Archive for September 2023

In the cyber world, there is no escape. Switch it off, or go to a place without it. A desert island somewhere? No can do. News follows me like a stalker in the night. A fine young missionary doctor, admired for his emphasis on preventative health education in rural communities without access to drugs and…

No booze on EgyptAir from Joburg to Cairo to Rome and so I got stuck into the best book I’ve yet seen on ‘Lucky’ Lord Lucan, the earl of the realm who disappeared in 1974 after murdering his children’s very British nanny in London. Laura Thompson’s “A Different Class of Murder” is full of hitherto…

Dateline: Ostuni, coastal southern Italy Italy has a right-wing prime minister. Ms Giorgia Meloni is the first woman in the high office but not so pleasant is that she’s a neo-fascist. Not a Mussolini more a Trump, as one commentator puts it. She is 46 years young and not of much interest to those of…

It’s not only climate change in Libya … Our old buddy Muammar Gaddafi, or rather Robert Mugabe’s old buddy, might have been a badass but for the most part he kept things working in Libya. The collapsed dams that have killed thousands of Libyans were not properly maintained for years, the mayor of Derna town…

The swearing-in of the new, old president has been and gone after our disputed elections.  Only three African presidents flew in for the grand jamboree at the stadium. Many more were expected. Invited guests included a man from brotherly Belarus whose name no-one could pronounce over the loudspeakers. Musician Jay Prayzah performed. He is known…

Dante’s Inferno comes to town. Everyone in officialdom blames each other for the fire that killed at least 74 people in the old central business district of Joburg. Most who perished will never be identified from the cinders of their remains left in the ruins. The derelict, condemned building had been hijacked as a shelter…