Ozymandias in Tripoli.

From the wonderful Nick Hayes at the Guardian.

On David Starkey, whites becoming black and blacks becoming white.

When I was at Cambridge, some of my fellow students, and some dons, used to say this thing that first amused me, but became increasingly irritating. I would be at a party, talking nineteen to dozen in my usual way, and then I would find someone staring at me with a look of wonder. The inevitable remark would then come. “You speak such good English.” And this at Cambridge, one of the most competitive universities in the world. To be at Cambridge was surely to be among the best: it is why I had applied in the first place. Why would anyone be surprised that a student at Cambridge spoke good English? Isn’t it a condition of admission? Wouldn’t you imagine that we all spoke good English?

But the subtext was clear: you are a black person and, therefore, you are not supposed to speak such good English. I was the first black African student at my college, and no, this was not as long ago as you think. My special status was stressed to me a number of times, particularly by one don who beamed at me and said, as soon as he met me, that I was the second Rhodesian at Sidney Sussex! And are you going back to Rhodesia after you finish, he asked, to which I responded that that was an impossibility as the country no longer existed.

I eventually developed an effective response to the you speak such good English comment. Anytime I heard this, I said, why so do you, in a tone of happy camaraderie.

These memories came back as I listened in wonder to the historian David Starkey on Newsnight. He said three things: that Enoch Powell was partly correct in his Rivers of Blood speech and that the white kids who looted all over England were victims of black culture, and, finally, that if you heard the Oxbridge-educated Tory MP David Lammy speak without seeing him, you would think that he was white.

He speaks such good English, you see.

That a historian would bandy about such imprecise terms as white culture and black culture is frankly baffling. What is white culture? Going to the opera? Divorce? Or having a nuclear family? Atheism? Or the creationism that is becoming rampant in the American south? Scientology? The gay pride parade of Amsterdam? Or the gay curing programmes of the kind advocated by Michele Bachmann's husband? The binge drinking of London? Football hooliganism?

And don’t get me started on black culture, which seems to be reduced by Starkey, to a very specific sub-culture influenced by hip hop and rap music and street gangs.

But gangs, of course, are not part of white culture, because the Teddy Boys, back in the 50s were not white at all, oh no. And those Victorian street gangs, the Sloggers, the Scuttlers? When Dickens wrote about Fagin’s gang of pickpockets, about murderous gang member Bill Sykes, why he must have had some sort of Jamaican influence because Bill Sykes? He was acting black.

Missing in David Starkey’s analysis is any awareness of class. Because this is the essence of Starkey’s reasoning: any white person who is not how you imagine a white person to be has become black, and any black person who is not how you imagine a black person to be has become white. To be black is to be poor, it is to be uneducated, to be inarticulate. A middle class black man like David Lammy becomes, not middle class, but white. And the working class hooligans who were looting trainers are acting black.

I very much fear that England is going to get this spectacularly wrong. All the commentators, like Starkey, are responding reflexively from within the narrow framework of their entrenched positions.

But that is another subject for another day. Listening to Starkey took me back to Cambridge, where my fellow students actually thought to express surprise that a fellow Cambridge student spoke English well. And why? Because I was black.

Jeepers, creepers, where'd you get those peepers? How nice of you to ask! I got them free from Newsweek!

Michele Bachmann, it is true, is nuttier than squirrel poo and fruitier than an orchard full of apricots, pears, plums and quinces. (That is a little shout out to my trade law friends, whom I miss madly, together with trade disputes about apricots, pears, plums and quinces. I weep when I read the Japan - Varietals case, I simply weep.) Back to the topic - Mrs Bachmann appears to be more than a little estranged from that thing you and I rather familiarly call reality, but this? Really, Tina Brown? Why not have her wield an axe splattered with the blood of a googly-eyed poodle and have done with it? As John Stewart said, you want to show that Mrs Bachmann is a nut? Use her own words. There are enough of them.

How to Run a Banana Republic, Part 33, Or How to Lose Your Bra and Gain $10 000

The man in brown in the middle there is a policeman. The man in the suit is the President. The young man in blue is a Zimbabwean commercial pilot who was recently in a reality TV show. His name is Wendall Parsons. And yes, he is white. There are lots of white people still in Zimbabwe. They sometimes, if they are lucky like Wendall, get to shake the President's hand and receive money from him. In the white envelope is $50 000 for lucky, lucky Wendall. See Wendall smile. See the President smile. See the policeman look. Look look look. Oh look look.

So this is what happened yesterday in Zimbabwe. The President presented envelopes stuffed with cash to two contestants in the last Big Brother Africa. The winner of the series, Wendall, received $50 000 of Zimbabwe's dirtiest money, and I am not casting aspersions here, but simply pointing that the notes circulating in Zimbabwe are notoriously grimy. (This is what happens when you don't print your own money).

Also sharing in the presidential largesse was Vimbai Mutinhiri, who did not win. She received $10 000. Now, I am as fond of Zanu PF as anyone would be after seeing it preside over the rack and ruin of a country one loves, but there are many things that prevent me from fully taking it into the warm embrace of my welcoming arms. For one thing, there is the gaucheness of giving out envelopes stuffed with cash. Who does that, I mean, this not some low level mafiosos making a down payment for a hit on the Capo. Whatever happened to those big fake cheques?

Then there is the startling image of Mugabe handing over a stuffed envelope to a girl whose most celebrated skill on Big Brother appears to have been standing still while people took off her bra with their teeth. Race to the bottom, anyone?

It is all bread and circuses of course, distraction and diversion. I want to say it is all very surreal, but it is just Zimbabwe. We sigh and move on. This is how you run a Banana Republic.

Image from NewZimbabwe.

When the trumpet blows, won't you call me please, call my name.

And now, a musical interlude from Peter, Paul and Mary with Early In The Morning, a song so hauntingly beautiful that it is almost unbearable.

In Harare in August: TED comes to Zim, Fashion Week at the Library and Pimp my Combi at the Gallery

There is a slew of exciting events coming up in Harare this month. My good buddy Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa has realised her dream of bringing a TEDx event to Harare - Upenyu is also the woman behind the community and activist website kubatana.net, so she thrives on ideas. Good luck Upenyu, and I wish I could be there.

Another good buddy, Priscilla Chigariro a model business woman who is also a model (see what I did there?) is the woman behind Fashion Week, which returns to Zim from 31 August 2011. Priscilla is one of the people who has responded to our Library Commitee's plea to save the Library: the Library at Rotten Row will host a day and night of fashion on 1 September 2011, with proceeds going to the Library.

I also received this invitation to an exhibition at the National Gallery on 4 August 2011 called Pimp my Combi! If you are in Harare, try to make all of these events.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind: the Nirvana baby is now all grown up

There was a time when I lived in Austria when I played Nirvana's 'Nevermind', 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill' and Alanis Morisette's 'Jagged Little Pill' over and over and over. And over again. Now when I hear any song from any one of those albums, I am immediately transported back to Graz, it is summer and I am walking from Jacominiplatz to Hauptplatz, listening to my disc-man.

Nevermind turns 20 this year. Gulp. I found a great (old) story on the baby in the iconic poster above: His name is Spencer Elden, he was the son of friends of Kirk Weddle, Nirvana's photographer. Kurt Cobain promised he would take Spencer to dinner when he grew up, but then of course Kurt killed himself in 1994. And Spencer, who lives in Los Angeles, grew up to speak like a Valley Boy. From an interview on NPR:

"My friend is all like, 'Hey I saw you today.' And I'm like, 'Dude, I was working all day.' And he's like, 'No, I went to Geffen Records, and you're on the floor and you're floating and I stepped on your face. 'Cause I guess they have like a floating thing where people can like walk on me and stuff ... so it's kinda cool."

Smells like seriously chilled-out teen spirit. Cool.