Taking a break ...

A quick message to say that I am taking a break from this blog for some time. I may start blogging again sometime in June, and until then, be good.

On my favourite European country

I have just come back from a long weekend in Holland. For a long time now, The Netherlands has been in pole position to be my favourite European country. What's not to like? It is one of the greenest countries in the world. The men are extremely easy on the eye ... they are gorgeous and fit from all that cycling and swimming. And the women are not bad either:) On a serious note, not that that wasn't also a serious note, the Dutch are some of the most pleasant people I have come across. I go there a lot with Kush, and it always strikes me how much they like kids. And the country is flatter than a pancake squashed by a bulldozer into the size of a postage stamp, but how lovely is it?

Amsterdam is an edgy city that feels like a city without being overwhelming. Den Haag is laid back, surprisingly so considering that it is the "world city of justice". Everything is close to everything else, in one day, you can have breakfast in Amsterdam, coffee in Haarlem, lunch in Delft, dessert in Leiden, tea in Den Haag, dinner in Rotterdam and a midnight snack back in Amsterdam. The architecture is perfect for the country. The people are outward looking ... it always strikes me that such a small country managed to influence the course of history in Africa and Asia. Even now, long after the glory days of the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch punch way above their weight in international relations, and are generous in their development aid. The Dutch government is a big funder of the organisation that I work for in Geneva, and I particularly love the agency Hivos which funds arts and culture projects in developing countries.

Then there is the art ... I have written before of my love for the artists of the Dutch golden age. I am therefore really happy because I have been offered an incredible opportunity to spend two months in Amsterdam next year, going through all the museums in Amsterdam and beyond and tracing and writing about the presence of Africa and Asia in the work of the artists of the golden age. So I get to spend time in Holland, and I get to write about art. How cool is that??

Image originally published here.

On the death of Stanley Ruzvidzo Mupfudza

My friend Stanley Ruzvidzo Mupfudza died last week. You will find many tributes around the web from the many Zimbabwean writers he knew and whose respect and love he inspired. Here is Memory Chirere’s tribute. And here is a touching report of his funeral, with some thoughts on his life, from Phillip Chidavaenzi.

I want to add my own thoughts. I met Stannie, as we called him then, at the University of Zimbabwe in the early 90s, he was friends with my one of my best friends, Switch. The three of us, Switch, Stannie and me, were connected by a desire to write, but above all, by a love of reading, we went through a Russian phase at around the same time. Then I left Zimbabwe after the UZ, and did not see him again. On the night that I fell in love with my son’s father, Safi, in June 2001, I met Stannie again. We were all just on the cusp of 30, at an age where we were more or less where we wanted to be and everything seemed wonderful and the future stretched before us with endless possibility. That night with Switch, Stannie and Safi was one of the best nights of my life. We had this conversation, this series of conversations, you know the ones where you sound deep and philosophical and everything the other person says rings with a clarity that really is just the vodka in your system. It was certainly vodka we were drinking; we ran out of mixers at some point and began to drink it neat. The hangover the next morning was just as memorable as the carousing of the night before. I remember going on and on about Safi’s feet, I may even have composed a rhapsodic ode to those feet. I remember Stannie watching all of the unfolding drama with wry amusement. I am only grateful that he did not make me into one of his characters. There was much laughter that night, and I will always remember it.

After that, I wrote a horrible coming of age novel in 2002 and he was one of the handful of people who saw it. I read his work too; we exchanged manuscripts over email. It was a loving and respectful friendship. He was always encouraging and generous. I was in floods of doubts about my ability. He was more secure because he had already been published, but I want to believe that we gave each other self-belief.

Stannie was a writer who became a writer because he loved to read. He is seriously one of the best-read writers I have met; everything was grist to his mill. I was looking forward to working with him later this year in Zimbabwe, now that, alas, cannot be.

Go well Stannie.

Fear no more the heat of the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages,

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and taken thy wages.

For the love of all that is good and beautiful, make it stop, please make it stop!

The Obama comparisons were inevitable in the campaign leading to today's UK election. David Cameron is the British Obama. No, it is Nick Clegg who is the Britbama. And now this. Please make it stop.

In which I find myself happily and gloriously in agreement with the Zimbabwe Herald

It is rare that I find myself nodding vigorously as I read a Herald editorial. I came across a recent editorial, dated 7 April 2010, in which the Herald, if you will believe it, took a compassionate and humane line on a fundamental issue of human rights, and said it might be time for Zimbabwe to reconsider the death penalty. I am delighted by this little glimpse of what the Herald could become. Here, in part, is what it had to say:

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Zimbabwe must now rethink the death penalty, and be ready to move from the informal moratorium now in place to abolition, replacing this ultimate sentence with life imprisonment, without possibility of release.

There are only two arguments for retaining the death penalty: as a deterrent to would-be killers and traitors, and as retribution by society on those who commit the ultimate crime

The first argument can now be addressed by fact. The informal moratorium on executions has seen no rise in murder rates. This fits in with experience in other countries. What is a deterrent for murder is the near certainty of being arrested and convicted, followed by a very harsh sentence. The homicide units of the Zimbabwe Republic Police have an enviable record of solving murders. Teams of detectives work round the clock to hunt down a killer and almost always succeed. There have been only a handful, literally, of unsolved murders since independence.

The evidence is pretty conclusive that life imprisonment would be an adequate deterrent backed by the same magnificent police work.

We acknowledge that South Africa still has a high murder rate but it had a high murder rate when the death penalty was still in force there and that murder rate appears to have more to do with poor arrest rates than the abolition of the death penalty. The fact that no death penalties have been executed for treason or for very serious security crimes where there has been no murder suggests that these crimes do not need this ultimate deterrent.

The second argument, that those who kill others deliberately have forfeited their right to life, has always been weaker. It reduces us, the people of Zimbabwe, to the level of the killers, that a death can solve a problem and that some people deserve to die. We must rise above such base feelings.

We concur that the sort of people as have been hanged or sentenced to death since independence have forfeited their right to belong to society. But life imprisonment would be adequate to accomplish that goal.

Arguments put forward in a recent constitutional appeal, that jail is not very comfortable do not hold water. Lifers should not get special treatment in our view. We acknowledge that the death penalty still has its supporters. But more and more countries around the world are abolishing this sentence and Zimbabwe should join them. It has been shown to be an unnecessary cruelty that we can rise above.

For the full editorial, click here