Category: Archive Extra

23 November 2015

Thank you

Thank you one and all for your warm birthday greetings. My 66th was an excellent day. To use a golfing term, I have played more than half the course...

Archive / Archive Extra

13 May 2015

‘Tete Whatsapp, Sekuru Google, Sahwira Wikipedia’

Further to my last lament on the decline of the printed word through social media and the web, it no longer is just about the demise of the reading culture...

Archive Extra

24 April 2015

Identity crisis

They found the passport office in the ruins of Mogadishu and gave them out as new identity documents for a fee. The idea was that they would be recognised...

Lament for a tortured friend

So, it’s boring as fuck. Sorry for that. Very few hits on my last story. We’ve slipped right off the...

Let’s make Orwell fiction again

Even in these far reaches of the globe it is impossible to escape from the noise of those damned elections...

How to launder money

We tried washing grimy notes in gentle soap suds and warm water. Then a machine cycle took 45 minutes and...

Pomp versus poor

They all do it. They deliver a state of the nation address (SONA) to legislatures, painting a rosy picture of...

Trickle down? Where? When?

Ask any economist. Trickle down from wealth at the top is a fine theory but where and when does it...

Kissing up to Chairman Mao

Harare, Zimbabwe. Our admiration for Chairman Mao, architect of China's Cultural Revolution from 1949 to 1976, is boundless. We have...

Railroad to nowhere

China, the master of rail and bullet trains, has offered to step in and fix it. Don’t hold your breath....

How to be a good bedfellow

Putin is our pal. As is Xi Jinping. So is the Supreme Leader in the crucible of radical fundamentalism, Iran....

Popcorn Syndrome wins again. Or does it?

It's like popcorn. Hot it up, it gloriously shows itself and then it's gone before the end of the movie....

The curse of interesting times …

May you live in interesting times! This started out as a...