32 years ago today Swedish premier Olof Palme was assassinated

32 years ago today Swedish Premier Olof Palme was assassinated. His murder remains unsolved.

Palme was walking back from a cinema to ride a subway home after watching a film with his wife and was attacked by a lone gunman who immediately fled the scene.

Numerous investigations have failed to solve the murder after an initial conviction of manslaughter of Christer Pettersson was overturned by a Swedish court. After he was killed Swedish law was changed to extend the 25-year limit to murder investigations to allow his murder investigation to remain open.

Olof Palme in 1974. Source: The Swedish National Archive

Numerous theories have been developed to solve his killing, all inconclusive. These include suggestions that his killing was ordered by the Yugoslav Security Service, the South African Apartheid regime, or the CIA.

As prime minster Sweden was a staunch follower of non-aligned policies towards the superpowers. He supported African liberation movements and developed close relations with Tanzania under President Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, a leader whose government was in the forefront of providing support to Africa's liberation movements.

Former soccer player George Weah has won Liberian elections

Former soccer player George Weah has won Liberia's elections, held on 26th December 2017.

When I wrote about his possible political ambitions in 2008 it appeared to me that he placed a higher priority on his soccer career.

George Tawlon Manneh Opong Ousman Weah is 51 years old and was FIFA Footballer of the Year in 1995. He also won the Ballon d'Or and was the first African to win these two prestigious awards.

In 1999 soccer legend Pele named him in FIFA's list of 100 world's greatest living players.

Some of the teams he played for include Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain, Milan, and Manchester City.

In politics, he ran against and lost to outgoing president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2005. He was elected to the Liberian Senate in 2014.

If he still occasionally puts on his soccer boots, he would be the second African soccer playing president, after Burundi's Pierre Nkurunziza.

The League of Nations sought a world peace that remains elusive

At the end of World War I the allied victors formed the League of Nations, later to become the United Nations, as part of the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The first session of the League of Nations was held in Geneva on this day, 97 years ago.

The principal objective of the League of Nations was to maintain world peace, a quest that has remained elusive throughout.

The Vietnam War estimated deaths: more than 2 million.

The League had 42 founding members who agreed to avoid future wars through collective security and disarmament, and settling disputes through arbitration and negotiations.

World War II casualties: more than 50 million deaths

Fast forward to today and throughout the existence of the United Nations and it would appear that humans are still grasping to learn the principles of the maintenance of peace. There have been more than 180 armed conflicts in the world between 1900 and today, claiming an estimated 80 million battle-related deaths.

As the United States flexes its muscles against North Korea, we know we still have a long way to go to grasp the painful lessons of war and find a lasting solution to the elusive nature of the peace we claim to cherish.

it is the 37th anniversary of Voyager I's Saturn approach

This day, 37 years ago, NASA's Voyager I spacecraft approached Saturn and sent back images of the outer planet.

Saturn from Voyager I. Photo: NASA

The spacecrafts' statistics are mind-boggling:

• it has travelled through space for forty years and two months - and counting
• it's the spacecraft that has covered the farthest distance from Earth
• it became the first craft to enter interstellar space, having crossed the boundaries of the heliopause on 25th August 2012. That's 14.4 billion kilometres away.
• it travels at 17 kilometres per second. It would take just over 7 minutes to cover the distance between Cairo and Cape Town
• it will continue its trajectory for the next 40,000 years, perhaps eternally, if it does not collide with any object

YouTube video links:

Voyager 1 trajectory through the Solar System

Voyager 1: The Complete Story [1977 - 2017]

Today is International Day of the Girl Child

It's United Nations' International Day of the Girl Child today.

It has been commemorated since 2011 through resolution 66/170 of the UN of 9th December 2011 and has been observed since October 2012.

It is a day for reflecting on the plight faced by adolescent girls worldwide and the challenges that constrain their empowerment and human rights.

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Links on the International Day of the Girl Child:

Resolution 66/170

http://www.un.org/en/events/girlchild/background.shtml

http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2015/11/prevention-framework

http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_76212.html

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Customs and traditions throughout societies have provided lifelong advantages to the boy child and left girls with less opportunities for their education, security, and a healthy life.

As we mark the fifth year since its launch, let us join forces to increase efforts to raise opportunities for girls on an equal par to the opportunities given to boys.

Butiama's image of the day

During rare moments a few times every year weather patterns over Butiama produce colourful images. It begins in the late afternoon with a dark rain cloud that hovers and moves slowly from a northerly direction towards the south. The cloud covers the sun, and a period of light rainfall begins, seen on the right edge of the photo.

At a certain point, just before sunset, the sun drops below the cloud cover and releases a bright hue of golden orange sunlight before sinking below the horizon.

We turn a page on another episode of nature and wait for the next memorable sunset.

When and how to say "sorry"

This is one of numerous articles I wrote for the Sunday News (Tanzania) column "Letter from Butiama" between 2005 and 2011. Publication date: 2 July 2006.

I posted it in this blog in 2013, but I felt it warranted being dug up from this blog's archives for readers who have not read it.

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There are proportionally far fewer people who will commit a mistake and say, “I am sorry”, or “I made a complete fool of myself.” You are likely to hear a far greater number of people justifying their mistakes.

To err is human, but to make excuses is even more so. Humans make errors, and are experts at making excuses.

We learn from childhood that we are likely to face serious consequences when we admit mistakes. The result is that we grow into adults who instinctively make excuses for our mistakes so that blame is shifted to some other person or factor.

Considering some of the problems we may encounter by admitting mistakes, it is understandable that we do not readily accept blame. If you break the law, the consequences of admitting guilt in a court of law are known: a fine or a jail term - or a one-way ticket to heaven or hell for the serious offences. It seems that the more serious consequences of admitting fault are permanently registered in our memories from childhood and so, in adulthood, we spend a great deal of time disassociating ourselves with our mistakes.

The excuses are sometimes ingenious. The whole World except Argentina believes that footballer Diego Maradona scored with his hand, while playing for Argentina in a FIFA World Cup match against England on 22 June 1986 at Mexico City’s Aztec Stadium. His excuse: “It was the hand of God.”

The football matches we see on television show some of the players praying each time they score, or when they enter the pitch. It creates the impression that many of the players are extremely religious individuals, but Maradona’s excuse had the effect of elevating excuses to an unprecedented level. There are few who would attribute Maradona's goal to God. The more conventional justification would have been to blame it on the devil.

To be fair to Maradona, footballers have no mechanism for admitting fault on or off the pitch. Maybe FIFA, the World’s football federation, might want to add confessions to its “fair play” campaign.

By spending time in excusing ourselves we end up lengthening an extremely short story with only three words, “I am sorry” (only one word in Kiswahili, samahani) to one containing hundreds of words.

Sometimes apologies are not enough and people demand to know the reasons for committing a mistake. There are many reasons for making mistakes, which are often grouped under the heading, “reasons beyond my control”. If you are tempted to utilise this overused phrase, you might consider leaving that judgement for others to make. A reason beyond control is not a good excuse, a Tsunami is.

The simple advice is, unless you are not facing a judge, when you make a mistake just say you are sorry, don’t make excuses. However, there should be a limit to the number of times one can apologise. If you begin to sound like an old phonograph record, stuck on the same three words all the time, then you do not become believable anymore, but may only reveal that you are addicted to those words.

When you find you just have to make an excuse, try and make them believable. I failed that test years ago during a visit to Washington D.C. I phoned for a taxi and waited for an extremely long period outside the house I was staying in. When I called the company again to find out the reason for the delay, the dispatcher pointed out to me that I had provided her an erroneous house number, which did not exist on that street. The taxi driver had been driving around for a long time looking for house number 2065, when he should have been looking for house number 2056.

When after my second call the taxi driver was given the correct house number he arrived at the house furious. I was quick to apologize, but made the error of justifying my excuse. Instead of providing a three-word apology, I transformed the apology into an excuse of about ten words. I told him I was actually a visitor to Washington D.C., suggesting that was the reason why I made the error.

He told me he didn’t care where I came from because “…twenty fifty-six was twenty fifty-six, even in Chinese!” Even in Kiswahili script, 2056 was and remains 2056, and I should have not had a problem translating that into English.

To be fair to myself, I only had a few seconds in which to come up with a believable excuse.

Under normal circumstances I would have immediately laughed at myself for making such an amateurish excuse, but I had no wish to further provoke the taxi driver.

x

The benefits of rising up early

Not quite a long time ago, I would have failed to list the benefits of rising up early. Now, having tried it for a while, I find there are distinctive benefits to beginning the day when almost everyone else is asleep.

My timeless Utopia was a world where the day extends to 30 hours, and the year to 16 months, enough to accomplish all my tasks. If a day on Earth was similar to a day on Pluto, my problems would be solved.

The next best option for accomplishing my tasks was to vigorously use time management to fit in with my daily duties. That didn't work well; I still couldn't manage to actively reduce my to-do list. It kept growing.

Then I decided to wake up earlier than I was accustomed to gain a few extra hours of work every day. It worked. I now wake up at 4:45 AM, but aim to wake up 15 minutes earlier within the next few weeks.

And, already, there are huge changes to how much I manage to clear in a day. Here are more benefits to waking up early.

Faster Internet
The busier the time of day, the slower the Internet becomes. Waking up early provides me with relatively faster connection speeds, something that is quite beneficial for clearing the daily inflow of emails.

Using the Internet when most people are asleep provides a slightly higher connection speed and the ability to clear more work.

Uninterrupted workflow
An early start provides the least interruption to the workflow from others with whom I interact during the day.

Between waking up and taking the shower, I have the privilege of working without interruption during the most productive time of the day.

More energized
I have discovered that waking up early keeps me highly energized throughout the day, both physically and mentally. In my previous routine the more time I spent in bed the more tired I was during the day.

A bonus to waking up early is viewing a captivating sunrise..

Less Stressful
Because there is ample time between waking up and leaving for office, there is also ample time to plan the day ahead instead of rushing from one task to the next. It provides a less stressful work day.

More time to exercise
I wont lie and say I have begun to exercise regularly. When I begin to exercise, I can use that extra time slot in the morning for a healthy dose of exercise.

These are a few of the benefits of rising up early. Not long ago, I worked late and rose late. The transformation and the fact that I am enjoying the change could be a sign that I am growing old.

I am not a mzungu! (re-posted with the Afro)

I am not a mzungu is something I have to keep on repeating at least once a month to children.

I am baffled why children should call me "mzungu" a Swahili word for Caucasian. And there is no confusing me with a white man; I am unmistakably black. There is at least one other meaning of the word, but in general Tanzanians understand "mzungu" to mean a white person.

But I have had to consider that children have their own interpretation of "mzungu" and it is slowly beginning to make sense to me. The first time I heard being called "mzungu" by a child was in Rombo, on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I was hiking and had my headphones. I concluded it was the headphones that made me a mzungu.

The second time I became a mzungu was during my Ukerewe to Butiama bike ride and as I rode through a village three children called out to me: "mzungu!" I responded: "I am not a mzungu!" They insisted I was.

My Ukerewe to Butiama bike ride (on my Swahili language blog)

I can attribute the second instance to my colorful mountain bike, sunglasses, and the huge Afro I was sporting. I could have deflected attention if it was only the bike, but I just couldn't go unnoticed for being unusual with that huge Afro and the sunglasses.

My colorful mountain bike.

This morning I was reminded how much I confuse children when a child called out my other name. I still have the Afro, I was holding my sun glasses in my hand, and I had a small backpack. I have concluded that, to these children, "mzungu" has nothing to do with race, but has a lot to do with the activity I indulge in (cycling), the accessories I use (sunglasses, headphones), and that huge Afro that even Don King would have envied. Or Wole Soyinka?

I originally posted this without my photograph, until Benjamin Leers commented: "where's the Afro?" So, here it is, below, although I trimmed it when I took this photo. Let me know if you think Don King or Professor Wole Soyinka would be impressed.

The headphones, the Afro, and the author of this post. 

Here are some money laundering techniques that you can try

I had the occasion to launder some US currency this year. As I saw it then I had no choice and I did not think there would be consequences.

The saga began when I traveled to Harare, Zimbabwe for a workshop and after the organizers refunded me some of the meeting expenses, including an old US dollar 100 banknote. I didn’t think much of it until I tried to change the money in Tanzania.

The bureaus de change would not take it because it was an old banknote and they told me they do not accept banknotes that are older than a particular year. I do not remember what the cut-off year was.

I tried many bureaus in both Mwanza and Tanzania and finally gave up before I thought of depositing the note with my bank. I made the assumption, taking a cue on how banks handle old Tanzanian banknotes, that they would accept an old US dollar bill and find the means to send it back to the printers and get a new one. 

I was wrong. Not even my bank would take the banknote. An employee told me that they would not be able to sell the banknote to a Tanzanian clientele composed mostly of individuals who are extremely choosy in what type of banknote they will accept. These are individuals who are experts at trying to pass on an old banknote to someone else but would not accept one themselves.

I almost gave up and then decided to ask someone who frequently travels abroad how he handles the tricky issue of exchanging these old notes into Tanzanian shillings. Easy, he told me: just iron the banknote and remove the creases and it would look as new as they want.

I took the advice and decided to add what I thought would be a foolproof spin to it. I would wash the banknote before I ironed it. So I washed the note and carefully ironed it and was extremely satisfied with the results. But even that was not good enough for Tanzanian money changers, who have imposed higher standards for accepting foreign currency that even the issuers themselves.

Not good enough for Tanzanian money changers.

I have an extra wallet that has a small collection of foreign banknotes left over from travels in Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana, and a few other African countries. And that is where my old US dollar banknote ended up until I traveled to the United States early this year and some supermarket worker accepted it without hesitation.

And this is my story of how I was forced to launder dirty money from Zimbabwe in Tanzania and succeeded in spending the money in the United States. And, as I expected, there weren’t any consequences.

Here's the ultimate in old school syncing

I have had enough hard disk crashes, and lost enough mobile phones to know that traditional methods of storing information are more reliable than the latest computer based backup systems,

Nothing beats pen and paper when it comes to preserving your data. And nothing beats backing up your information written on paper than a backup system that is based on pen and paper.

So, for a while, I have been experimenting with just that; backing up my information on my personal diary with a desk-based larger diary.

My information backup system.

It is extremely reliable, no doubt, but it consumes much more time than a few clicks on the laptop. Maybe I'll just postpone this old new way of recording information and post it at the end of my todo items for next year. That is, on my desk diary.

A visit to an elderly woman, and revelations on a traditional brewing venture

For more than ten years I have paid school fees and other related expenses for two orphaned students who have recently completed secondary education. Today, I visited their grandmother at the neigbouring village of Muryaza.

A few days ago she asked to see me and I told her to remain at home and that I would visit her instead. Over the years she has been walking all the way from her house to mine to remind me of overdue fees, and to ask for my assistance on various issues. It is a round trip of about 8 kilometres; not a short distance for a woman who I estimate is at least 80 years old.

With Nyakwe Masura (left) at her house.

A few months ago when I delayed the final payment of the school fees for her grandsons she urged me to pay the fees as soon as possible adding: “You have eaten the whole cow; you only have the tail to finish.”

Now both her grandchildren want to join the army. And that was the reason why she called me today to ask me to help them enlist. Two weeks ago the younger of the two asked me for Shs.17,000 (approximately $US 8) for launching a brewing venture. I gave him the money after he reassured me he was not going to produce illicit brew. Today he gave me details of his new venture, and I am worried he might not join the army.

With the money I gave him he produced three containers of approximately 20 litres each, and sold them for a total of shs.105,000 (Over $US 50), a profit of over 600 percent. The brewing process takes about two weeks, but the produce is sold in a day to owners of shebeens.

As I left, I told him I was worried that if he continues making money at this rate he might not join the army anymore. If he overcomes the initial challenge of raising sufficient capital, earning $US 50 adds up to $US 1,500 per month. And that isn’t small change by Tanzanian living standards.

The government should ban male drivers on passenger buses

Sometime last year a passenger bus on the Mwanza - Musoma highway overtook a car I was driving and hardly ten seconds later smashed head-on against another oncoming bus. Death toll 12 and scores injured.

There are many character differences between males and females and I believe one of these might be the solution for avoiding, or at least reducing, road accidents on Tanzania's roads. The male drivers who sit behind the wheels of the country's passenger buses do not appear to care about the safety of the passengers they drive. The principal concern of most of these drivers is how fast they can drive from point A to point B and any consideration that the excessive speeds they are used to might prevent anyone from reaching point B is hidden or eludes their intellectual capacity and collective experiences.

Women are different in how preoccupied they are inclined to preserve rather than to end a life, particularly if its someone else's life. I have seen a photograph of a woman who having walked for days from a hunger-stricken area reached a relief camp with her child on her back. She died on a crouched position on all fours because she did not want to crush her child strapped on her back. The malnourished child survived.

Over speeding was the cause of this bus, plying between Tarime and Mwanza, to veer off the road near Mwanza on 18th October 2012. Fortunately, no serious injuries were reported.

I was once approached by a woman whose husband had lost all his property to con men including an oxen plough that could have provided cash by hiring to farmers. He was ashamed to beg from neighbours for food; she, rather than see her children starve, walked more than twenty kilometres to ask for my assistance.

When the ill-fated bus overtook us I told the passenger sitting next to me how dangerous it was to drive on the unpaved road at a high speed and I slowed down to allow the dust ahead of us to clear up. When it did, hardly ten seconds later, we saw debris on the road and the bus that overtook us was lying on the ditch on the left side while the other bus it had struck was in the same position on the right side of the road. One passenger was attempting to get out of one of the bus windows.

The point at which both buses struck each other told the whole story; they were both severely damaged on the drivers' sides. Having seen most of what happened I could tell that either one or both of the bus drivers had strayed too far inside the opposite lane. To make matters worse that section of the road was under rehabilitation and any car ahead kicks up so much dust as to reduce visibility to a very short distance. A truck driven in the opposite direction minutes before the impact had exacerbated the already poor visibility. The driver of the bus that overtook us was driving at an excessive speed in a dust cloud and  without a clue of the whereabouts of incoming traffic that was approaching from the opposite direction.

There is another issue that should be tackled when addressing the incessant bus accidents on Tanzania's roads.  Most of the drivers on Tanzania's roads obtain their driving licences even before they learn how to drive. After driving behind a car from a driving school with a student driver and instructor on the road and having being signaled to overtake on a blind spot, I can also conclude there are probably few driving schools that actually impart even the most basic driving skills.

My point is that even the worst women bus driver in Tanzania will not drive blindly in a dust storm at more than 100 kilometres per hour without having a clear vision of the road ahead. Men will continue overtaking where they should not and continue risking the lives of other passengers without an iota of concern that things do not always go as planned.

Banning male bus passenger drivers will most certainly reduce bus accidents.

Max Graham mixes up two Arusha Declarations

Max Graham, writing for The Independent, mixes up two Arusha Declarations; he erroneously cites the 1967 declaration instead of the 1961 declaration in his article.

The latter one was a political statement of intent; the earlier one - made at the eve of Tanganyika's independence - a declaration to protect and preserve the country's wildlife heritage for all humanity.

The Arusha Declaration is normally use to refer to the 1967 declaration, while the earlier one should have been referred to as the Arusha Declaration on Conservation.

A street in Arusha.

Both declarations are cited and mentioned regularly by those interested in conservation and politics. If you are not Tanzanian and have no interest in neither conservation nor politics you might have be excused for not having heard of Arusha. Wikipedia describes Arusha well.

Hard disk crash blues

I kept postponing backup of my data until it became too late. My hard disk crashed and I lost crucial data on my netbook.

The technician in Mwanza who replaced my disk was matter-of-fact when I asked him why disks crashed. He asked me how long I had used the laptop and I noted that he was calling it a laptop, instead of a what it is, a netbook. I assume "notebook" has not been readily accepted even by the experts.

I said: "three or four years." And he told me that is about the maximum life expectancy I should expect from my hard disc.

I plan to set up more regular data backups now.

The data loss includes a large selection of my digital photos and that means I cannot continue with posts on my 2013 in review series.

The potential danger of mixing politics with religion

In a BBC Radio documentary released in April 2014 titled The Rise of the Arab Spring Prof. Eugene Rogan of the University of Oxford comments on the danger faced by politicians who use religion to advance political ends. He says:

The moment you begin to play on religious sentiment, you set in motion forces well beyond your control. And any ruler, foreign or domestic, who believes they might control the religious impulse and contain it to advance their own goals and go no further, has been shown to be deeply wrong. And they have almost, without exception, had to pay a high consequence for making that mistake.

While the subject of the documentary is the rise of Political Islam in the Arab World, the lessons can be applied to other religions as well.

2013 in review: 26 July

This is the beginning of the story of how I got myself in trouble, and cycled 877 kilometres from Butiama to Dodoma with Ross Methven.

It began when Ross was taking a break in Butiama on his Edinburgh to Cape Town cycling trip and was looking at route options from Arusha, where he had left his bicycle, towards Dodoma and southern Tanzania. I told him if he brought his bicycle to Butiama to resume his onward trip to Cape Town, I would accompany him with my mountain bike through central Tanzania. He did.

In the photo, he arrives in Butiama and within the next few days we began one of the toughest physical challanges I had faced.

When science is not entirely science

I have to admit that science is not my forte'. Thus I confess I still have not figured out why, living just below the Equator and while standing at a right angle, I do not fall off the face of planet Earth.

I have some vague understanding of the word gravity, describing how some unseen forces pull me in proportionate measure in all directions and, in consequence, I remain standing where I should not. The important point is I am not missing any sleep over my failure to fully understand gravity.

And yet I am not cowed enough to read scientific writings without a critical eye. I have read in more than a few occasions writings by scientists, people who should apply the most rigorous tests to scientific claims, using language that is closer to prose than science. In these writings I have seen words such as "most likely", highly likely", or "probably" used to lend support for outcomes that would, in my opinion, require backing from real scientific research instead of wishes on some attempt to link desired outcomes to some remotely-related scientific research.

I believe not a year goes by without some scientist revealing how some space probe "might" provide clues to the origin of the universe. Space research gets substantial funding from advanced nations and I suspect the beneficiaries of these funds inevitably run out of justification for some of their projects and fall back on recycling the probability that some space probe "may" finally solve the mystery of the origin of the universe.

I am eagerly waiting 14th July 2015 when the New Horizons spacecraft is scheduled to reach Pluto from where it "may" send back information of a huge scientific discovery. That should satisfy the scientists, but I would settle for much much less. That a spacecraft millions of kilometres away is controlled from Earth is thrilling enough for me. It might be basic science for the scientists behind the project, but I am likely to recount that momentous event to my grandchildren one day. I find no need for the scientists to promise me the "possible" unlocking of the mysteries of the universe. But, my way would be, at the very least, acceptance of the notion of funding science for science's sake but providing nothing practical in return to humans.

Have you figured out why a glass of water does not spill at the Equator? Without turning to Wikipedia? Please enlighten me.

The problem with Facebook

When I was growing up (science says I stopped growing more than three decades ago) the most embarrassing thing that could happen to someone in my peer group was getting drunk, throwing up on oneself on occasion, and saying the odd profanity while drunk.

The embarrassment surfaced after sobering up and lasted for as long as human memory permitted. For our age, it wasn't long. With the passage of time, the embarrassing moments were forgotten by most.

I am glad Facebook emerged long afterwards.

Today Facebook, and other social media, provide young people with a means to permanently carve their unpleasant experiences on a platform for millions to view for an extremely long time. And even when second thoughts pushes one to remove embarrassing content, a Facebook "friend" would have most likely ensured that a larger circle of his "friends" would read about or view your gaffe. One thing is certain: the definition of ""friend" has evolved in unpredictable ways since I was growing up.

Sometimes what might appear as a normal thing to write at a young age might prove extremely embarrassing as one grows older.

I read an article which says some employers look up the content of their employees on social media networks to find out what mischief is carried out after office hours. That itself should discourage most of those who want to present the same responsible image portrayed at work by maintaining the same facade on social media.

It would be extremely inhibiting if one cares more about running up "likes" from "friends" rather than getting a favourable rating by his employee, but is extremely crucial for those who care about their careers.

This is the best misprint yet

After publishing this post, I found out that the article with the misprint that I reported was edited and the error was rectified. I choose to leave the original post because it was accurate when I posted it.

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I have just come across what I consider to be the best misprint yet.

The Daily News (Tanzania) has a news report in which President Jakaya Kikwete has sent a message of condolence to Minister of Information, Youth, Culture, and Sports Fenella Mukangara following the death of two journalists: Innocent Munyuku and Baraka Karashani.

The minister was referred to as “the minter of information….” As far as misprints go, this one is a gem. Considering that the Daily News is a government newspaper and falling under the direct responsibility of the minister, one wonders whether it was a genuine mistake or whether it was a sick joke being perpetrated against Minister Mukangara.

Screen shot of the Google News alert containing the initial error.

In either case, I suspect heads will roll.

Here’s the link to the story: JK mourns Munyuku, Baraka.