That title is figurative - South African nights are generally short, since it's not that far from the equator. But I just saw the film LONG NIGHT'S JOURNEY INTO DAY at a celebratory* weekend at Berlin's House of World Cultures (next to the Chancellor's "washing machine" palace).

It's from 2000 and documents the TRC, which at that time was still going on. A profound attempt at bringing closure, if not always justice, to an ethically ravaged country. (And I didn't forget the "n" there!)

If you've actually lived there (I have, over a decade) and recognise some of the faces as ones that appeared on TV or in newspapers at the time the murders happened, it's heart-wrenching to watch at times. Even should you not have.

If we're all looking at Ferguson or the East Ukraine or elsewhere big boys are playing with guns, watch this documentary and be reminded of how much is destroyed when one human life - with all its complex development up to that moment, all the other people hitched to it more or less tightly - is trodden, shot or stabbed into bloody oblivion.

Although it isn't fashionable nowadays in Africa and elsewhere to do so, I greatly admire the idea of the TRC. But, watching this movie, the TRC does seem to have been ahead of its time by far.

• Tutu, a great talker, but also a very spirited pacifist fighter for what he believes in, seems to be on a mission of bright optimism, removed from the drudge (mostly) of the survivors.
• The perpetrators are essentially trying to save their skins. One was convinced until the end he was doing what was right for "his people".
• The female commissioners were friendly and wise, but in the end probably too aloof.
• The surviving mothers were the true forgivers, although in the final scenes even they show how deeply divisive racism makes everyone involved - they kept asking the black cop, who'd helped shoot their "terrorist" sons, how he could have done this to his "own blood".

I suppose the visual divides humans set up will be with us for a long time yet. Woman/man, dark-haired/blond-haired, dark-skinned/light-skinned... who cares?! In the end, we all do. We fight racism with racism, all the while spreading violence. Which breeds more violence.

We can probably forget the less visible differences ever really becoming as hotly contested: E.g. education, esp. of the political(ly neutral) kind. Even those that are visible in the clothes & environs of the protagonists of these sad stories: E.g. economic elitism vs. poverty.

In the end the feminist Iris Films, who made this foursome of clips on as many TRC cases (a selection from many thousands), managed to point me at one divide, which seems believable: (I misquote Orwell's 1984...) If there's any hope for the future, it lies in the peace-bringing women.

Daughters, journalists, commissioners (perhaps even one or other top politician, with numbers finally increasing!), mothers. Crying for beloved countries. But then getting up, hugging the bloodied once-big boys, moving on.

I've been listening a lot to this lately - stuck in my mind and just won't go. It's the version from that worship scene in the 2nd Blues Brothers film that's my particular earworm.

Recent developments have also brought to a fore my view of Germany's no. 1 woman, who turned sixty yesterday and some say is now at her zenith...

... wrote the book of the seven seals
No-one knows what our chancellor really thinks, it seems. She's nominally conservative but she dumped nuclear power after Fukushima like a hot potato. She said all was okay with the North Americans doing what that Snow-something fella said - only to get seriously pissed off when her own mobile phone turned out to have been bugged by them. She backed Juncker as conservative candidate for the EU general election a few weeks ago, then dropped him a metre or so just after the election was done (conservatives ahead in the polls) only to catch him by the nape of his political neck before he landed in a heap down on the EU premiers' deadly verbal fight floor.

... had twelve apostles and three she led away
People who get in her way get dropped. Fast. That charismatic "blue-blooded" minister of defence. The young but outspoken minister for the environment. Others. She can be ruthless when she wants to be. Pity she restricts those times to securing her seat of power. Just like she learnt from Kohl. As if she wasn't able to be better than him.

Who's that writin'?
That's the point: It isn't her. She hardly ever publicly commits herself. There was no writing on the election posters of her or her party last German elections, except for some silly phrases like "we are strong". So, no one is writing. The message to everyone else is: Stay stupid, mom's here, let her worry. Duh.

Ashamed
Or just afraid? The US secret services have been behaving particularly badly since 9/11. And globally long before, basically determining foreign policy independent of any president. Now it turns out the members of the German parliamentary committee, to investigate US spying on all of us here (not just her & her phone), have been themselves spied upon. Want to guess by whom? Now would be the time to drop the ever-understanding stance she's taken all her life. Stop being the well-behaved vassal. Doing nothing is less and less of an option - the national attorney general will have to act. Will she take sides? Some doubts remain! ;-p

Hillary Clinton is a fan. But I would much prefer the great Moderator to do a little more for all of our personal freedom. Stand up to Big Brother across the Atlantic. Get out of the pocket of the big German arms manufacturers. Allow more dissent, and dissent more openly herself. If she's as popular as they say, she can afford it on the way to retirement. I like moderation. But in her case, I've had more than enough. Thanks, Angie.

Now get your boots on and start walking over the other premier brickheads! No excuses, please!

The current issue of TIME touts the benefits of fat vs. a lead "fact" of the last 3-4 decades, that fat, or at least its "unsaturated" variant, is the root of all dietary evil.

As the article indicates, the truth may be a lot more complex. Reducing fat - and praising non-sugar carbo-hydrates - may have led to the rampant obesity we see in the richer nations of the world. Because all "carbs", including sugar and all forms of bread, tend to get converted into triglycerides when over-consumed - the long-term body fat many of us have too much of.

Nutrition advice is a mine field, in my personal experience. If you don't submit devotedly to one expert who becomes your god of goodness, you tend to find a plethora of mixed messages out there: Reduce fat and exercise (Susan Powter); keep fat as part of your diet and be aware that exercise will not make you weigh less (TIME). And so on.

Here's what I - a non-expert fiftysomething - go by at the moment: Keep fat intake at roughly 30% of daily consumed calories (on a given supermarket product, divide fat grams times nine by kcal, to get the percentage - this is Powter's formula); to reduce calory intake in general, look for foods around or below 200 kcal per 100g or 100ml. Avoid salty foods - make them the exception (once or twice a week, no more). Do not avoid fruits & unprocessed veggies. Keep "carbs" below 5g per 100g or 100ml; for drinks reduce this from 5g to 1g!

The last sentence is the most difficult one for me at the moment. I am in the process of giving up almost all my favourite drinks - that "healthy" carrot-orange-water-mix at 3g per 100g, for instance! Instead I'm trying to get back my taste for plain water; I find if it's cold - in summer - it's at least a little pleasant.

For the future, I need to drink more water & tea - way more than 1 litre a day. And I need to spend a lot less time in the evening alone. Spending time with people makes me eat less! So I'm going to push up my regular social evenings every week from now on. Not eating any "carbs" at all in the evening is a good thing, my young (fit) twen cousin told me some years ago.

So here I go. (Again.)