Author: AFP

South African set to be the first black ‘afronaut’

No one in Mandla Maseko’s family has ever stepped outside South Africa, but the young township DJ is set to rocket into space next year.

From the dusty district of Mabopane, near Pretoria, 25-year-old Maseko has landed a coveted seat to fly 103-kilometres into space in 2015, after winning a competition organised by a US-based space academy.

He beat off a million other entrants from 75 countries to be selected as one of 23 people who will travel on an hour-long sub-orbital trip on the Lynx Mark II spaceship.

The former civil engineering student – who was forced to put his studies on hold because he could not pay the fees – will experience zero gravity and a journey that normally comes with a $100 000 price tag.

Unless a rich black African books a tourist space ticket and blasts off before next year, Maseko will become the first black African to enter space.

Mandla Maseko. (Pic: AFP)

The “typical township boy”, who still lives at home with his parents and four siblings, was named one of the winners on December 5, only a few hours after the death of the country’s first black president, Nelson Mandela.

He said he immediately thought of such “firsts”, not only Mandela but also Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States.

In his exhilaration, he also imagined a conversation with Mandela.

“I have run the race and completed the course, now here is the torch’, ” Maseko thought the president would have told him. ” ‘Continue running the race and here’s the title to go with it, go be the first black South African to space’.”

His improbable journey from a middle-class township to the thermosphere began with a leap from a wall.

The initial entry requirement for the competitors was to submit a photograph of themselves jumping from any height.

His first choice was the roof of his parents’ three-bedroom house but his mother Ouma said “no”, fearing it was too high and that he would break his legs.

He settled for the house’s two-metre perimeter wall and a friend captured the feat using a mobile phone.

The picture has helped propel Maseko, who works part-time as a DJ at parties, to new heights.

He finally secured his seat on the rocket after gruelling physical and aptitude tests in the contest organised by AXE Apollo Space Academy and sponsored by Unilever and space tourism firm Space Expedition Corporation (SXC).

It was a dream come true for a man from a humble background.

His family says they never doubted the one-time altar boy at a local Anglican church, who now sings with a local township gospel choir, would be a high-flier.

“While I was pregnant with Mandla, I knew I was going to give birth to a star,” said Maseko’s mother.

His 18-year-old sister Mhlophe agrees: “I don’t know what comes after space. I’m sure if there was something he would go.”

Born to a school cleaner and an auto tool maker in Soshanguve township near Pretoria, Maseko has neighbours high-fiving him for putting South Africa’s townships on the “galactic map”.

His long-term plans are to study aeronautical engineering and qualify as a space mission specialist with the ultimate dream of planting the South African flag on the moon.

South Africa’s Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom sees Maseko “as a role model to the future generation of space professionals and enthusiasts”.

His experience could not have come at a better time “when Africa is gearing up its space ambitions” as host to the world’s biggest and most powerful radio astronomy telescope, said Hanekom.

The director of that project, Bernie Fanaroff, also hailed young Maseko as an ambassador for science.

“Anything that raises the profile of science up there must be good because it brings to the attention of young people what they can achieve in science and engineering.”

Curious young neighbours often stop Maseko’s 13-year-old sister Mantombi on her way home from school and ask, “What is space? what is space?”

“A very unique place,” she tells them. “Space is a very special place.”

Maseko spent a week at the Kennedy Space Academy in Florida where he skydived and undertook air combat and G-force training.

While there he met and posed for pictures with US astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who was the second man ever to set foot on the moon after Neil Armstrong as part of the 1969 Apollo 11 space mission.

For Maseko, the encounter was magical.

“This is how it feels to be out in space,” he recalls thinking. – Sapa-AFP

11 years ago

African Queen returns to Nile waters 60 years on

Sixty years after Humphrey Bogart steered her through crocodile infested waters, the African Queen is back plying the Nile.

Lovingly restored, the boat is operated by Cam McLeay, a New Zealand adventurer and Nile enthusiast, and took its first passengers for a ride in December.

“The African Queen belongs on the Nile. So it is so important to have the boat back home over 60 years after the film was made,” McLeay told AFP.

Cam McLeay stands on his boat with his colleagues on the shores of the River Nile in Jinja, Uganda. He bought the boat, made it functional and will use it to offer cruises on the river Nile in Jinja. (Pic: AFP)

In 1950 Bogart and Katherine Hepburn flew into Uganda together with a huge team from Hollywood to shoot the movie of the same name.

The film told the story of a prim missionary and a gruff adventurer, the captain of the African Queen – two totally different characters – who in true silver screen fashion end up falling in love despite the odds.

Hepburn wrote a frothy account of the making of the African Queen, which was shot between Uganda and neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, subtitled “How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Houston and almost lost my mind”.

Based on a 1934 novel by C.S. Forester, the movie was set during World War I in German-occupied east Africa.

“There were actually two of these boats, one of them was in Congo and this is the Nile’s African Queen,” explained McLeay, who recounts his love affair with the Nile.

“I’m very attached to the Nile. I’ve travelled the full length of the river, from the Mediterranean to the source in Nyungwe,” the father of three recounted. “I’ve been up and down the river for 16 years.”

Back in the 1990s he set up a rafting company in Uganda’s Jinja area, and then had an eco-lodge built on an island in the river.

McLeay says he wants his projects to be sustainable – from both an economic and an environmental point of view.

He then started thinking about a river boat to do trips and sundowner cruises for tourists, showcasing the scenery and the very varied birdlife.

“Just on this section here, we have over 100 species of birds. It’s just beautiful to be on the river here at the sunset on the Equator,” he told AFP.

McLeay learned of the existence of the African Queen when on holiday on Kenya’s island of Lamu, where traditional Arabic-style sailing dhows with lateen sails are common.

“I was looking for an authentic African boat to run on the Nile and I was thinking of buying a Swahili dhow,” he recounted.

“Then this hotel owner said: ‘Why don’t you buy the African Queen? She’s from Uganda!'”

A week later McLeay had gone to Nairobi and tracked down Yank Evans, a septuagenarian who explained how he had found the hull of the boat abandoned in northern Uganda’s Murchison Falls national park 20 years earlier and had done it up.

When he left Uganda for Kenya he brought the boat with him.

Another five years went by between the boat’s return to the banks of the Nile and the start of services on the river.

One of the challenges was to rebuild the steam engine, which was more than 100 years old.

In the movie, directed by John Huston and released in 1951, the boat was powered by a diesel engine that was made to look like a steam engine.

But when Evans restored it he decided to fit a real steam engine and had one airfreighted from Britain.

“When we got this boat, the boiler had been sitting around for a very long time,” explained Gavin Fahey, the African Queen’s captain and mechanic, adding that he had to strip down the engine and re-machine it.

McLeay explains that he has tried to recreate an atmosphere of times gone by on board his African Queen, the time when huge tracts of Africa were – for Western adventurers at least – still virgin territory waiting to be explored.

“Gavin wears the same kind of clothes as Humphrey Bogart. We have adopted the fez for the waiters, which is associated with the Sudan, where the Nile makes most of his journey,” McLeay said.

“And we are serving gin and tonics, like Humphrey Bogart drank in the movie.”

Keeping the engine fed with wood has virtually no environmental impact, McLeay says, since he is using wood left over from a construction project, and he has planted trees to ensure supply when that stock runs out.

“It’s probably more environmental friendly then a modern boat,” he says. – Sapa-AFP

11 years ago

Young Africans meet to tackle unemployment ‘time bomb’

Hundreds of young Africans began a five-day conference in the Senegalese capital Dakar on Monday focusing on the “time bomb” of youth unemployment across the continent.

Africa is one of the world’s youngest and fastest-growing regions but growing joblessness has become a major threat to prosperity, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB).

Alioune Gueye, head of the Network of Youth Leaders of Africa and the Diaspora, which organised the event, said “nothing is more tragic” than seeing parents educate their children only to watch them fail to find jobs.

“This is a time bomb that must be defused,” Gueye said as he opened the fourth Pan-African Youth Leadership Summit, co-organised by the United Nations, which this year will tackle youth unemployment.

Prime Minister of Senegal Aminata Toure (3rd L) at the summit. (Pic: AFP)

The UN estimates that 20% of Africans – around 200 million people – are aged 15 to 24, with the youth population expected to double by 2045.

Africa’s economy is projected to grow by 5.3% in 2014, according to the 2013 African Economic Outlook, an annual report produced by the AfDB, the UN Development Programme and other groups.

But growth is not translating into jobs for the young people who make up 60% of the unemployed or underemployed in Africa, the report says.

Recent estimates by the AfDB based on household surveys across sub-Saharan Africa and data from the International Labour Organisation find that youth unemployment stands around 34%.

“Unemployed young people are a threat to the stability of our countries,” Gueye said.

He told AFP after his address that “when a young person isn’t working, he has to rely on his family. He wants to start a family but cannot do so. He becomes embittered and can fall into organised crime or terrorism.”

Senegalese Prime Minister Aminata Toure told the conference the global financial crisis had led to numerous problems related to youth unemployment.

“The time has come to tackle this breakdown, to make young people the future of the continent. That must be the top priority,” she said.

The conference will make policy recommendations on tackling youth unemployment which will be circulated to the African Union and United Nations. – Sapa-AFP

11 years ago

Zambian politician charged for calling president a potato

Zambian police have arrested and charged an opposition leader with defamation after he compared the president to a potato, a party ally told AFP on Tuesday.

Frank Bwalya, head of the Alliance for a Better Zambia, allegedly referred to President Michael Sata as “Chumbu Mushololwa” during a live radio broadcast on Monday.

The Bemba term literally refers to a sweet potato that breaks when it is bent and is used to describe someone who does not heed advice.

“The police decided to arrest and charge him with defamation of the president,” Eric Chanda, the secretary general of Alliance told AFP.

If convicted, Bwalya faces a maximum jail term of five years.

Zambia’s President Michael Sata. (Pic: AFP)

Bwalya, a former Catholic priest and supporter of Sata when in opposition, is just the latest opposition leader to run afoul of Zambia’s leader.

In September, Nevers Sekwila Mumba of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy was questioned by police after calling Sata a liar.

Ex-president Rupiah Banda has been hauled before the courts on numerous corruption charges.

“President Sata is the same old man who was on all radio stations defaming former presidents Banda and Mwanawasa and nobody arrested him,” said Chanda. – Sapa-AFP

11 years ago

Meet the Elephant’s Bikers, Côte d’Ivoire’s version of Hells Angels

Decked out in leather gear, their powerful Harley-Davidsons girded in sleek chrome, the Elephant’s Bikers make an almost surreal sight in the poor and sometimes barren Côte d’Ivoire villages they visit.

As the west African country’s “Easy Rider” team roars into communities where residents are lucky to own a rundown moped, ecstatic crowds typically form to greet them on their journey from the economic capital Abidjan to the industrial port of San Pedro almost 400 kilometres to the west.

Wherever the club makes a pit-stop for supplies, men, women and children flock around the 30 or so bikes and their owners. Young drink-sellers use ageing cellphones to snap pictures of the Harleys and grinning villagers chat to the bikers.

Members of the Elephant’s Bikers club ride near San Pedro. (Pic: AFP)

“We’re sharing a pleasure, a dream. People identify with that. They see that it’s accessible, it’s not just on television,” says one of the bikers, Landry Ouegnin.

“Just because we live in an underdeveloped country doesn’t mean we can’t share this kind of thing,” adds the 34-year-old business manager, who helps run the club of inveterate riders.

The Elephant’s Bikers, created 10 years ago to mark the centenary of legendary American motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson, has about 50 members – mostly native Ivorians, but also expatriates, some of whom have become citizens of Côte d’Ivoire.

The whole gang displays the distinctive signs of a pack like the Hells Angels – bandanas, omnipresent skulls and crossbones, leather jackets with the Harley logo or that of their club, an elephant wearing cowboy boots.

The Elephant’s Bikers club, an Ivorian version of Hells Angels, was created ten years ago to commemorate Harley Davidson’s centenary. (Pic: AFP)

For Jackie Thelen, who leads the club and came from France to take on Ivorian nationality, the regalia is “a disguise” that unites members with “a spirit of brotherhood” like in other such groups scattered around the world.

“You’ll often see a big boss show up with ripped jeans, a flashy belt and skulls even though he’s in charge of a highly rated company. That’s the paradox among Harley-Davidson lovers,” says Thelen (52), who runs a business himself and sports a ring in his left ear.

Benevolent bikers
In Côte d’Ivoire, the bikers are anything but bad boys, in contrast to the reputation of notorious counterparts like the Hells Angels. And their rides are expensive. Including the cost of transport and import duty, the cheapest bike in the club cost four million CFA francs ($8 200), while the most pricey cost 25-million ($52 000).

Such sums are way above the means of most villagers along the bikers’ route, but they sometimes help the people they meet by making donations to schools, medical dispensaries or entire villages.

While some members of the club are not wealthy and assembled their own bikes, most are well off and a few are very rich.

A son of late president Henri Konan Bedie is a member, together with an adviser to a cabinet minister. To protect such prominent figures, paramilitary police follow the pack in a four-by-four truck and occasionally direct traffic.

Once they reach San Pedro, after a trek that began in the rain and has been strewn with potholes, the bikers are all smiles.

“That was wonderful!” shouts Gerard Lokossou (41) at the end of his first outing with the club.

A marketing director of 41 who has ridden with a biker group in the US state of New Jersey, Lokossou says he experienced the same joy being part of the Ivorian horde.

“It gave me a chance to discover a part of the country that I had never seen from that point of view,” he says, as wide-eyed staff from the hotel where the Elephant’s Bikers are staying film the group’s arrival.

Joris Fioriti for AFP