I could not stop grinning as I read a brief human interest story posted by the BBC today. A South African woman who is in the process of divorcing her husband, is trying to shame him for his infidelity by posting a sign on her car that lists his indiscretions. She is hoping that her former spouse will be shamed into paying the maintenance (alimony) that he owes.
The poster on the boot of her car reads:
If my soon-to-be-ex-husband thinks he can:
bed down cheap women,
buy them underwear,
wine and dine them in the best restaurants,
take them on five-star holidays,
take ‘excite’ tablets for erectile dysfunction,
go out boozing each night AND not pay me my maintenance as ordered by court,
and think I will take no action, he has another thing coming.
You go girl! The woman, who remains unnamed for legal reasons, commented to the Die Burger newspaper,
I decided to make a peaceful point for women everywhere who struggle to get their maintenance.
That takes some ovaries! Nice work!
Categories: Africa · Women
Tagged: Alimony, Divorce, South Africa
About a month ago I went to my local bookstore in search of a particular tome on Sudan. While perusing the shelves, I came face-to-face with Robert Mugabe. His wizened visage stared out at me from the cover of Martin Meredith’s recently updated biography, practically mocking my ignorance of his no-doubt fascinating life. What an excellent opportunity to learn more about the man holding Zimbabwe hostage, I thought. I grabbed the book off the shelf and headed for the cash register (I never did find the book I was originally seeking. I was too excited to head home and dive into my new find).
Well I dove in all right, but I could tell almost immediately that Mugabe wasn’t the gem that I thought it would be. I should be up front and state that I had certain expectations when I bought this book. One of them was that I would be educated in some detail about Robert Mugabe’s early life, educational background, and career as a freedom fighter. Meredith’s book did not give me the level of detail that I was looking for at all. I can understand if copious information is not available about Mugabe’s youth since many of the people who educated him may well be dead, but I’m sure that there must be people around to interview that could provide background on the time he spent in prison, as well as Ghana and Mozambique. After finishing the sections on Mugabe’s early life, I felt like I was left with a very rough sketch of what could have been a fantastic portrait.
My feelings of dissatisfaction continued as I became further engaged in the book. Major events such as the 2005 Murambatsvina campaign (better known to foreigners as the episode where Mugabe razed urban slums leaving around 700,000 people homeless) garnered only five pages of discussion. Similarly, there was minimal analysis of Zimbabwe’s involvement in Congo’s war or the horrifying Gukurahundi campaign. Nevertheless, I slogged through this book because it does provide some crucial insights (mostly in the form of Mugabe’s own quotes) into how such a promising man went so very bad.
Meredith’s quite simple thesis is that Mugabe is a man obsessed with power. He writes, “Power for Mugabe is not a means to an end, but the end itself.” He argues that Mugabe might have become a teacher (his desired profession) if not for the oppressive colonial regime under which he was born. While in prison Mugabe determine that the best course of action was to overthrow the whites and replace them with a one-party Marxist military regime. Mugabe never did get his forced victory over the white population (a negotiated settlement was reached), but he worked diligently to institute the one-party state that he had dreamed of for years. As I write, he is still working to achieve this goal.
Categories: Africa · Zimbabwe
Tagged: Martin Meredith, Robert Mugabe
