Safari Notes

Rebel, Revolutionary, Freedom-fighter, Leader, Statesman, Legend, Icon, Saint - all these can be used to describe the One and Only: Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela . He is comparable to no other leader in Africa or out of it. For a man to have spent 27 years incarcerated for no crime but because he dared speak out his mind; he dared struggle and fight for justice, equality and honor for his own majority citizens - for that man to be released from that prison and still be so humble, kind, forgiving, merciful and magnanimous to friends and foes, and those who hated and imprisoned him; and for that man to rule the country he set free for only four years and then had over power; for that man to treat all alike and equally, be they foes or friends or children or servants or heads of states; for that man, for most of his life until recently, to wake up each morning and still make his bed - these will go down in history as one of Mandela's greatest legacies and gifts to his Rainbow Nation an...

John Garang After only a few weeks after becoming Sudan's vice-president and after about six months after signing a peace treaty with the North in Kenya, Dr. John Garang de Madiobor (June 23, 1945 – July 30, 2005) was killed in a helicopter crash in late July, 2005. A Dinka, the sixth child of a poor family of seven siblings - 5 brothers and 2 sisters, Garang was orphaned before his teens; due to the conflict in Southern Sudan, he went Tanzania for his secondary school and then on to the US for college and a B.A in economics; then returned to Tanzania for further studies. Later, he returned to America and got his Masters degree and then a Ph.D. after writing a thesis on the agricultural development of Southern Sudan. In the 1970s, Garang joined the Sudanese army and rose to be a lieutenant colonel. In 1983, he started leading the southern Sudan People's Liberatin Army (SPLA) against the northern government forces; this Second Sudanese War lasted for about 21 years and ...

"We have set on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere on the distant horison we can see the glittering prize. Let us march forth with courage and determination, drawing strength from our common plight and brotherhood. In time we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible - a more human face" "The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed" "Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude" "Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being" "In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift - a more human face" "White South Africans must reckon with history for what it is and not for what they wis...

Anyone who has watched Robert Mugabe this year, as the 84-year-old dictator of almost three decades railed against colonial phantoms while stealing an election, ruining the economy and starving his people, might be tempted to take Zimbabwe as the story of Africa. But if Mugabe is the most famous living example of an African tyrant, evidence of a very different Africa has never been far away. Botswana, which shares a border with Zimbabwe, has for decades been mainland Africa's brightest star, a country that has gone from dustbowl poverty to middle income status in a generation, where elections are peaceful, politicians retire voluntarily, civil society is vibrant and where natural resources (in Bostwana's case, diamonds) are not a curse or a spur to corruption and violent theft, but a blessing shared by all. On Monday, that achievement was recognized when the Mo Ibrahim Foundation awarded its annual good governance prize to Festus Mogae, who retired this year after two five-year...

Jacob Zuma was born on 12 April 1942 in Inkandla, KwaZulu-Natal Province. His father died at the end of World War II, after which his mother took up employment as a domestic worker in Durban. He spent his childhood moving between Zululand and the suburbs of Durban, and by age 15 took on odd jobs to supplement his mother?s income. Owing to his deprived childhood, Jacob Zuma did not receive any formal schooling. Heavily influenced by a trade unionist family member, he became involved in politics at an early age and joined the African National Congress in 1959. He became an active member of Umkhonto We Sizwe in 1962, following the banning of the ANC in 1960. While on his way out of the country in 1963, he was arrested with a group of 45 recruits near Zeerust in what was then the western Transvaal (now the Northern West Province). Convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government, he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, which he served on Robben Island. After his release, Jac...

Pachacuti Inca , whose name means "He who remakes the world" was the ninth Sapa Inca (1438-71 of the Kingdom of Cuzco, which he transformed into an empire,He began the era of conquest that, within three generations, expanded the Inca dominion from the valley of Cuzco to nearly the whole of civilized South America. He was the fourth of the Hanan dynasty, and his wife's name is given as Mama Anawarkhi or Coya Anahurque. Their son was Tupac Inca Yupanqui. Their other son was Prince Yupanqui, who married Coya Chimpu Cello, the parents of Prince Inca Tupac Yupanki, who married Mama Cello, the parents of Princess Beatriz Tupac Yupanqui, wife of Conquistador Pedro Álvarez de Holguín, son of Pedro Álvarez Golfín and wife Constanza de Aldana, and had female issue (ancestors of José Gervasio Artigas and Gabriel Antonio Pereira and three times ancestors of Princess Maxima of the Netherlands). His given name was Cusi Yupanqui and he was not supposed to succeed his father Inca Viraco...

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother, Louise Norton Little, was a homemaker occupied with the family's eight children. His father, Earl Little, was an outspoken Baptist minister and avid supporter of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. Earl's civil rights activism prompted death threats from the white supremacist organization Black Legion, forcing the family to relocate twice before Malcolm's fourth birthday. Regardless of the Little's efforts to elude the Legion, in 1929 their Lansing, Michigan home was burned to the ground. Two years later, Earl's body was found lying across the town's trolley tracks. Police ruled both incidents as accidents, but the Little's were certain that members of the Black Legion were responsible. Louise suffered emotional breakdown several years after the death of her husband and was committed to a mental institution. Her children were split up amongst various foster homes and orpha...

Saladin (1138-1193) was born into a prominent Kurdish family, and it is said that on the night of his birth, his father, Najm ad-Din Ayyub , gathered his family and moved to Aleppo. There, his father entering the service of 'Imad ad-Din Zangi ibn Aq Sonqur , the powerful Turkish governor in northern Syria. Growing up in Ba'lbek and Damascus, Saladin was apparently an undistinguished youth, with a greater taste for religious studies than military training. There appears to have been few if any depictions of Saladin, but apparently tradition holds that he was a short man with a neat beard and even somewhat frail. His formal career began when he joined the staff of his uncle Asad ad-Din Shirkuh , an important military commander under Nur al-Din . Nur al-Din , the ruler of Damascus and Aleppo, succeeded his father, Zengi , after that ruler's death, engaged in a race with the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem to take over Egypt. During three military expeditions led by Shirkuh i...

Joaquim Alberto Chissano was born on 22 October 1939 in the remote village of Malehice, district of Chibuto, in Gaza province, and was the second President of Mozambique, having served from 6 November 1986 until 2 February 2005. Joaquim Chissano became the first black student enrolled at Liceu Salazar, where he completed his secondary education. He was a member and leader of the African Secondary School Students’ Organization in Mozambique (NESAM). He studied medicine in Portugal. However, due to his political convictions, he was forced in 1961 to flee to Paris, en route to Dar-es-Salaam, where he joined in 1962 the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), as a founding Member. In 1963 he became a Member of FRELIMO’s Central Committee, having also held various important posts in the party, including Private Secretary of the President and Head of the Departments of Education and Security. Joaquim Chissano played a fundamental role in the Lusaka Accord negotiations, signed on 7 September...

"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, andDemand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long andIts purpose in the service of your people." "Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,Even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people andBow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food andFor the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks,The fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing,For abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision." "When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose heartsAre filled with fear of death, so that when their time comesThey weep and pray for a little more time to live th...

Mention the name Raila Odinga and you are met with all kinds of reactions. Some writers coined the terms 'Raila Phobia' and 'Raila Mania' to describe the sorts of reactions he gets when interacting with the public. Most of his life has been served in the public service, as a university lecturer, as a civil rights activist, and as a member of parliament. Raila was first elected as an MP for Langata constituency of Langata, Nairobi, in 1992. He has retained the seat in subsequent elections in 1997 and 2002. He has been in different parties, in Ford-Kenya, in the National Democratic Party where he started his co-operation with Moi's government and where he was appointed minister for energy. He later defected to the Liberal Democratic Party, one of the coalition partenrs of the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) that won the 2002 general election and broke Kanu’s stranglehold on power since Independence in 1963. He was then appointed minister for roads, public works, ...

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri (truly, Kimathi wa Waciuri), Field Marshal, (October 31, 1920 – February 18, 1957) was a Kenyan rebel leader who fought against British colonization in Kenya in the 1950s. He was convicted and executed by the British colonial government. The British colonial government that ruled Kenya at the time considered him a terrorist, as did "loyalist" Kenyans who supported the British occupation and seizure of Kikuyu lands and opposed the Mau Mau Uprising. According to some sources, under his leadership, the Mau Mau killed at least two thousand Kenyan civilians. The Mau Mau rebels killed only 32 European settlers, and fewer than 200 British soldiers in the eight year uprising. The British in turn killed 20,000 Mau Mau rebels in combat, hung over 1000 suspected Mau Mau supporters, and interned more than 70,000 Kikuyu civilians for years in brutal detention camps on suspicion of providing material support for the Uprising. In her Pulitzer Prize winning book, ...

"The best measure of a government's success is the satisfaction of those who deal with it. A job in the government is not just a way of making a living; it is a means of contributing to your country." "Arabs must work together or they will all lose. They must take the initiative ... It is people who will shape the future, not machines or capital." "Quality is not merely an end. It has become a way of life." "To hold others responsible for failure is a way of escaping one's own responsibility. Responsibility is a heavy burden and a great honour at the same time. Whoever shoulders responsibility must be worthy of it." "The first duty of an official is to make his people happy and provide them with security, stability, welfare and progress." "The UAE is like a tree that has been protected by its leadership so that it will grow strong and bear fruit in abundance." "Our society has been and will remain a single st...

"I am the Congo, the Congo has made me. I am making the Congo." "History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington, or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipatied from colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history, and it will be, to the north and to the south of the Sahara, a history of glory and dignity." Patrice Émery Lumumba (2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961) was an African anti-colonial leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after he helped to win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only ten weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis. He was subsequently imprisoned and assassinated under controversial circumstances in January 1961. Patrice Lumumba continues to serve as a significant inspirational figure in the Congo as well as throughout Africa. Mo...

Quotes by Sankara: "I can hear the roar of women's silence." "I want people to remember me as someone whose life has been helpful to humanity." "The French revolution taught us the rights of man." "I would like to leave behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain amount of caution and organization we deserve victory... You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future." "Thomas Sankara, the young valiant and visionary President of Burkina Faso, was assassinated in a counter-revolutionary military coup by renegade soldiers headed by the then Captain Blaise Compaore. Sankara and twelve of his aides were murdered by this c...

"President Jakaya Kikwete, the latest addition to a growing list of Tanzania’s admirable statesmen, has just done that. His apprenticeship spanned two decades with tutelage under three heads of state, among them Julius Nyerere. It is coincidental that when Kikwete was retiring from active military service and exchanging his military uniform for civilian political outfit, a guerrilla fighter was on the verge of shooting his way to State House in Uganda. Now, 20 years later, two presidents have retired in Tanzania and a third one elected with the biggest majority in East Africa’s election history; nine million votes! And as we witnessed this democracy at its best, attended by the highest number of Heads of State in Africa, fifteen in all, Museveni who took power at the time of Kikwete’s induction was still clinging to power beyond his sell-by-date." Ippmedia More on Kikwete: Jakayakikwete.com , Wikipedia , Google News , GoogleBooks , Google Scholar  Image: kikweteshein.c...

Shaka (sometimes spelled Tshaka, Tchaka or Chaka; ca. 1787 – ca. 22 September 1828) was a Zulu leader. He is widely credited with transforming the Zulu tribe from a small clan into the beginnings of a nation that held sway over the large portion of Southern Africa between the Phongolo and Mzimkhulu rivers. His military prowess and destructiveness have been widely credited. One Encyclopædia Britannica article (Macropaedia Article "Shaka" 1974 ed) asserts that he was something of a military genius for his reforms and innovations. Other writers take a more limited view of his achievements. Nevertheless, his statesmanship and vigour in assimilating some neighbours and ruling by proxy marks him as one of the greatest Zulu chieftains. Wikipedia More on Shaka: Google Books , Google Scholar , southafricatravel.net , essortment.com , CN , zar.co.za Image: Capetown.at

"God made me an Indian." "Each man is good in His sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows." "I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place." "I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle." "If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it." "If I agree to dispose of any part of our land to the white people I would feel guilty of taking food away from our children's mouths, and I do not wish to be that mean." "If we must die, we die defending our rights." "The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it." "What white man can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief." "Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I...

"By the time Ernesto Guevara, known to us as Che, was murdered in the jungles of Bolivia in October 1967, he was already a legend to my generation, not only in Latin America but also around the world. Like so many epics, the story of the obscure Argentine doctor who abandoned his profession and his native land to pursue the emancipation of the poor of the earth began with a voyage. In 1956, along with Fidel Castro and a handful of others, he had crossed the Caribbean in the rickety yacht Granma on the mad mission of invading Cuba and overthrowing the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Landing in a hostile swamp, losing most of their contingent, the survivors fought their way to the Sierra Maestra. A bit over two years later, after a guerrilla campaign in which Guevara displayed such outrageous bravery and skill that he was named comandante, the insurgents entered Havana and launched what was to become the first and only victorious socialist revolution in the Americas. The images were th...

“Peacekeepers and preventive diplomacy remain essential tools in our efforts to silence guns and implement ceasefires, but by themselves they are not enough to counter humanity’s worst instincts.......Instead, the search for a durable and enduring peace demands action at a deeper, more profound level.........It requires the spread of values, attitudes and behaviours that reject violence and embrace tolerance, justice and respect for human rights. In short, it requires a culture of peace.” “Make no mistake; there are signs of progress in Africa. The progress is gradual, it is sometimes agonisingly slow but the signs are there.” "I carry with me a strong feeling of triumph, having seen the efforts of the National Assembly and its president in promoting reconciliation and dialogue in a bid for unity and to strengthen democracy in the DRC." Further Information: Asha-Rose Migiro.com , Asharosemigiro.org , Wikipedia