{"id":6452,"date":"2015-09-21T06:52:45","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T06:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6452"},"modified":"2015-09-21T06:52:45","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T06:52:45","slug":"there-but-for-the-grace-of-mugabe-go-we-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/09\/21\/there-but-for-the-grace-of-mugabe-go-we-all\/","title":{"rendered":"There but for the Grace [of] Mugabe, go we all"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don't know about you, but I always find Arjen Wals'\u00a0Transformative Learning <a href=\"http:\/\/transformativelearning.nl\">blog<\/a> both entertaining and informative. \u00a0It is, for example, one of the few places you can go to keep up to date with the growing amount of plastics in the oceans. \u00a0Sometimes this infor-tainment (or is it enter-mation?) can be a heady mix, and the most recent post was a good example.<\/p>\n<p>It tell how AW was invited to give a keynote at an Education Expo in Zimbabwe, and, on arriving at Harare\u00a0airport, discovers he's sharing a platform with the local dictator,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mgafrica.com\/article\/2015-01-31-uncle-bob-is-new-au-honcho-mugabe-may-be-a-son-of-a-bitch-but-hes-africas-son-of-a-bitch\/\">Uncle Bob<\/a>\u00a0himself; not only that, but there are 5\u20136000 people plus dignitories (and some\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.zanupf.org.zw\">Zanu PF<\/a>\u00a0bully-boys, no doubt) waiting to hear what he has to say. \u00a0AW is supposed to be talking about '<em>Growing Socio-economic Opportunity through Quality Education in the 21st Century<\/em>' which is a topic that Zanu PF zealots probably don't\u00a0like very much on the grounds\u00a0of its inherent neo-liberal, revisionist, and neo-colonial tendencies \u2013 quality education, indeed!<\/p>\n<p>Happily, however, by the time AW got to the venue, Uncle Bob had hoofed it to parliament, and\u00a0most of the 6000 had vanished as well. \u00a0You\u00a0will find more details of the Expo and AW's address in\u00a0the <a href=\"http:\/\/transformativelearning.nl\/2015\/09\/18\/education-transformation-and-sustainabiliy-sharing-the-stage-with-a-president\/\">blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But there's a twist to the story that AW seems not to\u00a0know about. \u00a0It transpires\u00a0that Uncle Bob went on to give the wrong <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/people\/robert-mugabe-mistakenly-reads-a-month-old-speech-from-start-to-finish-as-he-opens-zimbabwes-parliament-10503031.html?icn=puff-8\">speech<\/a> to\u00a0parliament (which he was supposed to be opening) \u2013 he repeated\u00a0his state of the union address he'd given a\u00a0month ago. \u00a0The state of politics in the country is such that no one dared tell him, and the faithful clapped anyway. \u00a0But it does reveal the possibility that the Great Dictator was\u00a0so discombobulated by the prospect of meeting AW that he got all confused.<\/p>\n<p>Such is the power of academics who would dare speak truth to power.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don't know about you, but I always find Arjen Wals'\u00a0Transformative Learning blog both entertaining and informative. \u00a0It is, for example, one of the few places you can go to keep up to date with the growing amount of plastics...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}