Category: Present

Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Moonies cult, also known as the Unification Church or the “Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity”, has died at the age of 92 in South Korea. According to Moon, Jesus appeared to him in 1935 asking him to accomplish the work left unfinished after Jesus’s crucifixion. Moon became a preacher and, after the second world war was imprisoned and tortured in North Korea before being freed during the Korean War.

Moon founded the Unification Church in Seoul in 1954 and published his book The Divine Principle which set out the church’s teachings. The church multiplied rapidly, and within a few years it had spread to multiple sites in Korea and missionaries were being sent to Japan and the US. By 1971 there were about 500 adherents in the US, and Moon moved there. By 1975 missionaries had been sent out to more than 100 countries.

The Unification Church’s teachings blend Christianity with Confucianism and Korean culture, and one of the most recognisable traditions of the church is the mass arranged weddings involving hundreds of couples at a time. Moon and his wife, who had 14 children of their own, were regarded by church members as “True Parents of Mankind”. The Moonies own the Washington Times newspaper and United Press International news agency.

In recent years it has become increasingly common for schools in Kenya to offer students tuition during school holidays. Kenya’s education minister Mutula Kilonzo recently reacted by outlawing holiday tuition, arguing that children should be free to enjoy their holidays, and they should not be the ones to bear the consequences of lack of organisation and inefficiencies on the part of teachers and schools in covering the curriculum in a timely manner.

A tragic event last week at Asumbi Girls’ Boarding School has heightened the debate. A dormitory fire at the school on Wednesday night resulted in the deaths of 8 girls. The dormitory was locked from the outside, so that the girls were unable to escape. The event happened during the school holiday period, and the 8 girls were among 85 students who were undergoing holiday tuition in contravention of the directive of the education minister.

The arguments over the merits of holiday tuition are difficult to reconcile. Kenya’s school term timetable provides students with a generous 14 weeks of school holidays, four of the remaining 34 weeks are often taken up with exams in October, and students often miss up to another 4 weeks of school during January. There is a high degree of stress associated with final exams in October, so many students are happy to sacrifice of up to 3 weeks of holidays in August in the hope of getting better final results.

Somalia’s transitional government was due to end yesterday. It is being replaced by a new government which consists of 135 traditional elders, selected according to a process which has been supported by the United Nations. Perhaps it is too much to hope that the new government will bring instant stability, but it is widely expected that the new government will be significantly better than the old.

The new government will appoint a committee to oversee the election of a new president for Somalia. Depending on your point of view, this is either the dawning of a new and better age for the country or simply a reshuffling of the deck chairs occupied by the corrupt elite. The country has essentially been ungovernable for more than 20 years, with rival warlords causing mayhem and misery for the country’s inhabitants.

African Union troops are still trying to chase al Shabaab fighters out of Kismayu, but Mogadishu has now been al Shabaab-free for more than a year. A new constitution has recently been adopted, and more than 60 people have put their names forward as presidential candidates, with the favourites being the current prime minister, the current president, the current Speaker, and the former prime minister.

For several years Christian missionaries have been striving to be “incarnational”. Jesus “became flesh and dwelt among us”, and we should therefore strive to do likewise. Hence modern missionaries have been adopting local cultures are trying to “be Jesus” to the people in the neighbourhood. However, according to J Todd Billings writing in Christianity Today, the Bible does not actually tell us to be incarnational.

The incarnation – the act of Jesus becoming flesh – is something unique to Jesus. We cannot literally become incarnated as we are already flesh. But apart from the literal issue, there is the question of whether we are supposed to do what Jesus did or whether instead we are supposed to do what Jesus told us to do. While the Bible does tell us to imitate the example of Jesus, it never tells us to live our lives by reference to the What Would Jesus Do question.

More troubling than the semantics is when we take upon ourselves the role of “being Jesus” to people. Our role is not to redeem people, but to point people to Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit. If we are the only Jesus that people see, then those people will never get to see the real Jesus. We are no more than servants and witnesses; it is only through the work of the Holy Spirit that people can meet Jesus.

The undeclared war between north and South Sudan has come to another temporary halt following another peace deal which seems to have left neither side happy. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki was last week brokering talks between the two sides in Addis Ababa. The main issue is how much landlocked South Sudan should pay to Sudan for the right to transport oil across Sudan to the coast, from where it can be shipped to purchasers.

In the recent past, Sudan has essentially been confiscating South Sudan’s oil, and South Sudan has responded by cutting off all oil supplies; in reply to that, Sudan has been bombing South Sudan. Now, after much pressure by other countries, the two parties seem to have reached a deal, whereby South Sudan is to pay Sudan around $3 billion plus a fee of $9.48 per barrel of oil which passes through Sudan.

The deal is not going to solve Sudan’s economic crisis, as the oil from South Sudan accounted for 85% of Sudan’s annual export earnings of $15 billion. To compensate for lost revenue, Sudan has devalued its currency, slashed government spending, and increased taxes, but inflation is still running at higher than 35%. Observers say that the “agreement” is really little more than the latest offer on the table; final agreement still seems a long way off.

Now that the Olympic Games have arrived, the thoughts of athletes and supporters from all around the world are on winning. However, when the number of people competing is compared with the number of gold medals available, it is obvious that the vast majority of competitors will be returning home losers rather than winners. Large numbers of them will have been trained for victory by their coaches, but instead they will be facing the shame and disappointment of defeat.

According to some sports psychologists, it is much healthier for an athlete to have a balanced view of the possibilities of winning and losing. Even the fastest and most successful athletes do not win all the time. Losing is an integral part of every athlete’s experience, and as such each athlete needs to be able to process it in a positive manner. As Winston Churchill is supposed to have said, “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

For many athletes, the gift of exceptional athletic ability is a curse as well as a blessing. They get to enjoy a brief moment in the public spotlight, but the rest of their lives can seem an anticlimax as they make the gradual transition from heroism to ordinary obscurity. This can be particularly accentuated by lingering regrets arising from failing to achieve hoped-for goals while at the peak of their physical ability.

Foreign Policy magazine has released the 2012 edition of its Failed States Index. Somalia comes at the top of the list with a score of 114.9 out of a possible 120. Rounding out the top five are Democratic Republic of Congo (111.2), Sudan (109.4), Chad (107.6) and Zimbabwe (106.3), all countries in Africa. South Sudan has been independent for a year now, but it is included as part of Sudan for the purposes of the list.

Afghanistan (106.0), Haiti (104.9), Yemen (104.8) and Iraq (104.3) are 5th to 9th on the list, then it is back to African countries which hold 10 out of the 11 places from 10th to 20th. East Africa features prominently, with Kenya (98.4) at 16th, Ethiopia (97.9) at 17th, Burundi (97.5) at 18th and Uganda (96.5) at 19th. There is some room for debating the results, but the clear picture is that African countries continue to struggle with effective governance.

The rankings were based on marks out of 10 awarded in each of the 12 categories, with 10 indicating the worst possible conditions: demographic pressures, refugees/IDPs, group grievance, human flight, uneven development, economic decline, delegitimisation of the state, public services, human rights, security apparatus, factionalised elites, and external intervention.

The world’s newest country celebrates its first birthday this month, having achieved independence from Sudan one year ago. At the time the prospects for the future of the country were not bright: landlocked, with an uneasy relationship with its northern neighbour Sudan, very low educational levels, almost no infrastructure, and no obvious prospects for income other than through a single stream of oil revenues.

Not much has changed in the first year of the country’s life. The relationship with Sudan has deteriorated, with Sudan undertaking cross-border raids and South Sudan cutting off the flow of oil through the north in order to prevent Sudan tasking the lion’s share of profits. While the government has made some steps forward, there has been some serious corruption, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars.

On the other hand, the citizens of South Sudan still have the satisfaction of knowing they have a country of their own, with the freedoms associated with self-determination. While things in the country could be better, they could also be far worse. Many African countries have been independent for 50 years without achieving any significant economic growth. South Sudan is placing its reliance on the quick completion of an oil pipeline through Kenya, in order to turn the export dollars back on.

The price paid to East African fishermen for their Nile Perch catches has almost halved as a result of falling demand from Europe. For the past two weeks fish processors are now paying $1.70 per kilogram, down from the previous price of $3.16. Some 80% of the annual catch of around 1 million tonnes goes to Africa, but demand in Europe has fallen off, presumably as a result of the current European financial crisis.

The export of Nile Perch caught in Lake Victoria has been contentious for a number of years. Aid agencies have campaigned against the export of fish to Europe from countries where a number of people struggle to find enough to eat. Many years ago the fish in Lake Victoria were an inexpensive source of protein for the people who lived nearby, but the high prices offered by Europeans meant that locals had to go without.

There have also been concerns about the supplies of fish being depleted by overfishing, brought on by the lucrative income from Europe. At present this appears not to be a problem, as a hydro-acoustic survey in October last year showed a fish stock biomass of 1.9 million tonnes, up from 1.6 million tonnes in August 2011. At present there are 600 tonnes of Nile Perch fillets sitting in cold storage rooms in East Africa, but no-one to buy them.

East African governments have increased their budgets for next year by a combined total of 20%, using deficit financing, even as many of the other countries in the world are tightening their belts to cater for the new austerity. Kenya’s budget is increasing from $12.9 billion to $17 billion, Uganda’s from $3.6 billion to $4.4 billion, Tanzania’s from $8.2 billion to $9.5 billion, and Rwanda’s from $1.9 billion to $2.3 billion.

East Africa has seen steady economic growth over the past decade, but opinions are divided as to whether this will continue in the immediate future. A very large proportion of government spending in each of the countries goes to paying the salaries of civil servants, and in order to find sufficient money to cover infrastructure, health, education and security, each of the governments will be relying on borrowed money.

Tanzania has already borrowed around $2 billion from various banks to fund a range of infrastructure projects, and plans to borrow another $800 million from international debt markets. Kenya is going to experience a significant increase in government expenses in the coming year with the establishment of 47 new county governments, as required by the new Constitution. The East African countries are all betting that significant economic growth will enable them to repay the loans.