Mzansi Afrika

Why is Africa poor?

Africa is economically poor. Some Afri-philes and some Africans sometimes blame colonialism as part of the reason why the continent is economically poor. Afri-phobes insist that after half a century of freedom from colonialism, that particular excuse is no longer valid, and that we need to look elsewhere. Some people suggest that Africa is poor because Africans are inferior to other races. This latter group goes further and cites inventors and skyscrapers: "Africa had none before the white man showed up," they say. If you mention black inventors, as I once did, you are quickly told that most of them were of mixed ancestry, "so we know where the entrepreneurial spirit came from, don't we?" So why is Africa, a rich continent, poor?

Colonialism, and slavery before it, served at least to put the brakes on local civilisations, so that the ways Africans were doing things before became obsolete and backward and therefore undesirable. That supposes that like children, Africans had to re-learn how to live, at the mercy of the coloniser. Take the case of language, for example: what the funk am I doing, writing in English and not in Sesotho, my mother tongue? A mother-tongue English speaker of course has a head-start on me, or at least on previous generations of Africans. Colonialism arrested our development in other ways, and one of the most devastating was the carving up of Africa. That act alone effectively destroyed natural nations and saw the birth of artificial countries. As I type this, war is raging on the continent, war that is a direct result of how the white man pulled out a knife carved Africa up.

Pitching the Luya and the Kikuyu and the Masaï and other tribes against each other could only end up in ethnic cleansing and tribalism, and the non-respect of government by people to whose tribe the authorities do not belong. The same thing happened in Yugoslavia and other parts of the world. See, I have to say that to keep Afri-phobes from saying that's how Africans are. Africa was meant to contain many more countries than it actually does, perhaps fifty more than the present fifty-two.

That, apart from eliminating the threat of tribalism, would also mean that African governments would be better able to build infrastructure, an especially expensive feat today when one considers the endless, hostile territory between towns in many countries. The hostility is from the land but also from rebel groups taking pot-shots at you.

Another result of colonialism is that African countries still trade with their colonial masters (at a loss) instead of with each other. "African countries are grappling to undo a legacy dominated by trade with their former colonial rulers rather than with each other. Senegal's biggest trading partner is France, while Gambia trades extensively with the UK. Although Senegal surrounds Gambia, trade between the two neighbours is minimal. The continent's railways and roads often lead towards the ports rather than link countries across regions. To fly from one African country to another, it is often easier to pass through Europe. [www.un.org]"

Africa is rich, rich in natural resources, a fact that can be another reason why it's poor. For one, think of the Liberian diamond quagmire. There are diamonds, but no industrial infrastructure to channel them through, and no real incentive to do so. The best way then is to tote a gun and keep the diamonds for oneself. That breeds war, and the rest is history. There are no real leaders. Two, if its rich, technologically more advanced populations are more prone to moving in and pillaging, which is what the scramble for Africa was all about.

Many of the reasons that insure Africa stays poor can be scrapped. One of those is the unfairness of the West when doing business with Africa. Economics experts can usually explain this better, but from what I understand, the West slaps high tariffs on African goods so that they're less competitive. Can't sell your goods? Why don't you borrow? Can't pay back that loan you took out? Why don't you borrow some more so that you can at least pay off the interest on the loan?

Africa is waking up, however, and I hope it does so in my lifetime. The present state of affairs has lasted long enough. It is time to swing things around. I urge you to visit Timbuktu Chronicles if you want to see just how Africa is waking up. As far as I’m concerned, the continent had to go through a period of realising its own worth, in order to be able to produce goods and do business in its own image and right, as only it knows how. First, Africa must

• Elect real leaders, or fall back to our pre-colonial system of government
• Get rich Occidental countries to start playing fair economic games
• Forget that... trade with your neighbour on the continent and cut each other some slack as far as trade tariffs are concerned
• Produce things that the world needs
• Stop fighting, full-stop. A country at war cannot build infrastructure, and it uses its resources instead on arming itself.
• Go all out to promote family planning values and the donning of the humble condom
• Realise that "efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa will fail unless urgent action is taken to halt climate change. [http://news.bbc.co.uk]"
• Bang on the heads of embezzlers and other corrupt officials; make authorities accountable
• Bend over backwards to make African brains want to stay in Africa
• Educate women and integrate them into the professionally active population.

Dear Mr & Ms Racist

Shock Treatment:
With reference to your behaviour in these past few years, I'd like to inform you that more and more people are waking up to the fact that the premise of your beliefs rests on scorn. For example, today more and more performing artists and others are spreading the message, and it seems to me that you're more isolated now than you've ever been. One of your complaints is the practice of affirmative action, usually observed in places where you have recently been, like America and South Africa. You say that qualified white people are not getting jobs while unqualified minorities are. In America, affirmative action "can call for an admissions officer faced with two similarly qualified applicants to choose the minority over the white, or for a manager to recruit and hire a qualified woman for a job instead of a man" [www.washingtonpost.com].

One thing that's clear is that as long as we're physically different, racism and discrimination will never leave our world. Unless something enormous happens. Something more threatening than an ominous cold war or a murderous hot one, something bigger than a natural catastrophe, something deadlier than any killer virus or monstrous organisms, more unthinkable than any evil you can imagine. Wars and viruses have so far not been able to right the world, and I doubt they ever will. We could bring up "religion" at this juncture as a possible solution but frankly, "religion" has been one of the bigger dividers of men and remains so, even as I type these words.

The truth is that humans and most other animals are conquerors. Dogs piss out a territory; humans kill or enslave those they find on a territory. Throughout their history, those humans with more advanced technology were able to travel wide, and wherever they did, they killed or conquered other humans they found there. It is amusing that as we plod onward as a species we're only just beginning to realise the value of protecting other species. Protect and feed the panda, but expose and starve Darfur.

In the face of adversity, folks have come together before. In Africa, villages would be foes and nations enemies; they would fight wars and struggle against one another until something big and unexpected came along, whether slavery, colonialism or apartheid. Then they'd suddenly come together as siblings, in Africa, America or the Carribean, one against a common enemy. That is why black people call one another "brother" or "blood". No one else that I know of does. European tribes fought amongst themselves, too. They have just never had to deal with unimaginable adversity. Too bad Hannibal failed to make it all the way across.

In order to realise and thus combat racism and discrimination, humans need an unimaginable shock, right here, right now, something to pit earthlings against a common enemy, preferably one with more firepower and with nasty,  malicious intent. Unfortunately for me I don't believe in flying saucers and little green men. Not today. So I don't think that kind of threat is on its way here. But I'm afraid it'll take nothing less to knock sense into humankind. For a few weeks the East Asian tsunami had the world acting as one, for the benefit of other fellow humans. At that time, there had just been danger that was unpredictable, that was far superior in strength to humans, and that could potentially have hit any other human. So we bunched together.

Similarity of Whites and Blacks:
So, if racism and discrimination will never leave the world, you're perhaps wondering what I am prattling about. Well, my potential friends, I happen to believe that all humans harbour discriminatory thoughts, drilled into them by culture and through other means. You're not the only ones. However, the question isn't whether or not to harbour such thoughts (all humans do, whether they like it or not), but how to overcome them. You're walking down the street and you see this Latino spitting. How could you not think or say, "Dirty Spic," like so many would? How could you be told by a black person that you smell bad and not think or say, "Fucking nigger. Needs to be put in his place," like so many would? How could you hear, "We don't serve your kind here, boy" and not think that "honkies" are all the same "fucking racists?" It's hard, yet humans need to see other humans as just that: humans -- and not as colour or as belonging to a group. People will always be outwardly different, which unfortunately puts other-feature humans in their vicinity on guard. With practice, this habit could go away, white ladies could stop switching their purse to the other side when approaching a black man.

There are more genetic similarities between blacks and whites than among whites themselves. Black people in one part of the world differ with those in another part in a significant way. And that gap is wider than it is between blacks and whites. Simply put, the criteria that you, Mr and Ms Racist, usually refer to when you distinguish race, are but skin deep. Is the place of origin sunny, snowy, windy or what? Is social life there calm, turbulent or what? These are what determines your criteria for distinguishing race.

"Race is a social concept, not a scientific one," said Dr. J. Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md. "We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world." It is timely that scientists are now realizing what many indigenous people and our history have been saying to us. The scientists did not set out to prove the interconnectedness of us humans. They were searching for European greatness; they were searching for products to further exploit the sick, and this allowed for the unearthing of fundamental truths. www.trinicenter.com/sciencenews

Race is terribly relevant to life outcomes. The likelihood that toxic waste has been dumped in your neighborhood, your ability to get a home loan, the quality of your kid's education, connections to job opportunities, whether or not you're likely to be followed in a department store or pulled over by police, are all influenced by your race. Race does matter. Not race as genetics but race as lived experience, what sociologists call "social" race. Social race is an important variable for health researchers and epidemiologists. www.newsreel.org/guides/race

What Exactly is Racism?:
It is different things to different people. To see what I mean, think of the idea of terrorism. To one group it's fighting for freedom, to another it's terrorism. Racism is somewhat similar. Answers dot com says,

rac·ism (rā'sĭz'm) n. 1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others. 2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race. rac'ist  adj. & n. [www.answers.com]

Notice that the definition does not declare as racism acknowledging differences among people. You can't help that, and I know of no one who can. It is what you do with that acknowledgement that makes you a racist (or a non-racist, in other cases). An Arab job-candidate who thinks, "Uh-uh... white interviewer? Goodbye job" is a racist. No matter how many times white people have denied  Arabs jobs on the basis of colour, those white people were individuals as much as the present interviewer. No individual can act for a group, and it is wrong to see what an individual does and think that others with the same physical traits would act similarly.

Racism is the Ottoman massacre of Armenians, it is slavery, it is the holocaust, it is apartheid, insults, cruelty, lots of cruelty, stupidity, cruel stupidity, cruel insults, and blind opposition to laws like affirmative action. Clinton was probably right when he said of affirmative action, mend it, don't end it.  Following are some comments by various speakers on the subject of racism and discrimination. The aim of the passages here is to get you to see a variety of views, and to ponder the situation with a maximum of opinions before you.

"Black pride" is said to be a wonderful and worthy thing, but anything that could be construed as an expression of White pride is a form of hatred. It is perfectly natural for third-world immigrants to expect school instruction and driver's tests in their own languages, whereas for native Americans to ask them to learn English is racist. [www.stormfront.org]

Of the many sorry things about the contemporary United States that the Katrina catastrophe has exposed, perhaps none is more depressing than what it showed about the abiding divide in American thinking about race and racism. The televised and photographed spectacle of Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans in particular revealed that the vast majority of those worst affected were black, in numbers disproportionate even to the large percentage of blacks within the city. [http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org]

Today in the United States and most of the White world, as soon as a White child is old enough to understand language, he is told that he should feel guilt for the crimes of his ancestors. Guilt for finding, conquering, enslaving, and killing off non-Whites around the globe... and littering in the process. Guilt, not for his own crimes, but for the crimes of other people of the same race. But he is also told that he should feel no pride in the amazing achievements of his race. No pride in the pyramids and the Parthenon, no pride in the arch and the dome, no pride in White science and technology and medicine, no pride in the glories of European painting and sculpture and music, no pride in Plato and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, no pride in the exploration of the globe and the conquest of space. Pride, not in his own achievements, but in the achievements of other people of the same race. [www.nationalvanguard.org]

You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction.You call me "Cracker", "Honkey", "Whitey" and you think it's OK. But when I call you, nigger, Kike, Towelhead, Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink you call me a racist. You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live. You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day. You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day. You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi. You have the NAACP. You have BET. If we had WET(white entertainment television) we'd be racists. If we had a White Pride Day you would call us racists. If we had white history month, we'd be racists. If we had an organization for only whites to "advance" our lives, we'd be racists. If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships, you know we'd be racists. In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists. You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists. You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug-dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist. I am white. I am proud. But, you call me a racist. Why is it that only whites can be racists? [www.snipeme.com]

In stark contrast to Martin Luther King’s advocacy of nonviolent resistance, the Black Panther Party believed in arming for self-defense against police brutality. While arming provided protection, it also led to incidents that ended in violent standoffs with the police. [http://afroamhistory.about.com]

I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver--no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare [www.socialistworker.org]

Former South African President Nelson Mandela, who Bush has praised as a hero of human rights, joined the chorus of critics by calling Bush arrogant and implying the president was racist for threatening to bypass the United Nations and attack Iraq. "Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white," Mandela said. Most pronouncements of racism I can at least understand, though usually not accept. This, though, makes very little sense to me. Why did Mandela choose to call Bush racist, instead of one of the many other possible pejoratives which would be at least a bit more relevant to the topic of discussion? I don't agree with most of the criticisms of Bush concerning Iraq, but if people are going to criticize him, I'd think they'd at least choose a criticism about Iraq. [www.discriminations.us]

France was Europe's fourth largest slave trader after Portugal, England and Spain and transported about 1.25 million slaves. France abolished slavery in 1794, after a successful revolt by slaves in the island colony of Haiti. This has already sparked debate about France's colonial past and immigrants from most of its former colonies. There is also a question of French citizens who are direct descendants of slaves who have felt they are being marginalised. However, these groups also feel that the commemoration is too little and too late. On 10 May 2001, France passed a law recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity. The law requires schools to include lessons about slavery as an important part of class curriculum. [www.andnetwork.com]

Today is the 10th of May. School children are not the only ones who need to learn about history. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours Truly
Rethabile

Pink and Mary J. Blige

There we were -- after celebrating an afternoon birthday party, after the meal, the cake, the champagne and the rest -- watching music videos on the telly. The singer, Pink, came along and left, with that reprise of Eurythmics's Sweet Dreams (are Made of This). Mary J. Blige came next, and one of the comments uttered was, elle n'est même pas belle. She isn't even pretty. "Holy Jaysus!" I thought. "Pink is pretty?"

Granted, the comment was made by a pre-teen, but what is this pre-teen a victim of? A victim of the telly, and the image it spreads of what beauty is? Past images and snippets of conversation rushed through my mind. Sistuhs wearin' straight hair. An acquaintance telling me the reason Ethiopians are a beautiful lot is because their traits stray but little from European traits. Meaning: Blacki Africans are ugly. The television, its commercials, society, are ripping us off by telling us white people are more beautiful than other peoples.

My 6-year old daughter, a beautiful "zebra-kid", wants pony-tails and an even lighter skin. Stop the bloody world and let me off, or keep it going and let me wage my fight. I spent a good quarter of an hour this morning on the way to school telling her how proud I was of my blackness, and her mum of her whiteness. And that she (my daughter) should be proud of her light-brown skin and of her double heritage.

The Male

The African male's obsession with masculinity is disconcerting. For one, it leads to war and strife. Most African men, most of the time, are in the process of showing somebody who's boss--usually their spouse, who's usually the literal homemaker. Without these women the blokes wouldn't know their left hands from their right feet. But it is precisely with those left hands that the women are slapped around and violated, and with those feet that their arses are kicked.

Most African men think they should screw every other woman -- excuse my French -- plus their spouse for good measure. This tends to belittle women in general and encourage the spread of VD and AIDS. The popular belief among such men is that donning a condom is being a sissy; few African men believe that dying from or transmitting the virus of death is being a sissy. Pity. They have probably never thought of it along those lines.

To be sure, the male can also be found elsewhere. The too-cool rapper or the red-necked hillbilly. Every continent has its share of the male. Africa just seems to have more than its share.

Forgiveness

The South African, film Tsotsi, got good publicity. What with the Oscar Committee's recognition and all. In France they're showing another South African one, though, that seems to have less hoopla around it. It's called Zulu Love Letter, and stars Pamela Nomvete, Mpumi Malatsi, Kurt Egelhof, Connie Mfuku and Sophie Mgcina. A husband and his wife are killed by the Apartheid secret police, she in the street, in front of her children and other people. The main protagonist witnesses this second murder, and has a hard time living with what she saw, especially that an old lady, 'Mè Tau, enters the story and is looking for her daughter, Dineo, who was murdered.

We all have to learn how to forgive. The critics are rather harsh with the film, perhaps rightly so, because the story-line of a movie is only a small part of the whole. I suspect that I will go see it anyhow, just because we all have to learn to forgive. The saying says that "it takes a strong person to say 'sorry,' and an ever stronger person to forgive." It does. But all those who can't forgive have a right not to. Such people will probably trash their lives and won't get very far with a lot of things, but they do have a right not to forgive.

Forgiving another human being for violating your child is almost beyond human capabilities. It is very difficult for me to stand behind an altar and celebrate the Eucharist and lead people in words of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness when I feel very far from that myself [www.telegraph.co.uk].

That's what The Rev Julie Nicholson, priest-in-charge of St Aidan with St George church, Bristol, said, after stepping down and giving up her function. She couldn't forgive and she couldn't go on telling others to do so, from behind the clout of the pulpit. So she quit. She has every right to do so. I can't repeat myself enough -- I will forever be amazed how and why, once Apartheid was over, South Africa did not sombre into blood-letting madness, fuelled by revenge and the inability to forgive. Chalk it off to gifted and dedicated leaders who were able to take advantage of the fatigue people had with violence and bigotry. Chalk it off to circumstances favoured by a very long history of colour supremacy which was really human weakness. Chalk it off to South Africa's at once real and incredible revenge against the odds.

The ethics of inter-racial adoption

Here in South Africa where we have so many Aids orphans and vulnerable children you get cases of white families that adopt black children. It's not common practice, but it's not unusual either anymore to see white parents with a black child or children. White lesbian couples, also adopt black children.

I sometimes wonder if inter-racial adoption is a good thing or not, I have certain reservations, but ultimately I do think it's a good thing. In South Africa there is not a strong culture of adoption among black families - this is something that child welfare organisations have been trying to change. So if people are willing to adopt, it is more than likely going to be a white family. Sometimes they adopt because they can't have their own children, but it's just as common to have white people who already have their own children to adopt a black orphan.

The main reservation I have about inter-racial adoption is that due to circumstances the black children that are adopted end up losing all contact with their own culture and heritage, they speak English and are unable to speak any African languages. I think this must be pretty hard to deal with growing up, and I'm sure that it would affect your sense of identity, and self-image and lead to a lot of painful questioning and soul searching.

On the other hand there's a part of me that feels it has to be better to lose your culture, but gain a loving family,  a degree of material comfort, stability and an education. Surely in this regard, it's better to have love and security and lose your black African culture and language. I don't know what the answers are, ideally it would be great if you could still have both - and are able to educate the child to speak their own language - maybe in school, or by a private tutor (and take lessons yourself). But even so, they wouldn't really be part of their culture. Unfortunately, the reality in South Africa means that it usually ends up being an either/or situation, and black adopted children end up not being able to speak their own languages.

Somehow though, growing up in a difficult family situation myself, I can't help feeling that love and security wins the day. If you grow up with love and stability, you have a better of chance of gaining the tools to deal with cultural alienation. The alternative is to grow up with nothing at all, no love, no education and a life of poverty.

Tackling bribery in Lesotho

Lesotho has built a world-standard network of dams, the biggest of which is the Katse dam. Construction companies all over the world wanted to be the ones to undertake the project, and many were prepared to go to great lengths to win. Even to the extent of bribing Lesotho officials. One Mosotho official who understood the scheme early on was Masupha Sole. He's now in prison serving a 15-year term.

Throughout the whole ordeal, the integrity of the Lesotho government shone through, and caught Impregilo, Lahmeyer International, Acres International and others unawares. They were charged with bribery. The two latter companies paid R10 m and R15 m respectively. Impregilo's case is ongoing, as it tries to appeal Lesotho's right to try it for bribery. "Sole’s conviction and the strong and independent stance taken by the court against a senior government official is a good showing of a commitment to the rule of law and of tackling corruption by the Lesotho Government [Source].

REMs and NDEs

Rapid eye movement sleep. REM sleep occurs in brief spurts of increased activity in the brain and body. REM is considered the dreaming stage of sleep. It is characterized by the darting of the eyes under the eyelids [Source].

Others say that it is, "the stage of sleep that is characterized by decreased muscle tone, rapid eye movements and dreaming," or "the stage of sleep during which the most vivid (though not all) dreams occur. During this stage, the eyes move rapidly, and the activity of the brain's neurons is quite similar to that during waking hours. It is the lightest form of sleep; people awakened during REM usually feel alert and refreshed." Have you ever been aware that you were asleep, but felt you couldn't move your legs or arms, and tried to scream? It's called sleep paralysis and it is due to REM. Your brain zaps your skeletal muscles and paralyses them.   

During rapid eye movement sleep, the brain's neurons are just about as excited as they are during waking hours. The resultant sleep is thus light, and that's when we dream.The phase "is marked by extensive physiological changes, such as accelerated respiration, increased brain activity, eye movement, and muscle relaxation." The dreaming is most probably due to the heightened brain activity and the relaxed, or "paralysed," voluntary muscles.         

It is said that the brain puts voluntary muscles into this lethargic state to prevent the dreamer acting out their dream. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain awakes and forgets to rouse voluntary muscles. When sleep paralysis fails to occur (the brain doesn't zap skeletal muscles into paralysis), the person has REM sleep behavior disorder, or RBD; and such people often do act out their dreams.         

In the preceding paragraph I said, "the brain awakes and forgets to rouse voluntary muscles." What if it forgets for a good while? The brain's up, aware of what's going on, but the person can't move. Could this constitute an out-of-body experience? Turns out that yes, it could. And well, I'll be damned (no pun intended). First the healing power of prayer was scientifically disproved, and now this. And it seems to explain the whole experience, too, including the tunnel and the white light and the feeling of peacefulness, described by many who've had a near-death-experience.

In the REM study, "researchers compared 55 people who'd had a near-death experience to 55 people of the same age and gender who hadn't had this kind of phenomenon. For this study, a near-death experience was defined as a life-threatening event (such as a heart attack or traffic crash) when a person felt a number of sensations, including a sense of being outside their physical body, unusual alertness, seeing an intense light, and having a feeling of peace" [Source].

For one, people who had had near death experiences were found to have a badly regulated sleep/wakefulness frontier. These people can also have REM while they're awake and ... really, really awake. Segundo, "the same parts of the brain are activated when people dream as in near-death experiences" [Source]. And third, "the near-death study group had a significantly higher rate (60 percent compared with 24 percent)" [Source] of rapid eye movement intrusion.

Charlize, Kanye and GLAAD

Actress Charlize Theron has been honoured for increasing "visibility and understanding" in the gay community. The star was presented with the Vanguard Award at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's (GLAAD) annual media awards in Los Angeles [Source].

Sisters Talk wonders why the award didn't go to Kanye West, fair question to which I have no response. I do not know the criteria used by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in choosing who the prize goes to. Theron said on television that she "would not wed boyfriend Stuart Townsend until gay marriage is legally recognised in the US." West says that "hip-hop was always about 'speaking your mind and about breaking down barriers, but everyone in hip-hop discriminates against gay people. Not just hip-hop, but America just discriminates'."

A TV-Evangelist in Lesotho

Ernest Angley is an American television evangelist who has no problem asking for money up front. Gimme the money. What's wrong with that, you say. Don't churches ask for money every Sunday? Don't they pass an offering plate among the faithful? The truth is that everybody does. But Angley has a jet, the village preacher doesn't. Angley claims he can help cure "death diseases" like AIDS, the village preacher doesn't. To my knowledge, Angley hasn't scholar-shipped a single needy child, the village preacher has. The difference is important.

Ernest Angley has recently been promising Basotho that he'd cure their AIDS. Why would he promise that? In America, and in other wealthy countries, this kind of claim may very well serve to fill his offering plate, but in Lesotho the man certainly operates at a loss. Perhaps he's down there for publicity's sake. "Hey look, I'm here too, just like Prince Harry and Bill Clinton. I'm helping these poor souls, too. So you who are in a rich country, gimme more money so I can help more poor souls."

Idland looks at the situation from a closer vantage point, and warns that one of the effects of this "mission" is that less people will get tested, and the virus will get a break and spread.

People in Lesotho doesn't [sic] need a miracle worker. They need education, and they need compassion and understanding from their families and communities. The resources are there to help far more people than are seeking treatment at this time, but people need to take the initiative to get tested, to seek treatment. Miracle workers like Mr. Angley only perpetuate the stigma - they let people think, 'Maybe he's for real. Maybe I don't have to get tested now.' And the sickness spreads further [Source].

Indeed, people who are just beginning to see the wisdom of consulting medical doctors instead of sangomas, are now being told that they can get cured just like that. I say bollocks to that. From Maseru, the Angley troop headed to Bloemfontein. It seems like blatant charlatanry is illegal in South Africa. I'd be interested in finding out what happened in that country.

Some of Idland's commenters say things like, "Actually there have been medically documented cases of people who attended Ernest Angley's crusades that were indeed cured of AIDS / HIV;" but they fail to provide such documentation. Can miracles happen? Yes, I know they can. Can I provide documentation? I've never claimed I could, although I believe it may exist. The point is that [1.] if someone, somewhere, cures AIDS, we'd hear about it, and [2.] miracles are not remote-controlled like a TV set, they aren't penny-driven, they're emotional, rewarding and personal, and have very little to do with people like Mr. Angley.

Futher reading:
http://infoest.sbc.edu
http://www.ernestangley.com
http://www.mannacabana.com