weekly newspaper.
Tomás Vieira Mário, a well-known veteran journalist and civil society leader, likened the root causes of the brutal conflict in Cabo Delgado to fields of straw. The point was that abysmal governance had drained Mozambique’s central and northern regions dry as hay, making them prone to fires (conflict). Mário’s allegory raises these questions: How were these regions transformed into fields of straw? What are the material conditions that constitute the straw and how did they come into being?
The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) recently published Land in South Africa: Contested Meanings and Nation Formation, about connections between land governance and economic, social and political conditions in southern Africa. In the book, 13 authors write about how various aspects of land governance transform southern Africa into dangerous fields of straw. Entitled “Land, Rights and Dignity”, my chapter documents this process in Mozambique, whe
First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
Every Ramadan, I think of one thing, and that’s food. And, no, it’s not because I fast and all I can do is salivate over what I am going shove down my gob as soon as the sun sets – I don’t fast.
The reason I think about food all the time is also not because I look at my mom or my brother, who do fast, and wonder: Wow, you must be so hangry (hungry and angry) right now!
I think about food a lot because of the poor – all the millions of poor Muslims globally who obediently and sincerely observe this month year after year with empty bellies and full hearts.
First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
Covid-19 fatigue, causing people not to wear their masks, wash their hands and maintain physical distancing, has been identified as a major possible driver of a potential third wave of Covid-19 infections in South Africa, the director-general of the National Department of Health said this week.
As of Thursday night, 54,331 people had died from Covid-19 complications. The country has a case fatality rate of 3.4%. There are currently 20,779 active cases in the country.
In a presentation to Parliament this week, Department of Health Director-General Dr Sandile Buthelezi said they were watching the number of cases in the Free State, Northern Cape, North West and parts of Limpopo. There were some worrying trends in these provinces, where there had been an increase in the case positivity rate.
First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
The Covid-19 pandemic continues its brutal march across India. New infections reached 387,000 on 29 April –about 44% of the world’s new infections that day. As hospitals run out of beds, ICU capacity, and even oxygen, the death toll is rising. The number of dead bodies in mortuaries, crematoria and burial grounds speak of the awful toll of the pandemic.
India’s numbers have outstripped countries such as the US and Brazil. The end of the surge is nowhere in sight, as more states and cities slip into the grip of the pandemic. Their numbers are rising quite steeply, even if numbers in cities such as Mumbai and Delhi are beginning to flatten. More worrying, the number of positive tests is rising very steeply, indicating that the actual numbers of those infected are even higher.
The first time I opened a bank account, it was in a grand branch of Barclays Bank in an era when the bank manager was a kind of demigod. I also remember the upheaval and drama when Barclays, quite rightly, left our then pariah country.