Bill Gates in Africa
…Bill and Melinda Gates, with an air of slight embarrassment, sat on a low wooden bench in the middle of the dark room, surreally reminiscent of nervous interviewees on a breakfast TV sofa. Before their arrival, Nkosepaca, the 60-year-old head of the family, had hauled himself across the floor and into a makeshift wheelchair at one end of the bench. He lost both legs above the knee when he fell off a crowded train a couple of years ago, and the stumps were tied up with filthy rags. Gates, whose personal wealth exceeds $40bn (£22bn), sat next to him, hands in his lap, eyes lowered below his baseball cap and feet wedged behind one of the chair’s wheels, which might once have belonged to a bicycle.
How were they to make conversation? Bill and Melinda Gates, whose charitable foundation takes as its premise that all lives have equal value, struggled to connect. They were there to talk about tuberculosis, because the foundation is putting millions into research to replace the ancient and inadequate BCG vaccine and find new drugs to shorten the six-month treatment time. Nkosepaca has had TB four times, infected by different strains of the bacterium – something which it later appeared had fascinated Bill Gates, who was to raise it with scientists again and again, asking what the implications were for a vaccine.
But faced with the man, he was silent and it was his wife Melinda who tried politely to engage Nkosepaca about his health, and who lit up with real warmth as she caught the eye of a wild-haired, fidgety granddaughter or a big-eyed baby. When his turn came to ask a question, Gates, looking less than comfortable, resorted to numbers.
“How many people live here?” he asked in that staccato voice that carries all the feeling of a computer chip, followed by: “How long have you had electricity?” (The answer was six years.)
The Gateses were on their first tour in South Africa since Bill announced he would step aside from Microsoft (although only reducing his involvement, he says) in 2008 and the billionaire financier Warren Buffet announced he would give the $30bn foundation most of his fortune – effectively doubling it in size.
The family had no idea of the vast wealth at Gates’s disposal. “Do you know who he is?” I asked them. They shook their heads. “Or why he has come?” No clue. But as most destitute Africans reasonably do, faced with a white, well-fed foreigner, Nkosepaca asked him for help. “He asks if anybody can help us because the money we’re getting is too little to sustain a family,” translated a young man from the Desmond Tutu TB Centre at Stellenbosch University, which had arranged the visit. Later, one of the daughters spoke up. “I just want to know whether you can help our father,” said 25-year-old Kutala quietly in English from the back of the room.
“We came for a visit,” answered Melinda. “We certainly will do something to help your family because you have been so hospitable today.”
guardian.co.uk
Uncharcteristically, I’m speechless…
Fear and loathing on DC’s streets as summer crimewave reaches the elite
Widening gap between rich and poor blamed for rise in violence, with 14 murders in two weeks.
…Twelve of the 14 murder victims so far this month were African-American males, shot dead in poor areas of the city rarely visited by tourists. The other two were an African-American woman and Alan Senitt, the Jewish activist.
Senitt, 27, had his throat slashed as he walked a female friend home from the cinema in the early hours of July 9. His friend was sexually assaulted. The Briton had been planning to spend the summer working for a Democratic presidential hopeful, the former governor of Virginia Mark Warner.
There was nothing to suggest it would be unsafe to walk his friend home. Georgetown, with its genteel rows of houses, tucked-away mansions and smart shops, is one of the richest neighbourhoods in Washington.
…In a city that is 60% black, African-American students have the lowest performance levels in the country; overall 37% of Washingtonians cannot read well enough to fill out a job application.
Probe: Black Chicago Suspects Tortured
Years ago, black suspects accused Chicago police of extracting confessions through torture: beatings, electric shocks, games of mock Russian roulette, and throwing typewriter covers over their heads to make them gasp for air.
On Wednesday, prosecutors appointed to look into the allegations from the 1970s and 1980s said they found evidence that some of the allegations were true – but that the cases are too old or too weak to prosecute.