South Africa Blogosphere

Zimbabwe: The End of the Beginning

I have noticed quite a few comments finding their way back to the site regarding Zimbabwe, Mugabe, and the general state of things between the Limpopo and the Zambezi. While this is a travel site and not a political blog, the two concepts have a certain symbiosis thanks to the fact that politics in the liberation zone often has cultural overtones, so let me air my own thoughts on Mugabe, for what they are worth, and how things are and how they went wrong.

In the Beginning

Before 1980 Zimbabwe was Rhodesia. Before 1890 it was Matabeleland. Associated with Matabeleland was a large area to the north known as Mashonaland which existed more or less to breed Mashonas in order that the Matabele (Ndebele) could kill them. For the Mashona in particular life at that time was brutal, unpredictable, and usually short. The Matabele were a monarchical society ruled by the dynastic succession of Mzilikazi, father of the nation, and later his son Lobengula. The Mashona were a far less cohesive nation, that, although they had at one time been part of an impressive regional empire known as the Mwane Mutapa, had been reduced somewhat by age and circumstance to a weak confederation of clans and language affiliates, with no central leadership, no standing army and certainly no viable means to stand up to the centrally governed, highly aggressive and militant Matabele.

Date: April 26th, 2008 | No Comments

SA Logue: Now on Technorati (We Hope!)

The purpose of this post is to get a Technorati web crawler to “see” the following link:

Technorati Profile

But since I have to publish the linke as proper a post, let me take this opportunity to introduce you to other bits of SA Logue on what I call the “meta-Web” - that part of the WWW that is dedicated to looking at itself in a more info-oriented way, largely for social networking purposes. If you’re interested in getting to know this travelogue on the “meta-Web”, why not click over to some of our blogtracking, bookmarking and photo sharing …

Date: July 17th, 2006 | No Comments

Crime Site Makes Everyone Go “Eeek”

SA Logue feels obliged to note the fact that, on the day of Germany’s World Cup handover to South Africa, the pressure on crackpots to cash in on 2010 is becoming almost unbearable, and many are starting to succumb.

They’re also unbearable, unfortunately - the crackpots, I mean. Consider the case of one Neil Watson. He has decided to grace our local blogosphere with the equivalent of a celebrity website for criminal acts. In what amounts to electronic vigilantism, he has made it his purpose in life to ambush the 2010 organizing team, the SA government, and fairly well anyone else who dares to consider South Africa in a positive light.

Date: July 7th, 2006 | 10 comments

Link Love: Someamongus

In honor of Thabo Mbeki’s State of the Nation Address later today, SA Blog introduces readers to Someamongus.

Someamongus keeps an astute, if slighty grumpy blog on a range of subjects South African - especially SA politics - but his particular specialty is our president.

The blogger’s name (I’m guessing it’s a he), which sounds like a newly-discovered dinosaur, derives from the presdent’s habitual, quasi-cryptic references to some among us South Africans: those who, in Mbeki’s eyes, prevent progress and transformation through nefarious means, especiaily griping.

It occurs to SA Blog that some among us is ungrammatical in many situations, such …

Date: February 3rd, 2006 | No Comments

Link Love: Wesley’s Travel Blog

Wesley writes various complimentary words about SA Blog, so we’d like to return the favor with some Link Love. You can visit his own travel blog here. He’s working on an overview of SA at the moment - top sights and destinations for tourists - whereas SA Blog’s own strategy is to beam an electron microscope at every particle that drifts across its consciousness. Bottom up, top down - we’ll meet somewhere in the middle, Wes!

Date: January 12th, 2006 | 4 comments