Back Issues

The politics of corruption

Russell Grinker

2003-10-09

Recent political discourse in South Africa has been characterised by a preoccupation with allegations of sleaze and government corruption. Senior government bureaucrats and party officials are alleged to have received kickbacks in return for favours; there were allegations of an internal ANC plot by black businessmen to undermine the President; and Deputy President Jacob Zuma has been accused of taking bribes. Director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka has in turn been accused of being an apartheid agent by Zuma's allies, giving rise to a spate of accusations and counter-accusations which threaten to destabilise the ruling ANC.

While South Africans concentrate on their homegrown scandals, it is important to understand that an obsession with sleaze and corruption is today an international phenomenon. There is a worldwide dynamic to 'scandal politics', which runs far deeper than the latest allegations. Today scandals seem to be one of the central features of politics throughout the world. The political classes in Japan, Italy, the USA, Britain and even Germany are no less immune to the disease than our local politicians. While scandals take different forms in different countries, if we look beyond the specifics, there is a broader pattern at work.

Politicians everywhere have power but usually not wealth. They are therefore often tempted to translate the one into the other. Given the history of apartheid oppression and black exclusion in South Africa, it might be argued that the power-wealth gap - and hence the temptations - are even greater than usual in this country. This form of corruption – an abuse of political power that might be termed “the corruption of politics” is however a very different thing from something that increasingly characterises politics everywhere today: the politics of corruption.

In the Western democracies this phenomenon usually started as a public crusade by opposition politicians or the press against government. While there was often some substance to allegations against government politicians, there was also a lot of hypocrisy. Longstanding petty corruption that had always been accepted as part of the everyday business of politics was suddenly cast in a new light. What had up to then been seen as perks of the job was now presented as evidence of corruption.

The politics of corruption has since transformed public life in a number of countries. In Britain it destroyed the Conservative Party and then came back to haunt the new Labour administration which had previously gained by playing the corruption card. Throughout the 'nineties and into the new millennium, a succession of political scandals accelerated the dislocation of traditional party politics in the West:

* Italy: In 1992 corruption charges were brought against leaders Craxi, Andreotti, and Silvio Berlusconi;
* Britain: The ‘Cash for Questions’ scandal 1994 – 1997; the recent resignation of prime minister Tony Blair's director of communications Alastair Campbell in the middle of Lord Hutton's inquiry into the death of David Kelly;
* Ireland: A beef scandal rocked the administration of premier Albert Reynolds;
* France: In 1998 the ministerial flats scandal damaged Jacques Chirac;
* United States: President Clinton was exposed in the Monica Lewinsky and Whitewater affairs in 1998; the current Bush administration remains tainted by allegations of voting irregularities;
* Belgium: A ministerial cover-up in a child torture case shook Jean-Luc Deheane’s government in 1998;
* Switzerland: 1998-2000 saw a sustained campaign over Jewish bank deposits;
* Germany: The CDU was hit by a funding scandal in 2000.

For the opposition, crying “corruption” was a way of attacking governing parties while essentially leaving their politics uncriticised. There was, after all, usually little significant difference between the political programmes of any of the major parties. Making an issue out of their opponents alleged corruption or immorality was a way of criticising governments whose politics the opposition largely agreed with. The cry of “corruption” allowed politicians to reap votes where they had not sowed a political alternative. For the media, corruption exposés seemed to be a way of demolishing governments with a strong grip on power. As was the case with the exposés of SA's ANC government, digging the dirt on a scandal seemed to be a way of breaking a powerful grip on parliament, which was based on the popular vote.

In many parts of Africa so-called 'structural adjustment' also encouraged an obsession with the corruption of African elites. The structural adjustment 'package' imposed on the majority of sub-Saharan African countries since the early 'eighties consisted of privatisation and an attack on state spending. Given the high level of dependence of the African elite upon the state, this further frustrated their advancement. Western obsession with 'good governance', conducted in the name of anti-corruption, was a frontal assault upon the networks that were necessary for the ruling elite to rule.

In most Western countries the crusade against corruption has transformed the political landscape. The reputation of parliament can no longer merely be restored by a change of government. Through campaigns around issues of corruption and personal rectitude, opposition parties and the media have changed the nature of politics. In the absence of genuine political differences, personal morality becomes the only basis on which politicians can be judged. Under these circumstances the meaning of politics has become more and more narrow. Neither government nor opposition even bothers to pretend that significant principles are at stake in their little debates. Unsurprisingly, many people have become cynical. They are ready to put the knife into those who are seen to have responsibility for the mess in which ordinary people have to live. There are no strong opposition parties to provide a voice for the angry and alienated, or to suggest political, economic or social alternatives to the problems of the modern world.

In the absence of an alternative standpoint from which to criticise, it is difficult to criticise at all. In these circumstances it seems as if the only thing open to scrutiny is the individual behaviour of politicians. Personal character has become the substance of modern politics. Given the dominant discussion and debate here in recent months, it seems that South Africa will be no exception to this trend.

Even progressives have been swept along with this disastrous approach to politics. Many seem to harbour the illusion that the ruling classes can be stopped in their tracks as long as the dirty secrets they hide are exposed. This fantasy arises out of a passive relationship between the governed and the governing. And it side-steps the difficult business of building political alternatives to government policies.

Even worse, this kind of outlook encourages a growing reliance on the high and the mighty to decide on issues which should be left to democratic political contestation. In Britain an unelected official, Ulster Judge Lord Hutton, is relied on to sort out the Kelly scandal. South Africa promptly follows suit with the appointment of Judge Hefer to look into the Ngcuka spying allegations. In the process the scope of authority of judges over elected government is enlarged. This is unlikely to be in the long-term interests of the people. Thus is democracy downgraded in favour of enlightened despotism.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

WORLD DAY AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY: 10 OCTOBER 2003

2003-10-09

Initiatives will take place in more than 45 countries on October 10 to mark World Day Against the Death Penalty. The initiative is launched by the Worldwide Coalition Against the Death Denalty (http://www.worldcoalition.org/bcoaljm01.html#710) which gathers international NGOs, Bar Associations, Unions and local government from all over the world. The Coalition aims at encouraging the constitution of national coalitions, the organisation of common initiatives and the coordination of international lobbying efforts to sensitize the states that still maintain the death penalty. A worldwide internet appeal will take place on the website www.worldcoalition.org, intended to question/challenge the authorities of countries that retain the death penalty. Below are some facts and figures on the death penalty, compiled from information available on the web site of Amnesty International. (http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-index-eng)

THE DEATH PENALY: SOME FACTS AND FIGURES
* The past decade has seen more than three countries a year on average abolish the death penalty.
* 76 countries and territories had abolished the death penalty for all crimes by April 2003.
* Known executions in 31 countries were recorded at 1,526 people during 2002. At least 3,248 people were sentenced to death in 67 countries.
* In 2003, for the first time, the UN Commission on Human Rights has urged states that still maintain the death penalty "not to extend its application to crimes to which it does not at present apply".
* More than half the countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice. 76 countries are abolitionist for all crimes, 16 abolitionist for ordinary crimes only and 20 Abolitionist in practice
* 112 countries are totally abolitionist in law or practice while 83 are retentionist.
* Does the death penalty deter crime? A United Nations survey done in 1988 and updated in 2002, concluded that "it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment". (Reference: Roger Hood, The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective, Oxford University Press, third edition, 2002, p. 230)
* Two African countries – the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria – have executed children in the last decade, despite a prohibition on the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by people younger than 18 under international human rights law.
* During 2002, executions were known to have been carried out in the following African countries: Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
* In 2002, the death penalty was imposed in the following African countries: Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
* As long as the death penalty is maintained, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated. Since 1973, 107 prisoners have been released from death row in the USA after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.
USEFUL LINKS:
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-index-eng
http://www.hrea.org/feature-events/world-day-against-death-penalty-2003.html
http://www.worldcoalition.org/bcoaljm00.html

Fatoumata Toure

Kampala, Uganda

2003-10-09

I am intrigued by the number of suggestions made to Thabo Mbeki to do something about Zimbabwe which is "dragging down the whole continent". Every African has a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" but with most Africans still considered drawers of water and hewers of wood, happiness went out of the window a long time ago! Secondly, I wonder why Thabo should really have that mandate when South Africa is strategically closer to the keepers of the gateways to the empire! Try getting a visa into South Africa, with or without your anti-apartheid credentials now deemed irrelevant!

Glenn Ashton

2003-10-09

Would just like to congratulate you on the Pambazuka newsletter; it is a most useful resource and is well put together. Keep it up.

Sizani Weza

Zimbabwe

2003-10-09

I will correct Nimene’s unfortunate misunderstanding about the situation in Zimbabwe. (Pambazuka News 126, Letters and Comments) It is more complex than the propaganda the Mugabe regime has been peddling at every international forum they attend.

The political violence associated with elections and the land redistribution efforts was a deliberate move. Mugabe called the actions "peaceful demonstrations" after admitting that Zanu PF has "degrees in violence". In any case, there is ample evidence that the laws and policies implemented by the Zanu PF government are worse than those promulgated during the colonial Rhodesian era. How does one explain the emergence of the Public Order and Security Act to curtail the activities of the opposition and civic society, the coming in of AIPPA to control the independent press and, even worse, changing electoral laws over five times within seven days before a crucial presidential election?

These and other actions will forever condemn Robert Mugabe as the worst dictator to emerge in the history of Zimbabwe and Rhodesia. If not contained, his actions and policies will ruin any hopes of restoring democracy and economic viability in the country. And this certainly will affect the southern African region.

Arts Under Pressure: Promoting Cultural Diversity in the Age of Globalisation

Joost Smiers

2003-10-09

http://zedbooks.co.uk/

Arts Under Pressure analyses the relevant forces behind decision making in cultural matters worldwide under the influence of economic globalisation. The book deals with all the arts, in all parts of the world and focuses on the cycle of creation, production, distribution, promotion, reception and influence. It asks: who has the power to decide what reaches audiences, in what quantities, with what contents and surrounded by what kinds of ambiances?

Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity

Francis Bok

2003-10-09

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?cds2Pid=280&isbn=0312306237

In this modern slave narrative, Francis Bok shares how in May 1986 Arab raiders on horseback burst into a quiet marketplace, murdering men and gathering the women and young children into a group. Strapped to horses and donkeys, Francis and others were taken north into lives of slavery.

J.M. COETZEE WINS NOBEL LITERATURE PRIZE

2003-10-09

http://www.africapulse.org.za/index.php?action=viewarticle&articleid=1594

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2003 has been awarded to the South African writer, John Maxwell Coetzee, "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider," according to the Swedish Nobel Committee.
Related Link:
* Nobel for JM Coetzee does black African writers no favours
http://www.sarpn.org.za/newsflash.php#875

Men Love Chocolates But They Don't Say

Mildred Kiconco Barya

2003-10-09

http://www.africanbookscollective.com/

A first collected works by a Ugandan woman poet, who has had her poems published in journals in Uganda and the US. The work is divided into sections entitled: 'Poems of Challenge'; 'Poems of Sunshine and Loneliness'; 'Poems of Loss and Contradiction'; and 'Poems of Release'.

Re-examining Liberation in Namibia

Henning Melber (ed.)

2003-10-09

This volume takes stock of emerging trends in Namibia's political culture since Independence and highlights the question of political liberation and tolerance - or lack thereof. The book examines in an introductory chapter the consolidation of political power and control by the former liberation movement, SWAPO. The chapters include case studies on the SWAPO ideology prior to Independence, a comparison of constitutional developments in Namibia and Zimbabwe, an overview on minority rights and policies concerning indigenous people and a case study on cultural policy with regard to music. Analyses also cover the issue of the SWAPO "ex-detainees", a critical reading of the Namibian President's biography and an exploration of the institutionalised public memory. The book ends with an essay challenging the limited tolerance currently existing in post-colonial Namibia.
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THE NORDIC AFRICA INSTITUTE'S BOOK LAUNCH
********************************************************************

Henning Melber (ed.)
Re-examining Liberation in Namibia
Political Culture Since Independence
Published October 2003
(paper back, 187 pp, ISBN 91-7106-516-4)

This volume takes stock of emerging trends in Namibias's political culture since Independence and highlights the question of political liberation and tolerance - or lack thereof. The book examines in an introductory chapter the consolidation of political power and control by the former liberation movement, SWAPO.

The chapters include case studies on the SWAPO ideology prior to Independence, a comparison of constitutional developments in Namibia and Zimbabwe, an overview on minority rights and policies concerning indigenous people and a case study on cultural policy with regard to music. Analyses also cover the issue of the SWAPO "ex-detainees", a critical reading of the Namibian President's biography and an exploration of the institutionalised public memory. The book ends with an essay challenging the limited tolerance currently existing in post-colonial Namibia.

The contributors are mainly from Namibia or Southern Africa and all of them have a long-term commitment to the struggle for national liberation and democracy. The editor, Henning Melber, had joined SWAPO in 1974. He was Director of the Namibia Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek between
1992 and 2000 and has been Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute since then.

This book was presented to a Namibian public on 18th September in Windhoek and launched at the Gothenburg Book Fair, Sweden, on 26th September. It will also be presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The book launch in Frankfurt is organised jointly by The Nordic Africa Institute, The Human Science Research Council (HSRC) from South Africa (presenting another volume by the same editor on "Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa") and Brandes & Apsel Verlag from Germany (who published a German version of the volume entitled "Namibia -
Grenzen nachkolonialer Emanzipation").

********************************************************************
You are cordially invited to our reception on Friday 10th October at 15.00 at The Nordic Africa Institute's stand
8.0 L 984 at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

********************************************************************
The Nordic Africa Institute P O Box 1703 SE-751 47 Uppsala, Sweden Phone +46-(0) 18 56 22 00 Fax +46-(0) 18 56 22 90 E-mail: nai@nai.uu.se Internet: http://www.nai.uu.se/ Order the Nordic Africa Institute's publications online!
http://www.nai.uu.se/webbshop/ShopGB

More...

WEIGHT OF WHISPERS

2003-10-09

Adhiambo Owuor

http://www.kwani.org/

"The collection of teeth on the man’s face is a splendid brown. I have never seen such teeth before. Refusing all instruction, my eyes focus on dental contours and craters. Denuded of any superficial pretence; no braces, no fillings, no toothbrush, it is a place where small scavengers thrive." Read Weight of Whispers by Adhiambo Owuor. Just visit the website of the Kwani Literary Journal and click on the link that says 'Stories'.

CONGO: A HELL ON EARTH FOR WOMEN

2003-10-09

http://www.peacewomen.org/news/October03/hell.html

“She came in last evening. Five armed men had raped her the night before, a few kilometres from here," explains Mathilde Muhindo, director of a social assistance agency of the Roman Catholic diocese of Bukavu, on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. "This morning, she was still crying. I cried with her," says Muhindo, in whose eyes traces of tears are visible. It all began in 1994. Rwanda's Patriotic Front, dominated by ethnic Tutsis, seized power in that country and halted the genocidal attacks against the Tutsi community planned and perpetrated by the Hutus, in which an estimated 800,000 people died.

ghana: Women Poised for a Manifesto to Address Their Concerns

2003-10-09

http://allafrica.com/stories/200310060020.html

Consultations continue as the initiators of the proposed Women's Manifesto in Ghana seek to gather more information and to get more groups to give their support for the manifesto. The document seeks to give women a common platform for addressing crucial concerns of women in Ghana through helping more of them to take up leadership positions in politics, and especially in Parliament.

liberia: Many Women Dying From Pregnancy Related Problems, Unfpa Says

2003-10-09

http://allafrica.com/stories/200310060564.html

The number of displaced Liberian women who have contracted reproductive tract infections and those dying from pregnancy related complications that could be treated is alarming, the United Nations population fund (UNFPA) said.

RWANDA: genocide widows dying of HIV/AIDS

2003-10-09

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37064

Mediatrice Ilibagiza, 38, is a widow and mother of three who, like thousands of other Rwandan women, lost her husband during Rwanda's 1994 genocide. She was also among the hundreds of women who were raped by Hutu militiamen known as the Interahamwe and soldiers of the old army, the Forces armees rwandaises, leaving her infected with HIV/AIDS.

rwanda: Marriage by Abduction Worries Women's Groups

2003-10-09

http://ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=20493

Judith Kanzayire, a 29-year-old mother of three children from northern Rwanda, admits that she was the victim of 'marriage by abduction'. "What can you do? It's the tradition here. We have no choice but to accept it,” she says. When asked if she is happy with her life and if she has learned to love her husband, she laughs out loud. “I'm his wife, and that's the end of it,” she replies.

swaziland: Women Fight for a Place in the Constitution

2003-10-09

http://ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=20482

The Swaziland branch of Women in Law in Southern Africa is concerned that guarantees of women's rights that were announced in the draft constitution, soon to be ratified by King Mswati, are not as secure as first thought. “When the draft constitution came out, there were many parts that we greeted with enthusiasm, because they called for equality for women. But upon further reflection, it is apparent that all rights, whether granted to women or anyone else in the form of human rights, may not be absolute,” said Manzini attorney Fikile Mthembu.

zambia: Give Women Land, says minister

2003-10-09

http://allafrica.com/stories/200310020034.html

Government has with immediate effect directed local authorities throughout the country to intensify land allocation to women to empower them through ownership. Lands Minister Judith Kapijimpanga also urged traditional rulers to encourage women to own land - of which 90 per cent was under utilised and was controlled by chiefs.

africa/global: Human Rights Education – Towards the End of the UN Decade

2003-10-09

http://www.hrea.org/erc/Library/display.php?doc_id=1259&category_id=4&category_type=3

This article from the Nordic Journal of Human Rights gives a brief overview of activities during the UN Decade of Human Rights Education (1995-2004). The author concludes that "...although the UN Decade will be over in 2004 there is little hope that governments will improve their actions towards the fulfilment of their obligations in human rights education. With or without a second UN Decade and a Voluntary Fund for Human Rights Education, the obligations for States will last and the duty to cooperate meaningfully in human rights information will remain.

africa: human rights and trade

2003-10-09

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/hchr/cancunfinal.doc

A human rights approach to agricultural trade liberalization reminds States of their commitment to a just international and social order and encourages more concerted efforts on behalf of wealthy countries to reduce and remove distortions to trade given the inability of most other countries to offer similar protections to promote the right to food and the right to development of their populations. This is according to a report on Human Rights and Trade by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, submitted to the 5th WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancun, Mexico.

africa: No Respect for Human Rights

Evans Wafula

2003-10-09

When Africa entered the final decade of the 20th century, interesting words had replaced the traditional political vocabulary. In came new catchwords like democracy, transparency, accountability and human rights. It was a tremendous improvement. Sadly, by the time the millennium dawned, these new words had lost their meaning and the continent had once again reverted to its previous wretched state. The blame in many ways lies with the continent’s political leaders and their foreign allies.
No Respect for Human Rights in Africa
By Evans Wafula
Advocacy Officer
Independent Medico Legal Unit
When Africa entered the final decade of the 20th century, interesting words had replaced the traditional political vocabulary. In came new catchwords like democracy, transparency, accountability and human rights. It was a tremendous improvement. Sadly, by the millennium dawned, these new words had lost their meaning and the continent had once again reverted to its previous wretched state.

Coups and countercoups were in the political menu as electoral fraud and brutal civil wars became the order of the day. The political and civil gains that ordinary people had died for in order to wrest freedom from long entrenched oppressive governments appears at times to have been in vain, especially for countries consumed by fresh onslaughts brought about by some African leaders obsessed with power. These are the topics the media and human rights groups in Africa have been addressing. It does not help to blame the ordinary folk for the tragic human rights record that Africa carries as the century dawns.

The blame in many ways lies with the continent’s political leaders and their foreign allies who do not seem to have come to terms with the order. It took demonstrations and wars to democratize these countries, yet some leaders have chosen to ignore this.

Additionally, the obtaining concept of politics in Africa is largely borrowed from the residues of the western political culture and norms, and therefore its destructive to the greater vision of a liberated, independent, prosperous and a human rights responsive Africa. The need to design a new concept a homegrown concept of politics is a priority agenda for Africa.

The Genocide

These leaders seem to think it was a mistake to grant their countrymen their rights and political freedoms. They claim to be representing their countries and people, yet it is not lost to many and should not be to them that such loud claims are being met by even louder and bolder statements from their citizenry who have not hesitated to let it be known that their patience is running out.

A case in point is the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which over 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. The killings went down in the annals of history as the most catastrophic phenomenon in the African continent in the millennium. The genocide can perhaps only be compared to the holocaust, the slaughter of 6 million Jews by Hitler and his sympathizers and the slave trade of the 17th century in which millions of Africans were uprooted form their homes and shipped to foreign land to start a life of slavery. The Rwanda Tribunal in Arusha has been set up by the United Nations to try the perpetrators, but no one can really get the full reprieve of the horror that left millions scared and traumatized for life.

In June this year, I was privileged to be in Rwanda attending an International Workshop on Capacity building jointly sponsored by the Centre for Victims of Torture Minneapolis-USA and USAID.

I used the opportunity to make a visit to the Gisozi Memorial site, which lies at the center of the genocide and symbolizes Africa’s darkest moments; about 250,000 people were buried in mass graves at this site. The site carries with it the memories of a forgotten genocide and a haunted nation. Inside the site is a storage facility where human skulls, clothes and crud weapons used in the genocide have been stored for historical purposes.

Rwanda stands between a fragile transition and a conceptual reconciliation period. The memorial sites both in Kigali and in Gisozi represents a wounded generation. According to Mrs. Murebwayihe Alphousine, the site was built in 2002 significantly to the healing and reconciliation process and plays a central role to the genocide survivors. The occurrence of the genocide goes way back in 1957 to 1994. The genocides used savagery methods to attack, both the Tutsi-led Banyamulenge and the Hutu-led Interahamwe militia shoot, clobbered and hacked to death many innocent civilians. The guerrilla-styled attacks organized against women and children were the most degrading form of human treatment ever perpetuated by human race. Tutsi pregnant mothers were attacked, brutally beaten and subjected to gang rape; in the process most of the Women miscarried.

My visit to Rwanda was a soul-searching one and carries with it great lessons for Kenya. The current transition needs to be reconciliatory with the past human rights violations.

Troubled region
In the troubled great Lakes, genocide minded-armed faction and militias have not given any indications that they learnt any lesson from the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. The armed factions that continue to roam this troubled area have left no doubt that they have unfinished business and they will not rest until they annihilate certain ethnic groups. On the other hand, the national armies in these two countries in the course of their duties and out of ethnic concern have not hesitated to show their displeasure. The number of internally displaced persons in this region has continued to rise over time to become the highest in the continent. Thousands have been forced out of their homes due to insecurity and fear of recurring attacks. The Gisozi memorial site is significantly symbolic to the region if peace is to become a reality.

Human rights organizations have confirmed that the interahamwe and their counterparts, the former soldiers of the Habyarimana regime, the ex-FAR, have now settled in refugees camps in western Tanzania having disguised as genuine refugees fleeing the conflicts in Burundi. But while these killers and torturous may have decided to change their bases, their mission remain the same- kill all Tutsi even if that involves destabilization of the whole region.

It seems now that after many years of ineffective attacks on Rwanda, these death squads have now decided to switch to Burundi, a country that in recent weeks has been tethering on the brink. Since last December, Hutu rebels have stepped up their attacks in Burundi. The recent power sharing deal is acting as a catalyst. The rebels have taken advantage of the deal and have opted to mount attacks on innocent civillians. Burundi’s Tutsi –dominated army has not taken these lightly and is now squaring with some of the internally based rebel groups who continue to run the power game.

The consequence of this increased turmoil is a rise in civilian toll and serious human rights violations. By the end of December the rebels had step-up their onslaught to an ethnic protracted war thus threatening the peace process. At the same time the power sharing government in Burundi ticks as the rebels continues to mobilize hundreds of thousands of its supporters to scuttle the transition arrangements.

Though it is easy to understand why the militia has turned its attention on derailing the deal, ethnic persuasions remains a factor in the conflict. It only needs the correct timing and willing ethnic demagogues. Like elsewhere in the continent, the latter are in abundance and one of these, the interahamwe, has offered to inflame the conflict in Burundi.

Refugees

This turmoil has precipitated an unmanageable refugee crisis aptly described by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees; the fate and conditions of refugees and internally displaced persons remain pathetic. Refugees continue the exodus from their countries of origin and settle in hostile environments, most of them are housed in shabby shelters that lack basic amenities. The conflict in the Great Lakes Region and the 19-year-old civil war in the Sudan, the absence of a central government in Somalia have compelled hundreds of thousands of refugees to settle almost permanently in neighboring Kenya and Uganda as the situation continues to deteriorate. From the dismal performance of president Joseph Kabila of the Republic of Congo to the armed skirmishes between foreign troops in Congo to the eruption of a brutal border clash between Eritrea and Ethiopia, a consensus seems to have emerged among the populace and human rights activists that will have a long way to go.

More...

BURKINA FASO: Suspected coup plotters arrested

2003-10-09

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37051

Twelve people, most of them soldiers, have been arrested in Burkina Faso since last week allegedly for planning with a foreign country to overthrow the government of President Blaise Campaore, State Prosecutor Abdoulaye Barry told reporters on Tuesday.

kenya: Reconsidering the Mau Mau

2003-10-09

http://www.africana.com/articles/daily/bw20031001mau.asp

Perhaps it's true after all that prophets are readily dismissed, if not crucified as felons within their backyards. It's certainly true in Kenya, where a battle is afoot regarding the remains of "Field Marshall" Dedan Kimathi, a hero of Kenya's war of independence and a leader within Africa's inaugural guerrilla movement, the Mau Mau. But while Kimathi's body, currently buried in an unmarked grave within the grounds of a penitentiary, may yet find a more respectful home, his story only hints at the larger re-evaluation of the Mau Mau and their era.

nigeria: unions call off strike

2003-10-09

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3175174.stm

The main trade union in Nigeria has suspended plans for a general strike on Thursday originally called to protest at a sharp increase in the cost of fuel. A statement by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) said they had decided to call off the stoppage after oil marketing companies agreed to revert to the previous oil prices.

rwanda: Ruling Party Wins Elections

2003-10-09

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3220932,00.html

The party of President Paul Kagame emerged as the victor last Thursday in Rwanda's first multiparty legislative elections since achieving independence in 1962, the head of the election commission said. A five-party coalition led by Kagame's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF, won 40 of the 53 elected seats in the 80-member Chamber of Deputies or lower house.

zimbabwe: Mastering Patience...or Mastered by Apathy?

2003-10-09

http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/econ/030829ciz.asp?sector=ECON

The crisis facing Zimbabwe continues to eat away at the nation's economic and social fabric. While political party actors debate the possibilities for negotiations, the standard of living for the vast majority of Zimbabweans continues to decline drastically. This update from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition outlines the critical concerns currently facing the Zimbabwean population, and then discusses scenarios for transition and prospects for settlement.

Zimbabwe: union chiefs arrested in nationwide swoop across country

2003-10-09

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe/0,,2-11-259_1427422,00.html

At least 200 trade union activists were arrested on Wednesday for participating in protests against soaring prices and high taxes in the latest crackdown on dissent in the troubled southern African country.

BURUNDI/TANZANIA: using film to improve lives of refugees

2003-10-09

For the 49,000 Burundians at the Mtendeli Refugee Camp, in Kibondo, western Tanzania, the prospect of a night at the movies is a sure crowd puller; but for aid officials it is a chance to pass on important development messages to the needy.
BURUNDI-TANZANIA: FOCUS on using film to improve lives of refugees

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]


KIBONDO, 9 October (IRIN) - For the 49,000 Burundians at the Mtendeli Refugee Camp, in Kibondo, western Tanzania, the prospect of a night at the movies is a sure crowd puller; but for aid officials it is a chance to pass on important development messages to the needy.

So, as dusk fell on Mtendeli on 30 September, part of the camp's dusty football field disappeared under a sea of bodies as children, men and women gathered at one end. At first there was just music, then the children began to dance to the rhythms of Congolese tunes. However, once the crowd had gathered, the screen - an enormous sheet draped down the side of two containers - flickered into life and the real show began.

"We play the music to attract the crowds," Roisin Gallagher, the project manager for FilmAid, told IRIN. "People hear the music and come towards it and, because the children are often there first, we film them while they are dancing and then project it on the big screen later."

To the excitement of the crowd, images of dancing children filled the enormous screen and the more provocative moves were greeted with cheers. Soon, an episode of Tom and Jerry followed. This may have been new to many refugees, but it had them hollering support for Jerry, the inevitable underdog.

Another cartoon, "Watoto wa Karate" (Swahili for the Karate Kid), dealing with the challenges street children face, and a short health education video shot by refugee women on how to look after oneself during pregnancy, were next. The feature presentation was "Majuto" (Swahili for suffering), a tale of a girl becoming pregnant while still at school.

Turnout that evening was lower than most - a mere 20,000. Other evening shows have attracted up to 33,000 people, Dr Geoffrey Okumu, the health coordinator for International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Kibondo, said.

Film professionals who were trying to help Kosovar refugees after the conflict in the Balkans conceived the idea of FilmAid, which is a project of the IRC, in 1999.

"It was found to be a positive thing. People who were bored and idle with nothing to do did come together and wanted the opportunity to see films," Gallagher said. "And film had a great potential for reaching wide groups that were not easily reached in a classroom situation or individually. So the idea of film was to inform, educate and entertain people."

It has since come to East Africa to help refugees from the conflicts in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Sudan.

And, over the last year, FilmAid has been working in refugee camps in Tanzania with day and night time screenings, as well as giving video training to help the IRC deliver messages on health, reconciliation and peace-building.

Some of the films are silent. Others are in Swahili, with a fellow refugee providing simultaneous interpretation for the audience. In addition, the interpreter sometimes provides additional explanation to what is being said or done on screen, to make it easier for the crowd to understand.

"For me, I found that quite hard to understand because I have been brought up watching films and TV, but if you have never seen films and TV, you mightn't always understand what is happening," Gallagher said.

The night's films tackled HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancies and child abuse, issues that the Refugee Advisory Committee, a body of religious and opinion leaders from the camps that pre-screen the films, decided were pertinent and suitable for showing

"They are the ones in the best position to decide what is suitable and they also make recommendations on what topics they would like," she said. "We have also gone around and spoken to the health departments to decide the most important topics to tackle."

And Okumu said that the efforts were paying off. He said one of the areas where progress had been made was with HIV/AIDS.

"Through screening the films that contain messages on HIV/AIDS, it has recently enabled us to triple the number of people willing to know their [HIV] status."

He said similar progress had been made in getting refugees to participate in malaria prevention activities.

Okumu said one big advantage was that films attracted large crowds and was, therefore, a more effective way in passing on messages than relying on small groups to do so.

Films shown to refugees are not limited to health issues. With a view to provoking discussions and new ideas for resolving the decade-long war in Burundi, FilmAid has broached the subject of peace and reconciliation.

"When we showed [Mahatma] Gandhi in the area of peace and conflict resolution, there was a huge debate afterwards as the Burundians were trying to work out if there was a peaceful resolution to the Burundian situation," Gallagher said.

But just as important, Okumu said, was the entertainment factor the films brought in relieving the refugees' emotional pressures.

"You'll find many of the refugees in the camps have been traumatised and just having an opportunity to get their minds off their problems goes a long way to making them more comfortable here in the camps," he said.

But, while the spectators clearly found the films entertaining, openly expressing amusement, shock, approval or otherwise as the plots unfolded, the messages of the various films were not lost on the crowd.

"The films are appreciated by the refugees because they are educating us, amongst other things, about pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and how to use a condom," Gervais Athuman, a Burundian refugee who worked as an interpreter for the crowd, said.

"They are useful because they show the things that we are seeing in the camps - things like prostitution and teenage pregnancies. It advises them on these issues," he said.


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burundi: Refugees and Displaced Persons in Burundi – Defusing the Land Time-Bomb

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zambia: Angolan refugees repatriated

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2003-10-09

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"Rich countries must provide practical support to developing country governments that demonstrate the political will to curb corruption. In addition, those countries starting with a high degree of corruption should not be penalised, since they are in the most urgent need of support," said Peter Eigen, Chairman of Transparency International (TI), speaking on the launch of the TI Corruption Perceptions Index 2003 (CPI). (The web page to this story also contains the full TI Corruption Perceptions Index.)

africa/global: Work completed on UN treaty to fight corruption worldwide

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chad: Chad starts scheme to track oil cash

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ETHIOPIA: Corruption reportedly worsening

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Corruption is worsening in Ethiopia and the levels are higher than in previous years, according to the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International (TI). Ethiopia was listed joint 92 on an index of 133 countries, scoring 2.5 on a scale of 10. TI, which is based in Germany, said a lack of coherent rules and regulations, red tape and poorly trained staff were contributing to corruption.
ETHIOPIA: Corruption reportedly worsening

ADDIS ABABA, 9 October (IRIN) - Corruption is worsening in Ethiopia and the levels are higher than in previous years, according to the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International (TI).

Ethiopia was listed joint 92 on an index of 133 countries, scoring 2.5 on a scale of 10. TI, which is based in Germany, said a lack of coherent rules and regulations, red tape and poorly trained staff were contributing to corruption.

"Corruption is a serious problem in Ethiopia," Jeff Lovitt from TI told IRIN. "There is a problem in developing countries because they lack strong public services."

The African Union - which has pledged to stamp out corruption on the continent - estimates graft has cost Africa around US $148 billion.

"Corruption is currently one of the major afflictions seriously confronting Africa," Desmond Orjiako, spokesman for the AU, told IRIN.

"Good governance is part of peace and security and tackling corruption is a key part of good governance," he added. "The AU has been at the vanguard of ensuring that corruption does not spread on the continent."

In Ethiopia, the federal Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission has been waging war against corruption in the country.

Spokesman Abraham Gozguze welcomed the report and said international support to fight corruption was sorely needed in the country.

"We also have to create awareness because in many cases what we are trying to do is change the mentality of people," he noted.

He told IRIN that the most recent case of alleged corruption in the country involved a doctor taking a bribe to move patients up a waiting list so they could receive treatment.

Other Horn of Africa countries such as Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti were not covered by the report as insufficient material was provided to enable analysis.


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africa/global: Review of the 2004 World Development Report (WDR) - “Making Services Work for Poor People”

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africa: Engaging Citizens In Re-Building Failed States

Dr. Norman Reynolds

2003-10-09

The United Nations, the US led Allies and new bodies like the African Union are faced with the task of re-building society and economy in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Liberia – and soon hopefully in Zimbabwe, the DRC and other failed states. They typically attempt to do so by taking prime responsibility, directly or indirectly through a weak transitional government, to “supply” security, infrastructure and services. This method seldom works. As a 'supply-side' model, it is encumbered by 'patronage' and hence is open to local elite capture, be it by warlords or opposition groupings or to disruption by “terrorists”. The answer is to move to a higher conception of local renewal and local responsibility in partnership with the central authority facilitated by the UN and allies. The key is to shift from 'supply' to demand-side management, and from patronage and central control / responsibility to economic rights programming that enables, resources, partners and builds competent citizens, argues this article.
September 2003


Engaging Citizens In Re-Building Failed States

Dr. Norman Reynolds

The United Nations, the US led Allies and new bodies like the African Union are faced with the task of re-building society and economy in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Liberia – and soon hopefully in Zimbabwe, the DRC and other failed states.

They typically attempt to do so by taking prime responsibility, directly or indirectly through a weak transitional government, to “supply” security, infrastructure and services. This method seldom works. As a ‘supply-side’ model, it is encumbered by ‘patronage’ and hence is open to local elite capture be it by warlords or opposition groupings or to disruption by “terrorists”.

Its main weakness is that it ignores the condition of society. The best definition that captures what has happened in such countries is that in each case there has been a “massive loss of competence” by citizens. Competence is here used in the old English sense of the ability to look after oneself, one’s family and to contribute to society. The need, therefore, is to “restore the competence of all citizens”.

The old orthodoxy of “supply”, which has often in the past been the means to control populations, acts to further marginalize citizens. After years of civic trauma, politically inspired violence and mounting poverty, the supply model asks populations to ‘wait’ for improvements; that is, to remain dependent. Passivity often becomes anger. It is this resultant vast gulf between inactive citizens and frustrated donor / emerging new government that leaves space for resistance and warlord and political / religious machinations.

It also fails to build local demand and economy; thereby punishing those who try to produce but cannot sell locally.

The answer is to move to a higher conception of local renewal and local responsibility in partnership with the central authority facilitated by the UN and allies.

The key is to shift from ‘supply’ to demand-side management, and from patronage and central control / responsibility to economic rights programming that enables, resources, partners and builds competent citizens.

Citizens can be ‘offered’ membership in programmes that confer rights and responsibilities upon them within programme rules. Programmes can be designed that confer community investment (and thus work) rights to build citizen ownership, management and access to productive resources. Other programmes can confer child, health, school and training rights and help to realise the right to live in a working local economy.

As demand-side measures, they also swell local expenditure and, together with other pieces of a localisation strategy, can raise the local multiplier, that is effective local demand, two or three times within a few years.

Programme membership is placed on “offer” to all citizens who organise locally to register to become ‘programme members’. This places the responsibility for implementation on communities of citizens formed for each programme purpose – and rewards local initiative, organisation and the acceptance of responsibility.

Programme rules define the broad aims, the rights and responsibilities of ‘member’ community groups, internal democratic ordering, and attach the related resources. The latter is a fundamental right, to know the available resources. All businesses, agencies and wealthier families enjoy such a basic right in the form of an annual budget. Why not include communities for different purposes as ‘constituent units of society’ with the same resource rights as official departments?

The ‘offer’ of programme rights engages all adults – the best form of politics – and sets out to make them competent in the sense of being able to look after themselves, their families and to contribute to society. It, moreover, allows the authorities to stand back, to “see the wood for the trees” and to assume a supportive, facilitation role.

Citizens organise as communities against known programme rules. These communities will often overlap and can be re-ordered as members decide and experience suggests.

Citizens are rewarded for organising: they qualify to manage the different programmes’ rights, to take responsibility and to receive the associated resources so that they can ‘act’. In doing so, they form and build institutions, perhaps upon existing bodies, such as democratic property companies, Child and Health Societies and the like that give strength to civic society.

This method quickly ‘calls forth’ a dynamic civic society and a local economic, service and community business system to partner the weak state and foreign powers. It also provides capable civic partners for the renewal of local government. It shifts responsibility, as loosely promised in all the current UN and allied rhetoric, to enabled, mobilised and organised citizens. This is the surest foundation for democracy. It also engages citizens in creative and mutual ways so that other and disruptive forces are ignored.

Three Programme Rights

1. Child Rights become the primary responsibility of all adults within a Child Rights Society formed at street, neighbourhood or village level in an “Ubuntu” formulation that is often common to traditional societies; that is that “All children are my children”. The programme provides a grant to each child. These grants are assembled at the ‘Society” so that effectively all adults come to guarantee the rights of all children in their communities.

The rights may flow from country constitutions or UN resolutions but, as programme rights, can be set at country, programme or community level. Early Childhood Development, including the moral and intellectual growth of the child, good parenting, safety, shelter, nutrition and primary health would be the core aims of the programme.

2. Investment Rights are a form of sophisticated community public works programme. A Community Investment Programme (CIP) issues annual investment rights to all adults registered within Community Development Associations (CDA).
The CIP provides roughly US$300 per adult per year registered in a CDA at street, neighbourhood or village. The transfer goes to form a combined ‘community investment budget’ and thus costs little to transfer.

This sets up a state funded civic society investment programme to inter-act with the public expenditure of local governments. Municipalities, for instance, build main roads and irrigation canals when CDAs in those areas agree to build the related minor roads and field channels.

The CDA investment budget belongs to all adults equally. It creates the fundamental economic right that all businesses, employed people and agencies enjoy but no communities are provided - the right to know the available resources. This is the start to ‘help people help themselves’. They explore the options and the costs; learn to invest across a front and over time; and to become democratic owners and managers of joint assets.

The result is a ‘learning society’ in which tens of thousands of experiments occur at the periphery. If something goes wrong, it is a chance to discover why, to correct it and to broadcast the learning. At present failure of all kinds is far too common and mostly hidden. Most poor countries have learnt almost nothing about local development for many years, including the last decade.

The poor are great investors when they have some cash to which they can add their considerable under-used labour. The simple institutional and administrative model allows them to convert the broken down village into an asset holding, investing and managing democratic and economic body, essentially a property company with equal adult – men and women - owners.

Members begin and remain equal as owners, investors and managers. Each year they issue equal ‘use rights’ over gardens, irrigation, grazing, orchards, grinding mills etc. that they trade amongst themselves, allowing each to optimise their economic activity as against others whilst achieving prices over their assets.

The Chinese village, for twenty years, has enjoyed the greatest and longest economic growth known to man upon the back of an informal, locally managed form of rural industrial co-operative. There are strong parallels with the CIP.

The members choose investments and from those decisions construct a labour budget at a wage they agree to pay themselves. In the 1992/93 hundred-year drought in South Africa, a similar economic rights based US$15 million ‘Relief and Development Programme’ (RDP) granted communities investment budgets for the first time ever. Villagers paid each other an average of US1.00 per day when the going official casual wage was US7.00. Why? Because they paid each other, they asked of each other, “How much will you give to earn the total labour budget?” Members sought the maximum investment result.

That programme, beginning with one staff member, reached 940 rural communities, generated 940 great people and development stories, spent the fund using just 25 staff within two years and ‘lost’ some US$1,000 misappropriated. Sadly, a new government, new political turf battles, and the rapid rounds of fashionable development approaches, often driven by donors, drove that expereince from the agenda – until now when it is making a comeback under local economic development driven by residents and local councils.

The CIP adds an investment loop to state expenditure before members earn wages and fees for local services. This raises the local circulation of cash considerably. In the model coming through, CDAs can enter into a social compact with the province. They ‘borrow’ from the province against their ability to raise the local multiplier and to enhance the local productive base and thus future incomes and welfare. They repay these loans by agreeing to pay higher school and health fees. Why? Because school and health form 70% of provincial budgets and, if paid directly as salaries, leak out to central cities. CDAs can use the money better in the first instance, enabling the state to become primarily an investor in and through citizens.

The CIP is affordable. If paid in local currency that in turn can pay all fees and taxes to the local government, it is especially economically dynamic.

3. The Right to Working Local Economies can be fostered by a programme that helps regions to install effective rotating markets, service delivery and intra-district transport systems so that economies of scale and low transaction costs, with access to services, are brought to each locality on market day. This can be once or twice a week within cities and, perhaps, fortnightly in the countryside. A hierarchy of spatial and temporal planning emerges so that each neighbourhood is linked to market and administrative centres and to regional economies regularly and on other days the market is known and can be visited. This programme may build upon an existing market system or pension payout points. It fits in well with sectoral production programmes, such as irrigation and small farmer dairy as it provides the means to bring seller, buyer and payment agents together and to swell local cash circulation.

The model produces a developmental and a ‘learning society’ with numerous local experimentations so that, if things do go wrong, they can be isolated, investigated and corrected without threat to the whole. The result is a positive joint learning opportunity, the results of which are sought by all programme communities to avoid wasting their time, effort and budgets. Programme rules and policies can then be reviewed in a broad participatory manner with the member communities.

Moving from supply, and often control and central dictation, to economic rights opens up citizen participation, responsibility and experiential learning of sectoral management but also of democratic action. It also builds local demand fast, as it places all expenditure in local hands so that the local multiplier is higher than otherwise and local economies gain strength, leading to greater national performance. Community members will give enormously of their time, labour, local knowledge and responsibility; something seldom ‘bought’ by higher authorities!

The model has been used in South Africa in the drought of 1992/93 and is now emerging as the key reform to instituting Local Economic Development amidst the devastating legacy of racial apartheid, 40% unemployment rates nationally but far higher in marginalised areas, and high dependence on central places.

It has been used in the UN Country Team’s Relief and Recovery Plan for Zimbabwe – which I wrote and which awaits the political decisiveness of the African Union to get rid of Mugabe and to move to new elections.

Economic rights under-pin citizens as democratic and as economic ‘actors’ and thus provide the citizen partner to local government success and to international efforts everywhere.





Appendix 1.
Busiesvlei

Getting Community Support Right

Norman Reynolds

The drought of 1992-94 saw the then South African government provide R15 billion to commercial farmers, mostly to cancel debt due to its own Land Bank. Very little from any source was provided for small black farmers and for farm labour which lost jobs.

The Independent Development Trust (IDT) asked me to design a drought relief and development programme. This was approved and R100 million set aside to run it for one to two years.

Calamities are often the best, maybe the only time to introduce significant reforms. The main reform introduced in this programme was that each community received a budget designed, upon flimsy information after a first visit, to employ themselves on community public works for about three to four months; i.e. a wage and a materials, transport and services budget to be used to build or maintain worthwhile structures, roads, wells and the like.

A legal letter on a proper letterhead was sent to each community days after the visit. The letter offered support and announced the budget provided to each community. The letter did not necessarily go to the “right” party as one visit could not reveal much beyond rough numbers of families without regular income – wage, remittance or pension. It was presumed, and worked in practice, that a public letter, nailed as it were the church door, which placed funds on the community table (albeit within a budget) would mobilise all members of a community. The letter required the community to organise to gain control of the budget. The community had to: -
· Hold a democratic community meeting, audited by two local dignitaries like a priest or headmaster, which elected or nominated an existing committee or chiefs council or whatever to run the programme
· Committee members had to accept operational portfolios like Treasurer
· Open a bank account
· Accept the controlling role of Annexures to the letter on procedures etc.

The programme set aside 7% to monitor and audit the use of monies. Funds were passed to the communities in tranches related to planned work for the next month or so. The same professional firm transferred funds to community accounts as tranches were approved upon field reports of expenditure and activity. This outlay guaranteed that there was practically no fraud and gave confidence to all the players, especially the community committees. A further 10% was set aside for management and technical support. The total administrative cost, 17% of R17 million, was provided over and above the R100 million for community budgets.

The aim was to prove two economic and constitutional points as central to development management: -

A. That, given the same economic rights as most households and all businesses enjoy, communities would show a new level of capability and financial know how. The rights are: -
1. To know the available resources – the budget. Unlike many official and donor programmes, the communities received their “drought” budgets as theirs – for all time. There was no closing date.
2. Having a budget, the communities knew the resources available. Holding the budget, they were able to explore alternative uses. This is a great improvement upon the fashionable but fallacious concern of donors with “needs assessment” separate from a budget. With the budget, the communities were able to exercise the most powerful economic conception of all, opportunity cost. That is, the opportunity foregone if one chooses to spend funds in a particular way is the real cost of that choice, not the cash cost.
3. To invest on a broad front – not just what the donor gives you, like a community hall; e.g. to paint a house and to build an extra room and from the savings against a new house to invest in education.
4. To invest in a sequence over time so that returns rise. To open the bar first and from its profits to build the hotel.
5. To explore how to keep monies active in the community, circulating for as long as possible. This is the local multiplier. To do that means hiring and buying locally whenever possible and first investing in projects which bring a return that can pay for social expenditure like the salaries and materials for early childhood development.

B. If a community has a budget and the freedom to optimise its use across a front and over time, it gains another right that communities have never been given: the right to define and manage its business boundary.

All the 940 odd communities that received budgets ranging from R40, 000 to R1, 000,000, illustrated these two inter-related forms of basic economic rights.

Busiesvlei, which received a R40, 000 budget, is a small farm labour township set amongst farms in the old western Transvaal. Most families who lived there, about 90%, lost their jobs as many surrounding farms went into the hands of the Land Bank.

We followed our normal procedures: -
· Two of us, an engineer in charge of that region and I dropped in to Busiesvlei after spending some time finding it.
· We asked if we could meet residents and any committee or other community body.
· They were suspicious. About twenty people of all ages slowly arrived in a classroom.
· We explained that we came from a Trust that wished to assist them survive the drought and the loss of jobs. The Trust was not prescriptive. It needed information in order to engage the community. Would they tell us about themselves, how many families lived there, how many had regular income and anything else we should know.
· Some senior people arrived during the meeting and stated that the community wanted a clinic. We accepted that but countered that the Trust would provide a budget that the community would use as best it could to solve income and other problems. We would hand deliver a legal letter shortly informing the community about the budget provided and the procedures and a staff member would then help them work out how best to use the funds. This did not satisfy some present: a clinic or nothing was their attitude. We explained that the budget probably could not build a clinic. A clinic could only be built if the authorities accepted it and agreed to man and service it. We left after about two hours, leaving behind an unhappy group.
· A legal letter awarding them R40, 000 was hand delivered three days later. With it were annexures that spelt out the procedures. With money on the table, as the theory stated, the community did meet and did elect a committee for the purpose. And a social audit confirmed the same.
· The engineer and I returned a couple of weeks later together with the local facilitator. We faced considerable anger. How could R40, 000 build a clinic? Why were we wasting their time? Did we not hear what they had said? Slowly, over several hours, working through the Committee, we turned the meeting around. We had them playing simple role model and other games that showed that they had more than R40, 000; they had rights that would reward imagination, courage, persistence and discipline. They had a crucial element of autonomy, something they had never had before. Not once did we prescribe what they should do – just questions and games about who they were, what was their surrounding and internal economy, their management boundary, how they related to agencies, farmers and the like.
· After about six weeks the facilitator began to report interesting activities of the kind that the programme predicted.
1. The Committee hired a taxi and travelled to see the Provincial Health Department at its headquarters. This cost R640. The officials were intrigued by a rural labour group that sought a clinic but “put on the table” as their negotiating piece some R39, 000. This had never happened before. It was agreed that a follow up meeting would take place in the nearest “white” town, nine kilometres away, in a month with the Town clerk and the Sister who ran that clinic.
2. When they returned there was a celebration; for the first time they were working with the authorities.
3. Because of the uncertain timing of any official solution, the Committee then spent R260 to travel in a taxi to a hospital to see a white doctor who had a good reputation. They travelled past two other hospitals to see him in the third hospital. It turned out that he was the Hospital Administrator. He was taken with their concern to obtain a health service for the community and that they had a budget to use. He invited them to treat his hospital as their clinic cum hospital for the next few months until they achieved some more efficient solution.
4. On its return, the Committee called a meeting to announce their success; the community had a clinic cum hospital. The celebration was spoilt when someone asked how anyone could afford to visit that distant hospital. The Committee then phoned the doctor. “Don’t worry,” he told them, until a particular date, his ambulances would fetch them on a regular basis and answer emergency calls. For R900 they had a complete health service, at least for a short while.
5. A month later, the meeting took place in the Town Hall of the nearby town. The Town Clerk was adamant. His over stretched clinic could not take people from another place for which his town had no responsibility. The Sister suggested that she could work extra hours on two days a week if the people from Busiesvlei could organise to come at those times. The Town Clerk would have none of that “infiltration”. The town could not afford it. The Sister then enquired if there was a place at Busiesvlei where a clinic could be run. She would come out on her own if the community could provide a suitable place. Like the song about Henry and the hole in the bucket, the Committee reminded everyone present that the lack of a clinic was what had started the whole business. Then an administrator from Head Office remembered that there was a manager’s house at Busiesvlei. Could a part of that be used for an occasional clinic? “No”, said a Committee member, “It has been locked for years. There is no manager.” A phone call followed to Head Office and the manager’s house was made available for the clinic. The community, after spending R980 of R40, 000, now had a permanent clinic. It had taken just four months from the time the letter with the budget had been delivered to Busiesvlei!
6. Two months later a manager in the IDT wrote a letter to the Committee noting that little money had been spent and threatening, which was illegal in terms of the programme rules and the letter conferring the budget, that if the balance of R39, 020 was not spent soon it would be cancelled, lost to Busiesvlei. The Committee then organised the building of a simple youth centre. By now they had so many friends that most of the material was donated by the Department of Health and the Police which at the time, prior to the first “national” elections of 1994, were given community development funds. Labour cost R12, 000. At the opening, the Police came in two big trucks and lifted everyone from their homes the few yards to the Youth Centre!
7. The Committee then invited the engineer and myself to a meeting to discuss how best to spend the balance of R27, 000. We reminded them of the games we had first played, particularly two that involved analysing the local economy that created jobs and business opportunities and the principle of investment rather than expenditure. After some time members began to explore, with rising excitement, the fact that the nearby commercial farmers, their previous employers, could not plant the next crop of maize because they were too indebted to raise loans. But Busiesvlei had funds. It did not take long for the community to instruct the Committee to choose the three or four best farmers – not the nicest – to enter into negotiations about joint farming ventures. Busiesvlei, with a R27, 000 deposit could raise additional funds with which to finance crops. In return for finance, farmers would hire labour from Busiesvlei, pay wages and interest and share the profit. Looked at another way, Busiesvlei was hiring the farmer as manager, renting his land and equipment and sharing some of the risks inherent in raising their own crops and employing themselves. R40, 000 had bought an economic, organisational and service revolution for about R240 per family.

All the 940 odd communities that received budgets had successes. The most common was that, paying themselves, they paid very low wages, around R7 per day. Work on official sites, like road building, paid R55 per day. Knowing the total wage bill, they gave as much as possible for the total, not the daily wage, that could be earned.

Some communities completed projects without paying wages. They knew that they had earned the total wage bill. The task was to match the output to that expenditure. Hence, as labourers and as community members, they were able to lift their sights to aim for the greatest output for a given total wage.

The programme became highly popular. Committees began to ask if they could take more responsibility for the running of the programme by forming a League of Reform Communities. Numerous issues had arisen about the workings of communities, investment in and the management of common properties and how investment in individual productive capacity, like a well or pigsty, could be undertaken. They sought regional and then national workshops. A key idea was that in a second round of budgets, a bank might advance an additional 30% as a loan to each community. As they gained confidence in their abilities to invest well, so they were prepared to face a rising cost of the funds provided, knowing that that opened up the far larger resources of the financial institutions. The aim that was discussed was to achieve 60% loan, 40% grant after four years.

The only unresolved problem was that in some communities those who were selected to work tended to form a protective monopoly over the right to work. The answer, from the second year, was to distribute the labour budget equally to all adults as work rights with a monetary face value for a days work. These would be bought and sold within the community. In that way no group could capture the right to work. The work right has been developed theoretically and offers a dynamic mobilising way to invest in people organised in communities and groups. This allows the state to partner communities, suitably organised, which invest in themselves, accepting, as financially competent bodies, in return an obligation to pay school and clinic fees. This sets up a high local multiplier, releases the state from the limitations of budgetary expenditure to the dynamics of finance, and propels the whole economy to higher levels of performance and of participation. There is a separate paper on the subject.

The drought programme ended in what, if publicly known, was a disgraceful and self-serving decision. Just as the programme was reinventing itself, so the head of the IDT was informed by the head of the South African National Civic Organisations (SANCO) that it was too popular. It must either pass the funds to SANCO or leave the field. The IDT passed a ridiculous rule that no community could receive a budget twice, stopping in its tracks the most innovative and successful rural programme ever, not only in South Africa but at least as good as anything elsewhere. And that to save a few individuals careers.

It is time that such a programme is re-launched with work rights and a growing component of loans, mainly for private asset creation but also for commonly owned and used infrastructure. There are moves in this direction, including turning the broken down tribal village into a Trust Company, converting a meaningless birthright “of access to a free good, land” into a community of equal, male and female, adult owners of the common properties. Again there are papers available on the subject.

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africa: IRIN Interview with outgoing AU commissioner for Trade, Industry and Economic Affairs

2003-10-09

http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0000553/index.php

Vijay Makhan is the outgoing African Union Commissioner for Trade, Industry and Economic Affairs. In an interview with IRIN, just days after returning from the failed trade talks in Cancun, Mexico where he led the AU mission he argues that rich nations have let down Africa once again despite their repeated promises and he calls for a radical overhaul of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

africa: NEPAD: What is it? What is missing

2003-10-09

http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0000550/index.php

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) has gone by many names. NEPAD is typically depicted by architects and foremost proponents as an attempt to address Africa's vast development challenges. Some have even called it Africa's 'Marshall Plan". More others see it as a development strategy and a programme of the African Union (AU). Critics on the other hand depict NEPAD as a 'neo-liberal' project, clearly contrary to the views of its supporters who see NEPAD as a revolutionary plan. Critics have even called NEPAD the 'Africanisation of GEAR'. Whatever name and epithet one chooses, NEPAD has clearly generated a great deal of debate, says this paper prepared for the labour research organisation Naledi.

africa: Stand and deliver! Analyses of the World Bank's World Development Report 2004

2003-10-09

http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/news/WDR2004.html

This year's World Development Report (WDR) addresses the challenges of making essential public services reach the poor by confronting the power relations that govern resources, exploring institutional complexities and recognising the centrality of politics to service delivery. But does it go far enough? This feature on the website of the Institute for Development Studies raises questions about three issues: Accountability, Service Delivery Performance and Health Systems.

africa: the reality of aid

2003-10-09

http://www.afrodad.org/issues/aid.htm

Aid has become a much contested issue. Orthodox approaches treat foreign Aid as a critical factor for redressing capital deficiencies in poor nations, boosting local demand and supply and through positive multiplier effects, establishing conditions for sustainable long-term growth. Donors expect Government to adopt policies and programmes that will create a conducive environment for improved economic performance. The reality however, indicates that Aid is driven by other motivations, argues this article one the website of Afrodad, a research, lobby and advocacy regional organisation seeking to secure positive policy changes to redress Africa's debt and development crisis.

Angola: Coffee industry shows signs of recovery

2003-10-09

http://www.africapulse.org.za/index.php?action=viewarticle&articleid=1593

Angola's once flourishing coffee industry is beginning to show signs of recovery after decades of civil war that virtually destroyed production. Until 1975 Angola was the 4th largest coffee producer in the world. Today its coffee output barely satisfies local needs.

africa/global: Drugs giants close to HIV giveaway for Third World

2003-10-09

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=449982

Seven of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer, are in talks with a leading international workers' organisation that could result in HIV drugs being given free to some of the world's poorest nations. The talks are being held between the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) and the main producers of HIV drugs.

africa: hiv/aids - a progress report

2003-10-09

http://www.unaids.org/html/pub/Topics/UNGASS2003/UNGASS_Re port_2003_en_p df.pdf

Using the mandates of the UN General Assembly Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS in 2001, the UNAIDS Secretariat and Cosponsors collaboratively developed a series of global/ regional and national indicators to measure the global community's progress in reaching the Declaration's targets in line with the Millennium Development Goals. This report, by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/ AIDS, which presents data from the first use of these indicators, represents the most comprehensive assessment to date of the state of global, regional and national responses on the broad range of challenges posed by HIV/AIDS.

DRC: Red Cross warns of persistent cholera in Mbuji-Mayi

2003-10-09

Despite concerted efforts by relief agencies, a recurring outbreak of cholera continues to affect Kasai Oriental Province and the city of Mbuji-Mayi, in particular, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the International Federation of the Red Cross reported last Thursday.
DRC: Red Cross warns of persistent cholera in Mbuji-Mayi

NAIROBI, 3 October (IRIN) - Despite concerted efforts by relief agencies, a recurring outbreak of cholera continues to affect Kasai Oriental Province and the city of Mbuji-Mayi, in particular, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the International Federation of the Red Cross reported on Thursday.

It said that in spite of considerable efforts to contain it, there had been 5,000 cases of the disease since September 2002, resulting in 263 deaths. "The endemic nature of cholera in this area and the fact that it has the potential to spread into neighbouring provinces makes it critical to immediately put in place measures to control and reduce the epidemic," the Federation said.

It noted that the geographic spread of the epidemic indicated that 68.32 percent of reported cases were in Mbuji-Mayi, while 31.68 percent were from the interior of the province, particularly from diamond-mining areas, where sanitary conditions around the mines were particularly poor.

It went on to say that data gathered by the local Stop Cholera Committee showed that the duration of the epidemic was unusual, as cholera outbreaks normally did not last longer than three months.

It cited two reasons to explain this anomaly: first, an inadequate number of domestic latrines because of rocky ground, which made digging very difficult - according to the provincial Red Cross branch, as at January 2003, only 17.37 percent of the compounds visited had family toilets or latrines; and second, poor access to potable water: only 21.3 percent of the visited compounds had access to water distributed by Regideso, the national water company, while the rest drank water from wells or unprotected sources, such as springs located beneath housing zones where the few existing latrines were less than one metre deep.

"Given the urgency of the situation, and the real potential for further deterioration", the Federation has launched an appeal for support, which would be followed by its 2004 annual appeal for the DRC, featuring a strengthened cholera project as a key component.

[For the complete IFRC report and appeal, go to ]http://www.ifrc.org/cgi/pdf_appeals.pl?03/2103.pdf]
[ENDS]

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GHANA: struggle to stop exodus of doctors and nurses

2003-10-09

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36969

Ghanaian doctors warn that the health services will break down unless the government takes urgent action to pay health professionals a decent wage and curb the activities of overseas recruitment agencies enticing them to accept salaries up to 20 times higher.

South Africa: Civil society key champion against HIV/Aids, says Tshabalala-Msimang

2003-10-09

http://www.africapulse.org.za/index.php?action=viewarticle&articleid=1605

Civil society and private business are making invaluable contributions to the war against HIV/Aids, national health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Saturday.

SUDAN: Suspected whooping cough outbreak in Equatoria

2003-10-09

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36985

Over 100 children, mostly under five, have died from a suspected outbreak of whooping cough in Kimatong Budi county, Equatoria state, according to the NGO, Medair.

ZIMBABWE: Disease outbreaks feared as water authority moves to cut supply

2003-10-09

Plans by the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) to disconnect water services to all towns owing it money could trigger widespread outbreaks of disease, which the health ministry may not have the capacity to control, warned Zimbabwe's Directorate of Disease Prevention and Control. The directorate, part of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, said there was a danger of diseases spreading to neighbouring countries and blossoming into regional epidemics as people moved from one country to another.
ZIMBABWE: Disease outbreaks feared as water authority moves to cut supply

BULAWAYO, 3 October (IRIN) - Plans by the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) to disconnect water services to all towns owing it money could trigger widespread outbreaks of disease, which the health ministry may not have the capacity to control, warned Zimbabwe's Directorate of Disease Prevention and Control.

The directorate, part of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, said there was a danger of diseases spreading to neighbouring countries and blossoming into regional epidemics as people moved from one country to another.

Dr Stanley Midzi, director in the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in the ministry, said they were already overstretched in terms of human and material resources and funding.

ZINWA, a statutory body charged with managing the country's water resources and catchment areas, announced this week that it would disconnect water services to all towns in arrears. The collective debt owed to ZINWA runs into hundreds of millions of Zimbabwe dollars.

The exercise was set to begin this week in Matabeleland South, where a total of six towns including Gwanda, the provincial capital, owe ZINWA over Zim $100 million (about US $122,977) in unpaid water tariffs.

The other towns are: Beitbridge, on the border with South Africa; Plumtree, on the border of Botswana; Esigodini, an agricultural and district capital about 50 km southwest of Bulawayo; Kezi and Maphisa on the edge of the vast Matopos National Park; and Filabusi, the district capital for Insiza constituency.

Tommy Rosen, the ZINWA manager for Umzingwane Catchment area which supplies water to the towns, warned that only a full payment of debts would result in reconnection of the water supply.

Although it was not possible to get a credit breakdown for each of the towns, sources in ZINWA told IRIN that Beitbridge owes Zim $56.1 million (about US $68,990), Gwanda owes Zim $37. 4 million (about US $45,993) and Plumtree's arrears reportedly stand at Zim $29 million (about US $35,663).

"There will be a massive disconnection of water supplies [starting at the end of September] to force the authorities and institutions to pay up," said Rosen.

However, the directorate of disease control has encouraged dialogue, saying that since ZINWA is an arm of government under the Ministry of Water and Rural Resources, it should not "deliberately start problems that will strain other ministries".

"ZINWA is a statutory body and, as such, we expect them to understand the various problems facing the ministry of health in terms of facilities, human resources, equipment and most important of all, drugs. So we assume that they know that disconnecting water supplies is the quickest way to trigger wholesale disease outbreaks," Midzi explained.

He added that "disconnecting the towns will create unhygienic conditions, where nothing can be cleaned and ablution facilities cannot work. The first outbreaks to expect would be of hygene-related diseases like general diarrhoea, and then bloody diarrhoea, followed by deadlier diseases like dysentery and cholera, which thrive in dirty environments".

"In the light of such fears, I think ZINWA should act responsibly and engage the local authorities in dialogue to find an amicable solution to their standoff on debts. We cannot afford to control any outbreaks because of the economic problems that have filtered down to all government ministries," said Midzi.

ECONOMIC CRISIS AFFECTING LOCAL AUTHORITIES

Thandeko Zinti Mnkandla, the mayor of Gwanda, the only municipality in Matabeleland South, expressed the same fears of disease breaking out. He said the affected local authorities had tried and failed to meet ZINWA officials to discuss the debt problem in the presence of representatives from the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing on two occasions within the past fortnight.

"Last week, the meeting failed to take place because of the burial of the late Vice President Simon Muzenda. We have not been given a reason for the failure of the meeting which was supposed to take place on Tuesday, 30 September," Mnkandla said.

The affected local authorities had made various proposals for paying off the debt to ZINWA. "I do not have the exact details, but I know that every concerned authority has proposed one way or another to settle the debt. So, ZINWA's plans represent major health hazards, which no local authority can control," the mayor stressed.

"For Gwanda we had proposed a steady payment of the debt beginning this month. This decision was taken after considering the precarious state of our finances. Residents owe us millions in unpaid water and other general service rates. Therefore, the situation is that local authorities are caught between service providers demanding payments, and residents who obviously are failing to pay because they are affected in various ways by the economic crisis in the country," Mnkandla explained.

He added that "local authorities are trying to engage [residents] in discussions to encourage them to pay".

"We cannot afford to disconnect them and risk disease outbreaks. It would be illogical and disastrous in public health terms if ZINWA goes ahead with this plan," Mnkandla warned.

By the end of the week there had been no confirmed reports of a town being disconnected.

CUTBACKS CONTINUE

When the government announced two months ago that it did not have the resources to issue grants to local authorities for essential services, the Bulawayo City Council appealed to the United Nations for help in the procurement of water treatment chemicals.

The council also announced that it had stopped testing the city's drinking water for cyanide and mercury, the chemicals widely used by gold panners and mining concerns based along the major rivers that feed the city's five supply dams.

ZINWA officials declined to comment on the possible health and environmental effects of the disconnection exercise, should it be carried out.

The water authority last month increased water tariffs by between 80 percent