Tackling Institutional Racism

I had the great pleasure this morning of meeting and listening to Imran Khan (as he joked, no, he’s not that other famous Imran Khan, the former legendary Pakistan cricketer and ex-husband to Jemima Goldsmith), the highly regarded human rights lawyer probably best known for representing the family of Stephen Lawrence, the black young man who was murdered by racist thugs in South London in 1993.

That eponymous and long struggle to achieve justice brought to the fore the deep rooted institutional racism that was endemic in London’s Metropolitan police force.

I won’t reproduce Imran’s entire excellent speech at this morning’s conference on racism in Dublin, but he made some very salient points, on how to deal with and tackle institutional racism, most of which you could say are a given, but always worth repeating and emphasising every now and then.

The following ten points (in bold & italics), he believed, were essential in tackling and challenging institutional racism wherever and whenever it reared its ugly.

I suppose in certain parts of Africa, particularly Southern Africa, where I’m originally from, you could also easily substitute racism with tribalism, which is another societal and social scourge that needs to be tackled.

1) Recognise and acknowledge that racism exists: In some countries, especially here in Ireland, there has been an apparent reluctance at official/political level to publicly acknowledge that racism exists at all or that it is a problem. In fact some very ill informed and feckless politicians, who do grudgingly admit that racism is a problem in Ireland, have the brass neck to imply that racism only became an issue when black people started migrating to Ireland in the 1990s.

2) Adopt a reality spectrum: Understand and acknowledge the lived reality of those who suffer directly from racism. Suspend the disbelief.

3) Treat people according to their specific needs: It shouldn’t always be about treating everyone equally. Nor should it ever be about tolerance either. Once you tolerate others, the implication is that there is something negative about them, that your tolerance is showing them a kindness.

4) Introduce affirmative action: This always divides opinion which sometimes is based on gender or racial lines. Usually those who are vehemently opposed to affirmative action insist on a meritocracy that conveniently ignores centuries of white (usually male) privilege which totally ignores the considerable barriers that black people (and women) have faced for centuries and in many cases still do. I personally am not a fan of blanket affirmative action, but realise that it may be necessary in certain circumstances as long as capable and qualified minorities are given a chance to progress.

5) Good Leadership: Especially at political and at service provision level (police, immigration, health service, etc). Good leadership sets the tone on how the rest of society deals with racism.

6) Diversity/anti-racism training: Basically ensure that people are aware how detrimental and debilitating racism is to the victims and generally raise awareness. Promote the positives about diversity in society but also develop ways with which to deal with the issues that may cause misunderstandings and conflict between different cultures and races.

7) Exert your rights: Challenge racism wherever you find it.

8) Adopt human rights agenda: We are all entitled to our human rights.

9) Institutions must learn to acknowledge mistakes: No matter how big or powerful, institutions, especially those that are there to serve the public (police, health service, social services, etc) should have the humility to acknowledge mistakes and not be prone to cover-ups.

10) Integrate equalities in everyday life: Equality should not be an abstract concept.

It's About The Children, Silly!

If judged solely on the basis of how it has gone massively viral online, the KONY 2012 campaign by the American nonprofit organisation, Invisible Children, has been a rip roaring success. As I write this, there have been well over 50 million views of the video on You Tube and Vimeo.


If you are one of those steadfast souls that conscientiously avoid jumping on bandwagons and opening any old viral web-clips that are bombarded into your inboxes, timelines and virtual walls, then you likely have not viewed this web phenomenon. Even then, unless you are hopelessly illiterate or never listen to news or have never opened a newspaper in your life, you will have heard or read about this somewhere.


Well, if you still have no knowledge of this somehow, you are not in luck then, because here it is in full.




Basically the half hour video tells the story of tens of thousands of children who have been abducted and turned into child soldiers and sexual slaves by the notorious and despicable Joseph Kony and his cultish militia, the Lord Resistance Army, which has waged a vicious and bloodthirsty reign of terror in northern Uganda and neighbouring countries since the mid 1980s.



The organisation behind this ‘campaign’ argues that they are making Kony ‘famous’ to put pressure on US policymakers to ensure that he is removed. Indeed, even before this online phenomenon, the US had sent in 100 special forces in 2011 to assist the Ugandan army and other countries in the region to hunt down Kony. Reports suggest that he has not been in Uganda for a few years and is probably somewhere in the dense tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo or the Central African Republic.


Why now, is one of the many questions that have been asked? I first became aware of Kony and the LRA back in the 90s when I was working as a journalist in Zimbabwe and was writing a series of articles about Zimbabwe’s involvement in the conflict in the Great Lakes Region (the second Congo War), which pitted the Democratic Republic of the Congo, supported by Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, Chad and Hutu aligned forces against Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tutsi aligned forces. Even though he was not a central figure at all in that conflict, Kony’s name came up a few times, mainly whenever child soldiers were mentioned. Equally attention grabbing was his proclivity to turn Uganda into a theocratic state ruled by his bizarrely self-styled version of the Ten Commandments.



By then, the world had heard about the child soldiers of West African conflicts, particularly in Sierra Leone and Liberia, but for me, it was the sheer scale of Kony’s abductions of children from villages in Northern Uganda and later neighbouring countries that was quite staggering and caught the attention. Estimates range from 30,000 to 66,000 children abducted and brutalised into being child soldiers or sex slaves.



Anyway, the KONY 2012 video or rather the organisation behind now faces the inevitable backlash for something so high profile (a host of well known names have jumped on the bandwagon – Bill Gates, Diddy, Mia Farrow, Juliette Lewis and Zooey Deschanel amongst many others and the video has even received praise from Barack Obama).



Questions have been asked about the motives of the NGO, how it raises and uses its funds resources; why it always should take these ‘pesky western do-gooders’; why cant Africans sort this out themselves (never mind it’s 20 odd years since Kony started his reign of terror); accusations of self promotion by the film-maker; accusations that the discovery of rich oilfields in the region may now finally be focusing attention and resources (US involvement) on something that has been going on since the 1980s without much western involvement or interest and also why nothing has been done to capture Kony after he was indicted by the International Criminal Court at the Hague in 2005.



Lots of valid questions, cynicism and concerns, but my take on this is that by any (legitimate) means necessary, Kony and his ilk must be stopped to save the thousands of children and put an end to the terror that is visited upon them daily.


I work for a big Irish children’s charity and in my work I come across so many children from the developing world lucky enough to have escaped from the clutches of monsters like Kony and it is only when you look into the almost soulless eyes of some of the more traumatised children that you realise that some of these so called principled stands against ‘neo imperialism’, ‘unwarranted western paternalism and interference’, cynicism about the bonafides of seemingly well meaning western charities are mostly selfish self posturing that won’t change much for these children.


Yes, I agree sometimes some of these interventions are naively set out and perhaps I agree to a certain degree that some ‘western’ solutions are not always a perfect fit for African problems but peddling simplistic ideological mantras in response to this campaign should not detract from doing all that is in the best interests of the children.


The focus should be on the bigger picture and if it means that KONY 2012 results in the capture of Kony and the routing of his LRA thugs, then I say well done to those behind the video and I would hope that this is only the start of an effective form of 21st century cyber-based manhunt for the world’s most wanted and despicable tyrants who cause so much untold suffering to so many.


You hear that Assad? ASSAD 2013 is probably being filmed somewhere right now.

When mama meerkat is away…

A couple of weekends ago, the boys were left to their own devices, when Her Gorgeous Self decamped to the neighbouring kingdom to visit her siblings who are Her Majesty’s subjects.

Yes, the long anticipated first solo trip without E finally happened. HGS had finally relented and reluctantly agreed that at this point in time, her precious offspring would be well looked after by his dad for a few days. Hmmm!!

In my mind and only in my mind, this boys only weekend went something like this:

• Dawn to dusk in our comfy PJs (do they have those all-in-one baby jumpsuits for adults?)

• TV remote firmly stuck on the sports channels, volume turned up (none of that Reality TV muck or Jennifer Aniston rom-coms);

• Use the blender to produce concoctions that are probably illegal in Utah or some such place;

• Connecting electronic and entertainment gadgets that normally have no symbiotic relationship whatsoever;

• Chicken wings for breakfast and lunch, ribs for supper all downed with Kombucha;

• Toilet seat up all the time, etc, you get the drift?

In reality, the weekend with my son was one of the best I have had since he was born all those 20 months or so ago. We bonded like never before, mainly because that ‘distraction’ called mummy was nowhere in sight (and with E out of sight is truly out of mind).

As most dads do discover, its all about mummy when she is around and there is less attention on dad (in fact, I would say more like clingy in the toddler years). Of course looking at that list up there, certain things happened: the TV and subwoofer volume was loud and there were certainly less greens on the plate, certain laddish gadgets made a rare apperance, personal hygiene was somewhat parked for the weekend but we had a grand old time.

The absolute glee on E's face when we 'danced' to music, lay on the soft carpet with our feet in the air, played piggyback, played all his favourite nursery ryhmes, ate all sorts of snacks or stayed up a little bit later than usual was just priceless. This fatherhood lark is a peach!! Ahem!!!

Next challenge is to convince mummy that the boys are now ready to take that ‘boys only’ trip to Anfield or perhaps further afield to the F1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi or Singapore.

Now that would be one helluva a weekend!!

An educationalist par excellence

Br Martin Duncan, who passed away, last week in South Africa after a short illness, was an educationalist par excellence. A principled and good man to boot.

And judging by the heartfelt condolence messages posted on various social media by so many old boys he taught over many years, his positive influence seemingly affected hundreds who attended the Christian Brothers schools at Embakwe and Bulawayo in Zimbabwe and CBCs Welkom and Springs in South Africa.

I can certainly say that Br Duncan was one of a handful of educators who shaped and moulded my egalitarian world view early on. He saw leadership qualities in me which I did not realise existed or in fact, truth be told I was too lackadaisical to utilise.

Such was his faith in me that he convinced me to become head prefect in final year of secondary school. I say convinced, because I was not particularly interested in the role, seemingly content in being just a prefect and in the shadows.

Many years later when I became one of the country’s youngest sub-editors at a leading national newspaper, he would remind me of my initial reluctance to take a leadership role and how even back then he realised that I would always be there and thereabouts.

Many were an evening when I would sit down with him in his office and we would discuss events taking place in the school and more generally about what was happening in the wider world. Generally, I can credit him with instilling in me, a keen interest in current and world affairs and a politically inquisitive mind.

I know he was also puzzled by my occasional predilection for rowing with teachers even as he counted me as one of the school’s ‘bright sparks’. Indeed, I was permanently banned from History (in 4^th year) and Maths (in 3^rd year) classes as a result and generally did not endear myself that well to most of the teaching staff, more so when I became head prefect.

Br Duncan was stern when he needed to be (as any principal or head teacher worth their salt can be), but mostly had a smile that set you at ease when you least expected. Like most educators of the era, he had a little ‘whangee’ (a padded little strap for meting out discipline to delinquent pupils). Strangely, despite my subversive relationship with the teaching staff, me and the ‘whangee’ never got acquainted.

I last saw Br Duncan a week or so before I headed for Ireland and he was palpably excited that I was going to the land where his Christian Brothers congregation had been founded by Edmund Rice in the early 19^th century in Waterford, Ireland.

He had lots of advice and most importantly gave me contacts that proved to be invaluable when I landed in Ireland and set about establishing myself.

There are so many young to middle aged men now scattered all over the world who are very thankful that they had the fortune to fall under the considered tutelage of Br Martin Duncan.

May he rest in peace!

The Magic Spoon!

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Well, here we are now (so sang Kurt Cobain). At 15 months, E finally decided that the time was right to try out his little tiny feet at a spot of walking – well wading and bouncing around the house with much glee painted on his face.

Whilst we had been told that there is no real set timeframe for when toddlers decide to start walking, we kinda felt young Master Ethan was taking his sweet, sweet time particularly around the time he turned 14 months.

Then one day, he just got up and started toddling around the house, toppling over harmlessly on his little bum and immediately getting up and setting off again.

Now at 17 months, E reckons he has mastered the simple task of putting one foot after the other and propelling himself forthwith! That – when we are out in open space – mainly entails him launching off in the opposite direction of wherever we are meant to be headed. Stubborn little fella that he is, it’s his way or hit high road mum and dad.

Such is his zest for ‘walking’ that we both reckon if we let him, E would just walk from where we live all the way to Cork, some 256 km away. Frankly, with his favourite peeled apple in one hand and a spoon in the other, I bet he could too!

Ah yes, the spoon. E has thing with spoons. Whilst his contemporaries tug a much cherished teddy, squeaky toy, or some such toddler paraphernalia, E loves his plastic spoons. And I am not talking here of these contraptions that they peddle nowadays that look like a Disney or Pixar character with a little obligatory ‘spoony’ bit at the end – basically a toy that pretends it is also a feeding utensil. No, E’s ‘toy’ this is a basic toddler spoon. 

We have tried to foist on him numerous soft, elaborate and noisy toys which now litter the house, but no, the humble spoon is his soother and calms him down when he is agitated, such that early, he would clutch one whenever we took him out in the car.

We have never figured out why he is attached to a spoon.

More of E’s quirks later…