A Spectacular and rare

atmospheric phenomenon

seen over Windhoek for several hours this morning - a 'sun dog' ? usually only visible from polar latitudes. Anyone have a detailed explanation. Weather was rather cloudy, but other conditions normal.

Here I am again, and happy May Day.

Although my web host has gone off the radar (the one who provides easier pointers to these blogs) my pages have mysteriously reappeared, so here goes.

It's a public holiday in Namibia, Workers' Day, and a quiet autumn day, balmy sunlight and a clear duck-egg blue sky. The Namibian construction industry seems the only one in the world, apart from corporate liquidators and doomsday financial journos, to be enjoying a huge boom. Cranes are everywhere, and the latest would-be proud house owner is jackhammering away at the opposite hillside to create his new mansion. Apart from that, all is still. There will probably be a workers' rally at the official stadium, later in the day, addressed by a deputy Minister, and attended by 8 people. Don't expect any protest marches or smashed McDonald's windows. (We don't have McDonald's anyway).

A comforting and reassuring feature about life here, to some, is that everything stays the same. May brings a spate of public holidays, so that, every year, the editor of the local English newspaper writes the same article about how these work-free days cut dreadfully into national productivity. (The newspapers themselves do not publish on a holiday, of course). Every year, some official spokesman will decry the deplorable attendance at the official rallies laid on the mark the day. (The reason is simple - if you are a REAL worker, when a public holiday comes along - what do you do? That's right, you STAY IN BED. Why show up at a dusty dilapidated stadium to hear a politician who turns up 2 hours late and can barely read his speech anyway?

The next exciting occasion will be the election, later in the year, which will be a precise re-run of all the others, including the evaporation of the currently fashionable opposition party, as in South Africa.

Meanwhile, happy May Day. It's a long weekend of course - next Monday is also a holiday...

the season of tacki- ness

is with us again

yes folks, as the sun beats down on the dusty arena after six rainless months, the Windoek junk fair aka the Windhoek Show is with us again. All the same stands from the same outfits, all the tatty stalls in the tatty halls offering the rubbish that won't sell in South Africa anymore, all the condemned rusty fairground rides which they got from who know where (a few fewer each year, since some must have collapsed in the meanwhile) - it's there.

It does have a kind of old fashioned charm - it dimly reminds me of when I used to get taken to the Rand Show in Johannesburg in the 50's when I was a kid. But now, not. For the N$20 admission you could still buy a couple of litres of gas, and get yourself well away from it.

Goodbye beetroot, hello cold showers

The removal of the inept South African president Thabo Mbeki was surprisingly painless. Would that it were as easy to get rid of other African leaders. Of course, it was his party rather than the people who deposed him (the people would not have counted for much).

The reaction may be a sigh of relief, but there is a darker side.

His 'quiet diplomacy' (amounting some might think to total silence), allowing Robert Mugabe to continue in power, with a sham agreement which will swallow up Mr Tshangurai just as surely as Mr. Joshua Nkomo was swallowed, when he could really have made a difference; has cost and will untold human misery and many human lives in Zimbabwe. If presidents of smaller countires such as Botswana and Zambia were not afraid to make their feelings known about Mr. Mugabe, why not the South African President?

But the more serious issue is the crackpot theory of AIDS he and his dumb-loyal cabinet followed for years (notably his bizarre 'health minister', recommending beetroot and garlic as treatment), which is largely resonsible for the 1500 a day death rate of the virus in South Africa. As the writer of the First Post e-paper noted, any politician causing a tenth of this death rate would be speedily hauled up before the war crimes tribunal in the Hague. No doubt Mr. Mbeki will enjoy a peaceful and respected retirement.

In his place, for a few months, we have a 'caretaker' whose name nobody can remember and nobody can pronounce. No matter, after that we have Mr. Zuma, who is a Zulu, related to the Matebele in Zimbabwe whom Mr. Mugabe tried to exterminate in the 1980's. So we might see a little less patience with the senile dictator north of the border. And although Mr. Zuma believes that taking a shower helps to prevent HIV infection, at least he is not on record as being opposed to more conventional anti-retroviral treatment.

The newest
(and ugliest)

building opened in windhoek the other day

That thing on top? a lop-sided storage tank left from the construction operation, about to be taken away? No, that is the architectural feature. Since the pic was taken, the 'tank' has been finished in a nice zinc colour - like an old fashioned upturned batch tub.

Must be suffocating under the hot spring time Namibian sun - either that or be contributing an awsome carbon load to the local environment from the power used by its aircons.
Of course, it is the new headquarters of a household name accountancy firm, so they could employ the best architects. But in Windhoek you can be mixing cement one week and be a successful practicing architect the next.
And why situated down a quiet, narrow residential side street? Because of the City of Windhoek's policy to zone peaceful residential areas to office blocks, thereby cocking a snoot at the wealthy white residents of the area, and giving the value of their houses a knock.

Why,

whenever an item about Namibia makes it on to the BBC news or other national medium,

does one get ready to cringe? This time, where African governments had been keeping a discreet silence on the China-Tibet issue, our Min of Foreign Affairs comes rushing in with a statement, probably dictated by the press secretary at the Chinese embassy, that Namibia deplored 'separatist' movements in Tibet, claimed that the violence in Tibet had been 'orchestrated' , condemned moves to independence in Taiwan, and supported re-unification into the one-China policy. Maybe Taiwan will decide its own destiny without the recommendations of Namibia.

Now compare with a press release from Ms. Yade, the French human rights minister: Ms Yade had said that Mr Sarkozy would miss the event unless China freed political prisoners and agreed to talk to the Dalai Lama.
The newspaper Le Monde had quoted Ms Yade as saying: "Three conditions are essential for him to attend: an end to violence against the population and the liberation of political prisoners; light shed on the events in Tibet; and the opening of a dialogue with the Dalai Lama."

Yes indeed. (Of course, China would be fully entitled to boycott the London Olympics because of Britain's involvment in Iraq, but that is another story).

Then last month, we had the North Korean deputy president/chairman of something arriving on a state vist and presiding over the independence celebrations with much acclaim.

I mean, is it a central pillar of Namibian foreign policy to ass-lick the world's crappiest countries? And when, after the usual bloodbath, Mr Mugabe is re-confirmed for another term as President of (what is left of) Zimbabwe, guess which country will be the first to rush with recognition and congratulation?

DARK

ORANGE

DELIGHT

Total eclipse of the moon, the last we'll see until 2011, hanging over the hostel building of the Windhoek High School, at 0530 this morning

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 ({:>? )