Commenterati - 290408

No, this is not just a play on the words- Commentariat & Index, but as in Glitterati, it's a pronoun describing the tribe of the commentariat.

Here's some more of today's better servings from them:

Olatunji Dare (The Nation, Nigeria): Encounters with Gani Fawehinmi

"It is given to only a few to know how their contemporaries and the larger society will remember them when they depart this mortal world. Gani Fawehinmi, our own Gani, can now count this gift among his sundry blessings"

Luke Onyekakeyah (The Guardian, Nigeria): Visioning for 2020: Constraints to national development

"With such uninspiring history of steering committees and national development, it would have been better if there were a change in the modus operandi in this dispensation. We have remained at the same spot over the years doing the same thing repeatedly. We need to move from the status quo that has not worked to something more proactive."

Prince Mashele (Businessday, SA): Imagination needed to avert looming crisis

"In international affairs, SA might not again attain the high esteem in which it was held in the first 13 years of democratic rule. The glory associated with the first decade of freedom made most of us proud to introduce ourselves as South African wherever we went."

Michael Nyamute (East African Standard): Markets can help pay for education at universities

"In Africa, many a government finances are in dire straits, but the demand to provide at least basic education is still strong. Government financing is insufficient for universal basic education, let alone higher education. Radical changes are required in the financing of education worldwide...Securitisation is one such option."

Tony Leon (BusinessDay, SA): Depressing consistency in Mbeki’s stance on Mugabe

"Although the endgame in Zimbabwe remains unknown, the locust years, which saw the destruction of one of Africa’s greatest economic success stories and potent symbols of democratic reconciliation, yields no end of lessons, most of them sombre.
The relative ease and speed with which Mugabe could plunder his country and starve his people is the most obvious. But Zimbabwe also demonstrated the severe limits of SA’s willingness, or ability, to lead the African renaissance to which Mbeki committed his presidency. In the words of Harvard’s Samantha Power, faced with a real test he “flunked it”."