The curse of interesting times …

May you live in interesting times! This started out as a Chinese curse. Thus, don’t expect tranquil and peaceful times.

So Joe is out of the race. Trump  covers an ear with medical gauze to constantly remind us he was shot at. What next?

Down here in the heart of Africa we are busy arguing whether the Zimbabwe president, who is 81, will stand for re-election for another five year term in 2028. Cohorts of  the enriched elites surrounding him say yes.

The constitution, amended after Robert Mugabe’s 37 years of harsh rule, says no.

Not that the US-style two term limit necessarily needs to be observed after the elite emasculated the democratic opposition. The continent has a post-colonial history of leaders clinging to power and amassing riches, by hook or by crook, in their dotage.

Unlike elsewhere, we are a placid bunch, even as the majority are poor and hungry –  or “food insecure” as the UN likes to call it.

There’s little anger when top of the range French champagne is poured over a top of the range Rolex wristwatch as a sign of defiance – a middle finger gesture – to any vague notion of egalitarianism.

It is no consolation that low-slung luxury Lamborghinis don’t fare well on our potholed streets.

One refrain goes like this: Okay, if you can’t provide us with clean water and electricity, how about a share of your loot so that we can try to make our own circumstances better. And there it rests.

It has always been intriguing to me that the unhappy don’t throw stones at luxury cars passing by, the feeling being instead ‘I wish I could have one of those.’

So be it. A luta continua. A looting continua.

Cartoon depiction. Spot the difference. Tormented Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh or tormented American politician.

*American gun culture.       *King Charles III. Easy target?

The sympathy bandages at the Republican convention.

The Trump target graphics up top suggest the shooter had an accurate aim but suddenly Trump titled his head forward to look at a joyous commotion in the crowd and speak closer to the microphone, saving his life and earning the sympathy vote.

His doctors said the bullet caused a two centimetre hole in the fleshy part of the upper ear but no stitches were required.

Ousted Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam was given asylum in Zimbabwe and an assassination attempt against him failed here when the gunman fired too early, so excited was he to have Mengistu in his sights at last.

He was caught and testified that members of his family at home were murdered by the dictator’s henchmen and he himself had been tortured by them. In the courthouse, before he was sent to Ethiopia to serve out an attempted murder sentence,  he wrenched up his prison shirt to show, he said,  old scars from Mengistu’s torturers and fresh ones inflicted by his Zimbabwe jailers.