NewsHawks 26 May 2023

Reframing Issues Page 51 AMIRA OSMAN KHARTOUM  is — was — a city that did not know war or fighting in its recent history. Now it is in the grip of a  civil war  between  rival military forces. The city has always been a hub of creativity. It was awarded the title of Arab Capital of Culture in 2005. Despite its Arab affiliation, the capital of Sudan is also very African. A tension of identities — British colonial, African, Islamic — made Khartoum what it was. This  triple heritage  is powerfully  reflected  in Greater Khartoum’s composition as three towns separated by rivers with a network of bridges. Omdurman is considered a national capital, the symbol of the values of the people, while Khartoum is the administrative capital and Bahri (or Khartoum North) is the industrial town. Together, they are simply known as Khartoum. A narrow part of the city, about 20km across, between the Blue and White Nile rivers, is where the airport and military headquarters are located. Around them are dense residential neighbourhoods. People have had to evacuate their homes as this narrow strip was one of the first invaded. The rest of Khartoum is now equally destroyed at a massive scale. I’m a scholar of Sudanese architecture who was born and raised in Khartoum by an architect father. The destruction of my home town has caused me to reflect on its construction. What is being lost is much more than just buildings. It is also people’s hope for a future they had invested heavily in. City of hope Like many African cities, Khartoum is divided into pockets of wealth and poverty. Over the past century it has expanded significantly. The city has unique geographical features that could also have become opportunities for future development. The most significant are  al mughran  (the confluence), a meeting point of the two River Niles and Tuti Island. They offer many river fronts, presenting great prospects for residents. Formal and informal businesses thrived along the rivers, as did cultural and entertainment opportunities. This created innovations such as open air book fairs and art markets, as well as more formal and well-funded initiatives, which sometimes led to tensions over conflicting interests. Khartoum could have been  conceptualised as a city of hope and opportunity. In a 2003  study  on safety and crime in various African cities, the conclusions on Khartoum mention religion as a deterrent for criminal activities. Greater Khartoum had a low crime rate in comparison with other major cities in the world. Despite a dictatorship and a people’s uprising, Sudan was safer than visitors expected. “Even its military coups were lethargic and bloodless,”  wrote  one Sudanese journalist, citing Khartoum as a selfish city for remaining peaceful despite a country burning around it. Perhaps the city, located in the centre of the Sudan, never really stood a chance for lasting peace with its tumultuous peripheries. This city is now a ghost town of abandoned homes, snipers and dead bodies on the streets. The militia are occupying most of it, rendering residents human shields as the army attacks them from the air. Changing landscape In the late 1980s and 1990s, many educated Sudanese left the country due to political instability, high unemployment rates and the general difficulty of day-to-day life. Yet, like many Africans in the diaspora, they never lost contact with the home country. During this time, building guidelines changed and Khartoum densified. Plots that previously had a single-storey family home now became three- or four-storey apartment blocks, and the city expanded vertically. Property dynamics adapted to receive the newcomers — as well as the massive cash injections from Sudanese abroad. One  migration profile  states that in 2013, US$424 million was sent back to Sudan — 0.65% of its gross domestic product. Much of this funding was used to develop properties in Khartoum, either for rental, for family use, or for those abroad when they returned for annual visits or in anticipation of their ultimate retirement. In a country with broken systems and institutions and little opportunity for other forms of investment, Sudanese invested heavily on their homes. In Khartoum, rental income is — was — the only form of retirement funding for many citizens. The Sudanese social and political context during the formation of the country’s  modern movement  in architecture from 1900 to 1970 influenced the development of Khartoum’s architecture in profound ways. It led to a unique architectural identity. What emerged was a form of architecture that adapted to the climatic conditions, as well as the sociocultural needs of the people. Bands of reinforced concrete, deep verandahs, large balconies and panels of face brick came to characterise many homes in the city. As time went on, these homes became multiple-storey, mixed-function developments. One Sudanese architect, Omer Siddig, played a part in developing the architectural identity of the city. He is also my father, with whom I trained with for many years and who is completing a book on his archives, mostly of buildings in Khartoum. In this archive he explains how a unique form of residential development emerged as his company spent more than 20 years providing building solutions for dynamic family needs: The model that evolved was adopted and replicated widely; it allowed for the family to occupy the ground floor section while the upper levels comprised apartments for use by the children of the family as they married. This system replicated the model of homes of extended families in the rural areas from where most of Khartoum’s residents originated … This allowed the houses to incorporate rentals on the upper levels without compromising the privacy of the main home. The loss So as the city continues to be destroyed, one must also wonder about the loss of everything that people have acquired over their lifetimes and what the consequences will be. Leaving Khartoum means leaving behind assets, income-generating opportunities, access to education and healthcare. Leaving Khartoum means a humanitarian crisis of great magnitude that will affect not only the rest of Sudan but the whole region as over six million people lose everything they ever had. A war in Khartoum means not only the displacement of people and the destruction of buildings and infrastructure, but also the loss of a rich heritage. People have lost lives, livelihoods, communities, unique innovations, their sense of place, belonging and identity, and the refuge that the city offered. It means the loss of hope in a dream of what could have been. — The Conversation. *About the writer: Amira Osman is professor of architecture and SARChI: DST/NRF/SACN research chair in spatial transformation (Positive Change in the Built Environment) at Tshwane University of Technology in South Africa. Khartoum: The creation and the destruction of modern African city NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023

Page 52 Reframing Issues support to this dictatorial power was the protection of uranium, which had been used for the first atomic bomb. And the Congo was also surrounded by quite a few countries that were communist. And so, it was much more important to keep the Congolese state under control, hence Mobutu being kept in power throughout this period from 1965 until the 1990s. Then, it was the end of the Cold War and suddenly, Mobutu was no longer relevant as a character in the new setting, which was considered to be a “democracy” somehow. So from the 1990s, there was an economic and political crisis set in the Congo and in Katanga, which caused the mining sector to decline, and which made it subject to a neoliberal transformation. On the one hand, there could be artisanal extraction because of unemployment, and on the other hand, investors could come from everywhere else to exploit the minerals. All this homogeneity that I was talking about in the 1980s disappeared during this whole period of transition which goes from 1990 to 1997, when there was a coup d’état. These years built a landscape that is no longer the regular one, it is now a fairly capitalist or quite devastating universe, always in search of this mineral, but with a social composition which is completely unequal. When I started to be interested in mines, my work consisted of trying to understand this failure or this change of periods, that is to say what was happening during the 1980s and the 1990s. The discovery of archive images gave me a rather interesting strata on the constitution, on the very construction of the city, on how it was thought out, how the workforce was at the base of this extraction, how communities were dispersed in space, and how the use of space or town planning actually contributed to all these extraction activities. This way, several stratas were thus falling into place. And I think that’s what I try to convey in my work: it is all this complexity in which the present itself is only relevant in the way it connects with a series of events or a series of stratas that form a sort of continuum. Caroline Honorien (CH): Copper, uranium, coltan… Your work often addresses how the Congo, with its natural resources, relates to the history of the world (and of capitalism). Could you expand on that? LL:  In your answer, may you also speak about the history of Katanga and Moïse Tshombe’s secession of the province from the newly independent Republic of the Congo, which led to Patrice Lumumba’s assassination after Mubutu’s coup in September 1960? SB: Yes, that goes back to what I was talking about when I answered the first question. The question of the transformation of the Congolese ore directly links this territory to the rest of the world. And indeed, we have to put that in a historical context. A few days after the independence in 1960, Katanga claimed to be secessionist and detached itself from the rest of the country. But you should know that this secession was entirely financed by the mining industry. The State was not really a State but, rather, the mining industry itself. The Haut-Katanga Mining Union was considered as a State within a State as it had its workers camps, its training centers, its sports centers, its cultural centers… the companies subcontracted the railroad companies, everything was structured around mining. And so, it was a lot of capital that wanted to keep its autonomy because the investors were in Belgium or London. We were already in a system that went beyond the notion of metropolis or country. It is a capitalist system, and shortly after the Congo’s independence, the industry wanted to keep this autonomy and suddenly financed this secession and hired soldiers for what was then called the Katangese armed force. It also enlisted mercenaries who came from Belgium, France, South Africa, to form this army around the figure of Tshombe, the leader of the secession. Just like that, Katanga was independent for four years and maintained relations with Belgium. Money was even indexed on the Belgian currency: a Katangese franc was equal to a Belgian franc. This funding was a way for Belgium to be in control of this rebellion. These elements are not necessarily told in mainstream history or in the history that we are taught at school. These are events that we are beginning to find out about, either in the archives or in the collection of testimonies. It is therefore by carrying out research that we can realizlse how this territory does not belong to the Indigenous people of the land. It belongs to an extractivist industry, which is operating on site. This means that we are dealing with things that are of international nature, not of local and Indigenous. This is also true when we talk about the enlistment of the workforce. Private entrepreneurs would seek labor in Rwanda, Kasai [Congolese province to the North-West of Katanga], or Rhodesia [former Zambia and Zimbabwe] for example. At the architectural level, a lot of village architecture came from South Africa. The bricks that were used to build the first houses in Katanga come from Bulawayo [in south Zimbabwe]. There was a whole system that was put in place, a whole constitution that was invented and served to return to what the philosopher [Valentin-Yves] Mudimbe calls “the question of the invention of Africa.” All these spaces were invented with this perspective of extraction and connection with the world. Going back to the ore you mentioned, it is clear that copper was closely linked to the history of World War I, uranium was linked to the Second World War and rubber, with Leopold II, was linked to the industrial revolution, and now, with the electric car, lithium in east Congo will be the Far West of tomorrow… The ore therefore makes it possible to no longer speak of the territory alone, but to understand it in all its complexity, both economically and politically. CH:  Further on this, can you talk about how ecology and urbanism intersect within the very fabric of the city of Lubumbashi, and how it affects its population? SB:  When I started working with the French Institute in Lubumbashi, I worked as a volunteer photographer and one of the missions with the director of the center was to document the architectural and industrial heritage of the city of Lubumbashi. From that moment on, the idea was to develop Heritage Days, accompanied by scientific presentations, whether in the fields of the history of colonial architecture or industrial heritage, etc. This way, I started working with architects to be able to contextualise the buildings in relation to the construction periods: the style, the intention behind, etc. Very quickly however, I started feeling uncomfortable, because the documentation of the building did not correspond to the use of the building by its inhabitants. It was as if there were two lives that shared these spaces: the life of the past use as intended by the architects, and the life of the occupants who had reappropriated the space to improve it, or else quite simply to destroy it, while the heritage process tried to save it. It raised the question of sharing the inheritance. But it is actually much more complex than that. Lubumbashi was built from 1910 when the Rhodesia Railways railway was linked to that of Katanga. Before, the first point of shipment for minerals Colonial extractivism and epistemic geologies in the Congo Whether for its rubber, its copper, its uranium, its coltan, or its lithium, the Congo has seen and continues to see its earth continuously looted by European colonial powers. For the last 16 years, Sammy Baloji (SB) has been dedicating his artistic practice to the literal and historic stratas his research has led him to excavate. Caroline Honorien (CH) and Léopold Lambert (LL) talked with him about what decolonisation would signify in this context. Léopold Lambert (LL): Could you talk about your relationship to geology? On the one hand, your photographs often capture the literal geology of the earth of the Congo, an earth that billions of us carry every day in our pockets or handbags, which is a vertiginous reality to consider in the exploitation of the country’s resources. On the other hand, your work in the archives also has something to do with geology in the way you exhume historical layers to explain the top one, which is the present. Sammy Baloji (SB):  Sure. I was born in Lubumbashi, which is the second largest city in the Congo, and it is a mining town. What I want to underline by calling it a mining town is the impact or the importance of mines, both in the structuring of the city, of society, of work and of how the mining industry plays an important role in this territory. Even daily life in the 1980s was punctuated with the mining industry. I’m not necessarily talking at the level of labor, but even the sound of the mine’s siren actually played a marker in the rhythm of life, the rhythm of society. So, we had a rhythm of life, which had several layers and which are all linked to a single element: extraction. We’re talking about extraction, but we’re not talking about transformation. Since the creation of the city until today, and even if we are talking about all this ore, it is because in the Congo, there is no processing company for this raw material. There is just this extraction, and then there is the ejection of this raw material outwards, which creates an imbalance. And even the action of extracting consists in going to the lower stratas and bringing the ore back to the surface. The slag heap of Katanga that we know very well, that we see in all the images, even on the currency, has become both a political and economic symbol. The slag heap is an important symbol which is in fact a product of the waste resulting from the extraction or even washing of the commercial slag heaps which is very present in the Katangese landscape. And so, whether it’s culturally or even organically, I’m influenced by all these elements, which brings about this perception, this sensitivity. My work is also informed by the political events that occured in history. I was talking about the 1980s, on the one hand, but you should know that in the 1990s, there was an economic crisis and a political crisis happening in the Congo, and in particular in Lubumbashi. And this crisis is very much linked to the question of the end of the Cold War, quite simply. The dictatorial power, that of Mobutu in any case, could no longer be and could no longer be supported, whether by the United States or by Belgium. One of the reasons for the From the series Mémoire by Sammy Baloji (2006). Courtesy of the artist and Imane Farès. NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023

Reframing Issues Page 53 was Lobito, in Angola. So there was a railroad that went to Angola, but which was much longer and more detoured, while the railway to South Africa and, in particular, Cape Town, was much more direct. And so there were agreements between these two States to create a junction between both railways to get the minerals out through southern Africa. From there, the city really started to be built. It was designed in a segregated system. The extractive workforce quarters are built on the basis of the agreements established with the local or Indigenous communities. Indigenous people are not directly hired as diggers or as miners. Before World War I, the labor force was hired abroad or from other parts of the Congo to be brought to the city. This is how Belgian workers were working alongside Black workers. But after the War, and with the influence of communism or even emergent unionism, the idea was to be able to separate these two communities so that the Black community would not revolt, or attack the extractivist system. This way, a clear segregation between Black people and white people emerged, as well as what they called the “cordon sanitaire”: a physical separation of more than 500 metres that separates Black societies from Western societies. The neighborhoods that were created in this segregation were called “Native quarters.” They were situated next to the mines and were entirely made up of this workforce which had been hired and which were usually not Indigenous. They could mix with Indigenous societies though, but these quarters were called extra-customary centers and they did not follow the traditional jurisdiction or the villages or pre-colonial jurisdictions that existed in the periphery of the city. Instead, they were under control of a new modern memory that emerged. The large economic centers of extraction are still the same today: Lubumbashi, Kinshasa, Kisangani, and so on. On the other hand, the peripheries, which were considered to be under traditional jurisdictions until today, are not able to produce an economy. This is why today there is a strong demography in these large centers which were already built during the colonial era, and they still operate the way they were meant to operate by the Belgian system or by the colonial administration. The peripheries are inhabited by workers and the centers by the upper-class people. Basically what I mean is that the system that was built during the colonial period still persists today. LL:  In a previous interview, you indeed stated that you are “not interested in colonialism as a thing of the past, but in the continuation of that system.” Few parts of the African Continent speaks to this continuation as poignantly as the land of the Congo. As someone for whom the practice of the land seems so important, how do you conceive what we call “decolonial ecologies” in this issue? SB:  I noticed that when foreign researchers arrive in Lubumbashi, or more generally in the Congo. Their gateway, of course, remains the colonial history and the colonial archives, that is to say all the scientific production of archive images of anthropology, ethnography, etc.  But this is only a moment. These sciences are built gradually and even the colonial system in itself is not established in a homogeneous way. From the start, until the end, it is dilettante and experimental. It copies from other French, English, German, Portuguese systems. There is some competition between them and even espionage between one country and another. When we talk about ethnography and the sciences that were born between the 17th and the 19th century, we are really in this relationship to the Other and how we perceive the Other, how we categorize the Other. I find that these elements are somewhat both limiting, but also constitutive of the thought that we have today on the way in which we can approach the Other. My work is about finding elements which reveal the ambiguity of these devices. Those categorical studies can be geological or geographical, they can focus on minerals or establish typologies of ethnies… For instance, these studies are at the source of why we talk about 400 ethnic groups in the Congo today. This is not necessarily true because the way pre-colonial societies defined themselves and the way in which they negotiated their territories do not correspond to the way in which so-called “objective” statistical data are established. Earlier, I spoke about Katanga’s secession. This secession created a sort of Katangese identity, for example. Yet, this identity that still exists today only emerged in the 1960s and with interests that are external to itself somehow. Similarly, part of my work has been on urban planning, for instance, and as I was mentioned earlier, on these Native quarters. The streets where they were located used to take the names of ethnies or ethnical groups that were supposed to live in these extra-customary centres. But this was only a nomenclature; in the end it did not necessarily mean that it was these people who lived there. What it does however is to produce an awareness of ethnies as an identification element. This allows the establishment of rules and ability to divide and conquer. It then becomes in the interest of each worker to be affiliated to his community to exist in this stratified space. It is a space of confrontation and still today, we can see it in the electoral sphere. Elections operate based on ethnic identities, but those are colonial inventions! What I’m interested in doing in my work is to underline these elements and this framework that belong to a context of occupation, from which we don’t seem to be able to exit. This is why I say that I’m not interested in the colonial apparatus as something of the past. We still operate in the same system. LL:  But when we speak about decolonial ecologies, we don’t necessarily think of what will happen once we totally overthrow colonialism. Sometimes, such decolonial ecologies can happen at a smaller scale and can annihilate this framework that fabricates Otherness, as you were describing. After all, one component of this framework is also the strict separation of humans from everything else. This is where our question about decolonisation came from. SB: Yes, I don’t think that I could approach the question of decolonization at a global scale; it has to go through smaller scales. So let’s go back to Katanga and to Lubumbashi as we may be able to find ways to talk about restitution at some point. There is a whole process to preserve the heritage of the extra-customary centers. Objects are collected to enter ethnographic collections and so on. The idea is to preserve what’s possible as traditional memory will disappear, but it’s important to wonder whether traditional systems have disappeared between these peripheries and these extra-customary centres. Personally, I don’t think so. There has always been back and forth movements between the city and the villages or the urban outskirts around Katanga. In all these communities in town centers, we still find today people who combine both traditional knowledge and modern practices. The question for me is how one will effectively make a junction between the periphery to the center, knowing that the center was built while the periphery was gradually destroyed by a system of evangelisation or education as it was done by the Catholic religion. Or we can talk about borders. If you look at the Congo for instance, we share nine borders [with the Republic of Congo, Central Arican Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Angola], but many communities are split by those borders established during the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference.  And so you find Lunda people in Angola who were colonised by the Portuguese, others in the Congo who were colonised by the Belgians, and others in Zambia who were colonised by the British. But originally, they’re all the same people who speak the same language, share the same culture and embrace their common genealogy. I don’t know how we can now deal with these separations that colonialism produced. CH:  You have worked on Captain Henri Pauwels’ album, which was instrumental to the building of Tervuren’s diorama. It is a very interesting piece of archive that allows us to understand how animality, environment and blackness intersect and perform under colonialism. Could you tell us why this particular piece of archive was interesting to you and how it relates more broadly to the colonization of the Congolese territory? SB: Yes, this was a project I undertook after the Mémoire series. At that moment, I encountered the colonial archive, in particular the archive of the mining industry in Katanga. After that, I got invited to Tervuren in Belgium to work on the institutional archive that had already been contextualised. What I wanted to propose was to bring back these archives to Katanga and to redo the Charles Lemaire’s 1898-1900 expedition that had brought them to Tervuren. It is this expedition that established the limits of what was then called Katanga. It’s very clear in the archive how Lemaire negotiated with local communities (that he calls “ethnies”) and how pacts were sealed. He used conflicts between the various ethnic groups to assert the colonial presence on the land in a context where Rhodesia was also looking at this territory. Lemaire established these borders through geodesic boundary stones that we can still find today. For me, it was interesting to confront the colonial archive with collective memory. I then encountered another archive. I was presenting my work in Malines in Belgium and, at the end of the talk, a lady who owned a gallery came to tell me that she had a large collection of archival photographs that could be of interest to me, given my work on the archives. I examined the archive and nothing seemed contextualized: it was a subjective archive that she assembled according to her own interest. But then I found this Pauwels album which constituted an entire context in itself. This is something in which the photographer (or the owner of the album) establishes an entire writing of his trajectory on a territory. I was interested in it because of his gaze, through which animals, the racial typology, the landscape, etc. are all approached in a horizontal manner. Everything is equal to everything, except for him who poses in the photograph as a conqueror in front of the animal that he hunted, or the group of Natives, or the typology of the outfits, etc. From there I did some research and encountered the story of Pauwels and realized that his expedition was also commissioned by the Tervuren Museum in order to build some dioramas there. But the history of dioramas does not start with him; it starts with U.S. taxidermist Carl Akeley. He was working for the Natural History Museum in New York, which was a private institution. In the 1920s, he did an expedition in the Congo to build dioramas. He hunted gorillas that he brought back to the United States to create a diorama that is still visible today, and which will even inspire a character like King Kong. And while Carl Akeley was doing this very successful diorama, his wife, Mary Jobe Akeley started writing letters to the Belgium King [Albert I] to be able to protect these animals in the east Congo. This is how national parks were established and, of course, those were created in a way that stripped the land away from Indigenous people. And still today, the populations living around the parks are claiming these territories to which they don’t have access. Meanwhile, inside the parks, there is an artisanal extraction of coltan that was discovered during the past decades. This extraction is very different from the one in Katanga, where the industry was already operating during the colonial era, while for coltan, the extraction is much more artisanal as these territories have not been industrialised. To these dynamics, we can add the question of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, which also affected these territories. The borders with Rwanda and Burundi are right there and again these borders are recent creations. Like I did for the Charles Lemaire expedition, I wanted to bring back Pauwels’ album to the east Congo, revisit the places, etc. But when I arrived in Goma [Congolese city at the border with Rwanda], I already knew that these territories were dangerous. I came in touch with a Congolese fixer there; he welcomed me and told me about the territories that could potentially be accessible and those that really couldn’t. And this way, I understood very quickly that, as a fixer and an Indigenous person, he brought a decent amount of international journalists to conflicted territories and that, while doing this, he took many photographs that were never published. You know, he’s supposed to be just a fixer, a person who is making the link between the international press and these territories. And so I decided to work with these images. On the one hand, the fixer’s photos and, on the other hand, Pauwels’ album; how could these two documentation sites inform on the conflicts that are happening in these regions? CH:  Photography, archives, dioramas… These practices and dispositives are often tied to the history of colonialism’s violence and extractivism. Can you talk about the way your work on memory upsets those technologies? SB: Yes, when ethnography and photography were being developed, we were already in this colonial era in Africa. There was already a form of photographic writing that had emerged, and we’re still having trouble getting rid of it today. The way images are made is through an approach and an aesthetic that is not thought of from the inside. I asked myself many questions about photography. Given how it emerged with this colonial and extractive reality, how can I transcend or distort this? I asked myself this question so many times, but it seems that, at the end of the day, it’s quite impossible to divert the photographic tool. But perhaps the right question would have consisted in wondering what existed before photography. How did Indigenous people express themselves? How did they contemplate the universe and explain their sense of belonging to the world? This is not just a cosmogonic vision, it is also a physical reality that can become political through an aesthetic that emerges. For instance, I’ve been working on traditional scarifications. In ethnographic collections when we find a body with scarifications, the photographs always show the contour more than the person. When we look at them, we may be able to identify them when we look at the body, but the way the photograph operates by displaying these elements on the body renders it foreign, and transforms the person into a foreigner. I’m interested in diverting the gaze in considering scarifications as a form of writing, as a choice, as a political choice, as a social choice, as a way to embrace a thought that establishes a group of people or a political power for a moment, to be able to regulate life and the community and, ultimately, to belong to a certain identity. That’s what I’m interested in. All these western and colonial sciences emerged to tell the story of the Other’s world, but how can we begin from the Indigenous people’s knowledge itself? For instance, one thing that I’m examining at the moment are two mnemonic devices created by Luba people. There are Luba people in Katanga and Luba people in Kasai. We share the same basic language, but when living with different cultural groups, languages evolved. And there are proverbs or myths that tell the story of the departure of Luba people from Katanga to Kasai. Part of it might be mythological, but other parts factually describe the pre-colonial migration towards Kasai while the kingdom would remain in Katanga. Luba people thus created two memory devices that allowed transmission from one generation to another. In Katanga, there is a mnemonic table that we call “Lukasa” which can be read by initiated people only to be able to tell the history of the kingdom. The table is never organized in the same way, but it allows the orator to tell history. As for Luba people in Kasai, there is a kasàlà poem which mixes the genealogical dimension with the cosmogonic dimension, the mythological dimension, as well as the relationship with the territory. It begins with the name. When we give a name to someone, a member of the community, this name links this person to other people who carried this name and through that, to an entire epic story. And once this person has the name, they embrace a certain politics and a territory. I’m working with these two elements to question the way political borders have been created during the colonial era. How can we use this knowledge, not to question the colonial setting, but to integrate the colonial setting within this apparatus to tell history? How do we ultimately appropriate these colonial tools? How do we accept them as being part of a continuity system, not a repulsive one? How do we integrate them to go beyond them and tell their story through all this knowledge that has not disappeared and has not been erased? This is why I speak about continuity. I don’t think that tradition is the enemy of modernity, I think that there is a continuity. How can both be combined? If we want to keep them apart, I think that we fall into a trap that can be very conflictual. We do what we can and we can proceed to a reappropriation apparatus both for what comes from the tradition and what comes from colonialism. LL: This also allows us to consider time at what we may call a geological scale: considering colonialism as the alpha and omega of the African continent would be forgetting the millennia of history that preceded it. SB: Absolutely. — TheFunambulist.Net NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023

Page 54 Reframing Issues Since the dawn of independence on 18 April 1980, Zimbabweans have striven to achieve the "Zimbabwean Dream’" — peace, equality, stability, democracy, inclusive economic growth and shared prosperity. This aspirational vision has remained largely elusive, notwithstanding the extensive efforts towards its achievement. These vigorous attempts have been rooted in an active citizenry’s unflinching and steadfast determination. The removal of Zimbabwe’s strongman, long-serving President Robert Mugabe, by a people-backed coup d’état in November 2017 was greeted with euphoria, excitement and high expectations. There was so much goodwill inside and outside the country, which was rapidly squandered — the dream was deferred. Once again, the build-up to Zimbabwe’s elections of 30 July 2018 ushered in the exhilarating and engulfing winds of potential change. You could cut the exultation and exuberance with a knife. Alas, it was not to be. It was a false moment. Well, it never rains but it pours. The Emmerson Mnangagwa regime — whose foundation is anchored in the coup d’état of 2017 — continued in power after the fraudulent 30 July 2018 polls mired and shrouded in the chaos of illegitimacy. This administration has proven to be hopelessly and shamelessly incompetent, corrupt, authoritarian and directionless. With the advent of the global COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the situation has degenerated further while being compounded by, among other factors, an insecure, edgy and divided securocratic state, the brazen theft of COVID-19 funding, ethnonationalism on steroids, unprecedented looting of national resources and excessive use of force against citizens. Evidently, this has xvii led to a collapsed healthcare system, unrelenting poverty, severe food insecurity, loss of livelihoods and dramatic shrinking of democratic space. As 2023 unfolds and general elections are beckoning, there is no letup. We have an unconstitutional and botched-up delimitation report. The voters roll is not available to all political parties. Violence against opposition supporters is flaring up, while arrested opposition leaders are denied bail and locked up without trial. At the core of this national tragedy is a government whose primary raison d’être is the feudal pursuit of the insatiable financial interests of Mnangagwa’s family and clan members; at the expense of national aspirations. It is a fine mess. Once again, the ambition to achieve a peaceful, prosperous, inclusive and democratic Zimbabwe has stayed ostensibly elusive. ‘Cry, the beloved country.’ Indeed, we can invoke Alan Paton’s exasperation. What is going on? The ‘Zimbabwean Dream’, characterised by peace, equality, stability, democracy, inclusive economic growth and shared prosperity, continues to elude us. Not only that, but these national aspirations have been hard to achieve An extract from Mutambara's new book in all African countries and most countries of the Global South. Hence, what we have been striving for in Zimbabwe is — in fact — the ‘African Dream’ or the ‘Global South Dream’. Well, the question to Zimbabweans, Africans and citizens of the Global South is: ‘What should be done?’ This is the challenge that motivates and ignites the premise of the work presented in this trilogy. In Search of the Elusive Zimbabwean Dream is a series comprising three books based on my political interpretations, leadership opinions and philosophical disposition over 40 years, from 1983 to 2023. This is an era in which my generation and the rest of the nation have sought to become the change they wish to occur in Zimbabwe. It is a period whose hallmark is a growing political consciousness and involvement of my generation in an effort towards political and socio-economic transformation and regeneration. This Autobiography of Thought Leadership is a collection of three volumes of grounded reflections that I expressed over time as I endeavoured to move, lead and inspire people. Research, observation and experiences informed these reflections. The trilogy records my initiatives that sought to turn strategic thinking into reality through the speed of execution. Ostensibly, the work is the documentation of my participation in, and contributions to, thought leadership – intellectual influence through innovative and pioneering thinking. My ambition has always been to change the world by igniting citizen activism through ideas. The collection is a journey of ideas that created the evolutionary and revolutionary advancement of inclusive democratic values, institution building, social justice, empowerment, shared economic prosperity, people-centred governance and efficacious statecraft. Events and circumstances leading to and informing the documented thoughts are presented and discussed. Thus, the three books consist of contextualised anthologies of speeches, statements and publications I have made over 40 years. Admittedly, over such a long expedition, from 1983 to 2018, there have been mistakes, failures and oversights. Still, there was intellectual growth and expansion as my ideas were distilled and, in some cases, changed, crystallised, broadened and deepened. In some instances, there have been radical shifts, as was the case with my position on the one-party state system. It is also of significance that some of the forthright speeches on social, political and economic matters presented in these books have led to my persecution, arrests, torture, detention and trial by the authorities in Zimbabwe. Speeches in this anthology reveal unrelentingly consistent themes and ideological dispositions from 1983 through to 2023. These enduring themes include a belief in the legacy and values of the liberation struggle, anti- imperialism, egalitarianism, justice and equality. They also incorporate a nationalist outlook, people-centredness, Pan-Africanism, social and gender justice, meritocracy, fairness and equity, technology-driven leapfrogging and Afro-centricity. These foundational frameworks and ethos are what I believe inform and underpin an aspirational shared national socio-political- economic destination, which is yet to be achieved in Zimbabwe. Although these books’ paradigms and prescriptions span more than three decades, their intrinsic value and relevance are both enduring and timeless. The solutions proffered are solid and ageless. This is particularly so for the postulations on value systems, redefining competitiveness, national vision, regional integration, nation branding, 21st-century Pan-Africanism, China-Africa relationships, unmined resource value, the sovereign wealth fund concept, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), financial technology (fintech), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), superintelligence, blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, the metaverse, womenomics, glocalisation, coopetition (cooperating while competing), green economy leverage, just transition, energy diplomacy, deglobalisation, creating shared value, making sustainabiliArthur Mutambara with President Emmerson Mnangagwa This is the third and final book in the trilogy titled In Search of the Elusive Zimbabwean Dream As observed in Volume Two: NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023

ty profitable and talentism. These aspects of thought leadership and empowering statecraft have become even more relevant and applicable in our beloved Zimbabwe and great continent today than when they were first proffered. The redemptive and paradigmatic shift required in the country to achieve sustainable national development and shared economic prosperity requires the operationalisation of some of these thoughts. While the views are primarily in pursuit of a national ambition — the ‘Zimbabwean Dream’ — there is a robust Pan-African thread pervading all the thoughts, particularly in the later years, which include my invaluable tenure as Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe. Hence, the material presented in the three books also lays the foundation for the ambitious vision of the United States of Africa — a peaceful, stable, united, integrated, democratic, technology-driven, industrial and economically prosperous continent providing all the requisite social amenities to its citizenry. Under globalisation, the nation-state is no longer a viable unit of analysis, political stability, economic growth or security; nor is it still the best platform for survival or prosperity. Instead, regional and continental initiatives, organisations and frameworks have since become the more efficacious platforms. It is precisely for this reason that Pan-Africanism is a recurring theme in the three books. The referendum vote in favour of Brexit (the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union) in 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, in the same year, while seeming to dent the perceived viability, assumed efficacy and global desirability of regional economics, only serve to increase rather than decrease the urgent need for regional and continental integration on the African continent. The value proposition of Kwame Nkrumah’s vision — a united and integrated Africa — remains unassailable. With the signing of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement on 21 March 2018, at the 10th Ordinary Session of the African Union Heads of State Summit held in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, the continent is on the glorious march to unleash and leverage an economy and market of 1.4 billion people and an estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$2.5 trillion. A key contribution of the work in Volume III is in the area of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). This is a global, all-embracing, technological transformation that will radically and fundamentally alter the way individuals, institutions, businesses, communities and countries operate, work, organise, relate and innovate. It is a revolution primarily because of the change’s scale, scope, speed and complexity. The 4IR is characterised by a range of new technologies fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even redefining the very meaning of humanity. Consequently, this revolution demands an interdisciplinary, comprehensive, holistic and integrated ecosystem approach involving all stakeholders across the globe, such as multilateral institutions, national governments, the public sector, civil society, the private sector, academia and the media. The 4IR requires new and different skills such as critical thinking, how to think, problem-solving, structured thinking, blended learning, interdisciplinary approaches, ecosystem thinking, emotional intelligence (EQ), cultural intelligence (CQ), existential intelligence (ExQ), spiritual intelligence (SQ), judgement, core competence acquisition, negotiation, cognitive capacity, flexibility, and knowledge production, management and ownership. The trilogy makes an emphatic and decisive contribution to the imperatives of the 4IR and its fascinating and interrelated drivers such as Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Human Augmentation, Big Data, Internet of Things, Internet of Everything, Autonomous Systems (military vehicles, drones and driverless cars), Chatbot Systems such as ChatGPT, 3D Printing, Quantum Computing, Cloud Computing, the Metaverse, Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency. The advent of COVID-19 in March 2020 has catalysed innovation and accelerated the adoption of 4IR technologies. However, the threat of nuclear weapons, autonomous warfare, the global energy crisis, the climate change challenge, and the global economic crisis, now characterise our brave new world. The book delves into all these matters of worldwide significance, with an emphasis on African agency and proactivity. Specifically, the Global South is urged to shape and drive the just transition in addressing the climate change agenda and global energy crisis. With the breakout of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, there is a need to rethink and reimagine diplomacy. More significantly, it is clear that geopolitical considerations influence national and regional adherence to global commitments and solutions. Do Africans understand this? What of deglobalisation? What are the implications for Zimbabwe, Africa and the Global South in general? The three-book anthology also attempts, in its small way, to resolve one of the African continent’s tragedies, that its peoples generally do not have a strong reading culture, much less a vibrant writing culture. More specifically, African leaders, activists and changemakers do not adequately, if at all, document their experiences. This malaise needs to be addressed to enhance the collective repository of national and Pan-African institutional memory, thus enabling socio-economic and political progress. Successful modern civilisations flourish because they cherish reading and writing about their experiences. Documentation is divine, sacrosanct, instructive, durable and eternal. The three books constitute a modest and personal effort to address this challenge within the Zimbabwean context. My views and thoughts over the past 40 years, which are documented in the three books, are organised as follows: Volume One: The Formative Years and the Big Wide World (1983– 2002); Volume Two: The Path to Power (2003–2009); Volume Three: Ideas & Solutions: Deputy Prime Minister and Beyond (2009–2023). As explained earlier, the motive of the three volumes is the pursuit of the ‘Zimbabwean Dream’ — a peaceful, democratic and wealthy nation characterised by inclusive economic growth and shared prosperity. Since this vision has been largely unattainable in most African countries, it follows that the material presented in these books is applicable and deployable in search of the elusive ‘African Dream’ — individually peaceful, democratic and prosperous African nations whose irrevocable destiny is a fully integrated and totally united African continent. Volume Three: Ideas & Solutions: Deputy Prime Minister and Beyond is solution-oriented. A major criticism of those opposing ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe is that we do not provide an alternative vision and a compelling strategy. We do not have an actionable and implementable timelined, well- resourced plan that can be monitored and evaluated. That is the critique. Most grand narratives about Africa focus on describing the problems afflicting the continent. In response to these apparent maladies and deficiencies characterising our activism and politics, this volume concentrates on proffering solutions and redemptive paradigms to Africa and Zimbabwe’s problems. What are the alternative policy frameworks, strategies and prescriptions for the Global South? What is the socio-political and economic vision? Where is the strategy? How best can the strategic initiatives and objectives be implemented, monitored and evaluated? These are the issues that constitute the motivation behind this last book in the trilogy. The book begins from the commencement of Zimbabwe’s Government of National Unity (GNU) on 11 February 2009 to its end on 22 August 2013. It proceeds through my intellectual journey of ideas and thoughts to January 2023. Given my unprecedented access to Robert Mugabe during the GNU, the book also covers many of our intimate conversations and reflections – what a rare insight into the man’s mind! Among other aspects, there are priceless nuggets and narrations from the liberation struggle — in Mugabe’s own words — which reflect his character, fears and ambitions. In particular, he directly articulates his subtle but ruthlessly Machiavellian political calculations and manoeuvres. The material in this book constitutes a first in the literature on Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. My conversations with Mugabe are striking because he is very relaxed, unguarded and unrestrained. He tells me what comes across as truthful and non-manipulative accounts and recollections. This is clearly so because, in some cases, the revelations are not charitable to him. In other instances, the information contradicts the official party line that he and his colleagues have vociferously pushed in public — ‘Oh, that is propaganda for the consumption of the unsophisticated and uninitiated’ as Mugabe derisively calls it! Indeed, the new insights about the struggle for independence in Zimbabwe are quite a treat. The book documents this gold mine of the never-before-revealed or published views and perspectives of Robert Mugabe – the political gladiator. He speaks from the grave. The book is organised into four sections: Section One — A Rocky Start to the GNU (2009); Section Two — Grappling with the GNU Agenda (2009 – 2013); Section Three — Mugabe and the Liberation Struggle (Nuggets of insights from intimate conversations); and Section Four — The GNU Endgame and Beyond (2009–2023). Hence, the book starts after I am sworn in as Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe on 11 February 2009. It then covers the entire period of Inclusive Government and beyond. The volume ends in January 2023, during my tenure as Director and Full Professor of the IFK at UJ in South Africa. Each of the four sections opens with a comprehensive chapter in which I present selected autobiographical material, the context of the events and circumstances leading to, and informing, the documented thoughts and views. I also review some of the outcomes and analyses thereof. In this way, the context, circumstances and issues are discussed. All this is done in the present tense as the events unfold. After that, the speeches or statements are presented in the same tense in the four sections, through a brief introduction to each article. This book provides a story of my views and thoughts as they develop within the context of a detailed and penetrating description of selected experiences of my life from 2009 to 2023. It is an epic journey of ideas as my philosophical disposition evolves — an odyssey of intellectual transformation and growth — in pursuit of the Elusive Zimbabwean Dream anchored in the African Promised Land and the Global South Ambition. Reframing Issues Page 55 Arthur Mutambara with former US President Bill Clinton (far right) NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023

Page 56 Africa News compared with 38.4 years in the world as a whole. Therefore, we need quality education, good teachers and adequate infrastructure to turn this demographic challenge into a dividend. In the words of the African proverb, “Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”  It is, therefore, incumbent on us to prepare our youth – who are our tomorrow – today. In addition to these demographic characteristics, Africa is characterised by a high level of diversity. The continent has 54 countries, each with its unique culture, language and religion. This diversity is a strength of Africa, but can also be challenging, making it difficult to develop effective technologies and policies for all countries. For example, with the rapid technological changes: the introduction of ChatGPT and Bard, natural language processing software, where is Africa? Are our languages represented? With more than 2 000 languages, is it realistic to expect all of them to be digitally represented? We have already seen that Africa has the potential to adopt new technology rapidly. For example, half of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to subscribe to mobile services by 2025, and the use of digital payments and mobile money systems such as M-Pesa has surpassed even much of the developed world, showing that Africa can be a world leader in technological innovation. Another issue that we need to tackle is the issue of jobs. The unemployment rate in Africa is high, and it varies significantly from country to country. According to the  International Labour Organisation, the average unemployment rate in Africa in 2022 was 7.1%, and 83% of Africa’s workforce is employed in the informal sector. Several factors contribute to this situation, including, first, rapid population growth. Africa’s young and growing population strains the job market. Therefore, we need to intensify education and training in Africa, and universities should partner in this regard. Second, many people in Africa live in poverty, making it difficult to find jobs. We need to change this because Africa is a wealthy continent, and many are enriching themselves using the resources of Africa. Third, political instability can make it difficult for businesses to operate, leading to job losses. Finally, lacking opportunities leads to migration as young people look for jobs elsewhere. Migration has emerged as a significant global geopolitical challenge in recent years and can only be resolved through deep cooperation and partnership between the African Union and its global partners. The high unemployment rate in Africa is a significant challenge for the continent. It can lead to poverty, social unrest and political instability. However, several things can be done to address the problem of unemployment in Africa, including: • Investing in education and skills training will help ensure that people have the skills needed for the available jobs. • Creating a more stable political environment will make it easier for businesses to operate and create jobs. We must reaffirm our resolve to silence the guns once and for all. • Promoting economic growth. This will create more jobs and opportunities for people. Addressing the problem of unemployment in Africa is a complex challenge, but it is essential if the continent is to achieve sustainable developTSHILIDZI MARWALA The African continent is critical to shaping the new global climate economy with its abundant renewable energy resources, forest and land, which are critical in mitigating climate change and building a resilient global economy. We need to ensure that we get a just trade as far as these resources are concerned GIVEN the increasing flux state of the world because of technological revolution and climate change, it is paramount that we reflect on the  African Union’s Agenda 2063, a strategic framework for the continent’s socioeconomic transformation in the next 50 years. Where are we now, and where are we going? It is a vision that aspires towards a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth, sustainable development and a continent at peace with itself. Agenda 2063 is a product of an extensive African-driven consultative process, intending to seize the future and position Africa towards realising the pan-African vision of “an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the international arena.” Agenda 2063 is crucial not only for Africa but also for the geopolitical landscape of the world. When we consider any of the critical global challenges of today – whether it be climate change, migration, renewable energy or conflict – Africa is not only at the forefront of these challenges but is also a key and active player in developing the solutions. Africa is increasingly making its presence felt on the global stage – from the UN to the reform of the global financial architecture – and will be an indispensable player in global geopolitics leading up to 2063. Let us look at the numbers. Today’s demographic characteristics of Africa are marked by a rapidly growing population, a young age structure and a high fertility rate (4.2 births per woman in 2023). Today, Africa is the second most populous continent in the world, after Asia. The continent’s population is estimated to be 1.3 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050.  In 2023, the median age in Africa is 19.7 years, How Africa can rise to the challenge of turning the AU Agenda 2063 into reality NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023

Africa News Page 57 ment. Africa has 60% of the unused arable land in the world. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Africa has 450 million hectares of arable land, of which only 140 million hectares are currently cultivated. Yet due to Africa’s size, the situation varies by region. In some countries, limited arable land is over-exploited, limiting agricultural productivity, yet fertile land remains unproductive in others. This means that Africa has the potential to increase its agricultural production by 200% by bringing more land into cultivation. These are the main reasons arable land in Africa is not being used: • Lack of investment: There is a lack of investment in agriculture in Africa. This is due to several factors, including a lack of access to credit. • Lack of infrastructure: There is a lack of infrastructure in rural areas of Africa, such as roads, railways and irrigation systems. This makes it challenging to transport crops to markets and to bring water to farms. • Lack of technology:  There is a lack of technology in African agriculture. This means that farmers are using traditional methods of cultivation, which are often inefficient and low-yield. In addition, African land needs to be developed and commercialised by local stakeholders to benefit African countries. Too often, valuable fertile land is leased and sold to foreign stakeholders without considering the food security needs of African countries. As the need for African domestic food security becomes an increasingly crucial geopolitical issue, we can learn from the successes of other developing countries, particularly in Asia, in developing their agricultural potential. Modernising African agriculture is good for Africa; it is good for business and it is good for the world. But we must bring technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) into agriculture in Africa. AI is being used in agriculture in Africa to improve productivity, efficiency and sustainability. Here are some examples of how AI is being used in African agriculture:  • Precision agriculture:  Precision agriculture uses AI to collect and analyse farm data to help farmers make better decisions about crop planting, fertiliser application and irrigation. This can lead to increased yields and reduced costs. • Crop protection:  AI is being used to develop new crop protection methods such as using drones to spray pesticides or AI to identify and control pests and diseases. This can help farmers to reduce their reliance on chemicals and to protect their crops from pests and diseases. • Market access: AI is being used to help farmers access markets for their crops. This can be done by providing farmers with prices, demand and logistics information. This can help farmers to get a better price for their crops and to reach new markets. • Climate change adaptation: AI is being used to help farmers adapt to climate change. This can be done by developing new crop varieties resistant to drought, heat and other climate change-related stressors. AI can also be used to help farmers manage water resources more efficiently. Another fundamental pillar of Agenda 2063 is economic transformation and growth. But, unfortunately, Africa has an annual infrastructure funding gap of US$100 billion. To achieve this, we should focus on accelerating intra-African trade and improving infrastructure connectivity through initiatives like the African Continental Free Trade Area and the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa, but it remains critical for African governments to increase spending on infrastructure substantially. These initiatives aim to create a continental market of 1.3 billion people that can drive industrialisation, stimulate investment and create jobs. Agenda 2063 also underscores the importance of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law. We envision an Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, shared values, and ethics, where the potential of the people, particularly women and youth, is harnessed and their rights are protected. However, as we strive towards realising this vision, we must also acknowledge our challenges. These include managing urbanisation, climate change, improving health systems and dealing with peace and security issues. While these challenges are significant, we are confident that we can overcome them with our collective will and shared commitment. The continent is urbanising at a rate of 4.1% per year, which is faster than any other continent in the world. This means the urban population in Africa is expected to double in size by 2050. Several factors are driving urbanisation in Africa. One is the high rate of population growth. Another factor driving urbanisation in Africa is the rural-to-urban migration. People are moving from rural areas to urban areas in search of better opportunities. On the positive side, urbanisation can lead to economic growth, improved infrastructure, and better education and healthcare access. On the negative side, urbanisation can lead to overcrowding, pollution and crime. Therefore, investing in infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals is essential. Improving the quality of life in rural areas is also important so that people have less incentive to move to urban areas. Finally, it is essential to promote sustainable development so that urbanisation does not lead to environmental degradation. Although Africa contributed the least to climate change, the continent is carrying the biggest burden. So, the issue of climate justice is paramount.  Africa is home to much of the world’s reserves of minerals that are key in the energy transition. One of many examples is that 92% of the world’s reserve of platinum, a critical ingredient in hydrogen fuel cells that reduces greenhouse emissions, is in southern Africa. The African continent is critical to shaping the new global climate economy with abundant renewable energy resources, forests and land, which are critical in mitigating climate change and building a resilient global economy. We need to ensure that we get a just trade as far as these resources are concerned. The lack of research capacity within Africa remains one of the critical constraints to solving these challenges.  Africa contributes a mere 2% of world research outputs – accounting for only 1.3% of research spending and producing 0.1% of all patents. However, universities are well-placed to address some of these challenges and we should give them political and financial support to play this meaningful role. In light of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as Agenda 2063, the African Union-United Nations Framework for Enhanced Partnership in Peace and Security is a mechanism for African development to take a key position in geopolitics. Strong and deepening cooperation between the UN and the African Union is critical to prioritising African development globally. The journey towards 2063 requires a shift in our mindset, a belief in our capabilities and an unyielding commitment to hard work. We must embrace innovation, be open to learning and be ready to adapt.  As Africans, we have proven time and time again that we are resilient and resourceful. I do not doubt that we will rise to the occasion and turn the vision of Agenda 2063 into reality. To quote Nelson Mandela: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” Let us, therefore, rise to this challenge, knowing that the task ahead might seem impossible, but with determination, commitment and unity, we can achieve our goal. Let us seize the future together and make Africa the continent of our dreams. — Daily Maverick. This is an edited version of Professor Marwala’s speech at the African Group Meeting of Permanent Representatives to the United Nations at its meeting on 18 May 2023. *About the writer: Professor Tshilidzi Marwala is the seventh rector of the United Nations (UN) University and UN Under Secretary-General. NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023

PETER BEUAMONT Historians say the involvement in Africa of the former US secretary of state, who is 100 this week, drew the US into Angola’s war and aided apartheid after the Soweto uprising. THE men who sat down for dinner at the Hotel Bodenmais in West Germany on 23 June 1976 were exclusively white, although the issue to be discussed was the path to majority black rule in Rhodesia. At the table was John Vorster, prime minister of apartheid South Africa. With him were ambassadors, diplomats and security officials. Pride of place, however, was reserved for the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who opened the proceedings with a racially tinged joke. It was a dinner that took place in the midst of a frantic two-year period when the world’s most high-profile diplomat – who had dismissively ignored Africa for much of his time in office in the Nixon and Ford administrations – was taken with a sudden interest in the continent. Then, armed with a dangerous cold war logic, he applied himself to successive crises in Ethiopia,  Angola  and Rhodesia in the search of a quick fix to burnish a reputation that was beginning to be eclipsed. As Kissinger turns 100 on 27 May, his interventions in Africa have once again come under the spotlight, not only for the multiple failures that emerged from an approach befogged by deception, secrecy and browbeating, but for the long-lasting and dangerous consequences of his efforts in southern Africa in particular. In the space of a handful of years Kissinger would be involved in a murky intervention in Angola that would complicate the emerging conflict there that followed Portugal’s withdrawal after a coup in Lisbon. He became the first US secretary of state to visit South Africa in three decades, delivering prestige to the apartheid regime in the aftermath of the  Soweto massacre in 1976, when scores of demonstrating schoolchildren and others were gunned down by police. And while he would strong-arm Rhodesia’s pariah prime minister, Ian Smith, into making a declaration that he would accept majority black rule, it would be a failed initiative undertaken in questionable faith and underpinned by his own sympathies for the white-minority communities who were ruling Rhodesia and South Africa with racist policies. The consequences, as historians point out, were a hugely prolonged war in Angola and an added lease of life for apartheid. In a scathing memoir, written for American Diplomacy in 2010, the former US ambassador to Nigeria, Donald Easum, who served as the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, delivered a withering assessment of Kissinger, describing African ambassadors and representatives at the UN as “routinely rebuffed and neglected” by the secretary of state’s office, and his “disdain” for black Africa. Kissinger would become engaged by events in Angola where, after a leftwing military coup in 1974 against Lisbon’s Estado Novo dictatorship, the new regime immediately stopped all military action in the African colony, leading to independence in 1975. Concerned that the Marxist-Leninist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) – one of the combatants in the civil war that followed the coup – would sweep to power, opening the way for Soviet influence, Kissinger moved to engage with Africa. In his memoir, Easum summarised Kissinger’s ambition: “He was determined to seize in Angola what he considered a timely opportunity to display America’s (and Henry Kissinger’s) strength. “He believed that defeating the MPLA, which he considered pro-Soviet, could expunge the image of a flabby United States in retreat after Vietnam. Moreover, he thought he could do it on the cheap with clandestine CIA collaboration. He was soon to be proved dead wrong.” If Angola was important – not least after the Cuban intervention to support the MPLA after South Africa invaded and its forces drove almost to the capital, Luanda – it was because Kissinger believed that should Angola fall, neighbouring states could follow, including Rhodesia, ultimately threatening South Africa. “He had a reputation for being a strategic genius,” says Nancy Mitchell, a historian and author of Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War. “But if you study what Kissinger did in Angola and Rhodesia, it really sheds a light on the weakness of his entire policy in Africa but also in the Middle East and Vietnam. He misread the situation in Angola from the start. He never expected the Cubans to intervene.” Echoing Easum, Mitchell sees the period of Kissinger’s diplomacy in Africa as “very sordid” and damaging, not least his whirlwind tour of African leaders in 1976 – which saw him fleetingly meet Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda among others – leaving behind a legacy of distrust. “He really dismissed the whole continent of Africa until he thought he could get a reputational gain by intervening in Angola and saving it for American influence. “He didn’t study Africa. He went in with a very typical racism of the time, a contempt for all developing countries, and thought he could get an easy victory, which he needed after the collapse of South Vietnam,” said Mitchell. “He even said it about himself when he quipped to a British Foreign Office official that it was a mixture of extreme arrogance and naivety.” As Mitchell points out, while Kissinger spent hours in talks with Rhodesia’s and South Africa’s white leaders, on his whistlestop tour of black leaders he either failed to meet key players, such as Samora Machel in Mozambique, was unaware of the importance of others – including  Robert Mugabe, whose Zanu-PF forces were threatening the white regime in Rhodesia – or spent a mere seven minutes with  Joshua Nkomo, Mugabe’s chief rival. The consequence was that the leaders of the “frontline states”, who Kissinger needed to persuade to buy into his plan for majority rule in Rhodesia, were either unimpressed or deeply distrustful, undermining his efforts from the start. There was another issue: Kissinger’s innate sympathies with white minority rule seen through his Eurocentric prism. As Peter Vale, a historian at the University of Pretoria, wrote in a recent essay for the Conversation, where he described Kissinger’s record in Africa as “dismal” and said he “neither ended colonialism nor minority rule in the region”. He wrote: “Kissinger’s interest in southern Africa in the mid-1970s was predicated on the idea that balance would return if the interests of the strong were restored. He failed to understand that the struggle for justice was changing the world – and diplomacy itself.” Speaking to the Guardian, Vale described the meeting at the Hotel Bodenmais and what it portended. “The conference was a bunch of white men sitting in Germany. He saw Africa in terms of Europe and as a subtext of European diplomacy.” That was perhaps nowhere more obvious than in his visit to South Africa, where  he persuaded a tearful Ian Smith – in town for a rugby match – to agree to majority rule. As Vale points out, he met only one black South African figure who was critical of apartheid. His visit, he says, was the “high point of apartheid’s diplomacy”. “What were the harms?” Vale asks. He suggests the visit to South Africa “probably extended the life of the apartheid regime” while contributing to a significant military mobilisation around Angola, which South African forces would invade again in 1987, leading to the battle and siege of Cuito Cuanavale. Nancy Mitchell agrees. “I think it is very plausible [that Kissinger’s diplomacy in Africa] gave apartheid more years,” she says. “Since it was felt that Mozambique was also going, the idea was to have a white buffer. It was felt important for white South Africa to stay stable because of trade and minerals. Much of it was a deliberate attempt to buttress South Africa.” Perhaps the last word should be left for the late Donald Easum, whose memorandums – and those of many other seasoned colleagues in the state department Africa bureau – Kissinger ignored. “It is impossible to know what might have resulted had Kissinger accepted the policy stances toward Angola of the first two Africa bureau assistant secretaries he hired. “It is in any case difficult to imagine that their recommendations would have resulted in the kind of nightmare – for Angolans, for US prestige, and for himself – that his bludgeoning of the bureaucracy provoked.” As Easum notes sadly, it would take “until 2002 for peace to come to that war-racked, landmine-strewn nation”. — The Guardian *About the writer: Peter Beaumont is a senior reporter on the Guardian's Global Development desk. He has reported extensively from conflict zones including Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East and is the author of The Secret Life of War: Journeys Through Modern Conflict. Kissinger at 100: How his ‘sordid’ diplomacy in Africa fuelled war in Angola and prolonged apartheid ‘Extreme arrogance and naivety’: Henry Kissinger (right) with the prime minister of apartheid South Africa, John Vorster, in West Germany in June 1976. Photograph: AP Page 58 Reframing Issues NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023

NewsHawks Reframing Issues Page 53 Issue 133, 26 May 2023 JONATHAN MBIRIYAMVEKA TRUST Jasen Mphepo to always portray the story of troubled Zimbabwe through theatre. For it is his gift. Jasen and his talented cast have kept generations of Zimbabwean audiences engaged and glued to the set for many years. These days, Mphepo runs the “Little Theatre”, a stone's throw away from central Harare. Yep, it is little in name, but not so tiny in the quality of the productions stemming from this hidden hub on Emmerson Mnangagwa (formerly Enterprise) Road. That is the other irony: Little Theatre is found on a location that the current head-of-state of Zimbabwe has given his name to. These days, albeit against much resistance by the citizenry, Enterprise Road in uptown Harare has been renamed Emmerson Mnangagwa Road after the man who benefitted from the ouster of the late Robert Mugabe in a military coup in 2017. It is right at the beginning of the sprawling street, which then leads into some of Harare’s swankiest neighbourhoods and then deep into one of the country’s best-known rural areas – Shamva, Murewa, Mutoko. So, what a symbolic setting it is, Little Theatre, for creative entertainers to express themselves freely about how their beloved nation is governed. It is here that “Half Empty, Half Full”, a yesteryear play, recently had a short run from 18 to 20 May 2023. If you have watched Al Jazeera’s explosive investigative documentary on Zimbabwe, titled Gold Mafia, you would certainly want to watch what they dished out on Enterprise…oops…Mnangagwa Road! Oh well, needless to mention that the President of the country is also heavily implicated in the “Gold Mafia” blockbuster. In a four-part documentary series, the investigation reveals how billions of dollars’ worth of unaccounted gold is moved from Zimbabwe to Dubai in massive laundering activity. Now, Half Empty, Half Full has attempted to package the Gold Mafia in a manner that the theatre lover appreciates. Starring seasoned actor Teddy Mangawa and Tafadzwa Hananda, the two-man production is still as relevant now as it was a decade ago. An excerpt from the play between the actors Teddy and Taffy goes like: Teddy: “Look, there are opportunities in the mining industry. You just have to play your game right and find relevant people . . . All you need is one dig and boom, you are on top.” Taffy: “Really?” Teddy: “Taffy my friend, this country will wake up one day but while it’s enjoying slumber, we must loot it. We must loot it badly for ourselves and children.” Taffy: “How do I get into this mining business?” Teddy: “Easy!” While the play does not explicitly say who is involved in the illegitimate gold operations, it does in a big way lay blame on politically connected individuals and the powers-that-be. Al Jazeera’s documentary revealed massive gold smuggling, money laundering and corruption, with Zimbabwean President Mnangagwa ultimately coming across as Mario Puzo’s Vito Corleone (Brando) — The Godfather or simply the mafia boss. Al Jazeera’s investigation shows that different smuggling syndicates looting gold and salting away proceeds to offshore accounts have one common thread — links to Mnangagwa. Main characters in the film who sucked Mnangagwa into the vortex of action include his own Envoy and Ambassador-at-Large Uebert Angel, a self-styled prophet who is a key interlocutor throughout the documentary (Diplomatic Mafia), Rikki Doolan (Diplomatic Mafia), Ewan Macmillan (Mr Gold), Kamlesh Pattni (Gold Dealer aka Brother Paul) and Alistair Mathias (Gold Trader aka The Architect). Mnangagwa’s wife Auxillia, the Family Lady, and his gold baron sidekick Pedzisayi “Scott” Sakupwanya (New Mr Gold) kept the President firmly at the centre of action in Al Jazeera’s blockbuster documentary. One gold smuggler described Mnangagwa — referred to in some instances as Mr Jones — as his business partner. Another spoke of him as an on-and-off partner whom he still meets. A third said he had to keep the President in the loop about gold smuggling operations. Without further ado, catch this masterpiece by Jasen & Co and rest assured that whilst the content of Gold Mafia probably upset you as a citizen, its artistic impression may leave you "half full" of distress. STYLE TRAVEL BOOKS ARTS MOTORING Porsche just got angrier Being a Fashion Model Life&Style Page 59 Issue 133, 26 May 2023 Gold Mafia, the stage play: Enter ‘Half Empty, Half Full’ Teddy Mangawa (left) and Tafadzwa Hananda on stage in the play Half Empty Half Full at Jasen Mphepo Little Theatre

Life & Style Turner, who initially found fame in a turbulent musical partnership, became one of the biggest acts in the world as a solo artist and one of the defining pop icons of the 1980s. TINA Turner, the pioneering rock 'n' roll star who became a pop behemoth in the 1980s, died on Wednesday aged 83 after a long illness. She had suffered ill health in recent years, being diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016 and having a kidney transplant in 2017. Turner affirmed and amplified Black women’s formative stake in rock 'n' roll, defining that era of music to the extent that Mick Jagger admitted to taking inspiration from her high-kicking, energetic live performances for his stage persona. After two decades of working with her abusive husband, Ike Turner, she struck out alone and — after a few false starts — became one of the defining pop icons of the 1980s with the album Private Dancer. Her life was chronicled in three memoirs, a biopic, a  jukebox musical, and in 2021, the acclaimed documentary film, Tina. In a statement on Wednesday night, her publicist Bernard Doherty said: “Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock 'n' Roll’ has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.” In 2018, scholar Daphne A Brooks wrote for the Guardian: “Turner’s musical character has always been a charged combination of mystery as well as light, melancholy mixed with a ferocious vitality that often flirted with danger.” Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on 26 November 1939 and raised in Nutbush, Tennessee, where she recalled picking cotton with her family as a child. She sang in the tiny town’s church choir, and as a teenager talked — or rather, sang — her way into Ike’s band in St Louis: he had declined her request to join until he heard her seize the microphone during a Kings of Rhythm performance for a rendition of BB King’s You Know I Love You. After her vocal talents became apparent, Ike gave her the name Tina Turner — and trademarked it in case she left him and he wanted to replace her in his act. He quickly became abusive: when Turner tried to leave the group early on after having got a sense of his mercurial character, he hit her with a wooden shoe stretcher. “My relationship with Ike was doomed the day he figured out I was going to be his moneymaker,” Turner wrote in her 2018 autobiography My Love Story. “He needed to control me, economically and psychologically, so I could never leave him.” She made her recorded debut under the name with the Ike and Tina Turner single A Fool in Love in July 1960, which broke the US Top 30 and started a run of respectable chart Queen of Rock 'n' Roll Tina Turner inspired women in music success. But it was their live performances that made them a sensation. Ike toured the Ike and Tina Turner Revue aggressively on the Chitlin’ Circuit – including in front of desegregated audiences, such was their commercial power. In 1964, they signed to Warner Bros imprint Loma Records, which released their first album to chart: Live! The Ike & Tina Turner Show. In the second half of the '60s, the duo were courted by many of rock’s biggest names. Phil Spector produced the 1966 single River Deep – Mountain High; they supported the Rolling Stones in the UK and later the US, and stars including David Bowie, Sly Stone, Cher, Elvis Presley and Elton John came to their Las Vegas residency. They were a chart-making, Grammy-winning force in the 1970s – a run that came to an end when Turner left Ike, who had been consistently violent and unfaithful, in 1976. Her last single with the group was Baby, Get It On, from the 1975 film adaptation of the Who’s rock opera Tommy, in which she starred as Acid Queen, a character of the same name of her second solo album. In the divorce, finalised in 1978, Turner came away with just two cars and the rights to her stage name. “Ike fought a little bit because he knew what I would do with it,” she said in the documentary Tina. Turner, who had already released two solo records, continued pursuing a solo career, though it would take until she released her fifth album, 1984’s Private Dancer, for her to supplant the old image of the shimmying rock’n’roller – and escape premature relegation to the oldies circuit – with one of a powerful, mullet-sporting, leather-clad pop icon. In the documentary Tina, she described Private Dancer as her debut. “I don’t consider it a comeback,” she said. “Tina had never arrived.” Turner credited Buddhism and particularly the practice of chanting with positively affecting her life in the 1980s. Outside music, she starred in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome opposite Mel Gibson in 1985. She published her first memoir, the global bestseller I, Tina, in 1986, which was later adapted in to the 1993 film What’s Love Got to Do With It? starring Angela Bassett as Turner. In 1995, she sang the theme tune to the James Bond film GoldenEye. Turner announced her retirement in 2000, a year after releasing her final solo album, Twenty Four Seven, though she would return to the stage in 2008, performing at the Grammy awards with Beyoncé, and for a final tour to mark 50 years of her career. That was conclusively the end. “I was just tired of singing and making everybody happy,” she told the New York Times in 2019. “That’s all I’d ever done in my life.” Turner collaborated on the musical Tina with Phyllida Lloyd, which premiered in 2018 and won Laurence Olivier and Tony awards for its respective West End and Broadway runs. “This musical is not about my stardom,” Turner said of the production. “It is about the journey I took to get there. Each night I want audiences to take away from the theatre that you can turn poison into medicine.” Turner often said she did not relate to the “invincible” persona that others put on her. “I don’t necessarily want to be a ‘strong’ person,” she told the New York Times. “I had a terrible life. I just kept going. You just keep going, and you hope that something will come.” In 2020, a remix of her 1984 hit What’s Love Got to Do With It? by the Norwegian producer Kygo made Turner the first artist to have a UK Top 40 hit in seven consecutive decades. In 2021, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, 30 years after Ike and Tina Turner’s induction. Turner is survived by her second husband, German music executive Erwin Bach. They married in July 2013 after 27 years together and lived in Switzerland. In 2013, Turner renounced her US citizenship to become a Swiss citizen. Her first child, Craig Raymond Turner, died in July 2018. Last year, Turner said that following her other son Ronnie’s death at the age of 62 that he “left the world far too early”. She is survived by two of Ike Turner’s sons, Ike Turner Jr and Michael Turner, whom she adopted. In 2020, Turner told the Guardian that despite having some serious health problems, the last 10 years of her life had embodied her ideal vision of happiness. “True and lasting happiness comes from having an unshakeable, hopeful spirit that can shine, no matter what,”  she said. “That’s what I’ve achieved, and it is my greatest wish to help others become truly happy as well.” — The Guardian. The late Tina Turner Page 60 NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023

NewsHawks Page 61 Issue 133, 26 May 2023 58th Annual AfDB Meetings in Egypt People & Places President Emmerson Mnangagwa was attending The 58th Annual AfDB Meetings in Sharm el-Sheikh Resort City, Egypt.

Page 62 NewsHawks Issue 133, 26 May 2023 International Sport THIS time Rob Edwards really could celebrate. The Luton manager had hared off down the touchline with four minutes of extra time remaining to celebrate what he thought was the winning goal in front of his side’s supporters, eating up 45 yards of Wembley turf, only to retreat to his technical area ashen-faced after glancing up at the big screen confirming Joseph Taylor’s extra-time goal, which would have been his first for the club, had been disallowed for handball. Jonathan Panzo, on cold as a substitute, dawdled on the ball and Taylor, a 20-year-old on his sixth appearance, nicked it from the Coventry defender, but surged through on goal with the help of his right hand. Edwards covered his face in disbelief but after 140 minutes of gripping action an agonising penalty shootout followed. Eventually, Fankaty Dabo missed the crucial spot-kick as Luton clinched promotion to the Premier League at Coventry’s expense, capping an incredible rise from non-league to the top flight in nine years. Up in the stands there were tears of joy for the Luton chief executive, Gary Sweet, among many at the club who have lived through it all. Given the lows Sweet has also seen, it felt fitting that he bounced to Yazz’s The Only Way is Up. Twenty years ago he helped form the Luton Town Supporters’ Trust after calling a meeting at the Bricklayers Arms. Until Dabo’s miss, the penalties had been immaculate. Dabo was inconsolable. For Luton, this was a hard-luck story with the happiest of endings. Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah will soon be lacing up their boots and putting on their shin pads at Kenilworth Road, a cramped ground with patchwork wooden terraces and dugouts barely a yard from the sidelines. The old girl, as Sweet affectionately refers to the stadium, will be in the big time. Mick Harford, who played in Luton’s last-top flight game in 1992 and now heads their recruitment department, was among the club royalty in the stands. More than four hours after kick-off, Edwards was finally able to enjoy a beer, a bottle of Budweiser delivered to him mid-press conference. This time last year he was toasting promotion from League Two with Forest Green Rovers. Aside from a 10-game stint at Watford, it has been a successful 12 months. “In the main, pretty good,” he smiled. Dan Potts, who joined the club from West Ham eight years ago when Luton were in the fourth tier, led the squad up the steps to the royal box to collect their medals. Potts was the third player to wear the captain’s armband, with Tom Lockyer carried off on a stretcher after collapsing on the pitch after eight minutes. Carlton Morris, who caused Coventry no end of problems, spoke to Lockyer, who was able to celebrate from his hospital bed in north London, after the final whistle. Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu, who played for Luton in nonLuton promoted to EPL after shootout victory against Coventry league 10 years ago, took the armband before being withdrawn in extra time. Mpanzu later joked he could retire after completing football, as the first player to climb from non-league to the top tier with the same club. Luton had two first-half goals disallowed either side of Jordan Clark’s fine opener. They did not allow the Lockyer incident to disrupt their rhythm. Coventry, meanwhile, were frozen until Gustavo Hamer scooped a shot over on the verge of half-time. Fifteen yards or so from the Luton goalline Alfie Doughty sent a long ball upfield towards Elijah Adebayo. Kyle McFadzean was one-on-one with the striker and Adebayo’s twists and turns led the Coventry centre-back a merry dance. Clark’s run was not tracked and after Adebayo chopped inside one last time he located Clark on the edge of Coventry’s 18-yard box. The Luton midfielder, a free transfer from Accrington, took a brilliant first touch with his right boot and lashed in with his left with his next touch. Coventry roused before half-time but nevertheless it was no surprise Robins changed shape. Matt Godden, a striker, replaced Jamie Allen, the midfielder who had failed to bring Viktor Gyökeres into the game. Suddenly Coventry were a different beast and levelled after Gyökeres and Hamer dovetailed to devastating effect. Gyökeres drove forward and calmly spied the advancing Hamer to his right. Hamer side-footed the ball in first time and pandemonium ensued at one half of this ground. McFadzean endeavoured to have a quiet word with Robins pitchside. No sooner were the Coventry supporters swooning over Hamer than the midfielder was forced off with injury after landing awkwardly. It seemed the biggest talking point would arrive in added time when Clark was deemed to have dived after Ben Wilson, the Coventry goalkeeper, confronted him after rushing from his goal. Up in the stands Howard Webb, chief refereeing officer of the PGMOL, bit at his nails. That was nothing compared with the intoxicating drama that would follow. — The Guardian.

NewsHawks Page 63 Issue 133, 26 May 2023 Kenyan sport, in which such heights attracted rave reviews, only to come for naught in the future? Well, in the case of Kenya’s Sevens rugby team, the only way — in their pomp — seemed to be up. It took the East Africans 140 tournaments to become champions on the circuit, only the second African nation after South Africa to win a World Series leg. The World Rugby Sevens Series — which is played over 10 tournaments across 10 cities in the world — is Sevens rugby’s premier competition. All the top-rugby playing nations in the world play in it, so Kenya winning the Singapore leg in 2016 was no small feat. Now, only South Africa remain a core member of the event from this continent. A core member plays in all 10 tournaments. Kenya’s relegation, which comes after 23 years, has not gone down well across the proud East African nation. The whole country has waded into finger-pointing mode, and even the government of Kenya, which unlike in my own country puts significant sums of money into national teams, has not been spared the blame for the demise of the Shujaa. Coming from Zimbabwe, I do relate, as my entry into the noble profession coincided with a feel-good Kenyan story. In 2003, Kenya sensationally reaching the semi-finals of cricket’s World Cup, and looked well on course to become the next Test-playing nation of world cricket. I spoke to Robin Brown, the former Zimbabwe player and coach, who years later went up to Kenya to coach the national side in the hope of bringing them back to their promising era of two decades ago. To his dismay, he said, the damage had already been done because of power struggles and greed in Kenyan cricket, in anticipation of a windfall as Test cricket loomed. To then try and restore Kenyan crickets status, Robin said, was flogging a dead horse. Whatever happened to Kenyan cricket cannot be allowed to happen to Kenyan Sevens rugby. Kenyans 7s, a beacon in African after SA, should not go Zimbabwe’s way. Zimbabwe, unlike Kenya, has not been a core member of the World Rugby Sevens Series.   But they used to be somewhere around there, invited to at least three legs of the series, and leaving some of the world’s best teams clutching at thin air. In 2009 at the Rugby World Cup Sevens in Dubai, the Zimbabweans, who are nicknamed Cheetahs, clinched the bowls section of the tournament and punched above their weight for a few more years to come. These days, few in the nation give the Cheetahs a second thought, for Zimbabwe’s team has become the best punching bag workout for beginners in world Sevens rugby. The sooner Zimbabwe abandon their policy of only-locally-based players, the better, because the talent pool is markedly thin. But what about Kenya after all these years of standing up to the world’s best teams on the Sevens circuit? Their fall will have a heavier sound, louder enough for Herbert Mensah, the new president of African rugby who swept into office on the pledge of commitment to equity in world rugby. IN a World Cup year as we are now, other things being equal, talk about African rugby right now will normally be revolving around the Springboks. Who is going to lead Bokke, in their World Cup title defence, if regular captain Siya Kolisi will not be able to make it? However, in terms of rugby, whilst geographically they are our kith and kin, we in the rest of the continent just do not live on the same planet with the Rainbow Nation. But away from that, world rugby is changing – not satisfactorily, but markedly. At least the big boys in the game are beginning to think of themselves as part of a global family, asking themselves if it is really worth it to continue being called the best in their little world of “Six Nations”, pun intended. Or The Rugby Championship, high-sounding as it is, but involving only four of the world’s best rugby-playing southern hemisphere nations. But forget about this aristocratic structure of world rugby; let’s talk about something rather different now. This week, if you follow this game beyond the normal boundaries, you would have come across a global-headlining story of Kenya being relegated from the World Rugby Sevens Series. An important country in Africa, being relegated from the top-tier league of the game’s number two format, seven years after winning their historic first title in 2016. When Kenya beat Fiji in the final of the Singapore Rugby Sevens to claim their first World Series title seven years ago, they were heavily tipped to be world-beaters of Sevens rugby in the not-too-distantfuture. Does it not remind you of another Sport Early reality check for Africa’s new rugby leadership A Kenyan Sevens player (with ball) during a match against Zimbabwe on a leg of the World Rugby Sevens Series. From Page 64 “We didn’t have money. If Dynamos or Highlanders wanted to buy a very good player, Chicken Inn [a club owned by a group of consumer goods manufacturers], for instance, would offer the player more than we were offering,” he added. “Now, thanks to sponsorship, we can now compete on the transfer market and as you can see, we’ve managed to sign some quality players this season.” With the cheapest ticket pegged at $2, football is also one of the few only affordable sources of entertainment and an escape from the hardships of daily life in Zimbabwe, which is mired in economic crisis and unemployment. At the Harare derby, CAPS fan Tawanda Marumani told Al Jazeera that he had lost interest in watching his club as the standard had fallen, and only the national team had interested him. “But without the Warriors now, I missed the atmosphere of the stadiums – the singing, the dancing, the banter and the friendships,” he said. “So I will attend all CAPS matches here at home and also travel to some of the away games outside Harare. And we are playing so well early on this new season, despite the pain of losing badly today to Dynamos.” But PSL and club officials feared that while the domestic game has improved, it will be hard to sustain if the country remains an international footballing pariah. “The longer the ban lasts, the likelier standards will fall without continental or international football. The league’s finances will also take a hit as sponsors are likely to lose interest in the longer-term and FIFA’s funding, including for refereeing and coaching courses, remains frozen. “We can’t remain in the wilderness any longer,” Mashingaidze said. “Sponsors want their brands to be seen at the continental and international level,” he said. Meanwhile, as Zimbabwe cannot play currently in the Africa Cup of Nations and World Cup qualifiers, the ban is hurting the die-hard fans. “I never used to miss a Warriors game, certainly not over the past 20 years,” Marumani said. “The suspension hurts because I believe now we had assembled a very good team to finally take us to our first World Cup finals, and without doubt qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations again.” However, there are few indications that the ban will be lifted soon. Zimbabwe was suspended after the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC), the state body responsible for sport, fired Zifa president Felton Kamambo and his entire board of directors over allegations of corruption and sexual harassment of female match officials. Kamambo and his board have denied embezzling any funds, with Kamambo telling Al Jazeera that “one day, we will be exonerated.” He has declined to comment further. Other officials are alleged to have pestered female match officials for sex in return for appointments – including the former secretary general of Zifa’s referees committee, Obert Zhoya, who was banned from football for five years by Fifa in September 2022. Zhoya declined to comment to Al Jazeera about the allegations and the ban. Fifa has repeatedly said that the condition for Zimbabwe’s reinstatement is the unconditional return of Kamambo and his board to office, even though they are set to stand trial in the country’s courts. The SRC is adamant that bringing back the Kamambo leadership is no longer legally possible because, after they were initially sacked, a constitutionally recognised Zifa council sealed the officials’ fate by passing a vote of no-confidence at an extraordinary general meeting. After a Fifa “fact-finding” delegation visited Zimbabwe last month and met SRC and PSL officials, the head of the SRC, Gerald Mlotshwa, told local media that “both sides are committed to finding a solution to the problems bedevilling football in this country.” Fifa has not yet released a statement or report following the meetings and the impasse drags on. Back at the raucous recent Harare derby, Dynamos supporter Kudakwashe Chitungo told Al Jazeera that it was unfair for the players to be denied the chance to play for their country. “These players are being punished for a crime that they didn’t commit. They are just pawns at the mercy of egoistic people in big offices who are refusing to do what is required to be done for the ban to be removed. They are in the centre of a fight they nothing about. The players’ dreams are being shattered,” he said. “The domestic league is all they have for now, so my buddies and I will be turning up every single game to support them.” — Al Jazeera. Enock Muchinjo HawkZone Fifa’s ban on Zim sparks domestic football revival

50c PRICE SPORT Zim Cricket launches Premier League NEWS $60 Covid tariff for visitors & tourists CULTURE Community radio regulations under review @NewsHawksLive TheNewsHawks www.thenewshawks.com [email protected] Thursday 1 October 2020 WHAT’S INSIDE ALSO INSIDE Finance Ministy wipes out $3.2 Billion depositors funds Zim's latest land controversy has left Ruwa farmer stranded Story on Page 3 Story on Page 8 Story on Page 16 Chamisa reaches out to Khupe Unofficial president calls for emergency meeting +263 772 293 486 Friday 26 May 2023 ALSO INSIDE Early reality check for Africa’s rugby leadership Sports World Athletics ban transgender women from competition Juju nonsense: It’s never too late to say enough is enough Fifa’s ban on Zim sparks domestic football revival Dynamos supporters at the Harare derby in April. THE fans arrived for the Harare derby hours early, with one side of the National Sports Stadium decked out in the blue of Dynamos FC and the other in the green of their bitter rivals CAPS United. As 35 000 fans taunted each other in a feverish atmosphere, Dynamos won the game 2-0. At the final whistle, dozens of their fans invaded the pitch in joy. While still far from the Harare derby’s glory days in the mid-1990s, when 45 000-plus fervent fans packed the stadium for a contest that brought the capital to a standstill, it was a marked improvement on recent seasons when the derby could barely muster attendances of 10m 000. Football is the number one sport in the southern African country of 16 million people but fans had lost interest in the domestic game in recent years, chiefly due to the weak performances of the best-supported clubs, with newer, smaller clubs dominating. To add to its woes, Zimbabwe was suspended by football’s world governing body Fifa in February 2022 over government interference in the Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) – a ban that applied to all national teams and the country’s clubs at the continental level, including women and youth teams. But while the ban has been a huge blow in many ways, Zimbabwe’s domestic game – able to play on as the league does not fall under Fifa’s or the Confederation of African Football’s control – has experienced something of a revival. Attendance has risen across the Zimbabwe Premier Soccer League (PSL) to an average of about 15 000 this season, up from about 2 000 last season. “People miss international football, that might have caused the big improvement we are witnessing in domestic attendances lately,” Dynamos CEO Jonathan Mashingaidze told Al Jazeera after his club’s recent derby victory. Meanwhile, the standard of the bigger clubs has improved as corporate sponsors – who have normally focused on bankrolling the national team – have diverted more financial resources towards domestic football since Fifa’s ban. Dynamos, Zimbabwe’s most decorated club, have won a record 22 league titles since they were formed in 1963 and reached the African Champions League final in 1998. But over the past five years, the country’s biggest clubs Dynamos and Bulawayo giants Highlanders had lost ground to newer clubs who have enjoyed the advantage of being owned and administered by big companies heavily involved in Zimbabwe’s economy. FC Platinum, owned by a large multi-national mining company, were Zimbabwean champions for the past four seasons, despite only reaching the top-flight in 2011 and being formed in 1995. But Dynamos and Highlanders are now both sponsored by a money-spinning commodities business, Sakunda Holdings. “The clubs owned by the big corporates had an edge over us on the transfer market in recent years,” Mashingaidze, who is also a former general-secretary of Zifa, said. To Page 63