Percy Zvomuya speaks to Kole Omotoso about the future of Africa and its people in the face of modernity.
Football statistics are weighted in Nigeria’s favour at this weekend’s clash between the Super Eagles and Bafana Bafana. Nigeria may be in a renewal process of their own, but one cannot see how a Bafana side with a new coach, with no proven strikers and playing in front of a hostile crowd, will defeat them, writes Percy Zvomuya.
Former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was sentenced to death this week on charges of genocide, will be “allowed to leave to a country of his choice”, but will not be handed over to Ethiopian authorities if the Movement for Democratic Change comes into office, party secretary general Tendai Biti said this week.
Percy Zvumoya looks at the upcoming film festival Africa on Screen, which will coincide with this year’s Africa Day celebrations.
Johannesburg’s scenes of blood and gore are striking for one reason. And it’s not the xenophobia. Africans on the continent have never liked one another. Rather it’s the vehemence with which the ”go home” message is being put across and the brutality that has accompanied it, writes Percy Zvomuya.
"Downtown Johannesburg is a wasteland this Sunday. Marshall Street is criss-crossed with makeshift barricades of rusty barbed wire, tyres and chunks of concrete. In Main Street, shops have been literally disembowelled, their heavy-duty Jozi iron shutters wrenched off and their interiors cleaned out." <i>Mail & Guardian</i> reporters Nicole Johnston and Percy Zvomuya venture into the Johannesburg CBD.
Football’s calendar in the coming two months appears to be quite hectic. Next month, Europe’s top countries will play in Euro 2008, which is being co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland, and in July there will be a football world cup — yes, a world cup for ”unrecognised nations”.
The Movement for Democratic Change may seem hopelessly undecided about whether to fight or boycott the presidential run-off against Robert Mugabe, but sources confirm it will go to the polls in a run-off election, the date of which still has to be announced.
In the samba spirit that the South African Football Association seems to have been seized by, and to welcome Joel Santana, the Brazilian coach, South Africans now have an opportunity to convert their names to Brazilian ones. After all, one Brazilian turn deserves another.
Though the post-1994 literary boom has seen a burst of new black authors, the audience for their work remains largely white. Zukiswa Wanner, whose debut novel The Madams subverts the notion of white madam, black maid, says when heI started writing he was told ”the audience out there is predominantly white” and that “a lot of people in the middle class with a lot of disposable income don’t buy books at all.”