The Fat Lady Sings

What does Robert Mugabe have in common with 1990’s fake pop stars, Milli Vanilli? “Blame it on the rain” was the duos last number one hit before their lip-synching scandal broke. It also happens to be Uncle Bob’s go-to explanation for Zimbabwe’s food shortages. During his recent visit to the World Expo in Shanghai, China, the octogenarian president said his country’s poor harvests were as a result of “inclement weather.” Many would however blame it on his 20-year reign, citing the disastrous land reform programme which crippled the agricultural sector, the bedrock of Zimbabwe’s economy, and bankrupted the country. Mugabe, though, is not one to dwell on his countrymen’s misfortunes. He was later photographed engaging in some retail therapy in Hong Kong, where he owns a house and his daughter attends university. He reportedly spent the weekend shopping for high-end suits and shoes in the city's Kowloon district.

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"When you're in love with a beautiful woman, you watch your friends" goes a popular 1970s single by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. Africa’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III of Swaziland, should have been paying heed. While he was attending to State business in Taiwan, his childhood friend, Justice Minister Ndumiso Mamba, was nabbed in bed with the Mswati’s 12th wife, Queen Nothando Dube, a former Miss Teen beauty contestant. The pair were busted by state security agents, who had apparently been following them for weeks, at the lavish Royal Villas Hotel. Though Swazi laws prohibit dishonouring the monarch, this did not stop the agents snapping photos of Mamba emerging head first from underneath the 22-year-old royal's bed where he was attempting to hide. The images later made their way onto the web. Mamba was immediately arrested on the orders of the King, whose mother - the Indlovukazi or Great She-Elephant - has reportedly sent a delegation to Mamba's village to lay charges of "trespassing into another man's home". He could face the death penalty if found guilty, while mother-of-two Dube would be banished from the kingdom.

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In 2003, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, the Dixie Chicks, a Texas based country group, declared: “We don't want this war, this violence." Seven years, and over a million Iraqi civilian casualties later, the last US combat troops have left the devastated country. However, 50,000 are staying behind to, according to their commanding officer, Gen. Ray Odierno, “prevent foreign powers from meddling with the new government.” Apparently the Americans do not consider themselves a foreign power in a country six thousand miles from home.

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The US musical duo, Wilderland, and some top music industry veterans recently released a new song titled “Fragile Day” which was written about two years prior to the BP Gulf oil spill, and features lyrics about fish swimming and dying in an oil-filled ocean. To counter such impressions, US President Barack Obama had a White House photographer take a picture oh him and his daughter, Sasha, swimming in the sea off Florida last weekend. The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region's beaches are back to normal. However, it soon emerged that the President was actually trying to pull a fast one. The private beach on which it was taken, off Alligator Point in St Andrew Bay, north-west Florida, isn't technically in the gulf.

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South Africa’s journalists may soon be singing the blues following government plans to institute a so-called “media tribunal” as well regulate what can be reported on and what constitutes a state secret. The government claims the law under consideration is necessary to limit the damage caused by media houses and their newspapers which they claim represent only a narrow, predominantly “white” interest. Predictably, the controversial head of ANC’s Youth league, Julius Malema, who has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, declared that the media must be regulated because "they think they are untouchable". The move comes in the wake of news reports that Ebrahim Rasool, who in 2008 was fired as Western Cape premier partly because of allegations that he had bribed journalists to report favourably about him, had been appointed South Africa's ambassador to the United States.