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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…

In times of turmoil and uncertainty, there’s a need to lighten up. Not necessarily with beer. But Derek Watts, an old friend who died last week, sums it up in this commercial for southern Africa’s Castle Lite brand of lager.  A founder of the investigative and malfeasance-exposing Carte Blanche TV programme, he always viewed life…

Check this out on a somewhat fraught national elections day    Here’s an absolutely stunning video. To plagiarise David Livingstone, angels in flight must be gazing on scenes as lovely as this … Zimbabwean film-maker Dillan Prinsloo is doing the flying for us this time. A pilot in his own right, he contributes to National…

The national holiday this week, Heroes’ Day, remembers fallen freedom fighters and their surviving, now-elderly brothers and sisters.  In the words of the ancient Chinese masters, a guerrilla must swim like a fish in the shoal of the oppressed. Fight when victory is certain, retreat when it is not. Have the speed of a rabbit…

  The comb is for tidying a new beard gown to distract you from my thinning cheeks and jowls, the side effects of weakened health and aging. Before the chin got covered, a friend who hadn’t seen me in a while said “My word, you look like shit.”   So I am reminded of the war…

Farewell Jane Birkin, singer and actress dead at the age of 76 in Paris. To those of us initiates in our distant Bohemian days, she was born British, in Chelsea no less, and moved to France in the 1960s and wholly adopted the country as her own. She was the daughter of an English actress…

It’s three meals a day at the summit in the sumptuous surroundings of St Petersburg. Food is high on the agenda. Is there enough within reach, now and in times ahead? Donor fatigue is a worry and delegates speak of Russian help in Africa – development, investment and continent’s future food security alongside ever present…