My Cuba

I visited Cuba as part of a lifetime of dreaming Havana, the people, the icon Fidel and the fascination with the heretic. I had Che in my heart. It was a time when Cuba was open for business and dollar shops were abound. I got to Havana in the evening in a flight packed to the rafters and as usual I was the only black person in the bunch. It was the turn of the century and I needed to visit before Fidel died or things fell apart. I am glad I did . I was the only person given extra scrutiny my passport held for much longer than any of my co -passengers. My disappointment was palpable for I thought I was entering a world where there was genuine equality. I could have turned back then if it would not have been too difficult. The Cuba I experienced was more complicated, it had the good i.e. an educated and loving people, the bad i.e. the control of the Fidelistas, the pass cards they citizens have to carry, the naive open racism that Afro-Cubans face as well as the poverty that people live in, the ugly was the subtle prostitution and a proud people reduced to living by their wits.

Havana smelled like a cupboard full of camphor balls, the fuel used by buses and cars seemed adulterated with something noxious. The crumbling decay of the facades of old buildings hid the beautiful people who naively expressed their stereotypes of 'negras'. I experienced the religion of my ancestors as a sophisticated and open part of life, it was quite inspiration . I engaged Osun and Shango without the darkness and fear that now cloud any open discussion of these saints and the ascription of debauchery that coats any access to their understanding in Nigeria. I evolved in my own understanding of a older form of Yoruba, the Oyo original in which every divinity is explored. Words like Olukunmi, Aku et al now made sense. My eyes were then opened and I was educated about the exiles in Miami and the form of Apartheid that they practised and how Fidel is the saviour of Afro-Cubans. on a person level it was a deep well of insight especially about my relationship with my late mother and many times I wept like a baby tears I never had when she died at a tender age. I came to know love as vulnerability in my journeys through Trinidad, Camaguey and many other places. By the time I got to Cayo coco I was in a groove.

It was quite painful to see my Cubano family excluded from tourist places where my dollars were sought. I moved out completely and lived in a Commune with a troupe of young artists, dancers, musicians who took me to heart. We shared many days and nights exploring life and love. It was quite an education. It dawned on me that the stubborn Fidel had mortgaged his people to preserve an ideology but without him my own people the Afro-Cubans will be totally stuck in plantations. It was a wash, Fidel is no saint but he has done both good and bad.

The fear is what happens now as I do not trust the Fidelistas, they like their counterparts in Miami would like to put the Afro-cubans into a box. I sincerely hope whoever the new leader is takes the best of the Cubano and recognises the diversity of the land. For my friends Angela, Alejandro, Jorge, amongst others i hope when we meet again we will have our usual game of dominoes, drink a whole bottle of Havana Club , light a cigar to the saints and dance to the Orisha, Los Vanvan and cry after a bolero or two. Viva Cubano.

Are we having a Shagari Mark II or just Anti Government

I have tried not to post too heavily against the current PDP regime in Nigeria in spite of my earlier misgivings. It appears its latest decision to rescind the sale of NITEL the former government owned telecoms company to Transcorp (itself a flawed effort to create a Nigerian version of the Korean Cheabol organisations) puts things into sharp relief. Although the jury is still out but, this government does not inspire any great sense of purpose or engender any serious transformative instinct. It trades on the humility and personal integrity of the President without any evidence for believing he has good judgement or any coherent policy direction. We have had this before between 1979 and 1983 leading to a period of fascist rule. On the other hand this government in Abuja might be worse in that it panders to the worst populist instincts of the Nigerian elite which are rampant competition, disdain for process, short term addiction and a rabid anti Olusegun Obasanjo.

The result is that confidence required in any successful economy to trust in Government commitment is being damaged. The belief in sustainability of any Nigerian government commitment has become a lottery in which any subsequent regime can overturn at will prior contracts and projects. This is a very sad development. We are now unable to have any continuity of national agenda even when the voters appeared to retain the same party largely for that reason. When the confidence of the investors small and large as well as voters and tax payers are tarnished to serve the insecurity of the baying mob of cognescenti and glitterati. I wonder how that can be called governing . I think this government is quickly becoming the Anti- government.

Triumph of Amebo

When I was but a young pup there was a sitcom called the village headmaster in which the gossips name was Amebo. So in colloquial Nigeriana Amebo became shorthand for an irresponsible gossip who finds life purpose in sowing division, discord and drama. The press across the world has taken the role of Amebo to absurdity. There was a time when journalism was a noble profession in which there was a clear distinction between facts and editorial. We now have journalists who make the news up as they go . There is very little attempt at objectivity nor a serious effort at debate but the sheer tabliodisation and addiction to the sensational means that there is very little left in the bank for a serious pursuit of issues for the reader, listener or watcher to make up their own minds. It also further shame that the quality of opinions is largely poor and simplistic full of easily consumable soundbites that are trite and rarely illuminate anything other than the egos of those who produce them.

Take the role the press plays in exploiting divisions and differences. my first genuine experience of this was as a young person of how they tried to vilify and generate hatred for my hero Mohammed Ali . He was for them the arrogant and narcissistic black man who sought to live above his station. In their view a dangerous renegade whose faith was dangerous and subversive. He was the whipping boy for this earlier form of Islamophobia. It is quite interesting that the same press now thrives on presenting him as an icon when he has been forced by disability and age to mellow his positions. The same press derided the earlier hip hop movement for Afrocentricism calling it romantic claptrap trumpeting an African past that never was and a dangerous ideology that did not have credibility in the gritty streets from whence they emerged. They laughed at the Brand Nubians, The Native tongue collective, KRS one , Jungle bothers till they helped drum ascendancy to the very Gangsta rap they now criticize.

The more disturbing turning point is the symbiosis with Princess Diana that followed her in life and its arguable that it haunts her in death. i remember distinctly being caught in London the day before her funeral and realizing the way in which press machinations had driven the people into a mob like frenzy in which the streets of London looked like a set of the war of the worlds. The hysteria generated was contagious like a sweeping tide of Ebola or some other kind of virus . People literarily attacked you if you questioned the sainthood that the very press who exploited Diana's neurosis had now conveyed on her. What became clear was that Newspapers, Television and Radio were committed to finding any emotive issue that drove the desire to engage life as a soap opera in which you continued to buy their product to follow the plot, sequel et al.

This journey of a tabliodisation of the media also includes the heavy rotation of 24 hour news channels that constantly seek an angle on the news and feeding the never ending desire for breaking news. This is always couched in the language and the world of simplistic and linear narrative that reduces life's most complex issues into readily consumable dichotomies. Take an example in the so called Obama momentum and the notion that it is a fact that there is division amongst the voters along the of identity lines especially blacks for Obama and Hispanics for Clinton. This simple narrative presumes that blacks are voting their colour rather than they had take their time to truly assess Obama's bona fides and like other voters including white males, working class women, latinos are liking what they see and also expressing their enthusiasm for the possibility that their hopes for dramatic change might be truly embodied in this campaign. It is true to say that 80-90% voting itself is a sign of absolute solidarity but that against an initial analysis that Obama was either not black enough or as a child of immigrant African rather than descended from Slaves he lacked credibility. It is now the same campaign that everyone now tags with the potential of inevitability. For the press the most disturbing result is that even when it is wrong it is right. CNN, Time magazine, Newsweek and NYT amongst many corporate media outlets have nailed their position to Hillary either explicitly or by their editorial positions. This however is often under the smoke of objectivity. In the same token the press refuses to acknowledge that Obama has won predominantly whites states like Idaho and Iowa outright. They neglect to acknowledge the fact that Latino is a multicultural, multinational, and multi- skin- pigmentation , linguistic banner and it only the media and lazy administrators that can create such classification then sow seeds of demographic blood bath on minority status. I often wonder what a black Chilean has in common with a Mexican other than language.

The major problem is that it is the same approach that has now been copied by the media in many parts of the world to great damage. In South Africa the role of the media in reducing Thabo Mbeki into the stereotype of the nutty intellectual who is a stranger to his people has stuck so well. They reduced a complex and nuanced man into a cartoon cut out that the public bought with potentially damaging consequences. They took their leave from their Western colleagues to present his position on Zimbabwe as timidity. In Nigeria the press has made Anti Obasanjo stance a governance standard to the detriment of clear headed and eclectic judgement with very damaging consequence in policy terms for reforms. We now have government whose desire for popularity is shown in how many of its predecessors positions it overturns. We have seen both the Clintons and Blair amongst other cosy up to the Murdoch press like crack addicts to a dealers Hummer. With the exception of Al Jazeera and maybe the Financial Times (on non African issues) you are highly unlikely to read or watch anything other couched in pre-packaged world views. It is now the case that governments aross the world spend a lot of their time and resources in news management rather than informing people. Once again the western approach to journalism has been accepted as the gold standard for a free press. How truly sustainable is this?

It is time to truly start encouraging original gathering of information and a concerted effort to manage the the role of the media in our information rich world. The first place is the role of Afro pessimists in shaping the dialogue around Africa. It is also the time we set up a fact check forum around the African media so that the politics of personal destruction is not used as a substitute for real exploration and dialogue of the issues. Finally it is quite right to start calling out all those hacks who collect brown envelopes or are in the pocket of corporate and vested interests to the detriment of the reading and viewing elite.

Yes We Can

End the Rule of Agbaiya in Nigeria

I read with some pain the snub given to the speaker of the House of Rep by the PDP chairman, the President , ex-President et al. It is quite typical. I remember my chairman when I first started my company (in the UK) was nearly 70 then but in spite of it we worked as colleagues . Of course it was a little more complicated than that but more on it another time. Part of my initial problem was i had been brought up in an environment where you acted completely dumb around older people and acted subservient. I had real problems in my own business challenging any unproductive behaviour from him. It took a while but I came back to my real culture. People, our ancestors did not really believe in the absolute rightness of the older person. Worse still when someone is even one day older they try that bullshit rank pulling. We forget the reason for giving respect to age was that in the times of old access, exposure, experience and competence came with age as you were more likely to be most knowledgeable the older you were . It is frankly no longer the case. There are many things my children are more knowledgeable about than i am . I hope I have the wisdom from time to time to be open and allow them to educate me. It is the failure to be truly open that means that most government departments still you yahoo accounts for email in spite of the inefficient, insecure and disorganised implications. It is part of a failure to let young more knowledgeable talent through. Remember it is the same people born before independence constantly in a dick measurement exercise with each other that as imprisoned the country in a spiral of personal conflict. They treat the country as part of their family compound.

It is because of these kind of people my Yoruba ancestors came up with the word Agbaiya which does not fully translate literarily into English but it is the description of a undignified and unwise elder. You know them by their behaviour , many who use their age and exposure like a baseball bat on the ridge of the nose. Many of those who have gone before us have exemplified that name. They refuse to know when to bow gracefully of the stage, they are blinded by what they know to what they do not know, they exemplify hubris in their conduct and lifestyle. It is time to put them into pasture simply we are more in number than they are, it is time to bum rush them out. This is our country we are the future and they are the past we need to kick these people out period! Now!

Excellence the only answer to racism

Lets call it what it is really . When we call the kind of discrimination that classifies people and diminish them on what we call Race it is in fact tribalism. The kind of tribalism that can become a debilitating illness . There are degrees of the illness and the roles assigned by the afflicted to those he or she is incapable of humanising. It seems there is a special place in all of this for any Alpha male that is so called 'black'. The regular allegation of intimidating others if your teeth is not showing, the unlimited expectation of sexual aggression, the assumption of intellectual incompetence amongst many others. Part of the rule is if you are a so called 'big black man' you cannot raise your voice or show anger. The mental institutions are filled with such men whose relationship with range of emotions are now so distorted they cannot calibrate responses that will keep them functional. Even then they are not allowed to be just mad they are over medicated and often killed in an over zealous fear of their potential for aggression. This is all well established reality and is one of the many reasons why Senator Obama is a phenom. He manages to keep this monster largely at bay in others. He seems to have a reassuring presence and all the attempts to demonise him so far have only been marginally successful. Remember that originally he was not black enough as people like Stanley Crouch commented on his lack of slave roots. Then he was trying too hard to be accepted by black people and rejecting his white mother , that was Ellis Cose both commentators are celebrated mainstream 'black' commentators who helped make it more acceptable for the rest of the media to follow. Then in Nevada he suddenly is too black for Hispanic voters at least that is what the Clinton campaign put out there. The net was already circulated the protocols of Hussein Obama alleging he is part of a kind of islamic sleeper cell having attended a Madrassa at 10 years of age. Then suddenly he is a member of a racist church who Mr Cohen in the Washington Post tied too Minister Farakhan because the daughter of his pastor gave the minister an award. Finally he is just another 'black candidate' whose only support comes from the emotive community that is herded by tribal instincts but incapable of any rational decision. Bill Maher on his show said he new blacks would come back home to Obama as they did on OJ equating a Senator running for the presidency with an alleged murderer. It reminds me of a dinner party in the Forest of Dean many years ago. There were 3 black men amongst a party of over 40 people all white. Over a period of time people huddled and spoke mingling from time to time until these three black male strangers ended up in a group together. In less than five minutes a white woman came over and alleged that we were being 'racialist' for why were we the only blacks in the party in each others company? Go figure all the times we were talking to whites there was no problem and of course it is not racist for the whites who were talking to each other but when its blacks then they must be doing something unsavoury. The same thing accompanied the Obama win in South Carolina. So Obama is all things dangerous and underhand even when they are contradictory.

These are all not new, the main thing that is new is that we are watching a man in Obama who tries his best not to be imprisoned by the justifiable anger and desire for fairness that has crippled blacks for a long time. It is time to move beyond the dialogue about the injustice of such treatment. it is not only distracting , it is debilitating. In fact I will argue it is an excuse for us not to compete and pursue excellence because we have a ready made excuse. It is time to get over the victimhood and embrace the possibilities in spite of the unfairness. Senator Obama stands in a long line of great men who seek excellence as the only answer to injustice and unfairness. This is the lesson our children need to learn and focus upon. The world is an unfair and imperfect place it is not a good enough excuse to waste a life. Time now to set a new agenda that finds power to rise above adversity and laugh in the face of unfairness, recognising that no human institution can provide justice. Justice is a realm exclusively for God. In the meantime we are obliged to use the gift of life as the full expression of love that it is. In fact racism is and can be a catalyst for excellence and it could not happen to a better people. It is time for a new day in which self pity and sense of entitlement gives way to a hunger for a life that matters and makes a difference. No matter what happens this not a choice it is an obligation.

Obama Victory Speech

There comes a time once in a lifetime that a leader captures the essence of their time. It is like lightning in a bottle. Here is my generations chance.