Concept: New Link: "The View From Fez"

A few weeks ago, before hereisnowhy.com went belly up, I had just finished a correspondence with the Morrocan blog The View From Fez, based in Fez, one of the "four imperial cities" in that nation and a UNESCO World Heritage Site to boot. The site is a real treat, in both writing and images. I've added it to the sidebar and encourage you to check it out!

Concept: Link to Friends of the Congo.

I am proud to link today to Friends of the Congo. With the economic discomfort we're feeling here in the U.S., it might be tempting to think that the distress stops at our borders... to be come reclusive and inward looking. In fact, the opposite is true. Whatever tension the United States is experiencing, it is still in a very advantageous position compared to most of the world. Our economic oversights and shortcomings, our failed economic policies have dragged the developing world along with us. This would be a terrible time to close our minds and borders.

It should not be lost, then, that Africa is in the midst of its own "world war," a conflict over money and economic resource that is often disguised or simply interpreted as a wave of "ethnic cleansing." This conflict is rooted in the same issues that prompted the Rwandan genocide over a decade ago, and has involved a number of states (the actual number is in dispute). Over five million have been killed, making this the deadliest conflict since World War II. The Friends of the Congo are committed to sharing this information and working towards a favorable resolution.

Please find this link added to the sidebar under the "cool people" section.

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What's with all of the Africa links?

While this link in particular represents an immediate and pressing concern, I've been reading about Africa recently as part of the research I'm doing for my novel Urbantasm. I'm am researching the roots of all characters; since the setting of the novel is like Flint, many characters are of African extraction. I have the added benefit of learning about a part of the world I know little about; the history courses I've taken so far have treated Africa only briefly and tangentially. Zambia, Mozambique, Congo-Kinshasa... in many ways this is my first exposure.

Concept: Link to Zambian Economist.

Today I link to the blog Zambian Economist in the sidebar "cool people" section. Maintained by "Cho" as "a non-political platform for exchanging ideas" the Zambian Economist nevertheless promotes a pragmatic argument to ease Zambian material and economic distress through common-sense reforms and responsible governance. I was particularly taken by the Memo to President Banda, but this blog discusses everything from food distribution to copper mining, and I'm going to have to visit many times before I've absorbed what it really has to offer.

You should drop by!

Event: Thoughts on Southern Africa.

Over the last several weeks, as part of my research for Urbantasm, I've been reading about countries in southern Africa. So far I've taken in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and presently, Mozambique.

I don't really have an argument or a bone of contention in this post... but it is one of those subjects where questions lead to more questions. The history courses I took in junior high and high school spent almost no time on the history of Africa which meant that for a long time I had only the popular images of blight and war, coup d'etats and apartheid. In college I quickly learned that most things that seem as though they ought to be complicated actually are, and realized that each tribe, each city, each country, each region had their own dilemmas, traditions, and histories. But that was as specific as I got. With the exception of a few articles I've read here and there and stories that friends have brought home from abroad, this is the first time I've taken a closer look at Africa.

One thing that immediately strikes me is the paradoxical relationship of South Africa to its neighbors since independence. In the early days, when apartheid was in full swing, South Africa's neighbors confronted it (often with the encouragement of the competing West and Soviet states)... while it's debatable what the upshot for the great powers would be, South Africa's retaliation was often devastating to its neighbors. For example, South African support of Mozambican insurgents led to that country's long civil war, which killed or displaced almost 25% of the population. Most South Africans are, themselves, very poor. But the economic engines of Cape Town and Johannesburg are forces to be reckoned with, and easily eclipse that of South Africa's neighbors. This would seem to be why apartheid, in addition to being a human rights nightmare by virtue of what it was, had an outsized impact on southern Africa as a whole. Of course, something that Wikipedia doesn't discuss in detail, but which I suspect is worth considering, is the fact that, as with most proxy wars, the West expressed concern for African states only as nebulously coherent allies. Our only investment was a military investment, and when we did engage in markets there it was in the most rapacious and predatory ways we could. So it's also Europe and America's fault that southern Africa is in the bind that it is today.

I know that these countries are often criticized as undemocratic and oligarchic. In the case of Zimbabwe, the worst observations would seem to hold, even as South Africa itself has come the furthest toward true democracy. But my attention is most held by the other two I've considered here: Zambia and Mozambique. Zambia is diversifying its economy, and Mozambique has joined just about every association from the Commonwealth of Nations to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries as a way to augment their post-civil war influence. Considering the Pandora's box of troubles these states have had to grapple with in living memory, it astonishes me that any sort of functioning state is possible... in some ways, this achievement is more audacious and commendable than the maintenance of the status quo in the relatively safe, powerful, and prosperous U.S.

But this opinion is largely limited and even hazardously uninformed. It is necessarily bookish. So please, comment on this!