politically complicated. Politically, because any small 3rd world country which tries to start enriching gets the US very twitchy, and tends to get you membership of the Axis of Evil club.

Then you can’t just suck energy out of the material: you have to build reactors, which are not cheap (write down the largest number which you know a name for, and add three noughts). You have to ask the French, British or Russians to build one for you – more neo-colonial dependency. These reactors have a distressing tendency to go on the blink (ask our South African friends). Plus the occasional meltdown. They may not produce greenhouse gases, but they consume huge amounts of water, which Namibia does not have. Usually then, they have to be situated by the sea. The effluent then would kill most of the fish which the country also depends on.

Nuclear energy? Promising idea, but needs more work.