BABU’S BABIES TSOTSIED!

Kenya should have won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2004’s Babu’s Babies written and directed by Christine Bala. Compare it to Gavin Hood’s South African Oscar award winning film Tsotsi. The reason why the later won and the former is relatively unknown is a lesson for every script writer, for everything else about them is so similar.

In Babu’s Babies, Babu Mereka aka Baba Juma, a driver in a coffee warehouse, is sent on an errand but diverts the company van to use as a public taxi, only to realise someone has dumped a white-fathered black-mothered infant in it, and he spends the rest of the film saddled with the motherless child. Tsotsi, whose name translates to ‘Gangster thug’ in south African street language, steals a car only to realise that there is an infant in the back seat, and for the rest of the film he too is saddled with it.

And the similarities do not end there. Babu lives in a low class income area, Tsotsi in the shanties. Babu carries the infant in a basket at some point in the film, Tsotsi carries the kid in a shopping paperbag all through. Both Babu and Tsotsi have comic moments whey they try to feed their infant ‘burdens’ with commercial milk. Both Babu and Tsotsi struggle to change the child’s diapers. Both Babu and Tsotsi don't want people to know that they have an infant in their care. And Both Babu and Tsotsi leave the child in care of a neighbouring woman for a period. Babu and Tsotsi who are portrayed as uncaring people at the start of the films end up being sentimentally attached to the child by the time the film ends.

So with all these similarities, how come Babu’s Babies did not get even a quarter of the worlds and even Africa’s attention that Tsotsi got? (despite Zimbabwe’s Ben Zulu being involved?) It can’t have anything to do with the acting, Ian Kaburu as Babu the broke company driver is as convincing as Presley Chweneyagaye as the ruthless young thug with a soft heart that no one had noticed.


The answer is that the script’s depths in Tsotsi were definitely deeper than in Babu’s Babies. By depth we don't mean that Babu was not well written, it was very well written by East Africa’s and indeed Africa’s standards, the reason why it was a project in the (now defunct?) African Development Script Fund.

The thing that Tsotsi capitalised on, making it such a gripping story, is raising the stakes for all the characters by creating extreme opposites in each situation. Contrasting the worlds at all levels, from economic, psychological and sexual, makes one understand more the urgency for the main character to do something fast or else, and makes one fear what would happen next, and generally made Gavin Hood smile at handling the golden naked statuette (whose sex isn’t moulded.)

Just look at it. Tsotsi is a ruthless killer, a youthful thug who doesn’t hesitate to kill. What better opposite than to make him take care of an innocent, sinless, voiceless, physically weak infant? Tsotsi is a single male criminal, why not give him Miriam the wide eyed, innocent looking lady (superbly acted by Terry Pheto ) to start having sentimental talks with? The child comes from the new very affluent neighbourhood where Tsotsi stole the car from its mother as she waited for the electric gate to open. Now what? Take the kid to the slums, the one roomed rusty metal contraption that Tsotsi calls home. Dangerous, noisy, violent, and dark, so opposite from the posh, electric gate, wine-racked, many roomed mansion that its parents live in.

Now you really start feeling for the kid, and wonder whether Tsotsi will kill it as he has beaten his best friend ‘Boston’ to a pulp or as he has killed even ‘Butcher’, his comrade in thuggery. But Gavin sidetracks and doesn’t dwell now on Tsotsi’s badness but its opposite: kindness, sentimentality, love undercurrents.

On Babu’s side, Babu already has a wife Rita (averagely acted by Lorna Irungu) and two children, one of whom needs medicine for Malaria. Babu, apart from his lack of money, doesn’t really come out as a mean guy from the very beginning. Leaving him with a child doesn’t raise the stakes. For one, while tsosti didn’t know how to feed the child, and doesn’t know how to change diapers, so that we have a tense moment when Tsotsi tears at the diapers to change him and comic moments as he tries to shut him up, for Babu these things are easy to do. So what are the stakes here? Why keep watching when there are no major obstacles for the main character?

We don't see where the infant left with Babu originates from, so we can’t feel whether when Babu goes with it to his estate the infant has entered another lower world or if the child was from a meaner ghetto and now is in a more safer area. It is no accident that Gavin Hood cuts from scenes of the infant with Tsotsi in the shanty town to those of the father in his posh residence.

While Bala has Babu buy milk from a street kiosk, Gavin has Tsotsi hold a woman (Miriam)hostage at GUNPOINT and force her to breastfeed the infant. Raising the stakes, that is the difference. What drama does one want if not a suckle at gun point, I mean people get guns pointed at them for their mobile phones or their cars or their cash, but a tit or the bullet? This was my first, and it was exciting, adrenaline was flowing thinking is the milk really that precious, is Miriam going to dilly dally and get shot because of breast milk, oh my God!


But Tsotsi is not all about angst and violence and Tsotsi trying to figure out how to stay with the kid. The film has breather scenes of sentimentality, digging deeper into the characters and their relationship with their immediate world; building three dimensional characters rather than cut out cardboard figurines. Babu’s Babies lacked these moments of passion, moments of breathing between Babu and his wife Rita. From the word go to the end of the film Rita and Babu are biting at each other with angry words and sarcasm. Well, it started out fine, but like an orchestra that has a song starting on the high notes and screaming them to the end, with no low notes to give a breather, it became constipating. That is why when Rita runs to her parents when she suspects Babu of cheating on her, there are no tears in our eyes, those oh my God and the way their relationship was so lovely why do they have to divorce? In a nutshell, if the screen writer had built a lovey dovey relationship between the two, then when they separate we would know what they have lost. Contrast this with the moment Tsotsi jeopardises his life with the cops at the gate. My mind first did not think of him in danger, but of the dangerous loneliness Miriam would have loosing a man with whom sparks of love were exploding. “Here she goes loosing another man, who similarly went and in the evening didn’t return,” was what brought tears to my eyes.

When Tsotsi gets taunted by children who will be the next generation of thugs yet he has lived in the same pipes they now live in, when the foul mouthed kids laugh at him yet he is a dangerous criminal, there is a look Tsotsi Tshegwaye gives them where he sees himself in them that doesn’t need words. Raising the stakes through opposites: Hopelessness is recycling itself. They see themselves as heroes wishing to live a life he has already lived and seen as not heroic.

What about when the cripple in the Railway station says that he still wants to live on so as “to feel the sun on his fingers?” how poetic in such squalid un-poetic surroundings full of darkness, gambling with life and of death? And Tsotsi with gun as he holds Miriam hostage and talks of the broken glass but is taken through lessons of “I see light and beauty on your face?” I mean, opposites raise the stakes. At the moments of danger and death, simple beautiful things are talked about, heightening the sense of danger and drama because for you to appreciate beauty, you must rate it against ugliness.

Like a well conducted Orchestra, the Tsotsi script writer takes us high then low. Just when we think Tsotsi is softening he swings us up and makes Tsotsi kill his comrade Butcher; reminding us of how he also ‘fucked up Boston real bad’ and how Aaap might be the next. This unpredictability in Tsotsi’s emotions are well written.

Audiences love good people, that is why they love Tsotsi, not because Tshenagwaye is handsome (is that why he is called Presley as in Elvis?) but because despite his gangsta nature, he seeks to do a good thing. Tsotsi gets stranded with an infant after a robbery, it is dangerous for him to keep it as it can lead police to him, It is embarrassing to his tough guy image in the gangsta land to be seen with it, he doesn’t know any girlfriend to clean it, he has every reason not to keep it, BUT HE CHOOSES TO KEEP IT. Babu gets stranded with an infant, it is not dangerous for him to keep it as he could have driven to the next police station and handed it in as a lost and found child, he has a wife who can clean it, he has children who can play with it, he has every reason to keep the baby, but HE WANTS TO DUMP IT. Who will the audience love?

The raising of the stakes is lacking even when Babu is told to take the parcel to the MD as it is crucial to the boardmeeting just before he greedily detours to do a taxi ride and get stranded with the baby at the end of the ride. The cruciality of the parcel is ‘talked’ about not ‘shown’, and even then it is talked after Babu has suffered delays delivering the parcel and is back in the office. The importance of the parcel is not even specified, we are just told it was important. But for Tsotsi, time is of essence, we are shown how crucial every second is when we realise John the father to the kid is an important rich man who orders police to track Tsotsi down. With this simple urgency every moment counts for Tsotsi and hence the urgency and confusion of his movements.

While Tsotsi raises the stakes by dragging you bang into the life of Tsotsi the thug whom we don't even know his name till three quarters of the film later, Babu’s Babies spends most of its time with the back story, taking almost twenty minutes to tell you how broke Babu is. In Tsotsi the back story is subtly hinted out when Tsotsi says he has once seen a dog with a broken back, then gently revealed halfway through that he is from a AIDS suffering mother and abusive father. But Babu has too much backstory of Babu’s brokenness. Babu quarrels with wife over lack of medicine, he goes to neighbour Nora and talks of his brokenness, then goes to office crying I am broke give me an advance, then cries to his friends in the coffee warehouse, we go back home again with him crying to wife oh no money yet, then the pub where his beer is watery from the tears of brokenness, then house again where wife asks for medicine, then the following morning he is woken up with ultimatums find money and medicine or else, oh God. How many scenes are those, do they really advance the story or do they have a stuttering effect? Tsotsi’s action in just one opening scene in the train and we know we better not fuck around with him, he is a dangerous thug.

The danger the infant is in is well illuminated in Tsotsi when he feeds it on canned milk and forgets to clean it up, and on coming back finds the infant attacked by an army of ants on its face. (opposites: beauty and innocence Vs Ugliness and terror) But the way Babu’s friend Jimmy lays the infant as they attempt to dump it in a garbage dump is too neat and clean and doesn’t evoke as much sympathy and terror that the kid is in. The best tension in Bab’s is when the Matatu (public transport van) tout takes the basket with the infant in it and swings it around as he hangs dangerously out of the dangerously driven vehicle. For Tsotsi, the stakes are high in many places, right to the very end when we think a crazy cop might try to shoot Tsotsi and he in turn would use the infant as a human shield to catastrophic results.

The soundtrack of the Tsotsi also goes a long way in raising the stakes in the story. Throbbing Kwaito beats, with its ‘almost Rock’ guitar beats, give a sense of raw urgency as well as the chants of the rapper. Babu’s Babies has a jazzy feeling in Eric Wainaina’s benga influenced ‘Nchi ya kitu kidogo’, with Eric’s silky voice creating a sense of calmness and smoothness. Contrast with Tsotsi’s rough Kwaito in -your-face music that creates a sense of confrontation and attitude, and you immediately get the feel of an unstable ghetto environment.

The sub stories for Tsotsi enhance the stakes: Tsotsi’s haunting childhood, violence in the streets, gangland politics and the competition between Tsotsi and Fela for supremacy, police zeal, ghetto betrayal; and loyalty between Aap and fellow thugs etc. it is a social commentary on the economic disparities, and how it hardens people. But for Babu’s, the sub stories infact burden the stakes. His lack of money, his lack of money, his lack of money.

At the end of the film, Tsotsi has a real character journey. We grow with him from a mean street smart thug to a sentimental, cornered, softie. What a contrast. Babu? Well, he started off a poor guy and ends up still poor, no inner character journey change. No contrasts.

Tsotsi, despite it being a Babu’s Babies look alike, gets its greatness from a superb script that justaposes contrasts to heighten stakes. It is a lesson that many screen writers need to learn from. Contrasts heighten stakes and bring drama. The people we cry for most when they die were the ones who were liveliest when we knew them.

So when is the Kenyan Oscar coming?

WHEN WE FINALLY COLONISE AMERICA

Preamble: I have been sent by the Parliament of Drunkards with this Hansard of the proceedings that take place at the People’s Parliament, that is Njuguna’s Bar, mostly on late night past closing hours. We normally lock ourselves with a bottle of Bozoi Vodka as the Official Mace, which is carried by the sergeant at Arms Mr Ole Tukkoi, whose official job is the night guard at the pub. The speaker is the Bar Man, Davie, whose day job is sleeping, night job is serving at the pub and collecting tips, and late night job after official closing (grave yard shift) job is being the speaker of our parliament which means indicating who is to talk next and also making sure we don't raise our voices too high for the police patrol to come knocking. Since all drunkards once they have drunk all their money will always blame the government for the bad state of the economy, there is no Leader of Government Business.

When we as Africans finally colonise America and in extension the rest of Europe we will force Gucci and Yves St Laurent to sit together in a warehouse and sew their clothes together. There is no need go be divided. American artefacts can sell better if the fashion houses join hands. We will pay them peanuts, and I mean literally pan-roasted peanuts from Bungoma because there is no need to pay Dollars when peanuts offer food for the stomach. After all, we will be teaching the Americans enterprise skills and building a work ethic among them. We will then market Gucci bracelets to the Maasai and the Zulus as authentic Inca Traditional wear common among the Aztec. Who cares if Gucci is French and Inca are South American? America shall be known as a far off country (continents, countries, what is the difference? Americans themselves don't even know geography, they think Nigeria is the capital City of Kampala so why teach them geography when we colonise them?)

We shall arrange interviews on the voice of Africa (as we shall rename VOA); Congo News Network (CNN); and Ougadougu Time to show how a single African Veteran of the Angolan War who lost one hand to a land mine, came to America and single handedly (no pun intended) taught Americans work ethic. “Americans don't have a work ethic” shall be the opening statement to all African entrepreneurs who migrate to our colony, America, and make them work for peanuts. “They sit in offices all day chatting on the internet and using computers to design clothes. We Africans, the Cradle of civilisation, use our brains and our sweat; we flex our muscles till we produce clothes, working from 6am-8pm.” Here he will pause, and wearing a look of pity, say “I collected a few stock market women from Wall Street and told them instead of lazing around drinking cappuccino and mourning about men till 9 pm they can better that time and sew clothes. That way they would earn money to buy food for their children and no longer be under the control of American men who are all gender insensitive.” If this is a woman saying the above, we shall omit the fact that she came to America on Safari and hunted a white American man in Malibu Beach to satisfy her curiosity about their famed sexual prowess only to discover he had a white wife back in his rural Kansas hometown. Since Congolese love fancy clothes to look ethnic French, they would import Gucci by millions.

We will start Non Governmental Organisations (NGO’s) in America, headed by Africans, and funded by donor organisations the most prominent of which shall be the Bantu Bank (which shall replace the embarrassingly uncivilised Ford Foundation.) Bantu Bank, as the name suggests, shall fund all grassroots developmental organisations in America provided they are founded by the Bantu people or other African races that share the similar characteristics of being black.

Top on the list of possible funding shall be media. As such we shall form organisations like Media For Education in America (MEDIAE) where we will send our bush doctors to impart the latest Film and Television production skills to Americans who are really not bad people, who really love TV, but don't have Media Schools to teach them the art of looking into a pot full of water and see what is happening a kilometre away. We shall laugh at their Sofa set productions like Larry King Live, silly comedies like Friends, and un-believable movies like Titanic. We Africans don't like such things, so come on gather the directors of such programmes and teach them real skills. But the way to teach Media skills is not to teach advanced production skills to anyone. In all interviews where this question is raised the answer is ready. “Oh, you know we want to teach them quality TV production but we can’t teach them advanced production skills because really, most of them don't own water pots anyway. Imagine, their most famous director Steven Spielberg has never invested in a water pot! Those who own them don't know how to use them properly, so the picture quality isn’t very clear like in the water of Lake Victoria. Most images in America are coloured instead of black and white and the America government has for a long time banned use of water pots, insisting on using water taps which the locals call faucets, reason being the government can easily control the amount of water and even water contend in their taps. Big Man Syndrome. Every broadcast around here starts with ‘George Bush has taken the war against terrorism a notch higher…. Etc.”

To achieve all this we need support from a reputable statistics organisation. So we will do away with the Gallup Pollsters and form SteadyMan Ltd which all donor agencies can turn to to have statistics tailored to suit their needs. Doctored Numbers, that is the in-thing. (so one donor can rush to Bantu Bank and say that obesity is the number one killer of Americans according to the recently released Steadyman statistics released last week and two hours later an African can start another NGO saying Starvation is the number one killer of Americans according to the recently released Steadyman statistics released last week… and in another two hours….


We shall never show the images of smiling Americans because that is not interesting to the World audience which actually means African Audience. Angry Americans smashing mobile phones on walls as their primitive market that they call the stock market crashes is the image we shall preach. As a way of showing their primitive war instincts where they can’t get the sense of civilised diplomacy but exhibit their war tendencies, we shall count on our fingers all the wars the Americans have fought. Oh my God! They even raided Iraq to get such a simple thing like oil! Oil-Rustlers, that is what those of the Texas Tribe are taught from a young age. They say it is cultural, but what they need is Christianity (or is it Nkosinity?). If any Texan asks why in their colonial mother country Africa the Kenyan Turkanas raid the Karamajong of Uganda to get cattle, we shall say we do no such thing. Turkanas only go to Karamajong to fight terrorism and take cattle back home because we are promoting democracy all over the world. Reconstruction of the infrastructure among Karamajong will need money, so we take their cattle to cover the costs of rebuilding Karamajong. On a larger scale, if the Ranchers of Texas and other cattle rearing states of America rear so much cattle, we shall declare that none of our cattle shall be slaughtered for beef. We shall therefore say that George Bush is rearing weapons of mass destruction and form a coalition of Democracy which shall include Uganda’s Karamajong, Kenyan Maasai, West Africa’s Yoruba, Hausa’s and Berbers from North Africa and with the Zulu in South Africa selling us the latest weapons in the spear industry i.e the short handheld spear called the Assegai, declare a hunt for Bush the terrorist, and swoop down Texas. Double results: We shall test whether the Assegais are effective in close combat, and we shall get enough cows to make beef to feed our insatiable appetite back home.

In case the Assegais don't prove as effective as we think and Texas repels us in prairie warfare, we shall fund North Carolina to secede from America. We shall give them military aid for a coup in Texas, look for the local thug in Texas and give him an un-ceasing supply of spears while praising him as a messenger of democracy. In other words, we shall praise him as “our boy in Texas” who is spreading democracy in that state so brutalised by the Bush Dictatorship. “How can a country like America be ruled by a father and then his son takes over? That is not democracy. Americans need to learn that ruling the country is not a family thing. Imagine Bill Clinton’s wife wants to rule too! Jesus!” Ooops , sorry, we shall swear by our Gods, so more like Nyasaye! Or Amadioha! Or Ogun!

If George Bush hides, we shall place sanctions on him and 40 years later if he is still alive due to Texas oil we shall broadcast on CNN (Congo News Network) that our CIA (Chimurenga Intellligence Agency) have copies of medical certificates that he is down with a constipation that looks fatal. Just to show that this is good news Americans living in exile in Chad shall be choreographed to dance in the sand dunes of the Sahara in joy over the impending death of Bush. Bush shall be called a Republican and that word shall be said with repulsion. Fighting Republicanism shall be our cold war rallying cry, our God sent agenda on this world, and Fidel Castro our ally in the Americas shall be the head of the Anti-Republicanism Operations.

To fight the menace of Republicanism we shall use NGOs, which shall only be registered if they bear names that have the suffix or is it prefix ‘Community Based NGO’. Since Americans can’t run such sophisticated organisations, those damn natives, we shall staff all NGOs in our American colony with African Expatriates. Only the front office receptionists shall be white and the drives too, so that the visible face of the NGOs can be white. If anyone asks why it is ‘community based’ and yet all decisions are made and executed by black Africans we shall sit in a bar under a mango tree in Bujumbura where one can see stars above and be able to identify at least five star constellations (hence the name Under the Mango Tree 5 star Hotel) and laugh as we drink Libondo Palm Wine tapped in the Congo. “These bloody natives in America can’t make their own decisions to solve their own problems, so why should American Human Rights Commission complain that NGOs are predominantly African staffed?” To prove that Americans can’t afford to run NGOs, we shall ask ourselves “How many American natives can you see who can afford to come eat in this Under The Mango Tree Hotel? They don't even know the difference between the Libondo palm wine from the Congo and the one that comes from Mombasa called Mnazi or the one from the palm trees in the Ivory Coast. To them palm wine is palm wine! With such a mentality, can they really discern different ways of solving problems?” “Yeah!” I can hear some one else laughing, “I can say this here among you fellow blacks but I can’t repeat it anywhere else for fear of being labelled Racist. But Prof Masekhela from the University of Pretoria has just made a breakthrough in his studies indicating that the Native American, infact all whites, have a lower IQ than us. Using studies carried out in Pretoria and the University of Yaoundé Cameroon, they have discovered that Brain power is proportional to the size of our buttocks, and since Americans naturally don't have huge protruding buttocks like ours, that is visible proof enough for us to say that it goes without saying that their brains are inferior to ours.!” “Hear Hear!” we shall shout and give instances why Prof Masekhela should be awarded a Nobel (Or a Mandela, for that matter.) Americans can’t mend a broken pipe in their own houses; they have to call a plumber. An American was stranded for a whole night in Lamu because he couldn’t force a donkey to move! What? He said he doesn’t know how to use a donkey, as if that is any news. No, but even with their own modes of transport, an American was stranded a whole night in Missouri because he couldn’t repair the puncture to his own car! He had to call a mechanic! But couldn’t he have driven home on that rim and buy a new one the following day to replace the spoilt one? I tell you! Americans!

“Yesterday I met two American girls studying here who said they have never seen a live chicken!” The Mozambican Bantu Bank Country Director for the State of Oregon shall laugh. What? Who doesn’t know a live chicken in Africa? Hahahahhahahahahahah! Surely, we need to educate Americans or else the bastards might die of starvation not having realised chicken is food.

We shall flatten the Empire State Building. If our grandchildren during their times want to visit those ruins we shall let them, but no way are we going to leave those towers standing for future generations to realise Americans had civilisations and even built houses to rival ours. We shall glorify Mwene Mutapa ruins in Zimbabwe as colossal examples of African architecture.(If we capture Spielberg alive he shall direct Mwene Mutapa: The Ndebele starring Russel Crowe whom we have already identified after his role in Gladiator. No, Djimoun Honsou will star, Crowe will act as the antagonist white cruel King who Ndebele vanquishes in the great fight choreographed in front fo the Victoria Falls (which we shall re-name Mama Rucy Kibaki Falls)

When we, Africans, finally colonise America, we shall force them to stop eating rice and vegetables. Matoke from Uganda is more nutritious. Zulu cuisine is better, or better still Maasai meat and blood to give them energy to run long distances. How the hell do they think they will ever win the Boston Marathon those Americans while feeding on burgers? Infact, Boston Marathon shall be run in Windhoek Namibia and shall only be hosted in Boston to celebrate 100 years since Africa organised the Boston Marathon under the banner ‘Boston Comes Home: The 100th Edition Of The Greatest Marathon On Earth.’

We shall start Zulu cuisine restaurants in New York and Chicago, and the emblem of the Zulu ribbed Buffalo hide shield shall be the mark of how far Americans have become civilised. All American teenagers will be rushing to Zulu fast food chains for their romances, and if a town doesn’t have such restaurants we shall not include in a map. Once that is done, even when Americans become independent politically, unemployed Ibo and Yoruba women from West Africa can rush to New York and Chicago and Beverly Hills and start theme restaurants in converted residential areas where they shall serve Foo Foo and Ogege at ridiculous overpriced prices simply because American middle class will believe that a way to show you are civilised is to take your dates to an African Cuisine restaurant where your wallet is robbed without violence by the figures on your bill and the half emptiness on your stomach.

All inventions by Newton, Columbus etc shall be erased from history books and declared simple machinations that any Achebe, Mariama Ba' or Lumumba could have easily made. The National Conservatoire of Music shall study Oliver Mutukuzi’s guitar wizardry and organize yearly concerts to show fellow white Americans how un-musical they are; playing Todii and Mutserendende and Dzoka Uyamwe( in the key of acoustic guitar) over and over again.

When we, Africans, finally colonise America we shall force them to learn Swahili in their universities. Swahili shall be the international language the world over, with Yoruba as another alternative since Nigerians love it so. (Gikuyu shall also be available just because Ngugi wa Thiong’o shall have a fit if we don't rate it.) No university in America shall teach in any other language but Swahili, but we will be considerate enough to give them a token ‘Department of American Studies’ in Yale and Harvard where those interested can learn of Shakespeare, James Joyce and Hemmingway. Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison shall be canonical books written by blacks who sacrificed to live in America, and who give us expert insights into American life. It doesn’t matter what Americans think of themselves, if Morrison says a Chicago man loves playing cowboy and hence is not intelligent that shall be the truth. We shall even form a Doreen Baingana Museum in the flat that she lives in and have a Baingana Golf Club next to it, furnished with Furniture from the Karen Blixen Museum. Any African wishing to go to America shall read Baingana’s books to understand American’s better from our elevated African Civilized point of View.

If Americans want to learn of their culture, arts, languages and literatures, they shall beg us for scholarships to come to University of Lagos, University of Durban, and University of Nairobi which shall be said to have ‘strong American Cultural Studies Departments’. Universidade in Mozambique shall infact have a School for American and Occidental Studies (SOAS) which shall be stocked with All American writing most of which would not be available in America itself. To qualify to study American Studies in these Universities Americans will have to write papers on Hemmingway’s copying of Kikuyu Landscapes to influence the strength of his books or such papers like ‘Swahili Syntax and How It Made Moby Dick Stylistically Better’. These papers will have to be presented in Swahili or Ibo, the only other internationally recognised language once we colonise America.

We shall not, as Africans, enslave Americans and bring them here to work in slave plantations. Such was the pain we underwent we shall never wish it upon any race.

However, we shall send canoes to rescue Chris Rock and other blacks who have been Prisoners of Race in that country for generations.

All American States will pay allegiance to Mugabe, who shall also conquer Blair and rule over Britain as a Zimbabwean Protectorate. Blair shall be captured for abusing Mugabe and Congo News Network shall declare Blair a terrorist who doesn’t like Civilisation. Blair shall die in exile among the Eskimos, alone and Forsaken. Maybe Sinn Fein and the Irish shall resist Mugabe and British be granted Independence, but there after we shall erase all mention of Sinn Fein’s struggle for Independence in history books. But even when that happens we the Mother Country I mean Continent shall conveniently forget where we buried Tony Blair so as not to allow his body ever being brought back to Westminster Abbey for burial. They can name all the streets in London after him if that makes them happy, but no hero-worshiping for a terrorist who resisted Africa colonising the world.


We shall rescue black Americans from Harlem, Bronx and Mississipi and start an Afro State for them in Chechnya, where they shall forever fight surrounding Kurds. We the Africans shall supply them with arms for the wars.

We shall baptize Americans with black names. Moi Raila Reagan. Museveni Clinton. Waangari Maathai Rice, nee Condoleeza. Mengistu Edgar Haile Hoover, Mobutu Sese Seko Bush senior. Mobutu Sese Seko Babangida Bush the son (he shall have to convert to at least one traditional African religion before we hang him one 30th of December for Crimes against Humanity. He let our Brothers in Katrina die, he signed the documents for the Iraq invasion, he ordered his army to bomb Baghdad, he tried to occupy Afghanistan…etc.)


Ah! When we finally colonize America.

This debate ended when the mover realised all the others were dead drunk and were in a black out state, so he walked home still ranting and we couldn’t hear what he said for transcription. We shall however see if we can ignite it again. There being so much other business, the Parliament adjourned at 4.05 AM.