Kwanzaa - Why?

I have been finding it hard to get into blogging – nothing has moved me to write on this blog lately. All kinds of things have sort of passed me by, MPs expenses, the on going debate in the US about healthcare reform and all I could find to move me was this article http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/were-dreaming-of-a-black-christmas-1821713.html

I find the practice, rather than the principle, of Kwanzaa slightly ludicrous.  I turn my nose up at Kwanzaa for various reasons.  Firstly it’s holiday created for a mainly African American audience, so why does it use Swahili words to describe itself and the things associated with it?  How many African Americans can trace their roots back to East Africa, let alone speak Swahili?  Apparently the use of Swahili is a nod to it is Pan Africanism.  Huh?  Am I missing something here?  Swahili is spoken in at most five out of fifty five African countries, each speaking a slightly different version of it.  If the creator of Kwanzaa really wanted to use a Pan African language they should have chosen English or French, which are spoken (officially) in more countries and could arguably be considered more unifying. How about Yoruba? It is after all the native tongue of at least 3 times as many people as Swahili.

I would also love to find out the percentage of African Americans that can name, let alone have visited, any of the countries in which Swahili is spoken.  I somehow doubt it is as high a number as those who celebrate Kwanzaa (currently estimated at 40 million and growing).  And what is with the arbitrary addition of the final letter a to the name? I find it interesting that, allegedly, a proportion of the very people who are using the official language of Kenya to celebrate their holiday were against Barack Obama being referred to as African American during his 2008 campaign because he was not one of them.

I have always been puzzled by the animosity with which a lot African Americans greet things they consider African (it is only comparable to the reaction of Black Britons of Afro-Caribbean descent). They look down upon us from their hallowed status as Westerners.

I have always poopooed Kwanzaa as a made up Black American holiday and though atheists would argue the same about Christmas or Easter at least, via their commercialisation, they have become inclusive.  How inclusive is a holiday that sells itself as a black holiday?  If the KKK or the BNP came up with a holiday to celebrate Whiteness or Britishness, there would most likely be uproar. Yet the limp wristed liberal readers of the Independent think it is on to promote an openly racist tradition because it is of African American origin. This is a holiday that was started by a man that, allegedly, thought it was ok to torture members of his own organisation and has no basis in African culture. Why are people so ready to support it?  The mind boggles.

The fact that this is considered an African American holiday – soon to be embraced by Black Britons, apparently - as well as the ignorance portrayed in the subjective embracing of African culture whilst rejecting Africans themselves as “other” is not only hypocritical, it negates the central principle of the holiday, which is apparently unity.

Elections, Elections everywhere....not a hope in sight?

When a the publisher friend contacted me and asked me to produce a few words about elections in the light of the upcoming US election, I was very excited. I wanted to talk about Hillary, Obama, Sarah Palin etc bring in thoughts about the various elections that have taken place around the world. However, when it came to actually writing something, I found I had nothing to say that had not been said before and the passion and drive faded away. When I found it hard to simply articulate what I thought was happening around me, I realised that I was (a) trying too hard and (b) attempting to passionately express other people’s opinions. I find writing most difficult when I endeavour to direct it down a path that my mind is not interested in.

So where to begin? In the past few years, elections have been conducted across a multitude of countries all over the world with varying results. The result in Russia was predictable, that in Taiwan might bring an end to a divided China and in Pakistan elections have led to the ousting of the military leader, Pervez Musharraf. In Africa, elections in both Kenya and Zimbabwe led to wide scale violence, after accusations of rigging, eventually culminating in negotiations between the ruling parties and the main oppositions. In Kenya, credit to the politicians there and their chief mediator, former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, there has been a power sharing agreement in place since early this year, which seems to be holding. In Zimbabwe, one of the great tragedies of the African continent, the bickering continues with no end in sight.

However, the election that has dominated media coverage, which appears to have captured the enthusiasm of people of all colours and creeds across the world, has been the election in the United States of America. There has been intense interest in what was going on in the Presidential Election in the USA from the Democratic Iowa Caucuses in January 2008 through to its conclusion on November 5th 2008.

There has been a great deal of talk about the historic nature of the US elections; these were the elections that would see either a black man, a woman or the oldest first termer walking into the White House. However, lets be clear and honest and not take away from the achievements of those that came before. The world has had women leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Indira Ghandi, as it has had a multitude of Black presidents. We have even had a Black woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Head of State of Liberia.

The historic nature, I suppose, lies in the exceptionality of two of the potential candidates in a country that has been led been led from its inception by a variety of white men. In their eagerness to clarify the moment many Black people (and other non Caucasians) have made much of Mr Obama’s skin colour. On the other hand Caucasians have made much of his provenance. I will say my piece about this, as it appears I must, then I will move on to something I believe is more significant about Mr Obama.

Mr Obama is mixed race; there is no denying that he is the son of a white American mother and a Black African father. However, if he was walking down the street and you passed him, knowing nothing of his heritage, the majority of us would assume he would tick the box on the diversity form that says he is a black man. You can make what you will of these things but if perceiving him as one, the other or indeed neither, gives people in need of hope, of pride, the uplift in spirit they require then I see nothing wrong with that.

The man himself has attempted to avoid any sort of racial classification, or affiliation. He has attempted to preach the politics of unity rather than segregation. And this, I believe, is the most important thing about him.

He is an orator in the mould of Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King, who marches in the nation uniting footsteps of Nelson Mandela. It seems he has roused many Americans, many who lost hope in the Bush years, given them something to hold on to. Many have found something to relate to, something that has inspired them and motivated them into action. Many who had seen no point in voting in previous elections were moved to do so by his promise of change. It is this quality to bring people together, give them hope and make them act that gives me hope for the future of the role of the United States on the world stage. And yet it also brings me great sadness.

The contrast between Mr Obama’s stance and the various mediocre, factional or tribalist options that we are presented with in African elections shows how far our continent has got to go. African leaders seem to want power not to unite or to bring about positive change in their nations but simply for their own gain. For this reason they find it very difficult to let go of power, to the detriment of their people.

The prime example here is off course Zimbabwe’s despotic ruler, Robert Mugabe, who refuses to leave the helm despite the fact that his people are starving and his country’s economy is now a shadow of it’s former self with inflation rates in the hundreds of thousands. The regime is so blatant in its abuse of power and disregard for it’s people that recently it spent $1,300,000, money donated to fight tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria on some other purpose and has refused to give the money back or state what it has been used for.

In my own country, Zambia, there was a long running debate before the Presidential election in 2001 because the then President Fredrick Chiluba was seeking to have the constitution amended to allow him to pursue a third presidential term. He was unsuccessful but in a bid to ensure that he still had his finger on the pulse, he handpicked the next leader of the ruling party MMD, who was guaranteed victory in the Presidential elections. When his chosen successor began a campaign to bring him and several of those close to him to justice for the alleged abuse of state monies, it seemed to many that his endeavour to hold on to power was simply about attempting to continue to dip his hand deep into the public purse.

Zambia has recently had elections, as a result of the death of our president in July 2008. However, during the campaigning the rhetoric of most of the candidates was so filled with vitriol, so self-serving, that one can have very little hope for a united progressive future. The candidates themselves leave much to be desired. Of the four main parties, three are led by old men who have been in government before and the remaining one by a man who was chosen as party leader because he was the right tribe. The election was again won by the ruling party’s candidate, Mr Rupiah Banda, a former diplomat and minister in the one party government of Kenneth Kaunda, followed closely by the vocal Mr Michael Sata, who also held positions in the Kaunda governments as well as the governments of Mr Chiluba. He fell out with the MMD party after his bid to be named as Mr Chiluba’s successor failed. He has vowed to die in State House, the Zambian president’s official residence and has refused to accept the results of the presidential by election, calling on his supporters not to sponsor the policies of the new president. According to independent monitors there was no apparent evidence of rigging, but it appears standard in Zambia for the candidate that comes second to contest the results of the Presidential election. It appears they cannot believe that they are not the people’s choice.

In Nigeria, a troubled country renowned for the corruption of it’s politicians, the situation almost mirrors the events in Zambia. In 2006 Senate had to block an amendment that would have allowed former President Obasanjo to seek a third term. An election followed in 2007, whose results are disputed. To be fair it appears that the people who are calling for a recount or indeed a new election in Nigeria have a case. It seems that there were irregularities, with polling stations in some states remaining closed on election day and as a result several states’ results being omitted from the count. Nigeria is is a country that has seen much conflict, ususally along tribal lines. The contry has been unable to change president peacefully. The election of 1993 is a case in point. It was won by M.K.O Abiola then annulled by Ibrahim Babangida, the incumbent. Babginda was eventually ousted by General Sani Abacha who ignored Abiola’s claim to the presidency.

Even in South Africa, a nation that inspired many after the release of Nelson Mandela, things have began to fall apart, with the ANC splitting into two factions as politicians and citizens alike, put their feelings before the good of the nation. Supporters of the former president, Thabo Mbeki, have decided to split away from the ruling ANC party, as they are unhappy that Mr Mbeki was forced to resign. The nature of Mr Mbeki’s departure is typical of African politics. He was ousted after a judge accused him of attempting to influence the outcome of an investigation into the alleged corruption of his successor as party leader, Jacob Zuma. Mr Zuma, who is most likely to become president of South Africa next year, has been in court on charges of rape and corruption and appears to be a divisive, rather than uniting figure. Although he is popular with the party’s mainly black grass roots supporters, the country’s technocrats and business community are still distrustful of this grade nine dropout, whose rhetoric has brought fear to the hearts of the country’s minorities and caused foreign investors to think twice about putting their money in South Africa.

As South Africa, amongst other nations, goes to vote next year, my wish for the future is that Africans learn from America’s President elect and begin to look for ways to unite, rather than plunder, their nations.

A Little Hope...

Okay, this will be my shortest blog, (all those who know me, as well as those who ever throw a cursory glance at my attempts at writing, applaud!). I have today emerged from a world that I love but that consumes me completely whenever I have to submerge myself in it, the world of the chartered accountant.

I emerge from my revision stupor to find Obama (The Kenyan, as he is very fondly known in my circles, and heart, to be fair, ) has actually managed to win the Democratic presidential nomination and, touch wood, stay alive. So as I sit here, listening to Prince, trying to get over the crazy overload of reading about six sigma and project management I am again proud of the home of Brave and Free.

Lets see how far you ladies and gentlemen can take this. Whatever you do, from now on here, be aware the world is watching, very eagerly. Will America be the first non-African or Caribbean country to have a black man at it helm. We watch, not convinced it will ever happen.

Please convince me it can be...

Life on Mars

I write this burdened by an overpowering weariness, an incredible boredom with the world. I feel uninspired, as though I have seen most of life’s coming and goings before. From where I stand history simply repeats itself, in a never ending circle and in the period between the beginning and the beginning again, we forget what got us there. It has taken me ages to re-adjust to the real world and even as I write this I feel detached from what is happening around me, as though it is a programme on television.

I have emerged from the funk of exam revision to find that we are reliving the 1970’s, the economic environment has evolved into a much bleaker animal than I left it at the back end of March. The phrases credit crunch, rising commodity prices and stagnant real rates of pay are being bandied around; the outlook for the global economy is austere. The aforementioned terms are constantly being thrown at us by increasingly desperate sounding, distraught looking, economic experts. But what does all of this doom saying really mean?

My day job, in corporate recovery, places me at the frontline of the coming onslaught. I watch, counsel and take advantage, as some people’s businesses fail and others become unable to manage their monthly outgoings. They all come to firms such as ours seeking refuge from their financial woes.

There are all types of suffers, but for me the saddest are the individuals, especially the ones who did not really see this coming. A great number of them do not understand what taking loans from institutions means, the implications of it. They have no comprehension that using a credit card or an overdraft facility is borrowing money and you may be called on to pay the cash back at some point, most likely when you are least able to afford it. And most people don’t realise that if your house has any lending attached to it, effectively you do not own it; the provider of lending does, until the money is paid off.

This last misunderstanding is the most heartbreaking of all, we watch as people are dragged, quite bewildered, through the relatively painless bankruptcy process by their creditors and at the end of it they maybe forced to sell their properties to pay off some meagre proportion of their debts or perhaps they try to hide from their financial problems by doing nothing and then their houses are repossessed and they find themselves effectively homeless, with no financial cushion to assist them to resolve the situation. They were, unfortunately, over stretched.

There has, admittedly been mis-selling and careless lending on the part of the banks and other providers of finance, the once respectable institutions delving into the murky waters of sub-prime lending; this has, however, long been encouraged by the government, the very same government who are now attempting to continue to encourage financial intuitions to lend people cheap money to buy property while on the other hand endeavouring to stem the tide of commodity driven price increases. At the risk of sounding gleeful, at least the greedy behaviour of banks has come back to bite most of them in the backside, with their billion pound write offs and the many of them scrambling for ways to improve their capital positions without looking like wallies. One can truly say “that’s Karma” though how much comfort this will give a person about to be thrown out of their home is debatable.

As I came in on the train this morning a thought struck me; given that very few people actually finish paying off their mortgages before they die, given that the relatives of the majority of people who leave unencumbered property will likely have to sell the property in order to pay the inheritance tax on it anyway, why in the world is everyone clambering to get on the property ladder?

What is wrong with renting? After all, all you are doing when you get a mortgage and begin to climb the property ladder is swapping one landlord for another. If the going gets tough, it is very likely that this landlord may be less forgiving than a flesh and blood person; there is no respite just because you have your name on the deed. In fact, you are taking yourself out of a house where the landlord may not have many avenues for recourse if you default on your payments and into a situation where the effective owner of your house has billions of pounds behind any threat they make to throw you out of your home.

I find it interesting that logical, rational people would act in very irrational ways to put themselves in harms way, especially at this time of such great uncertainty. But it is a cultural thing; British people like to own their own homes, even if they have to give their limbs and vital organs to the bank as collateral to do it.

And in the coming economic downturn this cultural trait will be the cause of much embarrassment and pain.

Changing the definition of a noun

Earlier this week I was surprised to learn that the word “immigrant” has become a racial slur. Being unreasonably proud to be an immigrant, to have my roots embedded elsewhere, I was quite taken aback by this new development. I made the discovery purely by accident while reading an article about an altercation that occurred after a football game last Saturday. Some players from the premiership team Manchester United were warming down after a game against Chelsea, when they were involved in a scuffle with the grounds staff. One of the players, Patrice Evra, is a black Frenchman, and was apparently called a “F£$%ing immigrant”.

I suppose the expletive and the tone of the remark, made the spirit in which it was intended obvious, as Evra can been seen, in photos taken at the time, hands forward, tongue sticking out, going for the offending grounds men.

I have previously written about racism in sport and I will not go over old ground. I will simply make a few comments about the reaction to this event, then move on to more pressing matters.

Needless to say, two camps have sprung up, each fighting it’s cause convincingly; there are those that believe the whole thing should be ignored and those that believe it should be dealt with in the most severe manner possible, punishing both the man in question and Chelsea football club, who, together with Manchester United, had wanted to cover the whole thing up. Manchester United grew a conscious over the weekend and decided not to go ahead with the planned joint statement denying anything untoward occurred. Instead, they went and complained to the FA, earning the ire of their premiership rivals in the process. And not surprisingly this is not the first time that a member of the Chelsea staff has been implicated in a situation like this; in 2006 a steward was accused of hurling a racial slur in the direction of Samuel Eto’o, that unfortunate recipient of many a racially motivated insult, during a champions league fixture.

I don’t need to tell you where I stand; it is imperative that the spirit with which the phrase, allegedly directed at Evra, was meant is stamped out of football. The FA must take a stand, after all this is still going on when people are busy chanting the words and wearing t-shirts declaring, “Kick it out”, which is the official UEFA slogan for the campaign to end racism in football. But hey, we have had this discussion.

The interesting thing about this whole foray is that Evra, the insultee, has sort to distance himself from any allegations of racism, probably because he went home, calmed down and realised that being called an immigrant is not, in the great scheme of things, such a bad thing. What I want to know is, when did the ignorant take the word and make it their own?

An immigrant is defined in the Oxford online dictionary as “a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.” The great scholars of Oxford University don’t seem to have realised that there is a more sinister definition of the word, a definition created by the government and media in this country. For the three years I have lived in this country there have been headlines vilifying immigrants, turning us into the bogeymen of the UK.

Immigration to the UK is as old as there have been people inhabiting these Isles, though in those days it was not as peaceful as it is now, with Vikings, Normans, Romans and other people invading and occupying the lands that are now known as Britain. Apart from becoming more peaceful it has, in recent years come full circle. Whereas historically settlers had been predominately from Commonwealth countries, they are now mostly from Europe.

The old settlers were easy to spot, the majority being either Black or Asian. They were also easy to insult, as there were several slights available for people of differing colours. The new wave of settlers blend in more easily and have required the creation of new slurs or the resurrection of more historic ones, being as white as (most of) the people who would like to make them feel unwelcome.

The arguments against immigration are the same old ones that have been used against new comers since the first man left his home to visit the people across the river. There has been great debate as to the nature and amount, if any, of immigration that should be allowed. The government has begun to pander to this talk often shifting the goal posts for immigrants by changing the rules. This however, doesn’t really affect the people who have caused this new uproar, as they tend to come from nations that have recently joined the EU and who thus do not require entry permits into the country.

There have been calls that economically the UK cannot absorb the number of immigrants currently coming to its shores. There are, apparently, no jobs for British people let alone the new comers. There is also the claim that the newcomers, being desperate, are taking jobs at lower pay than the natives, driving down wages.

This is, off course, just another xenophobic argument. The United Kingdom has an aging population and a relatively low birth rate. If no immigrants were allowed into the country the size of the working age population supporting the older generations would dwindle meaning that there would be greater pressure on a smaller proportion of the population to support the economy. Many of the immigrants that come to the UK are highly skilled, reflecting the changing needs of the economy.

Immigrants have been blamed for the dilution of English/British culture, but that would be assuming culture is a static thing, which clearly it is not. Tea, for years considered the traditional drink of the English, is not native to these fair isles. Nor is the potato, the required vegetable in the ubiquitous English dish, fish and chips.

As always immigrants have been blamed for the increase in crime though a study last year showed this was not the case and statistics show that the overall crime rate has been falling. And in the midst of all this apparently half of the central and eastern European immigrants have gone home.

So, why this hostility? Well, it is the usual thing, isn’t it? The fear of the unknown fed by irresponsible journalists and capitalised upon by equally rash political parties, has resulted in an innocent noun becoming a vicious insult.

I Now Pronounce You....

So I am now married. The wedding has finally passed and I can live my life as a semi normal person again. Everyone keeps asking me how I feel and I have no idea how I am supposed to answer the question. About my relationship, I feel just as I did before the madness of planning the wedding took over my life. I love him and he makes me happy, he loves me, as I want to be loved and we are adding value to each other’s life, creating happy memories, so it is all gravy.

I am not sure what is supposed to change but from the reaction of the people around me something should have changed. No one person can tell me what but judging from the fear a lot of people have of marriage it is a very big thing, something that can potentially ruin the rest of your life if the transformation is not right. People seem to be looking to see if I am disappointed.

To be honest I am simply relieved, towards the end of the wedding planning process I was fed up and irritated. I was about to run off to Zimbabwe (my husband, being British, would not be very welcome there) but being wise to my state of mind hubby hid my passport.

If I were to be blunt the wedding planning and organising was the worst part of getting married for me. For one thing I was 4,700km away from my wedding venue and planner and secondly my husband, having been ill advised by some single person, decided not to take part in the planning process. This left me to deal with enquiries and demands from his guests as well as mine (who were shockingly well behaved, I suspect because my mother had forewarned them), on top of planning everything practically by myself. This was simply not helpful, as he realised as the wedding day approached and his bride became ever more disinterested, crazy and angry.

But now it is over, and shockingly I even managed to have a good time on the day and now I can go back to my life and my relationship as it was before people began to expect me to be superwoman.

All I have left is people asking me what it feels like to be married (the same as it felt to be in a committed relationship, I just get to publicise the fact that I am off the market by wearing two rings on the second finger of my left hand now) and if I have any pictures. I also get people asking me what my new name is.

This question is of a lot more interest to me than the first because, though the last name I have is not the one with which my father had for the first five years of his life, nor, due to an anomaly, the one I had for the first few years of my own existence, I am very attached to it.

My father acquired his name when he was registered at school at the age of five. I am not sure my great aunt, who took him in that day, had any real concept of the meaning of a surname and simply told the school her husband’s name, being the name of the child’s guardian. This has resulted in my father having a different surname from his siblings.

For sometime various people used my father’s first name as my last name, before my parents had this corrected. Yet despite having started my life with a different last name I greatly identify with the one I have now and I am loath to give it up to take a last name that does not reflect anything about me (apart from the fact that I am married to someone who happens to have that name). Nor could my new name enable people to identify my tribe, country or even continent of origin. It does not belong to me; it is unable to tell people something of my history. It is in short my husband’s name.

Please don’t get me wrong I love my husband very much, I simply don’t see why I have to change my name to prove it. In fact I feel distinctly uncomfortable every time someone refers to me as Mrs because I feel as though I am giving up a very important piece of myself, of my identity.

It is a silly feeling as from what I can tell we did not really have last names in Zambia before we were required to register in the colonial registers. Historic information on African surnames is very hard to come by, but then last names are a recent (relatively) new concept even in Europe, where they were introduced in the late 13th centaury.

There is some indication that everywhere people were referred to by their place of birth, residence or by the identity of their father (or in the case of those whose fathers were unknown fathers, their mother). In some tribes in Zambia, there are still some people whose last names indicate what village they come from.

Despite all this I am still very attached to my own surname, it has been a part of me for as long as I can remember and goes so well with my first name . So what to do? Well, I unilaterally decided that I was going to double barrel my last name, as a compromise. Hence when I am called Mrs Mister, I correct the speaker, my name is now Missus-Mister. My husband doesn’t actually care what I call myself. He is happy as long as I am his wife and I love him, which will be the case regardless of what I call myself.

My next mission is to work on him to ensure that the children (that we don’t yet have) will also be called Missus-Mister…

The Rainbow nation...14 years on

I have recently learned of a home video that has destroyed the myth of South Africa as a “Rainbow Nation”. Sometime during last month, a group of white Afrikaner students filmed themselves forcing some elderly black people to eat food that they had urinated in. They also gave the black people bottles of beer, which they were forced to gulp down before being told to perform athletic feats to show their physical prowess, being black and all.

Though the video is said to have been circulating for almost a month, I have not seen it and it is unlikely that I will. I heard about it from a South African colleague who appeared greatly ashamed by the whole thing, I think he felt by telling me he was somehow distancing himself from the students. Absolution through confession, so to say. He did, however, take the opportunity to complain that there was nothing rainbow about the rainbow nation, as it has obviously left out some of its citizens, namely the white ones.

The students, who are residents of a whites only hostel, say they made the video in protest against the proposed integration of university living accommodation. Regardless of their reasons for making the video I must say the fact that they thought this was a valid form of protest speaks volumes about their upbringing, and about attitudes towards racial equality in South Africa, fourteen years after the official end of apartheid.

The video is the climax of several events highlighting the racial tensions in South Africa, including a shooting spree by a young white man in a township that resulted in the death of several black people, including women and a child. Then, off course, there was the famous lion feeding, where a white farmer and his three black employees beat a black man and threw his body to some lions. The blacks claimed to have been under the instructions of their employer. And finally the “black only” meeting of journalists which Jacob Zuma, current ANC president widely tipped to lead the country next year when Thabo Mbeki steps down in 2009, happily attended and stated that he saw nothing wrong with. He has alo been quoted as saying that South Africans should realise that sometimes people want to be with people with whom they share experiences a comment which has had the majority of White South Africans predicting the end of the “Rainbow Nation” policy.

Form all this it may be inferred that the South Africans have been living a lie for all these years. Their Rainbow Nation is a sham. The resentment on both sides, that Nelson Mandela attempted to alleviate through the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, is understandable. The blacks, oppressed for decades on their ancestral lands by people who only began to call themselves Africans in the last century, are resentful for all the pain and suffering, the lost opportunities. They are also resentful towards the continued superior attitude of some of the white people as well as the fact that those that they view as the aristocrats of the ANC have not given them the prosperity that they expected. The whites are resentful of what they call reverse racism, the advent of Black empowerment enterprises and affirmative action. Many feel that the blacks have stolen the country that they built out of nothing and protected against the failures of other African countries such as inherent corruption, poverty and illness.

How do you reconcile a country that has been split along racial lines for over a centaury? Clearly not by sweeping peoples pain under the nearest carpet. The “hug each other” approach has failed to address the inherent racism that continues to be passed from generation to generation in some sections of society. This policy has also been embraced in France, where one is French before one’s ethnicity and one is expected to let go of ones original cultural heritage. The policy, which has been the pride of France for many years, has had devastating effects on young immigrants who would like to be allowed to pursue their individuality. And 2005 and 2006 there were riots in the banlieues of Paris showcasing their frustration. Despite the current calm they continue to feel excluded.

And in South Africa we see the frustrations of the young whites cause them to flee their country, seeking citizenship in their ancestral homelands. Many take advantage of German, Dutch and English ancestors to begin new lives in the EU, away from country that has been taken from them. A few of these bring their prejudices with them, but they are better suited to life in countries where non-whites are minorities.

The young blacks who cannot flee or take advantage of the new opportunities presented to them due to lack of education, a hangover from the apartheid days, or proper guidance, as a result of the growing number of adults dying of AIDS, the frustration manifest themselves in criminal activities and violence, with gangs of young men going about “jack rolling” (“recreational” gang rape), committing murder and staging armed robberies in an attempt to get what they view as a piece of the pie.

So what is the solution? There are several things that have been suggested, such as an improvement of the education of the elderly black South Africans, who are seen as a vulnerable group, as well as the younger ones, structured accelerated land reform policy as previously promised, a system of welfare payments that allows people to re-educate themselves and gives them money so that they are not drawn to crime, harsher penalties for rape and other violent crime.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, though these measures would improve that quality of life of many of the citizens, it will not make them like each other or create great understanding and that, it seems, is the biggest problem.

Are Supermarkets the spawn of the devil?

I have been to the supermarket today. To most of you this will not sound like a topic worthy of discussion but most people who know me know how much I dislike supermarkets. It’s not only that they are often ruthless and dismissive in their dealings with the communities in which they operate but they are also temples to consumerism. The conspiracy theorist in me suspects that they are designed to draw you in and con you into purchasing more than you really need; they convince you to buy lower quality over quantity, especially when it comes to food. Fortunately recent headlines attest I am not alone. Despite this the majority of people still chose quantity over quality and shop at supermarkets.

I try to support the non chain local shops in my area, though I have to admit I am well served by organic grocers, a first class fishmonger and butchers, a Middle Eastern food hall as well as authentic Italian and Portuguese delicatessens within ten minutes walk from my house. I don’t know what New York or any of the other US cities is like in terms of the availability of quality food of varying ethnicity, but London is hit and miss when it comes to finding anything other than a supermarket in which to purchase food locally. I have lived in a part of London that will remain unnamed where goods at the closest corner shop were so extortionately priced it was a relief to go to the supermarket even though it was half an hour away on the bus.

However, there has been a growing movement in the UK, championed by our celebrity chefs, led most vocally by Jamie Oliver (the naked chef who last year challenged schools over the food they were providing our children) towards organic, ethically sourced, seasonal food. In his famous campaign we all learned about Turkey Twizzlers, pieces of meat that I am still not sure contain any turkey. His and other peoples efforts have resulted in a backlash against the supermarkets, one of whom have recently reduced the cost of their whole chickens to GBP1.99, despite a recent campaign by the aforementioned chefs against battery bred chickens. We have learned that not only do supermarkets undercut the smaller local shops, they supposedly do it by under paying the farmers who supply the various foodstuffs in their stores.

I know it is hypocritical to preach about buying organic, ethically sourced food given all the other things I do that are harmful to the environment and myself (taking at least one long haul flight a year and drinking copious amounts of wine) but I like food and I want my food to be good. I cook a lot (probably in larger quantities than I should) and I want to know that I am giving my guests, people I care about, the best that I can afford. Besides where I come from everything tastes of what it is, beef tastes like beef, goat like goat, fish like fish, and village chicken, a chicken so flavoursome it is as unlike western chicken as it possibly can be. Even our vegetables taste different, so I demand more from my food than most supermarkets can supply. However, not being as poverty stricken as I would like people to believe, I can afford to pay a little extra for my food, only ever being embarrassed to admit I pay over the odds to have an organic vegetable box delivered to my door every fortnight when I am confronted with people whose families have less to spend on their weekly food bill than I spend for two peoples seasonal vegetables.

My guilt has been felt by a greater part of society in the past few weeks when one of the programmes on battery chickens revealed how much working class people really have to spend on food. In my day job I use standardised household costs to calculate how much people are allowed to spend on their food. The numbers are astounding to me. The allocation is GBP 35 per adult and GBP 25 per child. The child’s allocation is what I budget for my lunch alone and Mr L and I spend the same as a family of three’s allocation on the rest of our food (that would explain our growing girth!). This discrepancy has led to the argument that organic food is the reserve of the middle classes. Perhaps is, although my retort to that is people in my village eat organic food and they are supposedly living on $2 a day or less. This is because they have access to cheap chemical free food. Granted they grow it themselves, but that would tell me that the problem is not the cost of food but the cost of production of food. I find it laughable that let your chicken run free cost more than keeping it in a space smaller than a piece of A4. It seems to me that that food problem has less to do with class than it has to do with the amount of land that is available for agriculture.

My country is large and we value food, so it stands to reason that we would make space to grow food be it vegetable or meat based. It is, however, difficult to farm vegetables naturally in Zambia, so we value them. Historically we ate more vegetables than we did meat, a fact also attached to the cost of food, in terms of opportunity cost. Killing a cow deprived you of milk more than it nourished you, for regardless of the value of the nourishment that its meat gives you; a cow produces milk for far longer than it will ever give you meat. I grew up being served a meat dish accompanied by several vegetable dishes. I cannot imagine a dish such as some of the Nigerian ones I have tasted in London that have meat, chicken and crayfish being served in Zambia. We would see that as greatly indulgent, only having the dishes cooked separately for special occasions. We lived as much in harmony with our animals as our hunger would allow.

Having rumbled on this long I suppose the moral of this story is that I feel it is immoral to argue that organic food is a class issue. We as a society should find a way of making healthy, ethically produced food accessible for all, rather than trying to justify the supply of non food to the less privileged members of our society. And that is all I am going to say about this today (yes you can all breathe now! ).