Staff Reporter

Accra, Ghana. It takes a couple of days to settle into the new rhythm, the different kind of mindset you have to take on to decide what you think about another place, a different chunk of the embattled African continent.

Once again, I am filled with admiration for what you can find on American television. The idiot box in the corner of your room is nothing less than an indicator of the state of the American nation.

The George W Bush administration in Washington DC clearly means business. They are moving towards delivering the most massive tax cuts in history for their citizens- especially those who already have lots of money anyway.

New York is as cold as all hell, but there are friends and ghosts to touch base with there that always make it a memorable place to be. Quite apart from the fact that New York is exciting anyway, even when you’ve got nothing to do.

OK, I give in. This is going to be another airport story. Time used to be when Moscow’s Scheremetyevo airport was a hub for a certain kind of world traveller. I am not just talking about communism’s so-called fellow travellers.

‘Africa’s best read" (the one you’re holding in your hands right now [sic]) takes a long time to actually penetrate into Africa. I understand it takes a week or so for it to reach the news-hungry dissidents of Harare and Bulawayo.

It is something of a shock to be back in England, my exile home of many years. The country is as grimly grey as it ever was, even though we are approaching mid-summer.

With the presidential election campaign now off to an official start in Uganda, the gloves are coming off in this political arena that is not particularly well-known for gentlemanly circumspection.

So many things have changed for the better in Britain. And yet it seems that even though I am somewhat strongly disposed to give New Labour’s New Britain a New Stamp of Approval, the behaviour of the New British themselves often leaves much to be desired.

It might have been a little over the top for Paul Mukonyi to express his outrage at conditions in economy class by coming within a hair’s breadth of causing a British Airways Boeing 747, loaded with several hundred persons, to crash nose first into East African soil over the Christmas holidays.

So why, I hear you ask, did we not go straight to the airline for redress, revenge, compensation, satisfaction, or even explanation when we were dumped unceremoniously, yet again, at the wrong airport, several hundred kilometres short of our programmed and paid-for destination?

The French have always run their colonies with so much more panache than the bumbling British. So while the Brits continue to make a show of post-colonial regret the French sail on upon their imperial mission unaffected by guilt, remorse or self-doubt.

Every child instinctively fears the darkness of the night. In Bujumbura, in Burundi, we all become children again when night falls – uncertain about the horrors, some rumoured, some real, that it can bring.

After 10 days in Burundi, you find that you have become exhausted just from trying to figure out what the conflict is about. You have been made privy to all sorts of theories, most of them leading to a dead end.

I gave my editor a stern and solemn promise that, in return for being allowed back into the pages of the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>, I would tell no more stories about things that happen to me at African airports, or on African airlines.

I must have dropped off just for a second there because when I looked at the TV screen again there were scenes of Biblical mayhem that the mind was hard-pressed to comprehend. This was not murder and mass immolation in the Third World.

When there is a new idea in the air, it suddenly seems to be everywhere all at once. In fact it is usually an old idea that has been hanging around up there for an eternity anyway, waiting for some random combination of coincidences to give it a new spin.

The Blue Moon Cafe in downtown Dakar is a funky sort of place, the interior designed to resemble the inside of a passenger aircraft, with the clientele crushed together in the economy-class seats, staring out of the windows of an aircraft that is going nowhere.

Recently, distinguished British writers had mixed fortunes in Gauteng. On the one extreme, there was John Le Carre scoring a major goal, in a quiet, backroom sort of way against the monstrously powerful pharmaceutical multinationals he targets in his latest thriller.

Prostitution poses difficult questions. On its own it is hardly the most pressing form of crime confronting the country. But crime authorities are correct to point to its extensions into child prostitution and drug dealing that constitute a clear reason for the need for vigilant control.

Transnet ditched a black empowerment catering company after it complained that a white company had used it as a front — but the white company has been retained by the transport parastatal. Arejeng Caterers and Sinclairs Signature Specialities are at the centre of the saga.

Tara’s Halls always looked some way off top class during his racing career — but he has certainly been a revelation at stud. Already the sire of grade-one winner De Los Rios and Cape champion juvenile Dance Of Diamonds, his reputation could be further enhanced in the R125 000 grade-two Odessa Fillies Championship over 1 […]

The Treasury this week asked the Department of Social Development for an explanation of allegations of corruption and fraud after the closure of hundreds of poverty relief projects in Gauteng.

The question that arises is whether former prisons, like Robben Island and Johannesburg’s Old Fort, should be preserved intact for posterity or should be removed wholesale, so that the future can unfold with its own identity.

I wonder if there’s the remotest truth in the rumour that Swaziland’s King Mswati III is thinking of abducting Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as his 11th wife. By further spreading this rumour, I intend no affront.

The South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers’ Union (Saccawu) is up in arms after women workers at Shoprite Checkers in the Eastern Cape were allegedly forced to submit to a strip search.

Phaswane Mpe is a short, sharp, earthily intellectual sort of guy, bursting with a love of language and linguistics (mostly English and Pedi), who somehow manages to combine all these things into his short, powerhouse of a novel, <i>Welcome to Our Hillbrow</i>.

The US may react with warlike vengeance, or avoid spiralling into reprisals. On Day Zero, the reaction of America’s leaders was one of dumbfounded inarticulacy. It was hard to follow what any of them, particularly the president, was trying to say.

Something extraordinary is happening in the wake of the New York tragedy. It is already hard to recall what normal life was like – and this is only the beginning. Americans in general, and New Yorkers in particular, are struggling to come to terms with their living nightmare.

One is beginning to get the hang of what United States President George W Bush is getting at when he warns the world that this is going to be "a different kind of war". "This is not going be like any other war you’ve ever seen," says the prez.

Like paradise, Equatorial Guinea is made up of equal parts of charm and horror. The sign on the wall of the quaint seaside restaurant reminds citizens that September 27 is the international day for tourism.

Suddenly, our time in Cameroon is drawing to a close. It has been a year and a half – a long year and a half, at times, plagued by Third World frustrations that could sometimes be taken as personal affronts: the thudding heat, the hideous airport, the dysfunctional roads.