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Featured this week

2006-04-13

FEATURED: Twelve years after Rwanda, Gerald Caplan warns of many more genocides
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Fifty-four women from 21 African countries stand up for Kwezi, the complainant in the Zuma rape trial
- World Health Day 2006: New research shows massive outflow of Africa's wealth behind underdevelopment
- Four Pambazuka News readers comment on the Charles Taylor trial
- Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender activists (LGBT) meet on discriminatory Nigerian legislation and persecution of homosexuals in Cameroon
LETTERS
- Is homosexuality really “unafrican”?; Falling down in Zimbabwe; Happy 250th birthday for Pambazuka News
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem asks 'who can be trusted with nuclear weapons?'
BLOGGING AFRICA: Blog columnist Sokari Ekine wraps up the blogosphere
BOOKS AND ARTS:
- Warning: “Site-specific gallery installation by up-and-coming artist. Visitors may find certain works in this exhibition challenging.” Shailja Patel introduces Wangechi Mutu
- Gangsters and Democracy: A review of Jonny Steinberg’s The Number
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Unease in N’Djamena as rebels move closer
HUMAN RIGHTS: Transparency campaigners arrested in Congo
WOMEN AND GENDER: What challenges does UN reform present for women?
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: UK judges order Zim refugees back home
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Worries over passing of Ugandan NGO legislation
DEVELOPMENT: NGOs call for fast-tracked trade negotiations
CORRUPTION: World Bank corruption back in the news
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: World Health Report 2006
EDUCATION: Child labour blocks Education for All
ENVIRONMENT: Shell told to stop gas flaring in Nigeria
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Journalist on hunger strike in Tunisia
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: New bookmarking tool for Internet café users
PLUS: Courses, Seminars and Workshops, Fundraising and Useful Resources, Jobs

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PAMBAZUKA NEWS - 250 ISSUES
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This is the 250th issue of Pambazuka News.

Thank you to all of you who have continued to support, subscribe, promote and sustain us with articles and information that we publish each week. Thanks also to those who sent us good wishes on our 250th 'birthday'. We are older (and if you realised what it takes to produce Pambazuka News, we feel much older than that). From its early days of being generated in a dark basement in Oxford, Pambazuka News today is almost entirely produced in Africa by Fahamu's staff in South Africa, Kenya and Senegal, and by volunteers in so many other places. Pambazuka is now produced in two languages - English and French. We feel proud to have been able to make a contribution to the struggles for rights and social justice across the continent, including support for the ratification and implementation of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, campaigns around media and freedaom of expression, remembering the anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, making critical analyses of issues such as debt, aid and trade, the WTO, the World Bank, EPAs, to name but a few.

Pambazuka News depends on your support. Encourage others to subscribe, forward copies of the newsletter to others, send us information about the struggles that you are engaged in, and - if you can afford it - reach deep into your pockets and make a donation. Every little helps to make Pambazuka News an authentic voice for building a different world, one that is free from oppression and exploitation, one where everyone recognises their social responsibilities, respects each other’s differences, and where each of us can realise our full potential.

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No lessons learned 12 years after the Rwandan genocide

2006-04-13

Gerald Caplan

Last week the world remembered the 12th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Gerald Caplan argues that understanding about the real causes of the genocide remains limited, while the world’s superpowers continue to act in their own self-interest when it comes to other genocides.


Twelve years after perhaps a million defenseless Rwandans were slaughtered for the sin of being Tutsi, Rwanda's genocide has at last become widely known. As people around the world commemorate this week the 12th anniversary of the genocide, the phrase "Another Rwanda" joins the wildly ignored "Never Again!" to reflect the world's apparent abhorrence of genocide—the ultimate crime of crimes. Anyone who thinks this augurs well for the future of humankind is dead wrong.

There are three critical realities that both these neat little phrases obscure: Few really understand what actually happened in Rwanda in 1994. A pernicious campaign to deny that genocide continues to unfold. And it IS happening again before our eyes.

Thanks to a modest production of movies, documentaries and books since the 10th anniversary, the genocide is far better known now than it was even while it was at its bloodiest. Far and away the most important vehicle has been the mainstream film "Hotel Rwanda", seen by millions and widely available on CD. The problem is what these large audiences learned from "Hotel Rwanda." Yes, it made clear that the minority Tutsi people were attacked viciously by the majority Hutu and that the world at large failed to intervene.

Yet the lasting impression surely is that some Hutu Africans were sadistically massacring some Tutsi Africans for no good reason. No one viewing the film alone would have grasped that this was no mere barbaric tribal eruption based on primitive ancient hatreds. This was a carefully planned and executed conspiracy by a group of sophisticated, westernized, greedy men and women for the purpose of ensuring their continued power and privileges. That's not a savage African phenomenon - that's a universal human phenomenon.

Nor is the critical, destructive role of outside forces evident in "Hotel Rwanda". No viewer would learn that the hatred between the two groups had largely been invented and inculcated over a century ago by the powerful Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda. They'd know nothing of the responsibility of the Belgian government for the deep, ultimately deadly, division between Hutu and Tutsi. They'd be blissfully unaware that the government of France was complicit in the genocide and has never to this day accepted any responsibility. Indeed, without a century of western interference, there'd have been no genocide as we know it. And had western governments cared one iota, they could easily have prevented the entire genocidal conspiracy from being executed. The world knows everything about Rwanda except what really matters.

What's even worse are the insidious forces at work that brazenly deny that there ever was a genocide launched by Hutu extremists against the Tutsi. Another unwelcome lesson in human nature: There are always deniers. There are always David Irvings and Ernst Zundels, who for their own sordid or pathological motives deny what can't be doubted. In Rwanda's case, it's an unholy coalition of Hutu genocidaires who want to complete the extermination of the Tutsi, whites in Belgian and France who had privileged access to the pre-genocide Hutu government, conservative Christian politicians in Europe, and a motley cast of characters around the world (including Canadians) with diverse, perverse, sometimes inexplicable motives.

For the survivors of 1994, and for the families of the victims, denial creates a second unbearable hurt, making an already difficult healing process far more painful and prolonged. And it's all based on lies and distortions. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable: To deny the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda is the equivalent of denying the Holocaust, and all who do so should be treated accordingly.

Finally, despite Rwanda, there remains Darfur. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on the world to assure that Darfur, the besieged western area of Sudan, doesn't become "another Rwanda". Unlike Rwanda, all the world knows what's happening in Darfur, so the excuse of ignorance, as in Rwanda, doesn't hold. Unlike Rwanda, Darfur has been formally labeled a genocide by the Bush administration and both Houses of the American Congress.

Yet three years since the Darfur crisis erupted, the world's reaction has been pitiful. The all-powerful permanent members of the Security Council - China, Russia, the US, France - have perfectly good reasons of crass self-interest to allow hundreds of thousands of Darfurians to die, countless women raped, millions forced to flee to squalid camps. Three years after it exploded, the situation in Darfur continues to deteriorate drastically. "Another Rwanda", indeed.

What are the real lessons of Rwanda and Darfur? They are surely inescapable. Those of us who demand interventions on humanitarian grounds - in Rwanda, Darfur, northern Uganda - will continue to be ignored. When western powers do intervene, we can be sure that dubious geopolitical and hegemonic interests are the driving force. We'll have many more Rwandas; we can count on it.

* Gerald Caplan has written frequently about the Rwandan genocide and genocide prevention.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

The Jacob Zuma Rape Case: A letter to Khwezi

2006-04-13

Fifty-four women from 21 African countries, meeting in Johannesburg to discuss women's rights and HIV/AIDS, have issued a statement expressing concern about the Jacob Zuma rape trial. Zuma, the former deputy president of South Africa, has been charged with rape following allegations by a 31-year-old HIV-positive woman. The trial has been characterized by ugly scenes outside the court building, with Khwezi, as the complainant has been nicknamed by her supporters, being abused and insulted by supporters of Zuma.


We, 54 women from 21 African countries representing 41 national, regional and international women's organizations in Africa; comprising of HIV and AIDS organizations, feminist associations and human rights institutions, meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa between April 6 and 7, 2006 to formulate advocacy positions on women's rights in the context of HIV and AIDS are outraged at the direction that the rape trial of the deputy President of the African National Congress, ANC, Jacob Zuma is taking. We find the conduct of the defence lawyers, the media, the courts and the police dishonorable.

1. We have been and continue to be affected by the twin epidemics of Violence Against Women and HIV and AIDS in various ways. Many of us are living with HIV, provide care and support to members of our families and communities who are infected with HIV and living with AIDS. We have either as young girls, or in our adult life, survived violent crimes committed against us by men in powerful positions within our families and in our communities. Some of us remember those women who have been senselessly murdered through acts of violence committed at home, at work and at school. We know that women are often raped by men who are known to them.

2. We take this opportunity to publicly state that we stand in solidarity with Khwezi. We applaud her brave stance in reporting her experience to the police and in standing before the courts to name her violation. Khwezi has shown respect for the mechanisms that exist in South Africa to report and resolve crimes. Confronting powerful men in powerful positions is a difficult and courageous task. We wish her, all of South Africa and the world to know that she has our love and our support.

3. We are outraged by the horrific and unethical victimization Khwezi has received in and through the mainstream broadcast and print media. She has been vilified by a form of reporting that is biased and blatantly sexist. We are noting those sectors of the media that continue to serve as judge and jury through the lens of the mass media, conferring guilt on Khwezi through inappropriate coverage of her HIV status, her dress, and her sexual past based on violations committed during her childhood.

4. We are angered by the inaction of the police, who, rather than provide a safe environment for Khwezi, have left thousands of Zuma's supporters to burn underwear and images of Khwezi outside the courts in ghastly acts of hatred and intimidation. We believe that the Commissioner of Police has continued to permit what amounts to public violence to unfold in the vicinity of the courts. Where he could have ensured a peaceful atmosphere prevailed, he has let Khwezi suffer dramatically brutal acts of bullying in her journey to and from the courts.

5. We are offended by the manner in which Jacob Zuma has manipulated traditional Zulu practice and custom. We are also outraged by Zuma's admitted attempts to abuse Zulu culture by seeking to buy off Khwezi and her mother with a few fattened cows. It makes women seem like a bag of meat that can be humped and the issue settled by trading a few cattle as marriage negotiation. This tactic of invoking customary options is a manipulative affront to a continent that daily struggles with notions of barbarism and primitivism in a global world that is built on racist and unequal frames and that believes that Africans cannot respect human rights.

6. Given the irresponsible and inaccurate remarks made by Jacob Zuma with respect to risk of HIV transmission and the infamous shower, we call for the dismantling of the South African National Aids Council (SANAC) as it is evidently a vehicle of misinformation and miseducation that permits the abuse of political power rather than meeting its statutory mandate with respect to HIV prevention, treatment and care.

7. Opening up the sexual violations Khewzi experienced as a five year old or thirteen year old child to the scrutiny of the courts is improper. These are incidents that happened when she was a minor who needed protection. It is unfair to present them as part of the present case history.

8. South Africa prides itself as a democracy whose Constitution promotes and protects women's human rights and freedoms from sexual violations. It prides itself on promoting and protecting the rights of women and people living with HIV and AIDS. South Africa claims to have a sophisticated judiciary that is free of political and other powerful influence. We want these bold claims to hold true.

Given South Africa's pivotal role in regional and international politics, how the Zuma Rape Case is treated by the media, the courts, the police, the ruling African National Congress, the Office of the President, by Parliament, by the Human Rights Commission, by the Gender Equality Commission, by every single arm of government, will send strong signals about the Human Rights of Women in Africa in the 21st century. A century where South Africa and the other 52 nations of the African continent have adopted the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa and the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa under the auspices of the African Union. And also where the SADC region has a Gender and Development Declaration and its Addendum on Violence against Women that has been signed by all its members including South Africa.

The women of the African continent deserve better than this. Women's rights are human rights and should not be violated under any circumstances; religious, political or cultural. Will South Africa walk its talk by upholding its Constitution and its Commitments at regional and international levels on women's rights?

Signed: Ama Kpetigo, Women in Law & Development (WILDAF), Amie Bojang-Sissoho, GAMCOTRAP, Amie Joof-cole, FAMEDEV,Beatrice Were, Uganda, Bernice Heloo, SWAA International, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, AWDF, Buyiswa Mhambi, Empinsweni Aids Centre, Caroline Sande, Kenya, Dawn Cavanagh, Gender AIDS Forum, Diakhoumba Gassama, Dorothy Namutamba, ICW, Ednah Bhala, Ellen Chitiyo, The Women's Trust, Ennie Chipembere, South Africa, Everjoice Win, South Africa, Faith Kasiva, COVAW – Kenya, Faiza Mohamed, Somalia, Flora Cole, WOLDDOF –GHANA, Funmi Doherty, SWAA – Nigeria, Gcebile Ndlovu, ICW, Harriet Akullu, Uganda, Helene Yinda, Switzerland, Isabella Matambanadzo, OSISA, Isatta Wuire, SWAA - Sierre Leone, Izeduwa Derex-Briggs, Nigeria, Jane Quaye, FIDA – Ghana, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, Women's Aids Collective (WACOL), Ludfine Anyango, Kenya, Marion Stevens, South Africa, Mary Sandasi, WASN, Mary Wandia, Kenya, Matrine Chuulu, WLSA, Neelanjana Mukhia, South Africa, Sandasi Daughters, Zimbabwe, Olasunbo Odebode, Prudence Mabele, Positive Women's Network, Rouzeh Eghtessadi, Sarah Mukasa, Akina mama Wa Afrika, Shamillah Wilson, AWID, Sindi Blose, Siphiwe Hlophe, SWAPOL, Sisonke Msimang, OSISA, Tabitha Mageto, Africa, Taziona Sitamulaho, South Africa, Theo Sowa, Therese Niyondiko, Thoko Matshe, Vera Doku, AWDF, Oti Anukpe Ovrawah, National Human Rights Commission - Abuja

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Stopping the brain drain of Africa’s wealth - a bottom line for health

2006-04-13

World Health Day 2006 on April 7 addressed the drain of health workers to developed countries, a problem which has had a significant impact on health systems in Africa. Research conducted by the Regional Network on Equity in Health in Southern Africa (EQUINET) argues that the debate over the health worker drain needs to be deepened to address the “significant and dramatically rising flows of resources out of Africa northwards, draining the continent of the important resources needed to address its own development, including in health.”


At this year's World Health Day the WHO will be launching its annual report which focuses on human resources for health. In Africa, as we have raised in previous editorials in this newsletter (the newsletter of Equinet, the Regional Network on Equity in Health in Southern Africa, available at www.equinetafrica.org), we are experiencing a 'global conveyor belt' of health workers flowing from rural, primary health care level in the public sector to urban, private care; from poor to rich areas and countries in the region and from the continent, with its high health needs and under-resourced health services to developed, high income countries such as USA, Canada, UK and Australia. The loss of public investment and social resources in this outflow is significant and outweighs any returns in remittances or aid for education.

However health workers will certainly continue to go to where they can work in adequately resourced health services, in decent jobs and where they can secure their own family needs. This draws attention to the much wider question of how in Africa we secure the resources to retain and value our health workers, and more widely to meet our population health needs. The latest EQUINET discussion paper, written by Patrick Bond and produced jointly by EQUINET with the Centre for Economic Justice in southern Africa points to a South-North drain of African wealth that undermines the resources for health and development, and that increases our dependency on the global North, and our loss of health workers.

The 2005 Commission for Africa report leaves the impression of a continent receiving a vast inflow of aid, with rising foreign investment, sustainable debt payments and adequate remittances from the African diaspora to fund development. Our discussion paper tells a different story: of significant and dramatically rising flows of resources out of Africa northwards, draining the continent of the important resources needed to address its own development, including in health. The paper synthesizes data about the outflow of Africa's wealth, to reveal factors behind the continent's ongoing underdevelopment, as the basis for proposing policy measures to reverse these flows.

The statistics speak loudly of a continent being progressively dispossessed of its wealth, and thus the resources it needs to improve health and human development:

* A debt crisis with repayments in the 1980s and 1990s that were 4.2 times the original 1980 debt levels, and annual debt repayments equivalent to three times the inflow in loans and, in most African countries, far exceeding export earnings, leaving a net flow deficit of by 2000 of $6.2 billion.

* Unequal exchange in trade and trade liberalisation policies that have lowered rather than increased Africa's industrial potential and exacted an estimated toll in sub-Saharan Africa of $272 billion over the past 20 years.

* Flows of private African finance that have shifted from a net inflow during the 1970s, to gradual outflows during the 1980s, to substantial outflows during the 1990s.

* Falling foreign direct investment (FDI) from roughly one third of FDI to third world countries in the 1970s to less than 5% by the 1990s, and a shift to highly risky speculative investment in stock and currency markets - with erratic and overall negative effects on African currencies and economies.

Africa is commonly and mistakenly represented as the (unworthy) recipient of a vast aid inflow. Aid flows in fact dropped 40% during the 1990s, and the phantom aid that flows back to the source countries in technical and administrative costs was estimated in one study to be $42 billion of the 2003 total official aid of $69 billion, leaving just $27 billion in 'real' aid to poor people.

There is also a perverse subsidy in the extent to which industrialised countries exploit the global stock of non renewable natural resources. This takes place through the extraction of minerals and natural resources from Africa by Northern investors with little investment in return and few royalties provided. It also takes place through use of global goods like the earth's clean air. Forests in the South absorbing carbon from the atmosphere are estimated for example to provide Northern polluters an annual subsidy of $75 billion. A method for measuring resource depletion used by the World Bank suggests that a country's potential GDP falls by 9% for every percentage point increase in a country's dependency on resource extraction. This implies, for example, that Gabon's people lost $2,241 each in 2000, based on oil company extraction of oil resources.

These outflows deplete the resources available for productive and human development. They are felt most heavily by women and poor communities, and undermine progress towards the achievement of human security for the majority of African people.

They imply that the first step to effect genuine growth and to deliver welfare and basic infrastructure is for African societies and policymakers to identify and prevent the vast and ongoing outflows of the continent's existing and potential wealth.

Current global reform agendas do not address these outflows. While they point to debt and unfair trade, they do not seek to reverse the outflow of African wealth.

Campaigns to reverse resource flows and challenge perverse subsidies are emerging from grassroots struggles and progressive social movements, such as those in Africa that are resisting privatisation and commodification of basic services, pressuring for rights to generic anti-retroviral medicines and resisting encroachments on human development through trade and macroeconomic policies that intensify inequities.

These grassroots struggles can be consolidated by national governments and regional co-operation to improve disclosure of financial flows and apply policies within Africa to prevent the outflows and encourage the 'stay' of domestic investment resources. The paper points to some options - systemic default on debt repayments, strategies to enforce domestic reinvestment of pension, insurance and other institutional funds; national-scale regulation of financial transfers from offshore tax havens; clearer identification and renegotiation of tied or phantom aid; and improved calculation and negotiation around of the costs of FDI (not simply the benefits), including natural resource depletion, transfer pricing and profit/dividend outflows.

EQUINET welcomes the focus on this year's World Health Day on one area through which Africa is bleeding - its loss of human resources. We would however urge that to deal with this effectively in the continent, and address the inequity globally in the resources needed for health and human development goals, we need to deepen the debate. In 1998 EQUINET highlighted that a critical dimension of equity is the power and ability people have to make choices over health inputs and their capacity to use these choices towards health. For Africa this must surely include bringing control over the resources for health and development back within the continent.

* This article first appeared in the the April 2007 newsletter of the Regional Network on Equity in Health in Southern Africa (EQUINET), available at www.equinetafrica.org The new EQUINET can be found at http://www.equinetafrica.org/bibl/equinetpub.php
Please send feedback or queries on the issues raised in this briefing to admin@equinetafrica.org . EQUINET work on economic policy and health is available at the EQUINET website at www.equinetafrica.org

Charles Taylor: The escape, the capture and the justice

2006-04-13

Charles Taylor, the President of Liberia between 1997 and 2003, is in jail, awaiting trial on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the conflict in Sierra Leone. A decision to move his trial, taking place through the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), to The Hague in the Netherlands, because of fears over whether he can be kept securely in Sierra Leone has not been finalized because there is no agreement over which country will hold him once he is convicted.

Taylor’s incarceration follows three years of obscurity. The former warlord was being held in Nigeria under an asylum deal, but this changed dramatically on March 28, when the Nigerian government announced Taylor’s disappearance from his residence in Calabar, Nigeria. On March 29, however, Taylor was arrested in Gamboru, along Nigeria's northeastern border with Cameroon. He was subsequently transferred to Liberia and handed over to the UN in Sierra Leone. On March 30, the Special Court requested permission for the International Criminal Court in The Hague to carry out the trial.

Having presided over a brutal civil war that cost the lives of up to 200,000 people and displaced an estimated one million, Taylor’s reign of terror over West Africa has not been forgotten, and he maintains a grip on the region, leading to fears that if his trial is not handled carefully it could lead to further conflict. Pambazuka News readers were quick to comment on the arrest of Charles Taylor. We have reproduced these commentaries below in summary form, with the full commentaries available through the website link provided. Send your comments on Charles Taylor to editor@pambazuka.org

1. Bringing African dictators and warlords to justice

Ndung’u Wainaina notes that bringing Charles Taylor and other dictators to justice, other than its importance in establishing the rule of law and deterring future human rights violations, gives victims an opportunity to know the truth about the past and seek reparations for these violations.

2. The many lives of Charles Taylor

Kintu Nyago points out that it was largely US pressure that led to Taylor’s arrest. This, he argues, has enormous implications for Africa and its emerging governance institutions such as the African Union.

3. The Trial of Charles Taylor and the Fate of Africa

Stan Chu Ilo says that the fate and future of Africa will be determined by the extent that leaders are held accountable for their actions by Africans and the international community.

4. Charles Taylor, The Escape Artist

Prof. Vivian Seton says that every morning, Taylor should take care of the crippled by bathing them, feeding them, combing their hair and taking care of their personal hygiene as this is the only way he will experience what it is like to be maimed and crippled.
1. Bringing African dictators and warlords to justice

Ndung’u Wainaina notes that bringing Charles Taylor and other dictators to justice, other than its importance in establishing the rule of law and deterring future human rights violations, gives victims an opportunity to know the truth about the past and seek reparations for these violations.

2. The many lives of Charles Taylor

Kintu Nyago points out that it was largely US pressure that led to Taylor’s arrest. This, he argues, has enormous implications for Africa and its emerging governance institutions such as the African Union.

3. The Trial of Charles Taylor and the Fate of Africa

Stan Chu Ilo says that the fate and future of Africa will be determined by the extent that leaders are held accountable for their actions by Africans and the international community.

4. Charles Taylor, The Escape Artist
Prof. Vivian Seton says that every morning, Taylor should take care of the crippled by bathing them, feeding them, combing their hair and taking care of their personal hygiene as this is the only way he will experience what it is like to be maimed and crippled.

1. Bringing African dictators and warlords to justice
Ndung’u Wainaina

The arrest of Warlord Charles Taylor after his indictment was unsealed in June 2003 by the UN-backed Sierra Leone Special Court cast a bright hope on conflict ridden Africa. Africa has for a long time been dominated by leaders who have constantly and consistently been unleashing in a deliberate and indiscriminate manner terror with impunity to civilians. To address this phenomenon, the AU council of ministers endorsed a plan of action against impunity in 1996. Subsequently, African leaders made a commitment through a declaration in 2000 to condemn genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the continent and pledged to cooperate with relevant institutions in the continent and outside that are set up to prosecute perpetrators. However, the Charles Taylor’s case has exposed African leaders as lacking in a common approach in combating impunity and preserving emerging fragile peace and democracy on the continent.

Charles Taylor is accused of masterminding massive killings, amputations, mutilations, and sexual offences including sexual slavery and rape, recruitment of child soldiers and adductions. Across in central Africa, former US-backed Chad dictator Hussein Habre is facing trial in Belgium, whose anti-atrocity law allows its courts to hear cases from all over the world. Habre’s extradition to Belgium was a wake up call to dictators in Africa and elsewhere, warning them that if they commit atrocities they could also be brought to justice one day and not necessary in their respective countries.

The arrest of Charles Taylor is a crucial action that will contribute significantly to securing peace, justice and accountability in Liberia and in its tormented neighbours where Taylor had established and sponsored an army empire of militia to terrorize and overthrow governments in West Africa in return for concessions to exploit diamonds and other natural resources. African leaders, the majority of whom have opted to keep quiet over the Taylor issue, need to recognize the essential role that justice plays in maintaining peace, political stability and promoting rule of law. Impunity does not serve the interests of African people whose lives have been ruined by either state or non-state actors.

An attempt to insulate or shield human rights violators flouts both international human rights law and humanitarian law and it is an affront to innumerable victims of these atrocities. Nobody is accusing African leaders that they are not doing much to address human rights violations in Africa, but they need to appreciate the existing gaps in the continent and work with the international community in dealing with complicated human rights abuses. The unwillingness to address the problem of impunity is inconsistent and incompatible with the fundamental principles of the Constitutive Act of the African Union. Africa’s conflicts are caused by widespread impunity which takes the form of massive human rights atrocities, large scale pillage of public resources, illegal extraction and sale of primary resources and systematic discrimination on ethnic or religious grounds. This calls for strengthening of institutional commitments and capacity to monitor and address human rights violations continuously and to take proactive actions to intervene.

Bringing Charles Taylor and other dictators to justice, other than its importance in establishing the rule of law and deterring future human rights violations, gives victims an opportunity to know the truth about the past and seek reparations for these violations.

The leadership of various armed groups roaming in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur in Sudan, Northern Uganda and Somalia need to take Charles Taylor’s lesson seriously. The arrest and transfer of Thomas Lubanga in the DRC to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and the indictment of rebel leaders in Northern Uganda and Darfur to the same court has opened new chapter in pursuing justice for human rights violations. Prosecution of these people by the ICC would contribute substantively to restoring peace and stop the widespread systematic attacks against the civilians in the Great Lakes Region. Sustainable peace and democracy is not exclusive of justice.

The African Union needs to facilitate the consolidation of the gains obtaining from these latest actions on the justice front through implementing the resolutions of the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA) adopted in 2002. It is also imperative to redesign and strengthen the peace building and post conflict reconstruction mechanisms in Africa to include justice and accountability mechanisms. Since African leaders have at least shown political will to intervene and address the conflict crises, it is crucial for the international community, including the UN Security Council, to adopt strategies that create a conducive environment for positive engagement and partnership in handling Africa problems. Financial commitment is only one way but more significant is the development of institutions with capacity to intervene rapidly and curtail the escalation of impunity.

* Ndung’u Wainaina is a Programme Officer, NCEC and Director, International Center for Policy and Conflict. P.O. Box 11996-00400 Nairobi. Tel: 4445974, 4446313; email: wainainagn@yahoo.co.uk

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org


2. The many lives of Charles Taylor

Kintu Nyago

The Charles Taylor saga raises more questions than answers. There is a need to appreciate at this stage that pressure to have Taylor apprehended overwhelmingly emerged from Washington, rather than from Monrovia, Abuja or the African Union (AU). This in turn points to the very fragility of most African countries while concurrently testing the very credibility of our continental and regional institutions, more specifically the AU and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Although Taylor and his state apparatus operated in a criminal manner, one needs to contextualize the pressure leading to his arrest, in order to fully appreciate the gravity of the issues surrounding that development. When three years ago Taylor and the lieutenants of his National Patriotic Party military politico outfit were besieged in Monrovia by the LURD rebels, they were ready to cause a blood bath rather than surrendering or for that matter fleeing into exile. For they were all to aware of the consequences of both, that is in light of Master Sergeant Doe’s violent death in addition to the issuing of the arrest warrant from the Sierra Leone based International Criminal Court (ICC).

It took the wise intervention of both the AU and ECOWAS to avert a massive loss of life in Monrovia. President Olusegun Obasanjo, then AU Chairman, in addition to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and President John Kuffor of Ghana, with AU backing, persuaded Taylor to peacefully relinquish power with the promise of amnesty for his supporters and a safe exile in Nigeria. Taylor complied, which in turn resulted into Liberia’s hitherto promising democratization effort that recently saw Ellen Johnson Sirlief elected and the Mano River Basin seeming to move towards a much deserved peace. This also was an illustration of the policy of African solutions to African problems.

Not for long however, for Washington, always too eager to criticize and impose its will, pressurized the Sirlief-Johnson administration to demand Taylor’s extradition from Nigeria. To ensure compliance the US withheld its development assistance to war ravaged Liberia. Hence it became a contest between democracy and justice. This being so because while the democratically elected Sirlief administration had opted through its mandate and wisdom to move on and reconcile, Washington on the other hand demanded immediate justice, through having Taylor arrested and tried.

Hence the honeymoon of the new Liberian government was rudely interrupted. This in a very fragile country where there is a chance of destabilization. For the much-anticipated national reconciliation has been undermined. For Taylor, who had won Liberia’s first democratic elections with a landslide, still has considerable support, both political and military. For instance, the current Speaker of the Liberian Parliament is a member of his party.

Regionally, Washington’s bullying tactics, (Obasanjo was also nearly denied access to the White House on his recent visit after it had been reported that the elusive Taylor had escaped), have fundamentally undermined the credibility of the AU and ECOWAS. How will these bodies successfully diffuse potential political catastrophes involving this or other African political elite? For after what has befallen Taylor, it would probably be only the most credulous to trust such conflict resolution mediations.

Regarding Taylor and Liberia, Washington is not spotless. In the mid 1980’s, Taylor escaped from an American jail, from where he fled to conduct military training in Libya and eventually launch a successful armed struggle in 1989 that overthrew the Doe regime. Some have actually pointed to US complicity in this escape.

On the other hand, the Liberian state, whose meaning refers to liberty, was created by the US in the mid 1880’s as an outpost for freed slaves. The irony is that subsequent American policy was characterized by neglect with interest only coinciding with the demand of US multinationals to smoothly extract huge profit margins from this poor country’s resourceful economy.

This background of neglect most probably explains how the freed slaves, the Americo-Liberians, soon adopted the attitudes of the former slave masters, leading to the marginalization of indigenous Liberians. Of the thirty or so presidents it has had, over 150 or so years, it’s only Doe who was an indigenous Liberian. Even the American educated Taylor and Sirlief Johnson are Americo-Liberians.

The context that led to Taylor’s rise to power was one of a country that was war ravaged without functioning institutions and a credible political class to mediate differences, which concurrently was rich in natural resources. Unless the world invests in the creation of viable political economic institutions in both Liberia and Sierra Leone, we are bound to see re-occurances of desperado war lords such as the likes of Taylor and Sankoh in this region.

* Kintu Nyago is Executive Director of the Forum for Promoting Democratic Constitutionalism, a Kampala based good governance think tank. (nkintu (at) yahoo.com

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

3. The Trial of Charles Taylor and the Fate of Africa
Stan Chu Ilo

The capture and deposition of former Liberian president, Charles Taylor to the Special UN Court in Sierra Leone, marks a step forward in the long but tortuous road to national reconciliation in Liberia and Sierra Leone. His upcoming trial will no doubt bring closure to the worst page in the history of sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, it will help unearth the many untold tragedies and unanswered questions about the horrors of that era under Taylor. According to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, Taylor's capture and trial will send "a powerful message to the region that impunity will not be allowed to stand, and would-be warlords will pay a price."

Charles Taylor represents the very antithesis of what a leader should be in traditional African thinking. He revolutionized guerrilla warfare in Africa as a means to gain political power. The war he led in Liberia caused the deaths of over 200,000 Liberians and the displacement of over 100,000 others. The war he supported and financed in Sierra Leone, led to the deaths of over 50,000 Sierra Leoneans and the displacement of over 400,000 others. His army, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia and the army of his Sierra Leonean protégé, Foday Sankoh, the Revolutionary United Front, gained most of their recruits from under-aged children, who were forced to kill their parents as a first test of valor.

These children were hooked on drugs and were forced to commit all kinds of atrocities, which were unheard of in the dark annals of our continent. The tale of a nine year old Liberian captures the intensity of Taylor's over flowing cup of horrors: "I saw 10-20 people shot, mostly old people who could not walk fast. They shot my uncle in the head and killed him. They made my father take his brains out and to throw them into some water nearby. Then they made my father undress and have an affair with a decaying body. They raped my cousin who was a little girl of nine years."

That a man who authorized and gloried in these horrors, should call himself 'a sacrificial lamb' is very unfortunate; that he should justify these atrocities as 'an act of God' is to insult the glorified African tradition of respect for life, a high premium on the sense of community and the realization of the fullness of life for one and all.

Taylor has been indicted with 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. His crimes include, among others, the systematic massacre and mutilation of tens of thousands of helpless civilians including children, women and the elderly; the hacking off of feet and hands of defenseless civilians with machetes and axes for comical relief or just for the inhuman passion of seeing blood flow. He also backed rebels in Sierra Leone under Sankoh, whose despicable crimes in the 'Operation No Living Thing', horrified the sensibilities of Africans and the international community.

Most of us who grew up in West Africa in those dark days, when Taylor and his henchmen reached the peak of evil, could not understand how any African could be so inhuman, so senseless and so brazen in the comprehension and execution of evil. Memories of those dark nights, of fellow West Africans who were disappearing every day, of thousands of Liberians and Sierra Leoneans who were roaming the streets of West Africa's major cities in search of a home, with wounded memories and fractured histories, still come into my consciousness.

Taylor was the most destabilizing factor in the sub-region for most of the 90s as he promoted rebel movements in Sierra Leone and Guinea. Out of passion for the rich alluvial diamonds of Kono in Sierra Leone, whose annual export value was put at $500 million, Taylor supported the rebellion of Sankoh, with whom he had military training in Libya. He used the ill-gotten wealth from the diamond trade to fuel the war and caused untold hardship to the people of both Liberia and Sierra Leone.

As Taylor's trial begins, it is important that the international community supports the fledgling democratic experiment in Liberia, which could be threatened by Taylor's demobilized soldiers - the most effective guerrilla fighters in Africa. It is expedient that Taylor be tried in The Hague for security reasons. It also highlights the significance of his crimes: the abuse of the dignity and rights of any person in any part of the globe is an abuse of the dignity and rights of every person in every part of the globe. The whole world has become a kind of court for judging the actions and inaction of leaders in any part of the world.

Taylor still has some strong following in Liberia. He also has immense wealth and connection in Africa and Europe. He was able to run the illegal trade in diamonds from West Africa because he had the support of some African leaders, who allowed the use of their countries as conduits for diamond and illegal arms. The illegal purchase of weapons by Taylor was actively supported by business interests from some Western companies in France and Britain. These weapons were not manufactured in Africa; it is always the case that it takes some Western collaborators to make a monster out of some African dictators or to create a corrupt African leader. Whatever be the case, the truth is that the long arm of the law has now caught up with Taylor. In the end, justice does prevail.

The fate and future of Africa will be determined to the extent that the leaders of this potentially great continent are held accountable for their actions by Africans and the international community. This is the only way to put an end to the colossal wasting of the human and material resources of Mother Africa, by a self-serving political class.

* Stan Chu Ilo is a Catholic priest. He is the author of The Face of Africa: Looking Beyond the Shadows and founder of the NGO Canadian Samaritans for Africa.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

4. Charles Taylor, The Escape Artist
Prof. Vivian Seton

Charles Taylor can be compared to the escape artist Hudini. All through his life, Taylor has been able to extricate himself from difficult situations and come out victorious. He broke out of the county jail in Massachusetts and go on to become the President of Liberia. Now he is in custody again. Will he be able to escape this time?

(I have known Charles Taylor since he was a senior at Rick’s Institute in Liberia. We were once pen pals, but as these things go, the friendship fizzled out. In April, 1980, Taylor introduced me to 16 of the 17-member PRC (People’s Redemption Council who had staged the coup which killed President William R. Tolbert, Jr. and brought Samuel K. Doe to power) “as the most intelligent woman in Liberia”.Taylor is a very determined man and carries out what he says.

On Wednesday, March 22, 2006, Charles Minor, the Liberian Ambassador to the United States and I were the two studio guests on VOA’s (Voice of America, the American government’s external broadcasting television and radio system) “Straight Talk Africa” to discuss the importance of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s official visit to the United States. The host of the show, Shaka Ssali, asked me to address Taylor directly and plead with him to return the funds (3.2 billion dollars) he alleged stole from the Liberian people.

It occurred to me that capturing Charles Taylor and condemning him to death would be the easy way out. I then got in touch with Dr. K. A. Paul who I had met on August 13, 2003 when he was a call-in-guest on VOA’s “Straight Talk Africa.” (On that program, I had been invited to discuss the significance of Charles Taylor’s departure from Liberia and the future of the country). Dr. Paul, the President of Global Peace Initiatives, is the man being credited with having talked Taylor into going into exile. Taylor was sent to Port Harcourt, the capital of the State of Kalaba in Nigeria where he was captured last week, flown to Liberia and onward to Freetown, Sierra Leone for prosecution.

In my discussion with Dr. Paul, I was concerned that if Charles Taylor was sent to Freetown, he would be killed before the trial even began. The trial could cause disruption of the peace in the entire region. Instead, I proposed that he should be tried by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands. After his conviction, Charles Taylor should be sent to Freetown where he would have to do community service. He should be made to return the funds he stole from the Liberian treasury and those funds should be used to take care of the thousands who were deformed upon his orders and provide for the orphans whose parents had been killed.

Every morning, Taylor should take care of the crippled by bathing them, feeding them, combing their hair and taking care of their personal hygiene. This is the only way he will experience what it is like to be maimed and crippled.

On May 15, 2002, I was invited to be the Rapporteur at the Conference on Children and Youth in Armed Conflict held at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. The conference was organized to determine the effects the Special Court, which was being set up in Freetown, would have on the child soldiers who had participated in the Sierra Leonean disturbances. Since then, the Special Court has been bringing the various warlords and other participants in the Sierra Leonean unrest to justice. Charles Taylor is supposed to have financed that war in order to get diamonds and other precious stones from Sierra Leone, which he allegedly sold to terrorist organizations around the world.

The Bush administration asked Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to request Charles Taylor’s extradition from Nigeria. She sent a letter to the heads of state of the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) to bring the Taylor matter to closure. General Olusegun Obasanjo, the Head of State of Nigeria, said he would turn Taylor over for prosecution. Thereupon, Charles Taylor left the villa, the former mansion of the Governor of Kalaba, and was caught near the Chadian border trying to leave Nigeria.

Taylor is now being sent to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Will he be Hudini and escape again?

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

More...

23rd International Gay & Lesbian Association (ILGA) meeting held in Geneva

2006-04-13

Sokari Ekine

The 23rd International Gay & Lesbian Association (ILGA) meeting was concluded in Geneva on Monday 4th April after a week of discussions and workshops around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues (LGBT). Africa was represented by LGBT activists from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, Tunisia and Senegal.

The two issues that most concerned the Africa group were the homosexuality trial in Cameroon and the proposed same sex marriage law in Nigeria.

Among other issues tackled were: the case of Ugandan LGBT activist, Victor Julie Mukasa. An outline of her case and her proposed course of action was presented in a plenary session alongside with a description of The All Africa Rights Initiative (AARI) and The Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL).

On the arrest and detention of 35 men on homosexuality charges in Cameroon (11 are still in prison), Alice Nkom, the lawyer for the defendants, was present and was able to provide us with details on the background to the case and the present situation. The trial is due to start on the 21st of this month. The prisoners have been refused bail and are housed in overcrowded cells with the most violent criminals, where they are sure to be sexually assaulted. Nkom reported that there was one positive element in that the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, has asked that people put their religious and personal beliefs aside and judge the matter on the basis of human rights. She is approaching the case from the point of view that like the Jim Crow laws of southern US which led to the Civil Rights movement and the apartheid laws of South Africa, the law being applied in the Republic of Cameroon is a violation of human rights.
Just last week, 11 female students were dismissed from their college "after confessing" to the Disciplinary Council of the school of belonging to a network of lesbians.

In the case of Nigeria, the proposed legislation which will ban any advocacy around LGBT issues – the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, 2006 - has already been presented to the House of Representatives. President Obasanjo is calling for the bill to be fast tracked.

President Obasanjo urges the National Assembly to give expeditious consideration and passage to the bill. “This is because the problem has become topical and embarrassing in recent times.”The House Leader added that "the problem of homosexuality has become very disturbing in view of the increasing number of gays and lesbians in the country".

Nigerian delegates said the bill would create a climate of fear amongst the community at large and would impact on HIV counseling and testing; drive the issue of sexual identity underground; and further reduce the number of reported rape cases both for men and women. Women and girls would be even more reluctant to report rape for fear of being labelled lesbian and therefore the bill would put women at even more risk of being raped. As advocacy and support by any organisation around sexual identity will become illegal, organisations such as Alliance Rights Nigeria and SPIN will be at risk of being criminalised.

The Nigerian contingent met with a lawyer from the Nigerian Human Rights Commission (HRC) to discuss possible strategies. It was decided that the first step would be to present a document outlining the issue of LGBT in Nigeria in relation to the proposed legislation to the HRC. Another possible course of action was to take the matter to the constitutional court. The lawyer pointed out that the process would take anything from 5-10 years with no guarantee of a positive outcome. There were three considerations:

1) Innovation (no legal precedent);

2) Hostile judges and a hostile system leading to an unfavourable judgement;

3) Social perception leads to legal change and in this case the overwhelming social perception is that homosexuals are social misfits and or mental cases.

In the North, gay men are seen as being paedophiles and or pimps whilst ironically in the south many lesbians are quite open about their sexuality.

Two Africans - one transgender and one lesbian - were chosen as ILGA representatives for the continent.

On Friday night we learned that the proposed bill had been presented to the House. The following day two meetings were held to discuss how to respond. It was decided that Human Rights Watch would take the lead by contacting various international organisations and possibly the UK government to take the matter up with the Nigerian Government and President.

It was also decided to contact Bishop Desmond Tutu and possibily Nelson Mandela in the hope that they could speak directly with the President and other members of government and the Senate.

Also on Monday 4th April, representatives from some African LGBT groups accompanied by ILGA officials presented a letter protesting the current anti gay bill in Nigeria to the Nigerian Embassy in Geneva.

African organisations that participated in the conference were:

Freedom and Roam Uganda
Alliance Rights Nigeria
SPIN
Changing Attitude
The Rainbow Project
Engender
GALZ
FEW
ARC En Ciel D'Afrique

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks, http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Who can be trusted with nuclear weapons?

2006-04-13

Tajudeen Abdul Raheem

"I am officially announcing that Iran has joined the group of those countries which have nuclear power.” These 17 words were uttered live on television last Tuesday, by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, to a cheering crowd of jubilant compatriots proud that their country had joined this patented club of countries whose wishes may not be ignored by the rest of the world because of their ability or potential to back their power with nuclear technology.

It is a small club of nations that can intimidate the rest of the world. Until recently, that club was almost exclusively White and Western (including the Zionist State of Israel), with the exception of China. But North Korea, India and Pakistan are also members now. All experts agree that Iran has not become a full member yet and may take a few more years to be able to make nuclear bombs but it has now demonstrated its potential.

As Iranians jubilate ‘The World’ or more appropriately those who think
they are ‘The World’ through the global media they control and the rest of us follow, let it be known that our world is made more unsafe by this copycat scientific development in Iran. US State department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said to BBC: “we would have hoped that the Iranian regime would have taken this opportunity to choose a pathway of diplomacy as opposed to the pathway of defiance.”

The same words could have been quoted back to the US for many policies its government, especially under the bellicose George Bush, have pursued since it came to power. And I am not referring only to the foretold tragedy in Iraq. It would be more credible if those who preach to other nations to respect international rules, conventions and etiquettes were themselves impeccable in their observance of the same.

The US government should be the last government to shout foul because it has refused to allow international law or morality to stand in its way in the pursuit of its own interests. If it can obey international rules in a kind of reckless a la carte what right has it got to say other countries should not do the same?

I am not sure if the world feels as threatened by Iran acquiring what all experts know to be a capacity to make nuclear fuels as the US and EU countries are orchestrating. Many Africans openly or secretly jubilated when India detonated its nuclear bomb the same week that Pakistan launched its own.

The only regret many felt was that there was no African country able to do the same and redeem the continent and its peoples from ‘nuclear whitemail’. There were many African scholars and activists who opposed Professor Ali Mazrui’s call for an ‘African Bomb’ in the 1980s who now regretted their ideological opposition to the controversialist scholar.

I was a baby radical then and thought of Mazrui as a reactionary. Now I know better. In those days, Mazrui had ambitions for Nigeria to be able to counter the nuclear threat posed by apartheid South Africa. The idea that nuclear weapons are safe in the hands of Americans and their European cousins only and a danger to the rest of the world is not only patronising but also racist. If George Bush can be trusted with nuclear weapons why not anybody else? The only way to ensure universal nuclear disarmament is for all countries to renounce it and destroy the nuclear arsenal they have acquired. As long as some have it and others do not, those who do not will try to either acquire it, if they can or if they cannot, envy those who do. Iran is not the only country trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

How come nobody is talking anymore about North Korea whose capability is technically ahead of that of the Iranians and whose leaders have also declared their readiness to use it ‘for pre-emptive action’ the principle so beloved by Bush’s America? There is no doubt that the Iranian government under President Ahmadinejad has raised the stakes very high in a game of brinkmanship against American bullying.

Many countries have been cowered into submission but secretly wishing they could also play with the Tiger’s tail and get away with it.

Is it really surprising that the Teheran announcement came the same week when Western media was full of stories about Washington planning ‘pre-emptive strikes’ against nuclear installations in Iran by the US, including using nuclear weapons? Does anyone expect the Iranians to behave like sitting
ducks?

Teheran continues to protest that it is seeking nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The Americans and many Westerners doubt this intention but many people in the world also doubt Western intentions. The US in particular, has not got a good record in identifying real threat to global peace and security. It was wrong in Iraq, in Afghanistan and why should anyone trust its judgement now? Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel have nuclear weapons and these countries are either neighbours of Iran or countries with strategic focus on the country and vice-versa.

Therefore Iran cannot be expected to willingly leave itself so vulnerable. Whether it is Ahmadinejad or any other leader, the nuclear option would have been a serious option in Teheran. Now that Iran has demonstrated its capability it may actually be opened to diplomatic discussions.

Unlike Israel which does not even accept any UN Non- Proliferation treaty and welcomes no inspectors, Iran may return to cooperation with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) but like Israel, it may never fully disclose its capability, just to keep its regional rivals and enemies guessing: do they, don’t they?

How many Africans will really find it objectionable if there is an African state with such potential?

Is homosexuality really "UnAfrican"?

2006-04-12

Keguro Macharia

Jacob Rukweza raises an important question on the broader issue concerning democratic freedom and sexuality. In asking whether homosexuality is un-African, Rukweza asks us to consider the centrality of sexuality to our ideas of citizenship and political allegiance. He rightly points out that ignoring African homosexuals means denying our shared humanity.

At the same time, I would have liked to see his article address the ways African homosexuality might be different from western versions. Are there specific ways of living, histories, and cultural practices that make African homosexuals unique? Is it possible that a struggle for sexual rights in Africa will look quite different from similar struggles in the West? What can we learn from the West? And, what can the West learn from us?

With Rukweza, I believe sexual rights to be central to human rights and democratic practice. I applaud his article, and Pambazuka, for initiating what I hope will be an ongoing conversation.

Is homosexuality really "UnAfrican"? (2)

2006-04-13

Cleo Manago

When same gender loving (SGL) and ''bisexual'' Africans stop writing about ''African homosexual liberation'' in blatantly colonial-minded ways, and have more of an African liberatory/affirmation agenda parallel to their desire for safe acknowledgement in their country - they **might** have more effective results.

This article by Jacob Rukweza sounds like the voice of a colonized African homosexual who is using Europe - an abuser, disrupter and exploiter of ''Zimbabwe'' - as a frame of reference in terms of identity as he critiques his own people. I do not mean to imply that Rukweza's complaints are not justified, but he is confronting people, his people, who are still deep in the difficult throws of resurrecting themselves from being disrupted by White/European brutality. Just like in Black America, the group is still trying to reconstruct its manhood, its independence, its self-determination - which is still threatened by colonial/racist forces.

Also missing from Rukweza's story – as is typical among most gay identity advocates in Black American and African communities – is acknowledgement of the sexual exploitation of African males and boys by White Europeans taking place all over the Diaspora (This contributes to hatred for homosexuals throughout the Caribbean). How this also contributes to African discomfort (and humiliation) with ''gay'' is frequently left out.

An approach to homosexual rights in Africa that is framed in colonial constructs i.e. gay/lesbian identity/politics, that does not explicitly acknowledge African post colonial struggle, will never work. As it has not worked, similarly, in America's Black communities. The so-called Black gay movement was/is mired in anti-Black behavior and often headed up by gay identified Black men who exclusively had White partners. This was an assault even on many of the Black homosexuals who desperately relied on it for sexual empowerment. Anti-Black and bourgeoisie tendencies in this ''movement' today still compromises its credibility and effectiveness.

If we really are or were a part of African history, culture and experience, we need to act like we have respect for and honor that. We need to stop attempting to force feed homosexuality in European/colonial drag (politics) down the throats of our ambivalent communities who justifiably wonder if this ''gay stuff'' is just another symptom of or a weapon to compromise African people.

Is homosexuality really "UnAfrican"? (3)

2006-04-13

Mercy Grace Muchadura

I do not see the reason why "gays and lesbians" should cry foul and seek special protection of the law when other sexual orientations are not specially protected.

One of the major problems that we have in Africa is with these young generations and even some old who just join the Western ship without much ado. The author refers to a book by Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe. Are these African scholars? Why should Africans wait for Western scholars to, not only tell, but also interpret their history? What rational basis is there to conclude that because Nzinga was a female "king" with male "wives" in the 1640s in one kingdom, then homosexuality is African? A thorough study of those cultural ancient settings will tell you that that tradition and many things discussed in that book are far removed from homosexuality which, in my personal opinion, is rightly treated along with bestiality as unnatural sexual behaviour. Why allow these Western scholars to inculcate into us their depraved culture and emasculate our cultural traditions in broad daylight? For once I agree with Mugabe.

Pambazuka News turns 250

Subscriber letters

2006-04-12

I educate myself each week reading your emails. I am from a third world country, namely the republic of the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific, where we are struggling for freedom and human rights as well. - Mere Tokailagi

Thank for the work you are doing. Personally I was apolitical, but ever since you started sending this good news, I have come to get more concerned with socio-political issues than ever before, especially about suffering of all kinds in Africa, women and gender and poverty. My eyes are now wide open and I am very informed of what is taking place in our continent of Africa. - Medad Rugyendo

Pambazuka is my essential link to sanity and to 'home'. Living in self-imposed exile in the UK, surrounded by the complacent consumerism and insidious continuing dominance of the west, it has been and is a weekly tonic to read excellent analysis, 'real' news on all aspects of social and political life from across Africa. I have found no other source for the understandings and insights you offer and, above all, a source with Africa at heart. Knowing there are so many wonderful people working so hard in so many areas, learning about the realities and the courage and commitment of Africans across the world, is reinvigorating and uplifting. Whenever I meet someone wanting to understand what is going on in African countries, Pambazuka is my 'gift' to them. Whatever the rest of the world thinks, Pambazuka is evidence of the strength and resources of the continent. Long may you continue. Thank you from the depths of my soul and, a luta continua! - Barbara Murray

Congratulations on making the 250th anniversary and possible more importantly for becoming an indispensable part of the fight for justice and transformation in Africa - Steve Kibble

Peace and love to you. I wish to commend you for the great work you are doing for Africa. Ever since I found your site, I have recommended it to my students and colleagues here in Toronto. I am a Nigerian Catholic priest but active in social criticism in Africa. I identify myself totally with the social activism of your online magazine. I hope to make occasional contributions purely from the perspective of a religious critique of contemporary African Christian and Islamic religions and politics as they affect women and children. My new book The Face of Africa: Looking Beyond the Shadows is being released this week simultaneously in Africa and North America. I am also the founder and director of the Canadian based Non-governmental organisation, Canadian Samaritans for Africa. Pambazuka! Ummera ummera-sha! - Stan Chu Ilo

Congratulations on the 250th issue of this wonderful on-line publication. I have been greatly informed on all issues in relation to the continent of Africa. This is about the only online news that gives one objective and authoritative news on politics, human rights, as well as other issues. Please keep it up. - Okwa Morphy

Somali Women Action (SOWA) hereby sends you a letter of appreciation regarding the issues of the e-newsletter Pambazuka News that we have received. We welcome the topics and the continent wide coverage of news of human rights, gender issues, etc. all being around the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. We firmly believe that the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) Coalition is the right apparatus in implementing the promotion of women’s rights in Africa and at the same will pave the way for further gains to all women around the world. Keep up the good work! We are proud of you! And the world is proud of you.
- Ruqiyo Ali Abdulle, The Chairlady of SOWA  

We all fall down

2006-04-12

Mercy Grace Muchadura

I am touched by the pleading by the writers who rightly feel the ordinary Zimbabweans must be rescued from the jaws of the hero-turned-villain Robert Mugabe.

It is not for Mugabe to deliver us from the evil. That is obviously impossible - for since when did evil deliver its prey from its jaws? We all do give credit to Mugabe for the good that he did for Zimbabwe, similarly to the likes of other African leaders who led the liberation of their countries.The problem with many African leaders is power - they take political office as a profession yet it is only national service!

I for one also wanted land because I grew up in a baren communal area. But I do not want to be given 200 hectares on farmland, because my profession and my aspiration is not to be a farmer. I am trained as a lawyer and I am happy to have land in Harare to build my house and continue to practice my profession.

In the communal area in which I grew up in, no-one was resettled. So where is the decongestion of communal areas? Who got the farms that were confiscated from the white commercial farmers? The answer is obvious - stupid political cronies with no idea of farming. They produce nothing. We are starving and we export nothing. Cry my beloved country. All the middle class has reasonably seen it fit to leave the counrty and go and practice their professions where they are respected and valued.

Kenya: Holy Messes, Bloody Head Games – The Art of Wangechi Mutu

2006-04-13

Shailja Patel

In the museum map for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wangechi Mutu's work is listed as: "Site-specific gallery installation by up-and-coming artist. Visitors may find certain works in this exhibition challenging. Parents/guardians are advised to preview the exhibition before sharing it with children."

One might be forgiven for thinking that Mutu, born and raised in Kenya, now based in New York, has already "up and come". Her work resides in museums of modern and contemporary art in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco. It has been exhibited at prestigious art museums and galleries in London, Paris and Tokyo. It has received critical attention in numerous glossy journals and publications.

"Beauty" and "horror" are the two words most frequently used about the Mutu opus. She creates collaged images of women, using clippings from fashion magazines, news magazines, and porn magazines (which feature, she's asserted, the most realistic brown skin). Smooth shiny arms that end in manicured talons, sexy stiletto-shod legs, emerge from bodies which are continents of mineral, wood, plant, forest, flesh, rock, jewel, feather. Close up, we see that each of these bodies is mutilated in some way – amputated, pierced, shattered, bleeding.

"There are elements and references to violence, but my work is not about violence," says Mutu. "It concerns what brings about violence, and ideas of power – female power, how history is proscribed or worked out on the bodies of women."

The installation I viewed in San Francisco is entitled "The Chief's Lair is a Bloody Mess". One wall of the white box gallery space has been gouged with dozens of small holes, like gunshot wounds, tinged with red pigment. Three chairs dominate the center of the room, poised on extended spindly stilt legs. A bottle of wine hangs over each one, drips on the chair and spills on the floor, drying to sticky odorous bloodstains. These "thrones" are a satire on Western global hegemony: "A leader can sit on his seat and tell people to go out and fight the wars he has created." Yet the ease with which the same seats could be toppled, as they wobble on their perches, suggests the precarious base of military dominance.

In the collage "Bloody Old Head Games", a tiny figure, half-female, half-bird, perches on the elbow of a gigantic standing woman with scars and dark patches where we would expect to see breasts. A pistol in the hand of the avian woman points directly into the skull of the main figure, spews an explosion of red and brown particles. The eye moves down the picture to a girdle of pubic hair that morphs into long dangling strands of a grass skirt, over a leg raised as if to dance. Mutu plays a head game with the viewer, challenges our preconceptions, seduces and frightens, lures and repels.

The work of an African artist exhibited in the Western world is never free of imposed expectations of "authenticity". San Francisco museum curator, Tara McDowell, says of Mutu's work: "Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, she creates work that reflects her African identity and heritage as well as a politics of place with which she is deeply familiar, having spent years exposed to the mutilations that are common in parts of Africa debilitated by civil strife and the diamond trade."

Wangechi Mutu was a schoolmate of mine at Loreto Convent, a private Catholic girls' school in Nairobi. The mutilations referred to may be common in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Congo – they did not figure in the experience of upper middle-class Nairobi schoolgirls in the 1980s. While Mutu admits to a "Catholic-obsessed mind", and clearly draws on the iconography of the ritualized sacrificial body, we see at work in McDowell's comments the unexamined racism of "collective representation". Anyone hailing from the African continent is assumed to have first-hand experience of every aspect of the social, political and economic history of every region of the continent. This is the only way their art can be legitimate. Unlike Western artists, Africans may not address a subject simply because it engages them – it must reflect some aspect of their own heritage.

If Mutu's work does indeed reflect a politics of place, it is a universal place she explicates herself: "I position myself as a violator, a person who destroys. There's something horribly satisfying about it. People have to clean up after you. Someone has to come around to heal the wall. And it takes a lot to repair. It's also about creating that cycle of responsibility that's part of the performance of this piece. Women's bodies […] are like sensitive charts - they indicate how a society feels about itself."

It takes creative courage to gouge out a white gallery wall. It takes intellectual and artistic courage to recontextualize mass-produced images of the female body in ways that may still be misinterpreted. Mutu's work has been reproduced on magazine covers with captions such as "Fashion and Art", or worse, "Sex Sells". But there is a deeply satisfying aesthetic fused with a radical politics here. A holy mess that draws us into the best kind of head game - one that forces us to re-examine our conditioned responses to the imagery that surrounds us.

* Visit http://sikkemajenkinsco.com/wangechimutu.html for more information. Shailja Patel is a Kenyan Indian poet and spoken word artist. Visit www.shailja.com

* Send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

South Africa: The Number by Jonny Steinberg

Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2004, ISBN: 1868422054

2006-04-12

Reviewed by Francis B. Nyamnjoh

The Number very broadly articulates the democratization of South African society since the end of apartheid in 1994, and the impact of this transition on prison communities structured on the principles of apartheid and the discipline and punish logic of prisons everywhere. In the words of the author, the book demonstrates “why generations of young black men lived violent lives under apartheid, and why generations more will live violently under democracy” (p.11).

Using the life of William Steenkamp/Magadien Wentzel, Steinberg demonstrates the proximity of the history of crime to the central fault lines that have shaped and continue to shape South African society. In William Steenkamp/Magadien, Steinberg sees the sort of man he wanted to write about, especially as: “I was frightened of penning a story about hell; I wanted to find a redemptive tale, to write about someone who had journeyed to the heart of the inferno but had come out the other side.” (p.27-28). The Number thus recounts Steinberg’s and Magadien’s journey into the latter’s past (p.44) Thus informed by how William Steenkamp/Magadien Wentzel has come to understand his own past and why, The Number, a highly researched book rich in prison ethnography and organizational sociology, is as much about history as it is about memory. Two themes have caught my attention: (a) democratization and (b) identity.


On Prisons and Democracy in South Africa

In post-apartheid South Africa where the rhetoric of equality of humanity, democracy peace and reconciliation are the order of the day, personal and communal identities are increasingly seeking representation for a complexity and plurality that the rigid policing of identities in the past had rendered invisible to the insensitive bureaucracies of legality and legitimacy. Considered as the most outlawed and subhuman of dehumanized blackness under apartheid when it was commonplace for white men to play out “their fantasies that blacks were animals, and in the process brought out the animals in themselves” (p.10), the black prison population has not been indifferent to the democracy bandwagon, often appropriating it to reinterpret the past, justify their actions and dream new futures of tolerance, belonging and conviviality.

Even the prison administration, used to disciplining and punishing, would have to re-invent itself through a revalorization of black humanity and a more empathic and contextualised understanding of crime and punishment. Both of these dimensions are captured through the story of a prisoner widely known under the false name of William Steenkamp [name in a stolen ID book (p.303)], who joined the 28s [one of the three competing and complementary prison gangster groups – The Number] in the late 1970s while still in his teens, and whom Jonny Steinberg, author of The Number, first met in October 2002, when he was about to be released from Pollsmoor prison.

The winds of change in tune with democracy and the contradictions arising from it in South African prisons are well epitomized by two coloured people at the centre of The Number - Jansen, the new administrator of Pollsmoor, whose philosophy and approach to prisoners Steinberg describes below, and Steenkamp, Steinberg’s main informant:

“He [Jansen] came armed with a philosophy as laudable as it was naïve: an evangelical belief that all men’s souls are naturally gentle, that only the cruelty of history had made them bad. He identified with the gangsters behind the bars. The humiliations he had suffered as a coloured warder working in apartheid’s jails were the same humiliations, he thought, that had turned many Cape Flats men into monsters…” (pp.24-25).

But both Jansen (as concerns democratising South African prison management) and democratization of the wider society face formidable hurdles, as the reality remains schizophrenic and pregnant with rhetoric.

It is therefore little surprise that Pollsmoor prison is “a world nourished by stories” as “weapons, tools, [and] the stuff of action”, and a place where prisoners want to unload their stories into a journalist’s notebook, organized around the master story of Nongoloza, the God of South African prisoners (p.17-18). Thanks to the mythical feats of Nongoloza, the prison Number gangs – the 26s, 27s and 28s - had demonstrated courage in the struggle against the indignities of apartheid.

A central theme of the book is that to change for the better, prisoners need the active cooperation of the outside world, a concern which William Steenkamp articulates superbly in the following words:

“It is no use us prisoners changing…if the world outside is still the same. You are still labeled a criminal when you leave, which means you don’t get a job. And inside here, we are told when to eat, sleep, walk, exercise, play sport, when to watch TV and when to phone our families. How can you expect a person enslaved in this mentality to have responsibility on the outside? That is why we always come back.” (p.29)

That is why prisoners consider the state and social structures - “the system” - “a factory for criminals”, making “criminals out of decent people” (35). It is also why The Number, whose death prisoners seeking redemption may wish, remains very strong even after democracy came in 1994, not only in prison, but also in the streets of cities and townships across South Africa (pp.38-39). Parallel to this, is the resilience of racism, despite the rhetoric of transformation and celebration of The Rainbow Nation.

On Identity – What is in a Name?

William Steenkamp, who has “served five or six sentences over the last 20 years, each time under a different name” (p.40), was, in the words of Steinberg, “a hell of identities not yet erased, and identities not yet formed.”(p.43). He captures his identity crisis (or should I say wealth) thus:

“My mother, she is the Wentzel in my life; she is a Muslim. My foster-mother, in whose house I grew up, her name is Mekka; she is a Christian. When I was a child I went to church. I sang in the choir. When I was told who my real family was, I was sent to mosque. So you can say I am confused. My father was a Christian. But I am not sure if he was really my father. If he was my father, why didn’t they give me his surname? Why Wentzel? Why my mother’s name?”

“I want to know who my father is, and when I find out, I want to take his name. And then my sons must take his name. JR and Steenkamp must disappear. I owe it to my children that they know who they are. And to their children and the children after that. I have fucked up my life. Why must I also fuck up the lives of children who have not yet been born? Why must they wander around nameless like me?” (pp.40-41).

To get a job with Mr Morris, he had to work under the name of William Steenkamp, a stolen ID he had assumed. But the troubles of going through with a false name were enormous, as the identity of ‘William Steenkamp’ haunted his work and made life at home intolerable.

“Do you understand what it means not to have a name? […] You can take it for granted that you are Jonny Steinberg. You’ve never even had to think about what it means. It means you are a Jew, that your grandparents came to South Africa in x year, that your father was born in y year. That you know your name means you will never have to sleep in a gutter or wander the streets like a stroller. You belong.” (p.302).

Uncomfortable with living a lie, “I wanted to go back to jail so this lie would end”, “I couldn’t live this life” (p.41) “I need to be Magadien Wentzel to live a proper life” (p.42). But there was the fear that this might never happen: “I have forgotten my own life … I was too fucking angry to take notice of my own life. I’m scared I will never get it back.” (p.44) And he is right to be scared, as it was all up to “a bunch of faceless bureaucrats, shifting through a biography that had been reduced to a slime dossier” to determine which of his lives was really his, often with an arbitrariness that shattered whatever sense of self he was trying to cultivate. (p.289).

The encounter between Mr Morris and Steenkamp demonstrates that reconciliation and empathy are possible between the world of crime and that of order, between imprisonment and freedom, and between communities rigidly divided and at conflict under apartheid, if only everyone in post-apartheid South Africa could make an effort to see the humanity in the other. Despite Steenkamp’s dishonesty, Mr Morris, a white South African, is able to see the goodness in him.

As for Steenkamp,

“I was brought here to serve this sentence because of what I did to Mr Morris…I loved them, you know, Mr and Mrs Morris. But a piece of me always held back. I would do stupid things to hurt him. I would smash the bakkie on purpose and then blame it on someone else. I would break his glass…A couple of years ago, I phoned Farieda. She said there was a new boss now; the Morrises went bankrupt. I walked back to my cell in a daze. I put my head on the pillow and cried. You see, I knew it was because of me, because of the glass I stole from him. I had destroyed him. He offered me love and I spat on him and destroyed him…When I get out, I want to work and save and try to pay him back. I know it will take me a long time. If he’s not there I can pay back his children. This is one debt I need to repay.” (p.288)

Finally released into the ‘normal’ world where he hopes to re-integrate himself into a ‘normal’ life as a ‘normal’ citizen of the now ‘normal’ South Africa, William Steenkamp/Magadien Wentzel comes “to learn that one cannot reinvent oneself without reinventing the people around whom one has lived a life”, for identity is not just how one sees and positions oneself, and also how others recognize and represent one. Identity, to make sense, is a negotiated reality.

Conclusion

This is a fascinating book with a compelling story told mostly from the standpoint of gangsters in prison who are more used to being disciplined and punished, than being given a voice to share their predicaments with the wider world. Steinberg has succeeded in doing what most writers cannot manage, being able to share, in a creative and irresistible narrative, the results of scientific enquiry or journalistic investigation with the wider reading public whose primary concern is a good story well told. The style is that of a master storyteller, but the content remains factual and sociologically outstanding. The Number is a major contribution to the peace and reconciliation, and to the crystallization of renegotiated identity essentialisms that should come from an understanding of all the facets and nuances of South African society past and present. Through his outstanding craftsmanship Jonny Steinberg has given a voice to the desperately voiceless in a new South Africa where every voice matters.

* Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Head of Publications and Dissemination at CODESRIA

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Africa blog round-up

2006-04-12

Sokari Ekine

Chippla (http://chippla.blogspot.com/2006/04/price-of-disloyalty.html) writes on the ongoing “3rd term” battle between Obasanjo and his supporters and the growing opposition in Nigeria to the idea. In particular he focuses on the disagreement on the issue between the President and Vice President, Atiku Abubakar:

“A few days ago, the Vice President, Mr. Abubakar, attended a meeting in which he publicly accused his boss of trying to manipulate the Nigerian constitution by perpetuating his stay in office.”

The President’s spokesperson then called on Abubakar to resign and so it goes on back and forth between the President’s men and the opposition including pro supporters trying to prevent the VP from entering the Presidential wing of Lagos airport. Chippla concludes:

“A few things become very clear from this incident: in today's Nigeria, demonstrations are allowed PROVIDED they are in support of the president or his ruling party. All other demonstrations are nothing short of treachery. The killing of innocent Nigerians who were demonstrating in the Northern State of Katsina against an amendment to the constitution goes to show that Mr. Obasanjo's government will go to any length to silence opposition.”

Ethiopundit (http://ethiopundit.blogspot.com/2006/04/battle-of-adwa-110th-anniversary.html) remembers the 110th anniversary of the Battle of Adwa which was a defining moment in Ethiopia’s struggle against colonialism. He reviews a book “The Battle of Adwa: Reflections on Ethiopia’s Historic Victory Against European Colonialism” and comments:

“Nine scholars analyze the unique Ethiopian victory at Adwa, pondering the factors that brought success, the putative missed opportunities for securing the future integrity of the Ethiopian territory, and the lessons to be learned…”

“The event and its implications have much to say about Ethiopia’s subsequent development, the secession of Eritrea, and relations with external powers. It also reveals much about the machinations of global powers and the dangers they pose to weaker nations, and most specifically international influence in Africa.”

Gukira (http://gukira.blogspot.com/2006/04/where-my-mouth-is.html) responds to an article in the Kenyan newspaper, “The Sunday Nation” which questions whether this is the right time to discuss issues such as sexuality when Kenyans should be focusing on “violent sexual offences”.

Keguro responds that “growing up means having to choose” and in this instance precedence should be given to legislation that will provide recourse to victims of “gender based violence” over the issue of gay rights. If one has too choose, as in this case, I completely agree with Keguro. Once this legislation has been passed then the focus can move on to gay rights, abortion rights and so on.

Diary of a Mad Kenyan Women (http://madkenyanwoman.blogspot.com/2006/04/violent-writing-and-gangsta-writers.html) writes on the ongoing “Violent writing and Gangsta Writers” in the blogosphere. Whilst supporting freedom of speech she points out that there are ways of saying things and one can express a point of view without being rude and insulting. On those who choose rudeness but hide their identity she writes:

“After all, it is not much more revealing to call oneself, for example, ‘blitzwriter’ than it is to call oneself ‘anonymous.’ Thus, this latter impulse to anonymity suggests to me that the writers are in fact cloaking themselves from themselves no less than from us. They are, consciously or not, divesting their rude anonymous alter egos of the responsibility that being a citizen of the blog world imposes. They are in short, making of themselves a mob - in both gangster and crowd senses. Mobs, in either sense, allow themselves the detestable vices of non-thought, hidden identities, and most of all incomprehensible, unnecessary, unthinkable, and unforgivable violence. Mobs - both the gangster kind and the crowd kind - allow themselves furtive recourse to petty parochialisms, to ugly little hatreds, to bigotry, to witch-hunts, to meaningless contests for a power that only they covet, to brutality, but mostly, to irresponsibility. Then the crowd disperses, the gangsters flee, and they all melt back into the sheltering disguises of normality, reason and identity. Until the next time.”

Black Looks (http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks/2006/04/last_week_i_was.html) posts an interview with South African lesbian activist, Rose Masuku, who speaks on being a lesbian in South Africa, the culture of “butch lesbians” and lesbians playing soccer as well as her work as a counsellor to lesbians, many of whom are thrown out of school and out of their homes.

The Moor Next Door (http://wahdah.blogspot.com/2006/04/christians-dont-respect-algerian-laws.html) asks: “Why is it illegal to convert Muslims from Islam to other religions in Algeria?” He believes this is because evangelists are using Christianity as a “tool to destabilize” Algeria and calls for a review of religious policy in Algeria.

“First of all, if Islam and religion are the causes of so many troubles in Algeria, why not stop the use of religion in politics entirely? We can start by abolishing the state religion, or by making it illegal to call for the use of religion for violent ends (or using anything for that end). The problem cannot be fixed by simply attacking the Christians, you have to attack Islam too. Religion is a problem that must be dealt with totally.”

The Skeptic (http://elijahzarwan.net/blog/?p=86) comments on the lack of reporting in the blogosphere on the killing of 17 Palestinians by the Israeli Defense Forces since last Friday. He contrasts this with the response to an op/ed in the Washington Post on an academic article discussing the Israeli lobby and American foreign policy. Here thousands of words were written on the topic yet nothing on the murder of Palestinians.

“Pardon me if I take a preachy tone for a minute. I understand that civilian casualties in the OPT are nothing new and that in Amrika these deaths more often than not appear on page A-13 as brief items written by AP. Still, if you got exercised about the Walt-Mearsheimer article, ask yourself why you are less exercised about the death of 17 people, including a little girl and a little boy. Which is more important to you: an academic paper or the end of 17 human lives?”

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks, http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Egypt: Women still marginalised from the judiciary

2006-04-13

http://www.agenda.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1344&Itemid=147

“When I was appointed by the Constitutional Court in 2003, I felt Egypt had taken a very important step towards building a freer, more equal merit-based society,” said Tehany al-Gebaly, Egypt’s only female judge. “Three years on, I am saddened to see that the obstacles to women joining the judiciary remain firmly in place.” In Egypt’s approximately 6,000-strong judicial body, al-Gebaly is the only woman in an executive judicial role.

Global: Separate UN agency for women?

2006-04-13

http://www.whrnet.org/docs/issue-un_women.html

A proposed blueprint for a radical restructuring of the United Nations as envisaged by outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan has fallen short of its target in one specific area: gender empowerment. As the 191 member states get ready to discuss the political nuances and economic implications of Annan's recently-released landmark report on UN reform, there is an increasingly vociferous demand to rectify the gender shortcoming by creating a separate UN agency to deal with women's issues.

Global: What challenges does UN reform present for women

2006-04-13

http://www.agenda.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1341&Itemid=147

“It is … right and indeed necessary that women should be engaged in … decision-making processes in all areas, with equal strength and in equal numbers.” These are the words of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in his speech to mark this year's International Women's Day which was celebrated on March 8. For a number of years the United Nations has been planning and implementing reforms to improve its effectiveness. However, current initiatives to reform the UN have women wondering if the organization is not merely paying lip service to the principle of gender equality.

Kenya: The little pill that could

2006-04-12

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32716

Misoprostol is not exactly a household name as far as drugs are concerned; however, it has the potential to improve and even save thousands of women's lives in Kenya. This medication is one of a number of drugs that can be used to induce abortion, in a procedure that has come to be known as "medical abortion", or "abortion by pill". It provides a cheaper alternative to surgical termination of pregnancy, results in fewer complications if administered correctly and can also be used to stop haemorrhaging after delivery.

Namibia: Leaving prostitution is easier said than done

2006-04-12

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32795

"Everything revolves around money and without work there is no money," says 33-year-old Maria Xoagub*, a mother of three who earns her living as a prostitute. "Sometimes we try stopping going to sell our bodies in the streets, but when poverty takes over we are back there." Xoagub’s story is one heard frequently from Namibia’s sex workers. In a country where the unemployment rate hovers around 30 percent, prospects of getting a job outside prostitution are slim for sex workers, many of whom are illiterate.

Nigeria: New Bill puts human rights defenders of sexual rights at risk

Press Release

2006-04-13

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), in the framework of their joint programme, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, express their deep concern over a Bill that would introduce criminal penalties for public advocacy or associations supporting the rights of lesbian and gay people, as well as for relationships and marriage ceremonies between persons of the same sex. As a consequence, human rights defenders and organisations defending those rights will be at a greater risk of criminalisation.
Nigeria: New Bill Puts Human Rights Defenders of Sexual Rights at Risk

World Organization Against Torture (Geneva)
PRESS RELEASE
April 7, 2006

Geneva/Paris

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), in the framework of their joint programme, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, express their deep concern over a Bill that would introduce criminal penalties for public advocacy or associations supporting the rights of lesbian and gay people, as well as for relationships and marriage ceremonies between persons of the same sex. As a consequence, human rights defenders and organisations defending those rights will be at a greater risk of criminalisation.

Indeed, the Observatory has been informed by several organisations, including the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), that on January 19, 2006, Mr. Bayo Ojo, Minister of Justice, presented to the Federal Executive Council a "Bill for an Act to Make Provisions for the Prohibition of Relationship Between Persons of the Same Sex, Celebration of Marriage by Them, and for Other Matters Connected Therewith". While the Council reportedly approved the Bill, it has not yet been submitted to the National Assembly.

For example, in its article 7 (1), the Bill prohibits the "registration of gay clubs, societies and organisations by whatever name they are called [...] by government agencies".

Furthermore, the Bill provides in its article 7(3) five years imprisonment for "any person involved in the registration of gay clubs, societies and organisations, sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private". It also provides the same sentence to anyone who "goes through the ceremony of marriage with a person of the same sex, and "performs, witnesses, aids or abets the ceremony of same sex marriage" (article 8).

The Observatory recalls that chapter 42, section 214 of Nigeria?s Criminal code already penalises consensual homosexual conduct between adults with fourteen years imprisonment.

The bill, if adopted, would blatantly violate the principle of non-discrimination, enshrined in all main international human rights instruments, and a corner stone of human rights law. It would also clearly restrict freedoms of expression and association of human rights defenders and members of civil society, when advocating the rights of gays and lesbians. This Bill would also potentially criminalise civil society groups engaged in fighting against HIV/AIDS through prevention programme.

The Observatory recalls that the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders states, in its article 5, that "everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, at the national and international levels: a) to meet or assemble peacefully; b) to form, join and participate in non-governmental organisations, associations or groups", and in its article 7 that "Everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to develop and discuss new human rights ideas and principles and to advocate their acceptance". The Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders herself has specifically called attention to the "greater risks... faced by defenders of the rights of certain groups as their work challenges social structures, traditional practices and interpretations of religious precepts that may have been used over long periods of time to condone and justify violation of the human rights of members of such groups. Of special importance will be... human rights groups and those who are active on issues of sexuality, especially sexual orientation" (See Report of the Special Representative to the Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders, UN Doc. E/CN.4/2001/94 (2001), at 89g).

Moreover, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Nigeria acceded without reservations in 1993, protects the rights to freedom of expression (article 19), freedom of conscience (article 18), freedom of assembly (article 21) and freedom of association (article 22). It also affirms the equality of all people before the law and the right to freedom from discrimination in articles 2 and 26.

As a consequence, the Observatory urges the Nigerian authorities to:

-- withdraw the "Bill for an Act to Make Provisions for the Prohibition of Relationship Between Persons of the Same Sex, Celebration of Marriage by Them, and for Other Matters Connected Therewith", in order to conform with international and regional law;

-- conform with the provisions of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1998, in particular with article 1, which states that "everyone has the right, individually or in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels", above-mentioned articles 5 and 7, and article 12.2, which states that "The State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration";

-- more generally, conform with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the regional and international instruments relative to human rights binding Nigeria.

Moreover, the Observatory also calls upon the international community, in particular the United Nations human rights mechanisms and the African Commission on Human and People?s Rights, to urge Nigeria to conform, in all circumstances, with its international human rights commitments.

More...

Tanzania: Two rapists to serve life in prison

2006-04-11

http://allafrica.com/stories/200604101288.html

Two persons of 23 years of age, have been sentenced to life in prison after a district magistrate's court in Tanzania found them guilty of rape. Handing down the judgment, the magistrate said the court was satisfied with the testimonies given and found the two accused guilty of the offence and would therefore spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Congo: Top transparency campaigners arrested in Republic of Congo

2006-04-12

The international Publish What You Pay coalition is deeply concerned by the arrest in the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) of two prominent campaigners against corruption and human rights abuses, Christian Mounzeo and Brice Mackosso. The arrests follow a campaign of intimidation and threats against the two men, who have spoken out courageously against the misuse of oil revenues in their country.
Publish What You Pay Coalition
Press release 10 April 2006

Top Transparency Ca