“You have to know the past to understand the present”. This is also important in this week’s Top of the Blogs. What is the origin of a tribe? Is South Africa going to take all the land from their white farmers? And what is happening in Eritrea? Check it out:

WHAT IS YOUR TRIBE? The Invention Of Kenya’s Ethnic Communities

theelephant.info

Kenya’s politics is loaded with tribal conflicts; Luos against Kikuyus is just the current example. But what is a tribe? Where does this mutual antipathy come from? The delineating of people into tribes was used by the colonial administrators to order tribes into a fixed structure. That doesn’t mean that the colonialism is to be to blame for everything that doesn’t work in Kenya nowadays, but this article shows an academic approach on how tribalism was constructed and how it still influences Kenyan politics.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: what about unsung heroines?

udadisi.blogspot.co.za

If someone would talk about the history of your country without mentioning its first president/chancellor/statesman, what would you think? The following text is from 2007 but it is still current because the history of countries is still told in the way where men fought the wars and women sat at home and watched the kids. And this is as incomplete as if you would talk about South Africa without mentioning Nelson Mandela!

South Africa’s much needed land debate is being turned into an international racist rant

qz.com

“White Farmers will be removed from their land”, “race war”, “civil war” read the emotive headlines. The resolution in the South African parliament in February to allow for a process to amend the Constitution to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation has led to a fierce debate all over the world. But in fact, South Africa won’t be the “next Zimbabwe”, it’s just going to use the power of democracy, as the author argues.

More dissent in Eritrea, a country where dissent is not tolerated

africanarguments.org

After the death of a respected elder in Eritrea, more and more people are defiantly taking to the streets to demonstrate. The 93-year old died in prison after criticising the government in October. These protests could be the first sign of a real change in Eritrea after almost 30 years under dictatorship.