Time flies indeed. It has already been a year since my editor invited me to contribute a weekly column in Engineering News, an opportunity that I grabbed with both hands. During the past 50-odd weeks (it feels like just more than a couple of weeks, really), I have touched on a multiplicity of topics relevant to Africa, and the feedback from readers has been great.
Both the negatives and positives about South Africa and the continent at large have been explored. Examples of the former have included the insistence by South African education authorities on making history a compulsory subject at high school level, at a time when the rest of the world is obsessed with equipping learners with competences that will ensure they are fit for purpose in a world that is on the cusp of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. And Angie Motshekga is hell-bent on introducing Swahili as an optional additional foreign language come 2021. How many Swahili teachers would need to be imported? At what cost? Someone should involve auditor-general Kimi Makwetu here. I am sure he will cry wasteful expenditure and call for Angie to be stopped in her tracks.
I have also lamented the poor showing by Bafana Bafana, the senior men’s soccer team, over the past two decades and offered free advice to Dr Danny Jordan, the makhulu baas at the South African Football Association, on how the team’s fortunes could be revived. This seems to have fallen on deaf ears, if the team’s recent performance is anything to go by. I mean, how could Bafana Bafana draw with minnows Seychelles, a team that was thrashed 8-1 by Libya, who themselves are not among the heavyweights of African football? Now it seems Bafana Bafana will be part of the proceedings at the 2019 African Cup of Nations tournament, whether they qualify or not. This is due to the Confederation of African Football (Caf) having stripped Cameroon of the right to host the extravaganza, partly because of brewing instability in the Central African country’s English-speaking regions, which have always complained of being treated as second-class citizens by their French-speaking compatriots and were supposed to host some of the matches. Caf has now requested South Africa to host the tournament, but the South African authorities have yet to take a firm decision.
I have also expressed my displeasure at the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC’s) lack of decisiveness when it comes to dealing with problem member countries. I contrasted this with the West Africans, who, under the banner of the Economic Community of West African States, did not hesitate to flex their muscles in the Gambia when tin pot dictator Yahya Jammeh tried to pull off a trick or two when he lost an election. I wrote at the beginning of 2018 that the two litmus tests for the SADC this year would be the elections in Zimbabwe in July and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) later this month. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that the SADC did not cover itself in glory in Zimbabwe and that it is unlikely to stand up to the governing party in the DRC should it show any inclination towards subverting the will of the people.
Actually, the gripes that I have expressed in this column since the beginning of the year are numerous: the decision by the whimsical monarch in Swaziland to change the kingdom’s name to eSwatini, at great cost to the fiscus; the gratuitous slurs from Donald Trump that we Africans have had to endure, despite incontrovertible evidence that our brothers and sisters who choose to emigrate to the US do exceedingly more good than harm to that country; questionable Chinese generosity towards our continent; and slow progress in establishing a dagga growing industry in our countries. As I noted in one of my articles in this column, the dagga industry is really a budding opportunity. According to some estimates, global expenditure on dagga is poised to top $57-billion by 2017. I say: Let us get in on the act.
I wish you a merry Christmas and prosperous 2019.