The Blame Game and the Genetic Code-Hegemony

There is something strange about the playground and the dynamics of growing up. There big guy is seldom the bully...if you pay close attention he is often used by a smaller guy whose size does not seem to limit the depths of his ambition. He ( the little guy) veils his inadequacies by controlling others and successfully manages to control and manipulate the bigger guy into doing his dirty work. 

This is China's dilemma. He is simply the bigger guy who everyone watches and blames while a littler guy gets away with all the planning and dirty work. So how do we identify the little guy in order to ease the tension on China. 

This week the premier spoke quite clearly about China's DNA and the idea that it is not written into the people's code to exercise rule over others. 

So what does the future look like. The dragon (revered in the East but feared and shunned in the West) is a useful symbol in understanding Chinese Psyche but statements by the German leader about the it's rise in the future have done little to assuage these fears. 

I suspect that the future will bring about more thoughts about different civilizations that marked ancient China...and even date I say thoughts but a revival of the Ancient Rulers. Strange that a Hong Kong billionaire has recently sought to create a prize of his own (which he is calling the Tang Prize) to rival the Nobel Prize. This could be a sign of a desire to revive not the Kings necessarily, but the individual civilizations in their glory. 

So what shape or form does the little bully take?

Is it communism? A concept that was developed by the Russians and that helped shape Chinese thinking. Or maybe thoughts from France regarding revolution which were also responsible for displacing the ruling class and helping refocus the population towards the working class.

The challenge is that the blame will fall on the bigger guy and he will have to face a barrage of insults until the power or force behind him is identified. What is strange about this is that 

China's size and her needs for energy and resources (especially food) places her in a place of vulnerability so that none of what she does in defense of her freedoms or territories can be seen as anything but aggression. Her smaller neighbors on the other hand, can do as they please and lay the blame on their larger neighbor. 

My suggestion- watch her smaller neighbors..Taiwan and Tibet. They may have the key to understanding her aggression. 

Good Idea bad press.

Its been about four weeks since the launch of a new project to help register Ugandans. The project is a great idea but also a challenge for the new head of the Internal Affairs Ministry.

Around the time of the previous elections, we became familiar with the new system and many of us indeed did brave the process,long lines, photos and finger printing that came with this project. It is highly doubtful that the Germans that helped manage this project could have failed in its execution (but that is just my opinion regarding the effectiveness of our Bavarian Friends). But that is besides the point.

The ads that are running in some media outlets are rather discouraging especially for someone who has lived in other countries (Kenya, Uganda and South Africa?). For starters, the ad refers to kitambulisho which is an infamous term that those who lived in Kenya in the early eighties are all to aware of. At the time, many Ugandans were living as refugees and fears were ripe about the possibilities of being deported to a country that at the time was rather unstable and still recovering.

The Kenyans too had similar encounters although their experiences predated independence and were more common in the class system that separated blacks from white and that brought about the rise of the Mau Mau movement.

As the gap between rich and poor grows larger and as a revival of precolonial tendencies seems to reemerge, i suspect that we will find ourselves battling our old colonial demons.

Another common reference that has fueled many concerns amongst historians and common citizens is the return of late seventies systems of leadership and law enforcement that were referred to as panda gari. At the heart of some of this concern was the use of the Swahili language which was often used by liberators but that was also used by rowdy and undisciplined soldiers to intimidate the populace.

Hard core ganda loyalists were therefore often anti-swahili because they seemed to have borne the brunt of the force.

South Africa comes into mind because more and more Africans seem to look on her as a liberator of sorts mainly because of the work of men like Madiba. Others though have seemed more doubtful about the true demonstration of these freedoms and have accused the ANC of failing to deliver and instead consolidating power into political hands. South Africa has relevance because here too, the concept of Kitambulisho came to the fore and was fiercely resisted by the vibrant populations.