Category: Africa

What Did Anyone Expect?

Africa, Men & Women, Politics

Reader Tony H. sent me this most excellent example of political (literally) fuckery:

A legend has been born in Central Africa. The story started when the head of the tiny Spanish-speaking nation of Equatorial Guinea’s anti-corruption office, Baltasar Ebang Engonga, known as Bello for his good looks, was himself recently arrested for corruption. That itself would have been routine enough on the continent, but upon searching the office the agents found around four hundred CDs containing videos of Baltasar having sex with seemingly every prominent woman in the country — including the wife of the Police Chief, the wife of the Attorney General, the President’s younger sister, and the wives of around 20 cabinet members. Some are calling him Africa’s King Solomon. The videos soon began to be uploaded to the internet one at a time by an unknown party, and if the information is accurate, must have been clearly labeled because it seems as if he recorded himself having sex with almost every woman he has met, and many of them are not famous. The videos are with women of all types, in every position, and in every imaginable location, including government offices, outdoors, public bathrooms, hotels, private bedrooms, and the hospital.

One may think that I would regard this as Just Another African Story, except of course that it isn’t:  throughout history, powerful men on any continent have always had access to willingly-shared pudenda pretty much upon request or demand.  What makes this serial conquest remarkable is the fact that it was captured on tape, so to speak.

What makes the article all the more interesting is the brief history told of Equatorial Guinea, which even by African standards seems to be an absolute armpit of a place.

As for our African Lothario, I have only one word of comment:

 

Worth Watching

Africa, Drive Time

I watched the last episode of The Grand Tour  on Prime last night, and I loved it, but not just for the antics of the three buffoons themselves.

I have often stated that if I could choose an African country to live in (and assuming that it wasn’t a frigging death trap — I know, that’s a big condition), I would unreservedly choose Zimbabwe, and specifically eastern Zimbabwe.

To call it beautiful qualifies as the understatement of the year, because it is about as close to Eden as one could imagine:  wonderful climate, interesting not to say spectacular scenery, and for some reason the locals are not the angry assholes so common in the rest of the country — perhaps because the place is so magnificent.

And if you watch One For The Road, you’ll see all that in the first quarter-hour of the show.  Even the cynical Clarkson is impressed by the scenery.  Once the trio climbs out of the semi-coastal zone, the countryside becomes the real Africa:  dry, hard and inhospitable.  But for that first hundred or so miles, as they leave the incomparable Nyangani district, is to witness Paradise.

My only regret is that they trio took the northerly route, through the festering cesspit of Harare (the capital) rather than via Bulwayo to the south, and the incredible Matopo Hills, en route to the Victoria Falls and, eventually, northern Botswana.

Anyway, I told you all that so I could play a familiar game.  As it happened, the three Brits chose their cars according to only one criterion:  which car would you like to take on that trip, under the condition that you’ve always wanted to own one, but never have.  Clarkson chose the chronically-unreliable but wonderful Lancia Monte Carlo (!):

May picked the Triumph Stag (with its terrible Triumph engine rather than the more-reliable Rover V8):

…while Hammond picked a Ford Capri:

Unsurprisingly, all were cars of their youth:  1970s-era, at a time when young men dream of their ideal cars, but can’t afford to buy them.

So, gentle Readers, after you’ve watched the show and seen the terrain over which the three Top Gear / Grand Tour men had to drive, my question to you all is:

“What dream car of your youth would you choose for the trip?”

Assume that, like Clarkson et al., you’d have a support team accompanying you, so feel free to pick anything, no matter how apparently impractical.

My only condition is that like the Grand Tour team, you’d have to cover the 1,300-mile distance in only four days, as they did — and include a trip on a ferry down Lake Kariba, as they did.  One’s normal choice of, say, an F40 Land Cruiser or Series 1 Land Rover would not be ideal, because you’d have to cane it on the tarred roads in order to make the deadline, and Land Cruisers / Rovers are not known for their ability to cane anything except your kidneys as they bounce all over the place.

No;  in the spirit of One For The Road, you have to pick a dream sports car of your youth for your trip.

Feel free to indulge yourselves.

Now:  I’ve closed Comments for this post, because you’ll need time to get to watch the show (which you need to do to get into the spirit of the game).  Next Saturday (Sept 21), I’ll set up a post wherein everyone can state their choice for the trip.

The Southern Africa Overview

Africa

Doc Russia sent me this essay and asked me whether I thought it accurate.  It is, 100%.  Read it for yourself.

Choice excerpt:

This didn’t have to be the way colonization ended in southern Africa. The evil of apartheid could have been done away without putting murderous thugs in charge. Rhodesia could have remained a democracy rather than becoming a brutal dictatorship known for its genocidal campaign against white farmers and a rival African ethnic group. South Africa could be a functional country rather than an anarcho-tyranny-ridden hellhole where thugs murder, rape, and steal from the Boers with impunity as the country’s infrastructure collapses and its economy follows Zimbabwe’s down the drain. But, thanks in no small part to US foreign policy, the worst-case scenario is exactly what happened. And now crosses symbolizing the murders of white farmers line the roads of South Africa by the thousands.

Ask me again why I left.  And why no Democrat should ever, ever have access to U.S. foreign policy.

Stupid Is (Part Deux)

Africa, Morons & Idiots

Okay, there’s stupid (voting for a Democrat Socialist), very stupid (waterbombing Danny Trejo)… and then there’s ultra-stupid:

A Spanish tourist reportedly has been “trampled to death” by elephants in South Africa after he tried to get close to them to take pictures. 

If you look up the word “pendejo”  in the dictionary, that’ll be his pic you see, right above that of the Trejo Waterbomber.

I remember one time I was driving friends around the Kruger Park when we suddenly came upon a solitary elephant.  I stopped, of course, at a distance of about thirty yards.

“Get a little closer!” urged one friend (American, first time in Africa, in fact I think it was the first time she’d ever left New England).
Of course, I refused.
“He’s just standing there,” she said.
“See how his ears are flapping?”
“I know, it’s so cute!”
“He’s warning us off,” I said, and put the minibus into reverse.

Then the elephant took three giant steps towards us, whereupon I tried my very best to break the world speed record for reversing a VW minibus down a dirt road.  Even so, he got to within about ten yards of the bus before our acceleration took us clear.  Fortunately, the road was straight and after a minute or so the elephant stopped, flapped his ears at us one more time, and exited stage right.

I took the opportunity to turn the bus around, and got the hell out of the area.

One of the others managed to get a single pic of Dumbo, right before he got on the road and decided to shoo us off.


(in the very left-hand bottom of the pic you can see the car windowsill, to give an idea of how close he was, no zoom lens)

Get out of the car? Close to a herd with calves?

I guess the Spanish guy felt that he knew all about elephants, having done the African River ride at DisneyWorld where the elephants frolic charmingly along the river banks, rather than trampling people to death.

Afterthought:  phew, if the whole herd got in on the act as the report says, all that remained must have been some bloody mud with bone splinters, with pieces of El Stupido’s iPhone mixed in.

 

Just Another Day In Paradise

Africa

From sunny Seffrica:

A elderly British couple who were kidnapped from their South African home ‘may have been dismembered with their body parts sold to a witch doctor’, a court heard, as their devastated family accuse local cops of covering up the brutal ‘slaughter’ .

Pensioners Anthony Dinnis, 73, and Gillian Dinnis, 78, were attacked by a gang of three men armed with guns at their remote farm in Middlerus in KwaZulu-Natal’s Mooi River area, before disappearing without a trace last August.

Of course, Blacks murdering Whites in South Africa is not a crime in Nelson Mandela’s paradise — which, by the way, is when the luckless (and naïve) couple arrived in the country, lured no doubt by the low cost of living and sunny skies.

Now, almost a year on, two suspects who had worked on the couple’s farm as labourers and who were arrested last year in connection with the cruel murders have been released without charge – one of whom confessed that Anthony and Gillian were brutally butchered.

And the Seffrican cops, of course, are completely ineffective, either through lack of resources or indifference.

After all, what’s the point of investigating the thing?  It’s only a pair of old (White) immigrants.