The Australian Department of Defence has been accused of ignoring the religious beliefs of Australian soldiers killed in World War I currently being re-buried, by assuming they were all Christians. This assumption is a very odd one for the DoD to make, given that the first Australian-born commander of Australian troops, General Sir John Monash, in command of all Australian forces by the end of that war, promoted to General in the field, and knighted on the battlefield (the first such elevation by a British monarch in 200 years), was Jewish. I think the DoD needs to make a change in its burial policy and officially apologize to the affected families.
Archive for February, 2010
Further to my post speculating about Robert Mugabe’s personality, here is some news from The Times about his physiology. Apparently, he nods off to sleep every few minutes, even when meeting foreign visitors. (HT: Normblog)
The Times article mentions the two main contenders for the leadership of ZANU (PF) following Bob’s always-imminently-predicted-but-never-quite-arriving retirement: Emmerson Mnangagwa and Solomon Mujuru. One would think that the Zimbabwean Vice-President, Joice Mujuru, who is likewise a ZANU (PF) nomenklatura, would perhaps also be a contender, but she is married to Solomon, so he takes precedence. She is more famous in Zimbabwe under her chimurenga name, Teurai Ropa (or Spill-Blood) Nhongo, and for leading a team of guerrilla fighters into battle while pregnant. Because she joined the struggle (for Independence) in her teens, she did not finish high-school; to her great personal credit, she completed her O-levels after Independence and while a Cabinet Minister. In the year she did O-level English, a novel by George Orwell was on the syllabus, leading to her infamous stage whisper at the official opening by then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe Institute for Development Studies; when the VIPs were led to a different (and much better) buffet than that provided for the other people present, she was heard by all to exclaim, “But this is just like Animal Farm!”
Her husband also had a loud voice. When I first met him, he was calling himself Rex Nhongo, and I did not then know what he looked like. A mutual friend introduced us using only first names as we happened upon each other buying groceries one evening after work in Twelve Gods, a foodstore and delicatessen in the low-density (ie, formerly whites-only) suburbs of Salisbury (as it then was). Making conversation while we stood in the queue, I asked, “And what do you do for a living, Rex?” In a booming voice which scared the living daylights out of the white customers in the shop, he replied, “Oh, I’m Commander-in-Chief of the Army, son!” Whether intended or not, this statement got the three of us to the front of the queue immediately. The mutual friend who introduced us is now himself a Cabinet Minister, one of the MDC contingent in Zimbabwe’s Cohabitation Government.
UPDATE [2011-09-12]: In August 2011, Rex Nhongo’s body was found after a fire destroyed his farmhouse. He was 62, and may have been killed or prevented from moving prior to the fire. The Guardian obituary is here.
FOOTNOTE:
Note that in maShona custom, a person may be given or may adopt different names over their life, and may prefer different names at different times or for different purposes. In addition, for reasons of security during the liberation struggle many people adopted noms de guerre, so-called chimurenga names.
I wondered here whether Robert Mugabe had been an informant for CIA in the years prior to Zimbabwean Independence in 1980. If so, many strange events in Zimbabwean politics, before and after Independence, would be explained. The thought has now occurred to me that such a relationship, if it had existed, would also explain an odd trait of Mugabe’s personality in the period after his return from exile in December 1979. I realize my thoughts here are pure speculation, and, moreover, speculation about another person’s personality.
Because informants working for espionage agencies provide information on a regular basis to an employee of that agency, informants and their agents often develop quite close relationships. Each has a secret which he or she usually cannot tell to other relatives or friends or colleagues – informants cannot usually divulge their information-passing actions to those around them, and agents usually do not divulge the names of their informants to their fellow employees. Each also has to trust the other to some extent, and so the pair can develop quite a close relationship with one another; examples can be seen in Larry Devlin’s account of his close relationship with Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, and Robert Baer’s account of his time working for CIA in the Middle East.
If our Robert had indeed been an informant (paid or unpaid) for CIA, then we would probably expect the agency to release him from that relationship when he was elected Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. If he had developed a close relationship with his agency handler, then becoming PM would mean he would no longer have a close, neutral confidant. Is this then why Mugabe became close to Lord Christopher Soames, the temporary Governor sent by Britain to oversee the election and the transfer of power at Independence? Their relationship became so close that Mugabe asked Soames to stay on (as Governor? as President?) for a couple of years after Independence, a request Soames declined. Is this also why Mugabe met weekly with his political enemy, Ian Smith, for about 18 months following Independence? Until it fell apart in 1981, their relationship was sufficiently close that they were able to dance with each other’s wives at official functions, such as the ball held for the African Parliamentary Union meeting in Zimbabwe in 1981.
The closeness of both these relationships (Mugabe-Soames, Mugabe-Smith) has always struck me as odd. But, if true, an ex-informant seeking another regular confidant could explain them both.
References:
Robert Baer [2002]: See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism. Crown Publishing Group.
Larry Devlin [ 2007]: Chief of Station, Congo. New York, NY, USA: Public Affairs.
These are some notes on deciding to do a PhD, notes I wrote some years ago after completing my own PhD.
Choosing a PhD program is one of the hardest decisions we can make. For a start, most of us only make this decision once in our lives, and so we have no prior personal experience to go on.
Second, the success or otherwise of a PhD depends a great deal on factors about which we have little advanced knowledge or control, including, for example:
I am a great fan of the writing of Richard Brautigan, so I was delighted once to encounter a short reminiscence of Brautigan by that Zelig of the Beats, Pierre Delattre, in his fascinating memoir, Episodes (page 54):
The last time I saw him [RB], we were walking past the middle room of his house. There was a table in there with a typewriter on it. ”Quiet,” he whispered, pushing me ahead of him into the kitchen. “My new novel’s in there. I kind of stroll in occasionally, write a quick few paragraphs, and get out before the novel knows what I’m doing. If novels ever find out you’re writing them, you’re done for.”
Reference:
Pierre Delattre [1993]: Episodes. St. Paul, MN, USA: Graywolf Press.
Belatedly, I have just learnt of the death last month of George Leonard (1923-2010), writer, journalist, and aikidoka. He took up aikido in middle age, a journey he wrote about movingly (see reference below), and ended up co-founding Aikido of Tamalpais. His writings on life, the universe and everything have been very influential in my thinking about life, as I acknowledge here.
The New York Times has an obit here, Quantum Tantra a tribute here, and Paul Rest here.
Reference:
George Leonard [1985]: On getting a black belt at age fifty-two. pp. 78-98 in: Richard Strozzi Heckler (Editor) [1985]: Aikido and the New Warriors. Berkeley, CA, USA: North Atlantic Books. This volume also contains a reprint of Leonard’s fine and inspiring account of Heckler’s aikido black belt examination, “This isn’t Richard” (pp. 198-205).