Tuesday, September 18, 2012

South Africa warns of cost of unrest - FT.com

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US fugitive nabbed on the Cape Flats - Crime & Courts | IOL News | IOL.co.za

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Libya After Gadhafi: Transitioning from Rebellion to Rule

August 24, 2011


Fighting Grassroots Terrorism: How Local Vigilance Can Help

By Scott Stewart
With the end of the Gadhafi regime seemingly in sight, it is an opportune time to step back and revisit one of the themes we discussed at the beginning of the crisis: What comes after the Gadhafi regime?
As the experiences of recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan have vividly illustrated, it is far easier to depose a regime than it is to govern a country. It has also proved to be very difficult to build a stable government from the remnants of a long-established dictatorial regime. History is replete with examples of coalition fronts that united to overthrow an oppressive regime but then splintered and fell into internal fighting once the regime they fought against was toppled. In some cases, the power struggle resulted in a civil war more brutal than the one that brought down the regime. In other cases, this factional strife resulted in anarchy that lasted for years as the iron fist that kept ethnic and sectarian tensions in check was suddenly removed, allowing those issues to re-emerge.
As Libya enters this critical juncture and the National Transitional Council (NTC) transitions from breaking things to building things and running a country, there will be important fault lines to watch in order to envision what Libya will become.

Divisions


One of the biggest problems that will confront the Libyan rebels as they make the transition from rebels to rulers are the country’s historic ethnic, tribal and regional splits. While the Libyan people are almost entirely Muslim and predominately Arab, there are several divisions among them. These include ethnic differences in the form of Berbers in the Nafusa Mountains, Tuaregs in the southwestern desert region of Fezzan and Toubou in the Cyrenaican portion of the Sahara Desert. Among the Arabs who form the bulk of the Libyan population, there are also hundreds of different tribes and multiple dialects of spoken Arabic.
Perhaps most prominent of these fault lines is the one that exists between the ancient regions of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The Cyrenaica region has a long and rich history, dating back to the 7th century B.C. The region has seen many rulers, including Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, Italians and the British. Cyrenaica has long been at odds with the rival province of Tripolitania, which was founded by the Phoenicians but later conquered by Greeks from Cyrenaica. This duality was highlighted by the fact that from the time of Libya’s independence through the reign of King Idris I (1951-1969), Libya effectively had two capitals. While Tripoli was the official capital in the west, Benghazi, King Idris’ power base, was the de facto capital in the east. It was only after the 1969 military coup that brought Col. Moammar Gadhafi to power that Tripoli was firmly established as the seat of power over all of Libya. Interestingly, the fighting on the eastern front in the Libyan civil war had been stalled for several months in the approximate area of the divide between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania.


After the 1969 coup, Gadhafi not only established Tripoli as the capital of Libya and subjugated Benghazi, he also used his authoritarian regime and the country’s oil revenues to control or co-opt Libya’s estimated 140 tribes, many members of which are also members of Libya’s minority Berber, Tuareg and Toubou ethnic groups.
It is no mistake that the Libyan revolution began in Cyrenaica, which has long bridled under Gadhafi’s control and has been the scene of several smaller and unsuccessful uprisings. The jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) has also traditionally been based in eastern Cyrenaican cities such as Darnah and Benghazi, where anti-Gadhafi sentiment and economic hardship marked by high levels of unemployment provided a fertile recruiting ground. Many of these jihadists have joined the anti-Gadhafi rebels fighting on the eastern front.
But the rebels were by no means confined to Cyrenaica. Anti-Gadhafi rebels in Misurata waged a long and bloody fight against government forces to gain control of the city, and while the Cyrenaican rebels were bogged down in the Ajdabiya/Marsa el Brega area, Berber guerrillas based in the Nafusa Mountains applied steady pressure to the Libyan forces in the west and eventually marched on Tripoli with Arab rebels from coastal towns such as Zawiya, where earlier uprisings in February were brutally defeated by the regime prior to the NATO intervention.
These groups of armed rebels have fought independently on different fronts during the civil war and have had varying degrees of success. The different roles these groups have played and, more important, their perceptions of those roles will likely create friction when it comes time to allocate the spoils of the Libyan war and delineate the power structure that will control Libya going forward.

Fractured Alliances


While the NTC is an umbrella group comprising most of the groups that oppose Gadhafi, the bulk of the NTC leadership hails from Cyrenaica. In its present state, the NTC faces a difficult task in balancing all the demands and interests of the various factions that have combined their efforts to oust the Gadhafi regime. Many past revolutions have reached a precarious situation once the main unifying goal has been achieved: With the regime overthrown, the various factions involved in the revolution begin to pursue their own interests and objectives, which often run contrary to those of other factions.
A prime example of the fracturing of a rebel coalition occurred after the fall of the Najibullah regime in Afghanistan in 1992, when the various warlords involved in overthrowing the regime became locked in a struggle for power that plunged the country into a period of destructive anarchy. While much of Afghanistan was eventually conquered by the Taliban movement — seen by many terrorized civilians as the country’s salvation — the Taliban were still at war with the Northern Alliance when the United States invaded the country in October 2001.
A similar descent into anarchy followed the 1991 overthrow of Somali dictator Mohamed Said Barre. The fractious nature of Somali regional and clan interests combined with international meddling has made it impossible for any power to assert control over the country. Even the jihadist group al Shabaab has been wracked by Somali divisiveness.
But this dynamic does not happen only in countries with strong clan or tribal structures. It was also clearly demonstrated following the 1979 broad-based revolution in Nicaragua, when the Sandinista National Liberation Front turned on its former partners and seized power. Some of those former partners, such as revolutionary hero Eden Pastora, would go on to join the “contras” and fight a civil war against the Sandinistas that wracked Nicaragua until a 1988 cease-fire.
In most of these past cases, including Afghanistan, Somalia and Nicaragua, the internal fault lines were seized upon by outside powers, which then attempted to manipulate one of the factions in order to gain influence in the country. In Afghanistan, for example, warlords backed by Pakistan, Iran, Russia and India were all vying for control of the country. In Somalia, the Ethiopians, Eritreans and Kenyans have been heavily involved, and in Nicaragua, contra groups backed by the United States opposed the Cuban- and Soviet-backed Sandinistas.
Outside influence exploiting regional and tribal fault lines is also a potential danger in Libya. Egypt is a relatively powerful neighbor that has long tried to meddle in Libya and has long coveted its energy wealth. While Egypt is currently focused on its own internal issues as well as the Israel/Palestinian issue, its attention could very well return to Libya in the future. Italy, the United Kingdom and France also have a history of involvement in Libya. Its provinces were Italian colonies from 1911 until they were conquered by allied troops in the North African campaign in 1943. The British then controlled Tripolitania and Cyrenaica and the French controlled Fezzan province until Libyan independence in 1951. It is no accident that France and the United Kingdom led the calls for NATO intervention in Libya following the February uprising, and the Italians became very involved once they jumped on the bandwagon. It is believed that oil companies from these countries as well as the United States and Canada will be in a prime position to continue to work Libya’s oil fields. Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates also played important roles in supporting the rebels, and it is believed they will continue to have influence with the rebel leadership.
Following the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, British, American and Italian oil companies were very involved in developing the Libyan oil industry. In response to this involvement, anti-Western sentiment emerged as a significant part of Gadhafi’s Nasserite ideology and rhetoric, and there has been near-constant friction between Gadhafi and the West. Due to this friction, Gadhafi has long enjoyed a close relationship with the Soviet Union and later Russia, which has supplied him with the bulk of his weaponry. It is believed that Russia, which seemed to place its bet on Gadhafi’s survival and has not recognized the NTC, will be among the big losers of influence in Libya once the rebels assume power. However, it must be remembered that the Russians are quite adept at human intelligence and they maintain varying degrees of contact with some of the former Gadhafi officials who have defected to the rebel side. Hence, the Russians cannot be completely dismissed.
China also has long been interested in the resources of Africa and North Africa, and Gadhafi has resisted what he considers Chinese economic imperialism in the region. That said, China has a lot of cash to throw around, and while it has no substantial stake in Libya’s oil fields, it reportedly has invested some $20 billion in Libya’s energy sector, and large Chinese engineering firms have been involved in construction and oil infrastructure projects in the country. China remains heavily dependent on foreign oil, most of which comes from the Middle East, so it has an interest in seeing the political stability in Libya that will allow the oil to flow. Chinese cash could also look very appealing to a rebel government seeking to rebuild — especially during a period of economic austerity in Europe and the United States, and the Chinese have already made inroads with the NTC by providing monetary aid to Benghazi.
The outside actors seeking to take advantage of Libya’s fault lines do not necessarily need to be nation-states. It is clear that jihadist groups such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb see the tumult in Libya as a huge opportunity. The iron fist that crushed Libyan jihadists for so long has been destroyed and the government that replaces the Gadhafi regime is likely to be weaker and less capable of stamping down the flames of jihadist ideology.
There are some who have posited that the Arab Spring has destroyed the ideology of jihadism, but that is far from the case. Even had the Arab Spring ushered in substantial change in the Arab World — and we believe it has resulted in far less change than many have ascribed to it — it is difficult to destroy an ideology overnight. Jihadism will continue to affect the world for years to come, even if it does begin to decline in popularity. Also, it is important to remember that the Arab Spring movement may limit the spread of jihadist ideology in situations where people believe they have more freedom and economic opportunity after the Arab Spring uprisings. But in places where people perceive their conditions have worsened, or where the Arab Spring brought little or no change to their conditions, their disillusionment could create a ripe recruitment opportunity for jihadists.
The jihadist ideology has indeed fallen on hard times in recent years, but there remain many hardcore, committed jihadists who will not easily abandon their beliefs. And it is interesting to note that a surprisingly large number of Libyans have long been in senior al Qaeda positions, and in places like Iraq, Libyans provided a disproportionate number of foreign fighters to jihadist groups.
It is unlikely that such individuals will abandon their beliefs, and these beliefs dictate that they will become disenchanted with the NTC leadership if it opts for anything short of a government based on a strict interpretation of Shariah. This jihadist element of the rebel coalition appears to have reared its head recently with the assassination of former NTC military head Abdel Fattah Younis in late July(though we have yet to see solid, confirmed reporting of the circumstances surrounding his death).
Between the seizure of former Gadhafi arms depots and the arms provided to the rebels by outside powers, Libya is awash with weapons. If the NTC fractures like past rebel coalitions, it could set the stage for a long and bloody civil war — and provide an excellent opportunity to jihadist elements. At present, however, it is too soon to forecast exactly what will happen once the rebels assume power. The key thing to watch for now is pressure along the fault lines where Libya’s future will likely be decided.

Sudan Tribune (Paris)

Sudanese President Makes an 'Oil for Unity' Offer

17 December 2010


Khartoum — The Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir offered to let the South take the entire revenue from the country's oil wealth in return for a unity vote in the referendum that will take place in less than a month.
Under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the north and south are to split proceeds from oil produced in the South equally.
The Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) in control of the South has persistently accused the North of paying them less than the 50% stipulated in the peace accord.
Bashir made the proposal public during his meeting on Thursday with a visiting delegation of the African Union Peace and Security Council.
"We say if they choose unity, we are ready for the national government to give up its full share in the oil of the South to the government of the south," he said.
But Atem Garang who heads the SPLM bloc in the Sudanese parliament told the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV that the issue of unity is not oil related but rather a "matter of principle".
Photo Essay:
He added that democratic transformation has not not occurred since the CPA was signed and that human rights are not preserved either.
This is not the first time the Sudanese leader makes such an offer. Last October he promised that the central government will pour billions in dollars for development projects in the South and will seek funding from any source including borrowing.
"As for the wealth sharing, we are ready to embrace the development of programs and projects adopted by the Unity Support Fund, in the areas of education, health, electricity, infrastructure, agricultural projects and manufacturing, until it reaches a level comparable to services provided in other states of Sudan," Bashir told lawmakers at the time.
The Sudanese president said that the government will seek funding for these projects from the national budget, grants or loans "even if it exceeded 100% of the oil revenue".
The statements reflect the general feeling about the inevitability of South Sudan's separation.
On Thursday, Bashir's assistant Nafie Ali Nafie said that efforts to campaign for unity have failed.
"No matter what we do we will reach this conclusion which will be recognized by the entire world... we must not deceive ourselves or cling to wishful thinking, we must resign to facts and realities," he said.
Nafie accused the SPLM of working to make secession the likely choice.

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Securing a Peaceful Divorce in Sudan



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Gideon Gono/Grace Mugabe Affair

Gideon Gono, Grace Mugabe Affair? Zimbabwean President's Wife Accused Of Secret Romance
First Posted: 10-25-10 09:58 AM | Updated: 10-25-10 09:58 AM

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's wife is rumored to have had a five year affair with one of the president's best friends, a South African newspaper reported on Sunday.

Mugabe was told of the alleged affair by his sister, Sabina, as she lay on her deathbed in the Zimbabwean city of Harare after a short illness. Reports stated that a trusted bodyguard, Cain Chademana, who was present at the time of death and is said to have admitted to also knowing about the affair, has been found poisoned.

Grace Mugabe, who is 41 years younger than the president, has been accused of extramarital affairs before. One purported paramour, Peter Pamire, died mysteriously in a car accident, while another, James Makamba, fled Zimbabwe.

Gideon Gono, the most recent man to be linked with Grace, was personally appointed as the head of the country's Reserve Bank by Mugabe in 2003. He is the first politician from Mugabe's inner circle to be romantically linked to the president's wife, which is said to be fueling Mugabe's anger.

President Mugabe was described as "devastated" at his sister's funeral, although whether this was due to her death or her shocking revelations was unknown. Grace has been embroiled in family feuding over her husband's wealth as Mugabe, 86, struggles with poor health. Some have said that the affair accusations are part of a campaign to discredit Grace.

South Africa's Rocket Man Elon Musk Wins A Contract To Replace The Space Shuttle



SpaceX Wins NASA Contract to Complete Development of Successor to the Space Shuttle
 First Astronaut Mission Expected in Three Years
WASHINGTON D.C. - NASA has awarded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) $75 million to develop a revolutionary launch escape system that will enable the company’s Dragon spacecraft to carry astronauts.  The Congressionally mandated award is part of the agency's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative that started in 2009 to help private companies mature concepts and technologies for human spaceflight.
"This award will accelerate our efforts to develop the next-generation rockets and spacecraft for human transportation," said Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer.  "With NASA’s support, SpaceX will be ready to fly its first manned mission in 2014."
Musk said the flight-proven Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft represent the safest and fastest path to American crew transportation capability.  With their historic successful flight on December 8th, 2010, many Falcon 9 and Dragon components that are needed to transport humans to low-Earth orbit have already been demonstrated in flight. Both vehicles were designed from the outset to fly people.
The announcement comes at a time when the United States has a critical need for American commercial human spaceflight. After the Space Shuttle retires in a few months, NASA will be totally dependent on the Russian Soyuz to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) at a cost of more than $753 million a year -- about $63 million per seat.
Musk said Dragon – designed to carry seven astronauts at a time to the space station at a cost of $20 million a seat – offers a far better deal for the U.S. taxpayer.  While considerable flight testing remains, the critical-path technology Dragon needs for carrying humans to orbit is the launch escape system.
New Launch Abort System
SpaceX's integrated escape system will be superior to traditional solid rocket tractor escape towers used by other vehicles in the past.  Due to their extreme weight, tractor systems must be jettisoned within minutes of liftoff, but the SpaceX innovative design builds the escape engines into the side walls of Dragon, eliminating the danger of releasing a heavy solid rocket escape tower after launch.
The SpaceX design also provides crew with emergency escape capability throughout the entire flight, whereas the Space Shuttle has no escape system and even the Apollo moon program allowed escape only during the first few minutes of flight.  The result is that astronauts flying on Dragon will be considerably safer. 
Furthermore, the integrated escape system returns with the spacecraft, allowing for easy reuse and radical reductions in the cost of space transport.  Over time, the same escape thrusters will also provide the capability for Dragon to land almost anywhere on Earth or another planet with pinpoint accuracy, overcoming the limitation of a winged architecture that works only in Earth's atmosphere.
Under the award, SpaceX will modify Dragon to accommodate crew, with specific hardware milestones that will provide NASA with regular, demonstrated progress including:
  • Static fire testing of the launch escape system engines
  • Initial design of abort engine and crew accommodations
  • Prototype evaluations by NASA crew for seats, control panels and cabin
The December 8th, 2010, demonstration flight of Falcon 9 and Dragon was the first flight under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which was initiated to develop commercial cargo services to the International Space Station.  After the Space Shuttle retires, SpaceX will fly at least 12 missions to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station as part of the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract for NASA.
                                                            # # #
On December 8th, 2010 SpaceX launched a Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.  This mission made SpaceX the first commercial company to recover a spacecraft returning from orbit, and the only CCDev winner to have already successfully flown its vehicle.  Credit: Chris Thompson, SpaceX
Artists image of the Dragon spacecraft in orbit.  The new launch abort system provides crew with emergency escape capability throughout the entire flight and returns with the spacecraft, allowing for easy reuse and radical reductions in the cost of space transport. Credit: SpaceX

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Marikana Truth

Marikana Truth
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Amidst all the confusion after the shooting of 44 protesting miners at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine in South Africa, we should not lose sight of the astonishingly simple underlying issues.

We are told the workers are demanding that their wage be raised to R12,500 per month (about $1,500) but the workers claim their salary is already at this level. They say they are sub-contracted by a company owned by billionaire South African oligarch Cyril Ramaphosa. He only pays them R5,400 or less and pockets the rest paid out by Lonmin.

If this is so then agreeing to the workers’ demands would cost Lonmin nothing and the whole dispute is between the workers and Cyril Ramaphosa. Instead of saying this however, Lonmin has placed itself between the two and taken responsibility for negotiating a pay rise which no one has asked for. Doing this, Lonmin is placing Cyril Ramaphosa’s private interests above those of its common stockholders and is neglecting its fiduciary duties. It is also leaving itself open to litigation.

Cyril Ramaphosa in fact owns 9% of Lonmin but was paid out $304m in cash by the company in 2010 in a deal backed ultimately by Xstrata. By comparison common shareholders have received only $60m in dividends in the last two years and have incurred over $2.5bn of paper losses. What the workers are requesting is that Ramaphosa share with them about $18m which he is taking from their wages.

When Cyril Ramaphosa bought 50.03% of Lonmin’s Black Economic Empowerment partner Incwala Resources in 2010, Lonmin put up the $304m in cash which he needed. Lonmin funded this with a share issue to which, according to Lonmin, Xstrata was the key subscriber. Since then a further $51m of credit has been extended to Ramaphosa.

Ramaphosa’s company also provides all of Lonmin’s welfare and training services and for this he may have been paid at least $50m in 2011 alone. Based on the worker’s demands and their living conditions, we can guess at how much of this reached its stated purpose. Companies linked to Ramaphosa were also paid “advance dividends” by Lonmin of $20m in the last two years.
All-in Lonmin seems to have paid Ramaphosa and his related companies well over $400m since he bought into the company. This is about 25% of Lonmin’s current market value and is a very large amount for a man who was supposed to be doing the paying when he bought his stake.

And this is not all.
The Marikana conflict is portrayed as a dispute between two unions, the hegemonic NUM and a small new union, the AMCU. But the NUM has been Cyril Ramaphosa’s vehicle since he founded it in 1982. He was its Secretary General until 1998, the year he went into private business to become a billionaire. This has led to claims that the ANC has instituted a form of modern day slave labour. The workers’ employer and their union are effectively the same person. Is it surprising that the workers worry that their union is not wholeheartedly defending their legal rights?

All this casts the Marikana conflict in a very different light to what we have heard so far.
The dirt-poor Marikana workers, many from Lesotho, living in slums, wearing rags, are asking for an extra $750 per month from one of the most powerful figures in the ANC and one of the richest men in the world, and they are openly calling him an exploiter.
Such a debacle, which calls into question not only Lonmin, Xstrata and Ramaphosa but also the whole ANC hierarchy, the reality of the “New South Africa” and the credibility of the ANC’s many foreign supporters, not least those in the United States, helps to explain the speed and the savage brutality of the reaction.

On 16th August, 6 days into the strike, the police opened fire injuring 112 and killing 34.
Local witnesses claim the workers were not charging at the police but were fleeing from them as tear gas was thrown at them by another police detachment. Autopsy reports apparently confirm many were shot in the back.

At the time Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa, was in Mozambique at an SADC meeting. He returned to South Africa but only one day later. He visited Marikana briefly but stayed away from the main area. A full five days passed and only then did he return and visit the crime scene. On the day of the attack Ian Farmer, the CEO of Lonmin, was diagnosed with a “serious illness” and still has not returned to work.

A few days later the 270 men who were arrested were charged with committing murder. They allege that they were stripped in their cells and beaten with sticks. Once an international outcry began and it became apparent that the publicity of a trial could be counterproductive, they were quickly released.

Even with the above illumination, some crucial questions still remain.
How could Cyril Ramaphosa exercise such influence over Lonmin’s Executive Board to be able to effectively bend it, and potentially the Board of Xstrata too, to do his bidding? And what truth could the South African government have been so desperate to hide that it was judged better to risk everything and open fire on its own people, rather than let it see the light?
The answer lies at the heart of the bitter fallacy of the South African commodities boom and the emerging markets paradigm which we have lived in the last 15 years. The sad truth is that nothing has changed, or, more accurately, nothing has improved.
In the past there was one oligarch, Harry Oppenheimer, who controlled Anglo American. Mr Oppenheimer officially opposed the apartheid regime and was a liberal but conveniently continued to export gold and diamonds from South Africa up to and beyond 1994.
Today there are five to ten oligarchs. They are black and they are African. They too oppose apartheid and they too are exporting all of South Africa’s gold and diamonds at the present time. The reason Cyril Ramaphosa could ransack Lonmin in the way he has is because he effectively is Lonmin. Lonmin exists in many ways to serve his interests and its foreign shareholders would do well to understand this. The whole debate about nationalisation is therefore completely moot. South Africa’s mines have already been nationalised and given over to a ruthless tyranny, signed, sealed and delivered by the many cheerleaders of the ANC overseas.

So what will happen next? In fact the next Marikana has already occurred. Tear gas was fired and four workers were shot two days ago on a gold property near Johannesburg controlled by another oligarch, Tokyo Sexwale. The strategy of the ANC’s opposition, which is correct given the extent of the disenfranchisement since 1994, will be to now target every oligarch. It will be demanded that they return much of what was taken. But this will never be done voluntarily and so this conflict, just like the apartheid struggle, will go on for many years.

Will this really be the lasting legacy of the post-apartheid era? Is this what Nelson Mandela’s years in prison, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s ringing endorsements, Bob Geldof’s concerts and Bono’s songs were meant to bring to us? Will they all now leave the world in darkness, with a set of fearful problems for a future generation to sort out? We will have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
– Arthur Mackay is an analyst of global economic and political issues.
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Saturday, September 8, 2012

The Loss Of Morgan Freeman

I am heart broken to see that Morgan Freeman has passed away. He was a gentleman and a great actor who overcame incredible odds to come from Mississippi as a black man. I will always remember him best for playing Nelson Mandela. Morgan ll of your fans love you very much!!!

North America's Misconception Of Africa