In less than a month, three different athletic world records which were previously held by Ethiopian athletes have been broken.
It all started in Monaco, France, during the diamond league meeting on August 14 when Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei smashed Ethiopian legend Kenenisa Bekele’s 500m world record that stood for 16 years.
It was a sensational run by the 23-year-old Ugandan who has been making all the headlines on the track in the recent past. Cheptegei registered a new world record by clocking 12:35:36 which is two seconds clear from the 16 years old Bekele’s record of 12:35:36.
Farah destroyed yet another record previously held by Ethiopian athletic legend Geberselasie by running 21:330km in an hour, breaking the previous 21.285km which the Ethiopian registered More than a decade ago. The 37-year-old Somalia born British athlete completed over 53 laps at an average pace of 67 seconds per lap.
If that was not enough, another Ethiopian athlete record was successfully hunted down on the same night in Brussels when Holland’s Sifan Hassan smashed the women’s one-hour run record by covering a total of 18 kilometers and 930 meters in an hour.
The previous world record for the one-hour run was held by Ethiopia’s Dire Tune who covered 18.517m which stood for 12 years. This result should raise eyebrows not only in Ethiopia but across the East African region signaling that things are not the same any more. The athletics long distance podium is no longer the sole preserve of athletes from the two East African athletics powerhouse nations of Kenya and Ethiopia.
The hunting down Ethiopia’s long distance records
Africa: CAF Women’s Champions League – Eight Teams to Participate in Opening Tournament
Ethiopian Women league defending champion Adama ketema need to win the 12 nations’ Council for East and Central African qualification campaign so that it could have a place in the first ever edition of African Women Champions League that takes place in 2021.
The decision was made public during the CAF Executive Committee that took place on Thursday, September 10, 2020.
It has been decided that the first edition of the African Women’s Champions League will take place in 2021. The decision was made public during the Executive Committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) that took place on Thursday September 10, 2020 amongst a host of items including the body’s next Presidential election.
According to the conclusions there will be eight finalists for the inaugural edition. Six CAF zones across the continent will organize qualifications to determine the eight finalists for the inaugural CAF Women’s Champions League. The first edition of the CAF Women’s Champions League will see the zonal union of the host country have two representatives, but the following editions will see host countries with one representative while the reigning Champion’s Zone Union will have two representatives.
Council for East and Central Africa Football Association (CECAFA) (12)
Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zanzibar.
Union of North African Football Federations (UNAF) (5)
Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia
West African Football Union (WAFU) (16)
Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo.
Central African Football Federations’ Union (UNIFFAC) (8)
Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sao Tome and Principe, Chad.
Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (COSAFA) (14)
South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius Island, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Eswatini, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Indian Ocean Football Federation (UFFOI) (6)
Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, Réunion Islands, Seychelles
The Environmental Consequences of Political Repression
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the military junta that facilitated his rise to power have not done much to change the country since driving the aging despot Robert Mugabe from power in 2017. Zimbabwe is now a poster child for the link between authoritarianism and environmental degradation.
By Henry Munangatire
Zimbabwe was once Africa’s rising star. Boasting robust human capital, considerable natural-resource wealth, and modern infrastructure, it was the continent’s leading producer of crops such as maize, wheat, and soybeans. Agricultural exports earned it the moniker “the breadbasket of Africa.” How far the country has fallen.
Today, Zimbabwe can barely feed its own people, let alone the rest of the continent. According to the World Food Program, some 8.6 million Zimbabweans need help, and acute malnutrition is expected to rise by 15% in 2020, exacerbated by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the government is failing to provide basic services, such as safe drinking water, health care, adequate housing, and education.
Zimbabwe is also enduring one of the worst economic meltdowns in its history – and the second in a little over a decade. The country is now beset by runaway inflation, severe fuel shortages, prolonged power outages, and mounting unemployment. Some 90% of Zimbabweans now struggle to make their living in the informal sector.
These problems began with severe economic mismanagement under Robert Mugabe, whose 37-year-long rule – which ended when the military forced him to resign in 2017 – was marked by severe, often violent political repression. But Mugabe’s successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, and the military junta that facilitated his rise to power have not brought much change. Not only have they done little to reform the economy and create conditions for investment and growth; they have also maintained Mugabe’s repressive practices.
But it is not only Zimbabwe’s people who are suffering from the regime’s behavior. So is the environment. The Forestry Commission of Zimbabwe estimates that the country is losing 330,000 hectares of forestland per year, and that total forest and woodland cover has dropped from 53% to 45% since 2014. The primary reason for this decline is that Zimbabweans depend on biomass for nearly 70% of their energy, owing to the unavailability of electricity and the high cost of gas for cooking.
Deforestation in Zimbabwe has contributed to the decrease in annual rainfall in the region over the last decade. (Air that passes over trees produces twice as much rain as air that does not.) Given Zimbabwe’s location in the tropics, which makes it particularly vulnerable to shifting rainfall patterns, this has contributed to recurrent droughts – a major driver of rising food insecurity.
Reduced rainfall has also affected electricity generation, by forcing a partial shutdown of the hydroelectric plant on Lake Kariba in 2019, which supplies over 50% of Zimbabwe’s electricity, as well as electricity for Zambia. A shortage of foreign currency puts Zimbabwe’s alternative source of electricity – imports from Mozambique and South Africa – out of reach. In 2019, power outages lasting up to 18 hours became routine, disrupting economic activity.
When it comes to delivering other services – such as managing urban waste and supplying potable water – the government’s failures seem intentional. Over the last 20 years, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC–A), led by Nelson Chamisa, has gained popularity, and now controls 26 out of 32 urban local governments. To assert its authority, the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) – the party of Mugabe and Mnangagwa – has used its power to circumvent constitutional provisions that give residents and local authorities greater control of service delivery.
The politicization of basic services has undermined their delivery significantly. Poor waste management allowed the capital city of Harare’s main water source, Lake Chivero, to become heavily polluted from sewage effluent, causing eutrophication (when nutrient buildup causes excessive vegetation growth). According to a recent report by the Harare City Council, water from Lake Chivero is now contaminated with substances linked to liver and central-nervous-system ailments.
Harare’s main water-treatment facility, built with a capacity to serve 300,000 people, today supplies water to over 1.5 million, and is not nearly up to the task. The combination of inadequate waste management and a lack of potable water was responsible for the 2008 cholera outbreak, which claimed over 4,000 lives.
Gold mining, a key economic activity since before colonialism, is furthering jeopardizing Zimbabweans’ health. But political uncertainty and an unfavorable business environment have weakened investment in the industry. So most mining, some 60%, is carried out illegally, with no regard for environmental or safety standards. The result has been increasing pollution in the Mazowe River, which flows from Zimbabwe into Mozambique, where the increasingly toxic water is used for household, recreational, and agricultural purposes.
Enforcing environmental standards is not a priority for Zimbabwe’s government, because gold is a valuable source of foreign currency. According to Transparency International Zimbabwe, however, the country is losing over $200 million each year, as huge amounts of gold are sold on the black market and eventually smuggled out of the country to places like Dubai and South Africa.
Zimbabwe embodies the nexus of political repression, poor governance, and environmental degradation. The effects are not bound by national borders, so this nexus should concern us all.
Henry Munangatire, a development practitioner and media expert, is a founder of the #ThisFlag citizens’ movement. He is a former fellow with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Zimbabwe.
Transcendence Tsegaye Gebremedhin on Ethnic Loyality
By Eyob Asfaw
Recalling I forwarded brief commentary on Tsegaye Gebremedhin as a follow up to last week’s ‘HOHE Chapter’s webinar held on 13 Sept 2020. Today I narrate and discuss the Webinar on Tsegaye Gebremedhin continued also on 20 Sept 2020 with interesting construct on the discourses of Authorship. On this episode, the moderator-Wondwossen Adane, provocatively made an inquiry to the discussants- Michael Shiferaw and Desalegn Seyoum about the validity of interpreting Tsegaye’s work through intermeshing his background.
Desalegn on his counterpart contends that Tsegaye draws his background from those two nations, i.e Oromo and Amhara. According to him, not only Tsegaye’s rigor of authorship but also the works Karl Marx, Simone De bouvoire and Frederich Nitche can’t be understood without gazing at their respective biography. In the instance of the French author-Simone De Bouvoire (lived1908 – 1986), her life experiences undoubtedly charts her literary work and existential feminism. By and large, throughout the discussion on Tsegaye’s works, the discussant conceded that the works of Tsegaye is deeply embedded in his identity. Indirectly, his identity heritage subjects to analyze his works through the prisms of biography other than contextual interpretation. In his works, he tried to uncover the potential and cultural repository of the Oromo culture perhaps in Amharic poetry. Arguably, Tsegaye’s works convinces us an author can be transcendent on ethnic loyalty.
In general, Authorship, as a follow up to Michel Foucault’s ‘What is an author?’, published in 1971, is a constant issue of dialogue and debate among philosophers and literary artists. In pursuant to Foucault essay, a scholar called Chartier– engaged critical dialogue with Foucault – which proposed that the major development in the history of authorship during the Enlightenment was that the writer’s name, image, and often personality became publicly recognizable. Foucault draws attention to ‘the author’ appearing for the first time in the late seventeenth century on title pages, front spaces, and introductory biographies in, especially, editions of collected works. For Foucault, the ‘author’ is a construct’ whose works worth examining how the author became individualized in a culture like ours. What status the author has been given, at what moment studies of authenticity and attribution began, , at what point we began to recount the lives of authors rather than of heroes. The fundamental of ‘Author construction’ will commence the discourse of the criticism ‘the man and his work’. As a result Authorship cannot be having prior explanation without fair understanding to Author’s background.
Coming back to the discussion on Tsegaye, a participant called an author “Meseret Abeje” clearly objects biographical critics downsize ‘Inter-Textual Reading’. Instead, Meseret argued that Tsegaye’s works more portrays the intermarriage and integration of Amhara and Oromo societies other than contradiction among the two neighboring societies. For Meseret, it is not uncommon to forget as to where the authors comes from originally but for our surprise they wrote from shared cultural perspective as they proved how they create their character in their authorship. On the other hand, Michael contend that, without overlooking the authors identity, yet Tsegaye duality was proved to be resilient for the possible eventual contradiction. When Tsegaye laments about Awash in his epic poem he deliberately characterized inquiry subjected Dada and Tulema through his personified dialogue to the low land river called ‘Awash’. In his commentary, Michael demands to attribute as the Tsegaye counts his descent from those two clans. The author and journalist- ‘Abera Lemma’ as a participant shared his observation about Tsegaye confronts several rounds of Censorship bottlenecks during the Dergue regime. From his memory, according to Abera, Tsegaye challenged the then ministry of Information and his play called ‘Gamo’. To his dismay, the play was banned after a one time stage show. Also, Abera shared from his personal encounter that, in his last days Tsegaye engaged fully in series of principled controversies among other fellow literary artists including with so many heavyweight artists.
In conclusion, Authors are emancipatory in their works and Tsegaye transcended through passing the litmus test of personal heritage. Tsegaye left a lesson for contemporary authors to reconcile divisive ethnic loyalty, be able to pay the price for their own principle and ought to portray cross-cultural characters in their quest for authorship.
