The African women’s blogsphere this week · Global Voices
Nish Matenjwa

Her love of her country notwithstanding, Rombo the Rambler agonises on how a ‘country that has so much potential gets it so wrong so often’ despite the ‘intelligent, forward-thinking, grounded men and women’ she encounters on a daily basis and asks what happens to these people once they are elected into public office.
Several African women have written about the recent passing away of Coretta Scott King, widow of civil rights leader, Martin Luther King. In tribute, L.W. says her ’thoughts on the life and death of this great woman’ are much too vast and complex than can be articulated or captured on her blog. 
‘Thank you for your grace, your courage, your wisdom and the legacy of civil rights for all people’, states Black Looks movingly.
Black Looks has also written about a Nigerian British woman who has been elected mayor in London’s Wandsworth borough – the third largest in the country – 
Lola Ayonrinde.
WM writes persuasively about the myth of the Strong Black Woman or SBW, and how women have been conditioned to  feel that being an SBW ’is something to which one should aspire; we feel complimented when we are included in the category of others similarly valorised; and we blame ourselves for any indication that we are falling below the standards of the SBW’.
AfroFeminista asks whatever happened to ‘plain speak’ and writes about the use of words and how her workplace ‘sterilises everything’ where instead of using plain language, phrases such as ‘attitude change’, ‘let's all just get together, in order to get this job done’ become ’paradigm shifts’ and ‘coalition building and networking’.
Writing about how she has been ‘witness to the most abominable behaviour by certain individuals’ in a situation where sons were seeking to disinherit their mother, Wambui is riled as she watched a family tear itself over ’money and property’.
Her chances of maintaining a work/life balance are doomed, writes Ore who neatly encapsulates the difficulties facing many women in trying to maintain a career while having a family and children.  ’All the women I know end up pulling double-duty i.e. working and taking care of their family and home. Even those married to the most progressive, new-age type of men’, she writes.
A rapidly expanding city attempting to accommodate the rising number of people moving in is bringing about environmental problems, Brownyn writes from Johannesburg and who says ’our so called green lungs are being threatened, ecologically important wetlands are being destroyed and hundreds of trees are disappearing from a city that is seriously in danger of losing it's reputation as being the largest man-made forest in the world’. She states the situation is made worse by the lack of consultation by City Council during the planning process.
Adaure writes amusingly about ‘Africa’s One Hit Wonder’, a timeless song called ‘Gao’ by a little-known group known as ‘Magic System’.  ‘This one some has to be by far the most popular African song ever. It is the song that usually gets everybody off their seats and gets the dance floor rolling…and the room lights up. It brings smiles to everyone’s face and all get up, hands on head or index finger pointing to the heavens’.