Arts & Books

I was talking to Katleho Shoro from the Anthropology Department at the University of Cape Town about a workshop that was to be organised where two African authors were coming to speak about their novels. When I left the building I had the book ‘Dust, Spittle and Wind’ (2011) in my hand.

Signatories to the open letter include Chelsea's Eden Hazard; Newcastle United's Papiss Cissé; former Seville striker, Frédéric Kanouté; Abou Diaby of Arsenal; Arnold Mvuemba of France's Olympique Lyonnais; and, former top Chelsea goal scorer, Didier Drogba (who is now a UN Goodwill Ambassador).

Peter Penfold was UK’s High Commissioner to Sierra Leone from 1997 to 2000 when his services were terminated after disagreement with Tony Blair’s New Labour government over Sierra Leone – over the so-called ‘Arms to Africa’ scandal of 1998.

As a teenage high school student, I was enchanted by The Man Died, the prison memoirs of Wole Soyinka in which he took his fellow intellectuals to task for letting the man die in all by keeping silent in the face of the tyranny of Nigeria’s genocidal war against Biafra, including the murder of a

The joint letter from the two organizations read:

Chinua Achebe, Nigeria’s distinguished Professor of Literature based in the United States, has recently published ‘There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra’, his war time memoirs and reflections on the process leading to Nigeria’s darkest page in history and its outcome.

It is usually a pleasure to review a book by a sitting president of Africa. Fewer African politicians write about their experiences in and outside of government. South African and Nigerian politicians are an exception.

http://bit.ly/QspSiZ

It is becoming increasingly worrisome that Professor Chinua Achebe will end his long, glorious career just as it began - mired in controversy.

With apartheid’s end, many people thought the deplorable living conditions of poor South Africans would automatically improve. Nearly twenty years later, for some it has deteriorated, and many of those called shack dwellers are still living in informal settlements.