From the United Nations Security Council down to the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States neighbouring Mali there are demands for a return to constitutionality.

The putschists insistence that they have no interest in political power and that they will move the country to democratic elections “within a reasonable time” does not cut it.

ECOWAS states have closed their land and air borders to the landlocked state.

Presidents Muhammadu Issoufou of Niger, Macky All of Senegal, Nana Akufo Addo of Ghana and Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire are headed for Mali to impress on the group of colonels who have arrested President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and his Prime Minister Boubou Cisse that they will be shunned until constitutionality is restored.

The African Union has suspended Mali’s membership in accordance with its policy of red-carding any unconstitutional change of government.

Defence of this principle is paramount at this political moment in time. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko faces opposition demands to quit after a rigged election and the nominal leader of the free world, President Donald Trump will not commit to acknowledging defeat if he loses the November election in the United States. 

With democracy under attack we are reminded that is an imperfect system. As Winston Churchill told us with stark humour it is better than all the rest. If we embrace it, recognizing the will of people is its very bedrock.

If that has been tampered with there is machinery, albeit frustratingly cumbersome and slow, to deal with it.

But moving in therapy is never the answer.

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She says flatulence could become an aviation security problem.

I have  got wind of Kenyan MP Lilian Gogo calling for a law forcing airlines to carry medication to control flatulence.

She says apart from the sheer unpleasantness of have a passenger break win one’s vicinity, it could pose a security threat if fellow travelers responded violently.

No doubt Gogo will be flushed with success if her efforts succeed.

However, there has been no official reaction from IATA or officials  in Kenya and other destinations.

In Britain, at least, we know the authorities are at full stretch investigating the theft of a one-million- pound golden toilet from Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of the country’s wartime premier Winston Churchill

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By determining that Prince Charles will succeed his mother Queen Elizabeth as head of the Commonwealth when the 92-year-old monarch steps down, the 53-nation organisation has gone full circle.

It remains a mystery why the heads of state gathered in London last week elected to do this, rather than introduce a rotational system of filling this position like other multilateral organisations do.

Admittedly the post occupied by the Queen and ultimately her son is purely symbolic.

Nevertheless, the decision taken in London will fuel the criticism that the Commonwealth, which is pretty much a symbolic organisation,  is a hangover of British imperialism.

I have been following Commonwealth summits since 1971 when Idi Amin took advantage of President Milton Obote’s absence  in Singapore to seize control of Uganda.

Six years later France-Albert Rene mounted a coup against Seychelles President James Mantham while he was attending the Commonwealth Summit in London, underlining that no deed is so onerous that it does not bear repeating.

So apart from being grist to the tabloids’ mill, and cannon fodder to the anti imperialists, what are the Commonwealth’s major  achievements?

No doubt it concentrated heavily in its early days in bringing down apartheid.

Having covered the adoption of  the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement banning sporting relations with the racist regime at its 1977 London summit, I was refused entry to Zambia for CHOGM in Lusaka two years later.

Nothing would keep me from Melbourne in 1981 where pro-apartheid New Zealand premier Robert Muldoon endeared himself to his supporters by referring to Zimbabwe’s debutant President Robert Mugabe as a jungle bunny.

Ten years later Mugabe hosted the CHOGM that made the Harare Declaration mapping out the organisation’s course into the new millennium.

By 1993, however, Mugabe led his country out of  what he called an evil organisation that took him to task for stealing an election.

So, no shortage of colourful rhetoric to be sure.

At one stage in my career,  I was shortlisted to become media  spokesman for the Commonwealth.

I was asked in my interview: If the Commonwealth did not exist today, would it have had to be invented? 

Of course, I replied. Why else would we have the Francophonie?

As an inveterate multilateralist, I find myself defending both these talk shops and others like the United Nations and the African Union  with the argument that it is better to be negotiating and deliberating than making menace and, worse,  engaging in armed conflict.

As Winston Churchill put it: jaw jaw  is better than war war.

But one must beware  or over-egging the pudding.

Some of those steering Britain’s perplexing path out of the European EU are saying the Commonwealth could replace the EU as a rating partner.

With the Commonwealth currently comprising 9% of trade with Britain compared with  44% with the EU, this is patent fantasy for the next century.

Certainly, the Commonwealth plays an important role furthering the goals of smaller nations that make up the majority of its members.

And there is something to be said for using the soft power of cultural and  historic ties to maximum effect in an often unfriendly world.

Thusfar the Commonwealth has adopted one laudable feature of its founding  ethos: understatement.

It should preserve and cherish this.

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New President Cyril Ramaphosa has been delphic in his response to the multitude of pointed fingers – not least because some of them are pointed at him.

It would certainly be dangerously naive to blame it all on former President Jacob Zuma.

No single person can lay waste to an economy. There have to be accomplices.

When and how they pay for pain and suffering they have caused is a matter for the cvourts.

The  muscular and independent judiciary has been the salvation of the Rainbow Nation. So whatever cynicism has grown in the nursery of our misery, we have to accept that the judges will continue to do an exemplary job in bringing the crooked politicians and officials to book.

It is for ourselves and our elected representatives to ensure the corruption never happens again.

Constant vigilance is essential.

And we’ll need some measurement of success.

Let me suggest the 25-year-old Berlin-based Transparency International.

TI’s annual Corruption Perception Index was published this week.

Once again it has depressing news for Sub Sahara Africa which once again takes up the bottom of the table.

Critics of the index say it is superficial because it relies on perception rather than hard fact.

Do you imagine TI or any other watchdog  would not use hard facts if these were available?

Cover up is the lifeblood of corruption. This is why government crackdowns on media and non governmental organisations trying to establish the truth invariably points to widespread corruption.

TI is also criticized for reducing the incidence to a single mark out of 100.

Surely anyone with even the most basic education understands percentage grades.

Would you prefer the obfuscation of what Winston Churchill called lies, damn lies and statistics?

This year, South Africa gets 43 on the index.

Its exactly the same as the global average, which TI says represents little or no progress worldwide in fighting corruption.

The cleanest country is New Zealand with 89 points  which scores and the most crooked is Somalia with only  9.

Don’t bother arguing over whether 43 is a passing mark.

We have a mark on the doorframe that we can compare next year.

Will it show we are winning the fight?

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It’s the first time the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, known as Cites, is meeting on the African continent.

The eclectic  mix of policymakers,  activists and academics meets every three years with the survival of an increasing number of species on their hands.

Academics like Ross Harvey of the South African Institute of International Affairs says its an enormous load.

“Winston Churchill would have said about CITES what he said about democracy, that it’s terrible form of governance, but it is the best available,” says Harvey

Cites for example fears that tougher rules to protect elephants , currently being killed at a rate of around 

20 000 a year for their tusks could backfire and boost the trade in ivory.

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