“Languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express.”
Walter Benjamin in “The Task of the Translator”

Western culture has a penchant for worshipping the exotic from a safe myopic distance, overlooking the human reality rubbing up against its elbows and knees, unintentionally creating cross-cultural connections comical, frustrating, and inspirational all at once. Israel, literally and figuratively, finds itself somewhere between Europe and Africa. The “people of the Book”, are currently celebrating “Book Week” with hundreds of new titles on display in all the major cities. Despite Israel’s considerable Ethiopian population, the only work of fiction (to the best of this writer’s knowledge) published by an Ethiopian writer this year is Hama Tuma’s The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories, translated by Dori Parnes (Ahuzat Bayit 2009). Activist writer-in-exile Hama Tuma’s book is out of print and essentially unavailable in English, and has never been officially published in Ethiopia in either Amharic or English, so if you want to read this brilliantly funny, sensitive, intelligent portrayal of life under Mengistu’s reign of terror, start learning Hebrew. 

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በሀገሬ ልኩራ

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WHERE DID OUR DECENT MURDERS GO?

Ethiopians, who have had to endure brutal deaths over decades, have a common wish which asks God “to make my death decent” (amamuaten asamirew). I am one of those who wonder why Ethiopians pray since He hardly ever listens to them but then again Ethiopians are a hopeful lot who will die hoping and praying for better days that never seem to come.

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OF SWINE FLU AND MOTHER AFRICA

Thank you swine flu and Mexico ! For once Africa has not been blamed for being the source of a deadly virus. From Ebola to Lassa Fever, Rift Valley Fever, White Nile virus, the Marbrug Virus, the “Jealousy” malady and even AIDS and all so called haemorrhagic fevers have been attributed to poor old Africa . Africa is good for some blame at least.

The ongoing swine flu has been first detected in Mexico and the reports indicate that a small five year old Mexican boy was the first victim. Imagine just if his father or any other Sanchez or Mexican had been on safari in the Serengeti plains and the swine fever would have been called the African swine flu and Mother Africa would have been blamed for a mild yet deadly flu that you can avoid by wearing a face mask and washing your hands! Shame of shames, an African virus that does not kill millions would have been bad for Africa ’s reputation. This time around the Mexicans are to blame even though it could very well be gringo/American tourists who took the virus there and brought it back to their homes. Back in 1981, the first AIDS victim was an American but somehow the scientists argued that the deadly virus must have originated from the “dark” continent. By the way, the Israelis have reportedly protested against the present flu being called the swine flu. Not kosher at all. The virus is said to be a combination of swine, bird and human flu, a combination that poor Africa cannot really afford come to think of it. Now that this deadly flu is beginning to ravage the Western world a vaccine may be found for it fast as it is no malaria killing millions in over populated underdeveloped countries.

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OF A ROYAL PARDON AND FRENCH DENIALS

“…the African man has never really entered history”
Nicholas Sarkozy, the French President, in a speech on Africa made in Dakar, Senegal on July 26 th, 2007

To be fair, Nicolas Sarkozy did say Africa deserves to be happy just like other continents. But in the above quoted speech in Senegal he did say also: “The (Africans) have never really launched themselves into the future,” and Mr. Sarkozy did add “the African peasant, who for thousands of years has lived according to the seasons, whose life ideal was to be in harmony with nature, only knew the eternal renewal of time … In this imaginary world, where everything starts over and over again, there is room neither for human endeavor, nor for the idea of progress. The problem of Africa … is to be found here. Africa’s challenge is to enter to a greater extent into history … It is to realize that the golden age that Africa is forever recalling will not return, because it has never existed.”

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HAMA TUMA’S FIRST BOOK NOW PUBLISHED IN HEBREW (IN ISRAELI)

The first Hama Tuma book in English, “The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories” (Heinemann, African Writers Series, 1993), has been translated and published in Hebrew by the Achuzat Bayit Publishing House Ltd (Tel Aviv). The well known historian Professor Haggai Erlich has written the introduction to the Hebrew version while Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiongo had written the preface to the English one. Other Hama Tuma books have been translated into Italian and French.

The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor, By Hama Tuma

In the book the twelve stories of part I deal with courtroom scenes during the Mengistu regime while the eleven stories in part II recount life as it prevailed under the oppressive regime and in Ethiopia of the time. Reviewing the book, Ngugi wrote: Hama Tuma brilliantly captures the contradictions that make up the real Ethiopia of the twentieth century”. On his part, Robert P. Smith Jr. of Rutgers University wrote: “ Hama Tuma’s tales admirably illustrate the spirit that prevails widely under oppressive regime in Africa today. Dreadful though they may be in content, these excellently written stories combine the satire and imagination of a Montesquieu and the inventiveness, humour, and oral tradition of Bernard Dadie, a Birago Diop and others”.

For the Hebrew version of the book contact Office@Abayit-books.com

Hama Tuma can be contacted at hamatuma@gmail.com

www.hamatuma.com

Of DJs and Coups: Africa’s Unending Originality

The “dark” continent is in reality the most vibrant and original continent. Tam tams are still there, the drums of passion and of an undying spirit of hope rising against the reality of despair and death. Westerners have this annoying tendency of taking poverty as exotic (take the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire as an example) while disliking the poor, of loving Africa’s wild and Serengeti type plains while detesting the Africans as a whole.
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CONTEMPT FOR AFRICA OR JUSTICE SERVED? (COMMENT ON THE ARREST WARAANT FOR BESHIR OF THE SUDAN)

The controversial International Criminal Court has finally come out with an arrest warrant for President Omar Beshir of the Sudan . The warrant is out for war crimes and/ or crimes against humanity but not for genocide—a point that would surely not matter that much for the accused

Let me say from the outset that I have little or no sympathy for the tyrant in the Sudan who, aside from causing the slaughter of so many in South Sudan and Darfur , has deported many Ethiopians to their deaths or disappearance and has sent his troops to occupy Ethiopian land. That said, the decision by the ICC and the clamour it has engendered from quarters that have proven contempt for Africa calls for some reflection. As I tried to point out in my previous article, “Of Courts and Hypocrisies”, the ICC seems to be in reality the ACC, the African Criminal Court, as it seems hell bent to deal ONLY with alleged African war criminals (up to now) from the Congo, Sudan, Central African Republic and Uganda. From Milosevic to Charles Taylor and the Congolese war lord, that court in The Hague has yet to deal with notorious war criminals from the West.

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OF COURTS AND HYPOCRISIES

A loud hue and cry is being heard just because a Sierra Leonean Court found three former rebel leaders (of the Revolutionary United Front--RUF) guilty of war crimes. The accused were found guilty of what a CNN reporter termed creative torture (what is so creative about chopping hands and arms?). The foreign media cried joy in its usual paternalism, congratulating Africans for conducting a trial (that the UN was involved is a footnote) and delivering a verdict of guilty. For those of us Africans who know African judges and courts and their insatiable appetite for finding all and sundry guilty, there is of course no surprise at all.

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Africa’s Woes and Jokes

The time has come, the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things;
Of shoes and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”

Somalia has done it again. For 18 years it showed the world that a country can exist without a State (which makes the Somali fundamentalists the first real Marxists) and still accomplish all the functions of a proud African State —kill, maim, destroy the country, displace millions, bring in famine, commit atrocities and more. And now, as the whole or at least half the world watches, Somalia has elected its latest president (no fake claim like Meles or other dictators who allege that 99.9% elected them)--, meaning some 500 MPs from various clans—themselves unelected-- elected Sheikh Ahmed as president and did the election not inside Somalia but in a neighboring country, Djibouti.

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Yetiwled Tiwstawoch

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lEMTENKER TSIDAT DEGMO QIDMIA KERAS
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I STILL DON'T WANT TO BE AN AMERICAN

The statement by Rama Yade, a young Senegal born woman who serves under the French president as a junior minister for human rights, provoked my foray into this mined field that often triggers wrath from the "we love America" camp. Yade was euphoric that Barack Obama got elected US president and said: "This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times ten. America is becoming the new World. On this morning, we all want to be American so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes".

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