My Darling Daughter, I am blessed because I have you as my daughter and you know I love you immensely. While I believe you must steer your own course, life’s journey is full of twists and turns and can oftentimes be rough. In my humble opinion, you should be open to any help that may make your journey a little smoother. My dear daughter, since you were a baby I have taken the time to show you by words and action, irrespective of societal norms, that a female child is as valuable as a male child. I have also, hopefully,…
Author: Pride Team
President Muhammadu Buhari congratulates Chief (Mrs ) Dorothy Chinyere Anyiam-Osigwe, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Anyiam-Osigwe Group, on her 90th birthday. The President joins family members, friends and associates of the nonagenarian in celebrating a lifetime of achievements and God’s benevolence to the passionate teacher, mother, entrepreneur and humanitarian. President Buhari affirms that as the President of the Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation, Mrs Osigwe’s significant contributions to human development in the country through the annual lecture series of Osigwe Anyiam-Osigwe Foundation, are worthy of commendation by all true lovers of knowledge and the place of education in nation building. On…
Olayinka Ajala, University of York The close-run election contest between incumbent Muhammadu Buhari and former vice-president Atiku Abubakar was largely peaceful. But it was not a perfect performance given that there were some pockets of violence that led to the death of at least 16 people. Olayinka Ajala gives his views on the poll. How well did the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission’s manage the vote? Although the election can’t be described as a perfect performance, it was a noticeable improvement on previous elections conducted since the country returned to democracy in 1999. The commission understandably received a lot of…
Keith Gottschalk, University of the Western Cape Writings on South African liberation struggle icon Winnie Mandela almost all fall into one of two categories – either hagiography or demonology. These two books – Truth, Lies and Alibis. A Winnie Mandela Story, by Fred Bridgland and Sisonke Msimang’s The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela. A Biography of Survival, try to be more nuanced. Bridgland was a correspondent for Britain’s leading right-wing newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. For years, he dispatched empathetic reports on an anti-communist hero of the cold war, Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement, which were at war with Angola’s ruling…
Stuart Richards, University of South Australia Every year it is the same story: the Academy comes so close to catching up with the rest of the film world, only to award the Oscar for Best Picture to the most middling of the bunch. Many cinephiles the world over were likely scratching their heads, or rolling their eyes, or perhaps throwing something at the television, when Julia Roberts called out Green Book’s name, a film the LA Times later dubbed “the worst Best Picture winner since ‘Crash’”. The film is the story of an unlikely friendship between musician Don Shirley (Mahershala…
Dear Dorothy, I have been married, with kids, for eight years to a man whom I know loves and cares for me. Some time ago, I attended the wedding of a relation of mine while my husband was away on business and bumped into an old flame at the wedding reception. One thing led to another and I ended up spending the evening in a hotel room with him. Dorothy, I have been full of regrets at what happened and wish I could turn back the clock. I don’t know what possessed me to do what I did because my…
Martin Plaut, School of Advanced Study The unveiling of a statue to the Emperor Haile Selassie outside the African Union has stirred up a storm among Ethiopians and Eritreans. Some, including the Rastafarian community who still worship the Emperor as a god, were delighted. Others were furious, recalling his role in the 1973-74 famine or his suppression of Eritrean freedom. Haile Selassie ruled Ethiopia for more than four decades, between 1930 and 1974. In 1935 his country was invaded by Italy and he sought refuge in Britain. He became a symbol of resistance to fascism in Africa, returning to the…
Nancy Kang, University of Manitoba In Mules and Men (1935), anthropologist, creative writer and Harlem Renaissance upstart Zora Neale Hurston relays the evocative folktale “Why the Sister in Black Works Hardest.” Fatigued after the work of Creation, God casts a massive bundle onto the earth. Intrigued by the mysterious object, a white Southern woman during the antebellum era asks her husband to retrieve it. Reluctant to tote the load himself, the master instructs a slave to fetch it. Soon wearied of the task, the slave then commands his wife to shoulder the burden. She does so, excited at the prospect…
Oluwaseun Tella, University of Johannesburg The increasing use of soft power in foreign policy by great powers such as the US (prior to Donald Trump’s administration) and China has sparked interest among African policymakers and academics. Soft power is the opposite of coercive capability or hard power, such as the use of economic and military might. Soft power involves trying to influence other countries using culture, values and policies. South Africa is one of the African countries that has taken advantage of the opportunity that the use of soft power presents. It’s successfully hosted international summits and sporting events such…
Riaan de Jongh, North-West University The world is inundated with data. There’s a virtual tsunami of data moving around the globe, renewing itself daily. Take just the global financial markets. They generate vast amounts of data – share prices, commodity prices, indices, option and futures prices, to name just a few. But data is of no use if there aren’t people able to collect, collate, analyse and apply it to the benefit of society. All that data generated by global financial markets gets used for asset and wealth management – and it must be properly analysed and understood to inform…