AfricaIs aCountry

Snake Oil

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Snake Oil

By
Sean Jacobs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKOwDQcPwbs

Selling desperate people false hope, especially AIDS patients, are common on the African continent–well documented in my native country, South Africa–now there’s this “faith healer” in Tanzania who has people in East Africa traveling thousands of miles for a homebrewed drink that he claims can cure AIDS, cancer, diabetes, and other “incurable diseases.” There’s no evidence it does. The report above is by Kenya’s private NTV network. Above is Part One of the NTV report; below is Part Two.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c03FulCf6LY

There’s also Jeffrey Gettleman’s report in The New York Times which reveals the “healer” even has a Facebook page.

Further Reading

The people want to breathe

In Tunisia’s coastal city of Gabès, residents live in the shadow of the phosphate industry. As pollution deepens and repression returns, a new generation revives the struggle for life itself.

After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.