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Featured This Week

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/highlights/36472

FEATURED: Yav Katshung Joseph argues that, in a post-conflict DRC, one way to heal the wounds of war and colonialism is through reparations.
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Richard Akum interrogates the ongoing Juba Peace Talks between the Ugandan government and the Lord Resistance Army.
- Mammo Muchie et al. argue against the financial support of the Ethiopian government.
- Issa Shivji, on the occasion of his retirement as Professor of Law from the University of Dar Es Salaam, tackles the role of lawyers in propping up the neo-liberal system.
LETTERS: Middle-East, History as disconnected, The DRC and Ethiopia
BLOGGING AFRICA: blog discussion on e-commerce, racial profiling, literature, sex workers and 16th International AIDS Conference.
BOOKS AND ARTS: Book review, two film reviews, Spike Lee New Documentary and Puppet theatre
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Links to news on Sudan, Somalia, Uganda
HUMAN RIGHTS: International Day for the remembrance of Slave trade.
WOMEN AND GENDER: Reflection of women’s right at the AIDS Conference.
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: AIDS meeting says IDPs and Refugees should get access to treatment.
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Human Rights groups call for President Bingu wa Mutharika impeachment.
DEVELOPMENT: IMF: Shrink or Sink it?
CORRUPTION: South African former MP faces jail.
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: International AIDS Conference closes with call to deliver universal access.
EDUCATION: Engendering Education
RACISM & XENOPHOBIA: Israeli Apartheid
ENVIRONMENT: Islamic Courts ban trade in charcoal and wild life
LAND AND LAND RIGHTS: Kenyan lands ministry promises to repossess all land owned by “absentee landlords”.
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Highway Africa around the corner
DIASPORA: Black History
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: Continent slow to adopt low cost fibre.
PLUS: e-Newsletters and Mailings Lists; Fundraising and Useful Resources; Courses, Seminars and Workshops; Jobs.

Pambazuka News appoints new Online News Editor

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/highlights/36475

Following interviews for the post of Online News Editor for Pambazuka News, Fahamu is pleased to announce that we have appointed Mandisi Majavu to the position. Mandisi is a writer/journalist who has written widely on topics such as race, socio-economic conditions in Africa and civil wars in the DRC, Eritrea/Ethiopia, Burundi and Sudan. Mandisi, a cultural critic, has extensive experience of working for online journals and with alternative information providers that are online based. He is based in Cape Town.

We hope all subscribers will join us in issuing a very warm welcome to Mandisi as he begins work on Pambazuka News.

We would like to thank the more than 80 applicants who applied for the position of Online News Editor. We wish everyone the best of in the future.

DRC: Healing the wounds of war through reparations

Joseph Yav Katshung

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/36471

As the elected leaders of a post-conflict state, the DRC government's top priorities must be to heal the wounds that have been inflicted on many Congolese by colonialism and civil wars in that country. Yav Katshung Joseph writes that: "Victims of serious human rights violations in the DRC are begging for justice and reparations. The new government should place this issue on its agenda in order to grant them reparations. It is true that reparation takes time. However, a step must be taken."


Introduction

Some outbursts of violence between soldiers of the presidential guards "DSSP" and the guards and private army of presidential contender Jean-Pierre Bemba marred the announcement of the election results in the DRC on 20 August. Two hours before the announcement by electoral officials that a runoff is to take place, soldiers from both rival contenders have been involved in a number of attacks. Since none of the 32 presidential candidates who contested in the 30 July elections won 50% plus of the vote, the DRC will hold a runoff election between Joseph Kabila (44.81% of the vote) and Bemba (20.03% of the vote). The fighting left at least 16 victims dead, with many more wounded, but the overall toll is not known and the two sides denied responsibility for the escalation in violence.

The need for unity must take account of the duty to remember and the right to justice necessary to all credible, lasting processes of reconciliation. Accountability for human rights violations is an important instrument in breaking the cycle of impunity, and is an indispensable component of the process of healing the wounds of grave violations committed in the DRC, reconciliation, reconstruction, and peace. It is also the foundation for post-conflict reconstruction based on the rule of law and respect for human rights.

As the focus on a national and international level is towards the post-election period in the DRC, we should also not forget the nightmare in which Congolese citizens have been living from the colonial period till today. The elected government must address the question of reparations for victims of human rights violations in the DRC.

To put this into perspective, over the last decade there have been intense debates internationally and locally about reparation for victims of gross and systematic human rights violations. Discussions arise in post-conflict situations regarding serious violations of human rights, such as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other forms of injustices of the past. In the DRC, millions of people have been severely affected by the conflicts and violence of the past.

If we are to get over the past and build national unity and reconciliation, we must make sure that people who suffered gross human rights abuses are acknowledged by providing them with reparation. These measures cannot bring back the dead, nor can they adequately compensate for pain and suffering suffered, but they can improve the quality of life for victims of gross human rights violations and/or their dependants. However, one important question is posed: how does a nation like the DRC seek to repair harm, restore rights, and build trust when the number of victims runs to millions over the period from colonial times to the Mobutu regime, and the 1996-1997 Kabila-led war, and the 1998-2003 war and the continuing conflict in some parts of the country? [1]

The question of reparation in the DRC

The Congolese have had to deal with violence and conflict since the DRC's independence from Belgium in 1960 and even before independence. It is for this reason that the questions on when and how to repair the harm inflicted to victims should be put on the agenda. However, this has not been the case in this country and there appears little discussion on the possible processes available and appropriate to secure justice for the victims of the gross and systematic human rights violations.

To ensure that justice translates into accountability and punishment for perpetrators, and, on the other hand, reparation or redress for victims, is not simply a moral imperative. It is a political necessity to combat a culture of impunity stretching unbroken from colonial times through the Mobutu regime, till today. The elected government of the DRC should be pushed to break away from this culture of impunity.

Mechanisms of reparation in the DRC

In principle, at the national level, victims have two mechanisms through which to seek reparation: the judicial and non-judicial mechanisms.

Judicial mechanisms
The judicial reparation mechanism in the DRC is mostly based on reparation proceedings associated with the criminal prosecution of individual perpetrators, with victims participating and seeking reparation as civil claimants. The challenge here is that many victims of violence and atrocity may not have access to the courts or the resources needed to undertake lengthy and costly prosecutions that are not guaranteed to culminate in the payment of reparation.
The judicial reparation mechanism should be strengthened by the International Criminal Court (ICC). If not, the victims' prospects for achieving judicial remedy and reparation will remain minimal. The case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo [2] proves this point. Dyilo, a founder and leader of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC), was arrested and transferred on the 17 March 2006 to the International Criminal Court. He is accused of committing war crimes as set out in article 8 of the Statute. However, so far, no one else has been brought to justice for serious human rights abuses and war crimes perpetrated in DRC - a situation compounded by a shattered justice system.
We hope that the Court under article 75 of the Statute will provide reparation to the victims, if Dyilo is found guilty. [3]

Non-judicial mechanisms

There are a wide variety of non-judicial mechanisms and the Congolese Truth Commission is one of them. The work of a truth commission, when properly carried out, should automatically lead to some form of reparation. However, in the DRC, despite the fact that the truth and reconciliation commission was established in July 2004, it is unable to conduct investigations into human rights abuses. The Congolese TRC was not created and is not operated transparently in order to sustain democratic legitimacy and therefore, to work for reparation. There is a clear lack of citizen involvement in the creation and functioning of the TRC, and a lack of openness to ensure domestic legitimacy. Moreover, there are many criticisms because commissioners come from different factions previously or currently involved in the conflict and were not chosen by means of a transparent process which espoused a democratic spirit,practice.

Therefore, it seems that the purpose of such a commission, is to become a Truth Omission instead of a Truth Commission. As such it cannot satisfy the quest for reparation in the DRC.[4] There is also the question of source of funds, given the vast number of victims who may claim reparations.

Trends towards reparation in the DRC

The question arises: how should reparation be done? The whole process can become a difficult task especially when emerging from a protracted conflict, with ethnic divisions. It should be noted that not all perpetrators can be brought to book if such prosecutions both outstrip available resources and risk a dangerous frailty, further divisions, possible balkanisation and instability.

Also, one delicate question relates to contributions from foreign governments and individuals. How possible is it for foreign countries and individuals being held accountable for their roles in the civil war to pay reparation? For instance, in the recent judgement by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Uganda was found liable to compensate the DRC for violations of public international law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law. The amount of money to be paid in reparation is still to be determined through bilateral negotiations between Uganda and the DRC. It is unlikely that victims will benefit from it.

On a positive note, on 12 April 2006, the Military Garnison Court in Songo Mboyo [5] in the DRC sentenced seven military officers of the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC) to life imprisonment. This after the FARDC battalion based in Songo Mboyo(troops of the ex-Liberation Movement of Congo), rebelled against its commanders who they accused of withholding their army salaries, robbed almost all the houses in the villages of Songo-Mboyo and Bongandanga and then committed collective rape of at least 119 women and girls on 21 December 2003. Many of the women were less than 18 years old.
As a form of reparation, each victim's family will be paid compensation of 10,000 US dollars. The other victims who were raped will each receive 5,000 US dollars Compensations ranging between 500 to 200 US dollars are to be set aside for businessmen and villagers who were victims of robbery. This is the first sentence against military personnel of the FARDC for crimes against humanity. The same verdict stipulates that the Congolese state must ensure that the victims are compensated. This court's decision is a significant step that will help advance the fight against impunity and provide reparation. However, more still needs to be done.

Conclusion

Victims of serious human rights violations in the DRC are begging for justice and reparation. It is true that reparation takes time. However, the new government must take a step in the right direction by placing this issue on its agenda.

Erik Doxtader says that “in the face of a history that will not 'end', reparation requires close attention to the question of how to craft a present for the future. Much more than an ideal to be achieved in some vague time yet to come, its hope for transformation is a call to act right now. The fact that reparation can neither erase history's pain nor fully compensate for its losses is not a reason to conclude that what is past is past or that legacies imply an inevitability which defies correction. But, this is not to say that there are ready-made solutions. Much more that just a set of policy decisions or court judgements, the power of the reparative may reside in an attitude, a willingness to see historical deprivation and inequality as a common problem that demands the struggle for a future in which things can be made otherwise.” [6]

* Yav Katshung Joesph is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo and an Advocate at the LubumbashiBar Association. He is the Executive Director of CERDH, and Coordinator of the UNESCO Chair for Human Rights, Peace, Conflict Resolution and Good governance. He has published numerous articles on human rights, law and transitional justice in scholarly journals. For contact: joyav22@yahoo.fr or joseyav@justice.com

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

References:

[1] There is a debate in the DRC on the responsibility of Belgium for the barbarity and humiliation associated with the past oppression during the colonial period. Congolese civil society are demanding compensation from the Belgian government. As it is true in the world, there has been an increase in the incidence of claims for reparations related to injustice committed long time ago, including those related in colonialism.

[2] Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a Congolese national, has been the president of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC) since its inception in 2000. In September 2002, he established and led the Forces Patriotique du Congo (FPLC), a military group affiliated with the UPC and dedicated to carrying out its goals using violence. He is alleged to have enlisted and conscripted children to serve as soldiers in this organisation. The UPC/FPLC is based in the Ituri district of the DRC, one of the most violent regions in the country. During the war in 2000, Lubanga's organisation is alleged to have been responsible in part for many of the massacres and other abuses that took place in the Ituri region. More recently, his group has been involved in disputes to gain control over the mineral wealth of the region.

[3] The benefits of victims from reparations under the ICC may not be linked to finding a perpetrator guilty. The Court is yet to pronounce itself on this.

[4] "The relationship between the International Criminal Court and Truth Commissions: Some thoughts on how to build a bridge retributive and restorative justice", by Josephy Yav Katchung. Available at: http://www.iccnow.org

[5] In the northwestern province of Equateur, precisely at 600km northeast of the provincial capital Mbandaka.

[6] Erik Doxtader, "Reparation" in Charles Villa-vicencio and Erik Doxtader, Pieces of the Puzzle, 2004, p 32

Piecing Together the Puzzle of Uganda's Elusive Peace

Richard Akum

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/36470

The ongoing Juba Peace Talks in Uganda between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army are the first step in the right direction. So much is at stake: The 20 year civil war has claimed thousands of lives, the war has brought misery to the Ugandan people, and it has caused destruction and displaced millions of people in their own country. Richard Akum argues that: "If the talks break off with the commitment toward further consultation between both parties, it would have provided a window of opportunity to right the organizational, participatory and temporal frailties of the current effort. A return to arms is definitely not an enviable option"


A complex combination of time, situation and opportunity, have united to create an enabling environment for the ongoing Juba Peace Talks (JPT) between the Government of Uganda (GOU) and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Snapshots from the past 20 years reveal an asymmetric conflict which has spanned three countries - Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These countries have witnessed egregious violations of human rights - including recorded cases of forced abduction and rape, attacks on civilian populations, the recruitment and retention of child soldiers, and the killing and displacement of millions in Northern Uganda. The current peace talks have far-reaching implications - the local and regional security depend on the JPT, and whether agencies will continue developmental projects in Uganda, as well as in the region, also depends on the peace talks.

To piece together the puzzle of Northern Uganda's peace prospects, consideration ought to be given to regional involvement in the peace talks, the level of representation of the parties to the talks, their positions on the issues, and the time frame for dialogue and agreement.

Over the past couple of years, the conflict dynamics in Northern Uganda have been altered by a number of factors which include the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end Sudan's 23 years Civil War in January 2005 and the unveiling of International Criminal Court arrest warrants for the LRA's Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen, Raska Lukwiya in October 2005.

Yoweri Museveni's re-election to the Ugandan presidency in February 2006 also contributed to the change of conflict dynamics that make up the two decade long civil war. It is fair to say that all these events have invariably shifted strategic decision-making choices towards the management and sustainable resolution of the conflict in Northern Uganda. Hence the high expectations, coloured by cautious optimism, surrounding the ongoing Juba Peace Talks. It would be remarkable to cap off this series of stabilizing events with a sustainable and comprehensive peace deal in Northern Uganda. However, a few pieces of the peace puzzle remain elusive.

Given the regional implications of the sustained conflict in Northern Uganda, the Juba Peace Talks need to be located within a broader regional organizational mandate. The African Union has a stake in the current peace process, given that the conflict in Northern Uganda is currently Africa's longest running cross-border intra-state conflict. Meanwhile a strong Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) presence at the peace process would show the commitment of regional actors to see a deal emerging from the ongoing talks. These organizational actors would, through their participation, provide leverage to others involved to reach consensus by providing security and monitoring guarantees where they are needed. They would also provide the bridge to trust and confidence-building between both parties. These are all intangible elements that would bolster the current effort being undertaken by the Government of South Sudan.

However, regional participation is legally complicated by the ICC warrants looming over the peace process. The warrants are blamed for Kony's skepticism to directly participate in the talks. As the argument goes, if Kony steps foot in Juba, UN forces on the ground could arrest him, given the outstanding warrants. This once again raises the long-standing contention between peace and justice. With the commitment of the international community, a just peace can be attained. Simplistically, a coordinated effort by MONUC (United Nations Mission in the Congo) and UNMIS (United Nations Mission in Sudan) forces could enforce the warrants executed by the ICC, and bring the leaders of the LRA to justice, thereby opening the way for tier-two LRA leadership to engage the GOU in peace talks.

With these structural deficiencies in the background of the ongoing talks, there remains a need to find common ground between the GOU's push for a narrow agreement which focuses on current strategic calculations, and the LRA's search for a more comprehensive agreement which addresses the root causes of the conflict. The GOU's bargaining position is strengthened by the ICC warrants on the LRA leaders. Hon. Amama Mbabazi, Ugandan Minister for Security, visited the ICC in the Hague on July12th - two days before the start of the Juba Peace Talks - but noticeably did not request a withdrawal of the ICC arrest warrants. The government's stand at the peace talks remains hinged on a narrow amnesty offer for the LRA leadership under indictment by the ICC. For the rest of the LRA fighting force, the GOU envisages for some, reintegration through a security merger with the Ugandan Peoples' Defense Forces (UPDF), and for others, resettlement into Ugandan civilian life. To this government position, Hon. Betty Akech, former Ugandan Minister for State Security, while noting previous failed talks between both parties, cautions that “the GOU should only make realistic, feasible and deliverable commitments to the LRA, not those it cannot implement because of some structural as well as legal difficulties.”

Though the LRA has denied any strategic frailty, their attempts at calling for the talks and Kony delivering his first televised interview in 20 years, are a response to the collusion of forces to bring them to the Juba Peace Talks. The LRA seeks a more expansive peace agreement including compensation for losses incurred during the conflict, a program of national reconciliation and national unity, a completely revamped national army and wealth-sharing and power-sharing agreements similar to those of the Sudanese Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Hence beyond the acrimony accusations and counter accusations that marred their initial encounters on July 14, their positions do not seem so divergent after all. Nevertheless, the devil remains in the details of the puzzle to Northern Uganda's elusive peace.

Overall, there is a need for a peace deal that will positively alter the attitudes and behaviors that have sustained the conflict over the past 20 years. Meanwhile, institutional guarantees need to be put in place for altering structural contradictions and fostering peace with development.

The government's deadline to reach an amicable agreement between itself and the LRA, which is September 12, seems rather condensed given the 20 years of mutual mistrust, fear and uncertainty which separate the GOU and the LRA. Should the current Juba Peace Talks fail to yield peace and understanding, the GOU would consider aiming for an outright military solution by attacking LRA positions in the Garamba forest in the northeastern DRC. Meanwhile, the LRA would resort to the same guerilla tactics that have sustained them as a resilient, close-knit fighting force for the last 20 years. Such a situation would have a direct consequence on the fragile CPA under implementation in Sudan and on the concerted effort by IGAD, IGAD partners, the AU and the UN to bring peace to Sudan. The stakes are much higher than they appear on the surface, thus regional and international partners ought to get involved.

All the pieces in Uganda's peace puzzle may not come together at this point in time. However, the start of high-level talks between the main parties to the conflict is a laudable move in the right direction. If the talks break off, but with a commitment by both parties towards further consultation, it would have provided a window of opportunity to right the organizational, participatory and temporal frailties of the current effort. A return to arms is definitely not an enviable option.

* Richard Akum is a Researcher for the Peace Practitioners' Project at the University for Peace, African Program. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the perspective of the university. He can be contacted at fonteh@gmail.com

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Not at their Expense: Putting the Elected Prisoners of Conscience First

Mammo Muchie, Berhanu G. Balcha andTekola Worku

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/36469

Last year, in November 2005, the EU and the US called for respect for human rights in Ethiopia, an end to mass arrests, the lifting of restrictions on the opposition, and the freeing of political detainees. In January 2006, the donor community halted direct budget payments to Ethiopia over concerns about its commitment to human rights This article argues that: “Until the political situation shows remarkable improvement, budget support from the donor community translates into the undermining rather than the building of democracy in Ethiopia. The donors must not reward the arrogance and rigid stance by the regime.”


The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, appeared on BBC recently asking the donor community to give budget support to Ethiopia. Remarkably, apart from a British EU MP, the critics of the Meles government were not invited to the programme. The lack of opposition representation, when the BBC deals with the question of Ethiopia's aid dependency is a serious omission. This article therefore, is in part a response to the BBC report on this issue.

In Ethiopia today, elected opposition leaders are in jail. More than 20 journalists are in prison. Thousands of political prisoners are languishing in prisons throughout the country. It must be emphasised that they are innocent. They were arrested because they dared to contest the rigging of the election last year. They are in jail because they hold different political views. They are in jail because their conception of a democratic state, human rights and good governance contradicts that of the government. Independent observers agree that the elections were rigged. Most serious political analysts reject the regime's claim that there were no irregularities in the counting of ballots. A significant component of the international community took a symbolic step by suspending budget support to show their disquiet regarding the mishandling and subsequent excessive violence by the regime against those who protested against electoral injustice.

As a consequence, Britain, the EU and even the World Bank made a symbolic gesture by suspending budget support alleging breakdown of 'trust' (Hilary Benn) mainly because of the government crackdown on democracy, the people and the opposition. The understanding was that the political situation had to improve first before budget support could be reinstated. That seemed to be the overall donor position regarding the political situation in Ethiopia.

However, it now looks like the World Bank has found a trick to make it seem as if it is not giving budget support to the regime directly while, in reality, it is giving funds to branches of the local regional government indirectly. Budget support to the current government only helps the regime and not the poor. Aid should go directly to the people or to the programmes that yield direct benefits to the people. It should go directly to the health services, schools and other local services to the people, but not to the local government offices, which are run by one and the same political party, and its overt and covert structures of control. The World Bank is fully aware that the central and the local Government are run by one and the same party, as a number of its own studies on the budgetary flows between the centre and regions attest. The indirect aid to the Meles government agreed to by the World Bank will strengthen the government, and this is going to prove to be a further barrier on the efforts to bring about the much anticipated democratic transition in the country.

The situation has NOT changed

The crackdown continues. The elected opposition leaders are still in jail. If health and education services are suffering due to budget cuts, who is to blame for the situation? The responsibility falls entirely on the shoulders of the Government. It is not to be ruled out that the Government can tamper with these vital services to protest the donor community's just action to suspend budget support direct to its coffers. It has always been the government's position that aid be channelled directly to its coffers. We encourage the donor community to be creative by finding alternative avenues that will enable it to reach directly the people or civil society groups, especially community, faith-based and other grassroots groups, which are interested in providing communities with sanitation, water, health, education, farm support and other local needs. The donors must not give the money to the Government knowing that the regime wants to have complete control of the flow of aid in Ethiopia. Until the political situation demonstrates remarkable improvement, the current budget support by donors translates into the undermining rather than the building of democracy in Ethiopia. The donors must not reward the arrogance and rigid stance by the regime. The goal of providing monetary aid should be to empower the public, strengthen civil society, and to build an independent media and organise independent judiciary.

If Meles wants budget support desperately he should not persecute the opposition. Meles has submitted conditions to the donor community on how he should receive aid. He has asked the donor community not to take the lid of aid on and off, meaning he indirectly begs them to put the lid on rather than take it off. The current development assistance prioritises good governance, democracy, human rights as paramount for aid. Meles has been violating these values and principles - most glaringly during the election in May 2005. If the donors uphold these principles that he has violated, they should be congratulated. When they fail, they should be criticised. At the moment, it is the regime in Ethiopia that is violating these principles. It is principled not to give money to those who kill and violate the rule of law, abuse human rights and put in jail the opposition. The BBC should have invited the opposition to explain and clarify why budget support was suspended in the Ethiopian in the first place. There was no opposition representative to put the case forward. The BBC should redress this omission in the future. Generally speaking, the BBC, the donor world and others must understand that the Meles regime has structural and objective weakness that will sooner or later cripple it. Internally the Ethiopian people are against its chicanery and fraudulent actions. There is growing urban and rural resistance. Externally it has been embroiled with Somalia's Islamic Court. It has a war-like relationship with Eritrea for nearly a decade now. There are pockets of resistance sprouting for this or that reason everywhere. Regardless of what problems the opposition camp may have, the Meles regime has even bigger and more structural problems.

The opposition forces grouped around Kinjit, the new Alliance for Freedom and Democracy, have called for a national dialogue with the regime in order to change the political environment. The regime seems hell-bent on undermining national reconciliation and is determined in its belief that it can fight on all fronts as long as it can hoodwink the Bush administration as its partner in the 'global war on terror.' The regime has been blinded by its own arrogance, and appears more desperate to win back its loss of budget support by its inexhaustible willingness to assume the role of regional policeman, than to release political prisoners and create a favourable environment for a broad-based, all inclusive national dialogue and reconciliation.

The international community must hold firmly to the position by linking budget support to the immediate and unconditional release of the political prisoners in Ethiopia. Nothing is acceptable other than this. First, the prisoners must be released, and then budget support can follow. Not the other way around. We call upon the international community not to sacrifice political prisoners who have risked their lives for no other crime than trying to create a sustainable system of democratic transition. In order to bring back budget support, the pre-condition of the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners must be a top priority.

The Struggle for Democracy Continues

At present, Ethiopians inside and outside the country are united in their desire and motivation to see the birth of a democratic transition within a united national framework in their country. Ethiopians want to achieve, at a time when their own millennium is just around the corner, the following: the structural uprooting of poverty and inequality by instituting a comprehensive, effective and capable system for fair representation in politics, fair distribution in economics, fair governance in administration, fair treatment in the eyes of an impartial legal/judicial system, and freedom, rights, justice, dignity and security for all. A lot of Ethiopians in the Diaspora have decided to act as a moral community by focusing on the larger issues of making our country achieve a major civilization shift from authoritarian and tyrannical traditions to democratic, participatory and people empowering frameworks and traditions. May 15 2005 saw a massive voter turnout serving as a guidepost and as a huge resource for effecting the transition from tyranny to democracy. Ethiopians at home and abroad united, and struggled tooth and nail to show how debased it was for that massive turnout to be marred by accusations of fraud in the post-election period. Those who remained true to their principles and fought to the end against this gross abuse of peoples' trust were thrown into jails. The donors must not finance this gross injustice by funding their jailors.

Concluding Remarks

We call on the international community not to finance injustice owing to unrelated and possible expedient reasons to the development of Ethiopian democracy. We urge the international community to stand firm against injustice. It is only by upholding such principles that a democratic renaissance in Ethiopia could come into existence. In Ethiopia, the immediate and unconditional release of the prisoners comes first. It actually brooks no delay. Withholding budget support and supporting other well-targeted boycotts are necessary to change the rigidity and arrogance of the regime. Financing its rigidity is to court injustice and not to serve justice. The international community must support the people, the opposition and especially those who are languishing in jail such as the renowned human right activist like Prof. Mesfin, the elected mayor of Africa's capital, Dr. Berhanu, elected party leaders such as engineer Hailu and judge Birtukan, journalists and civil society activists, and an unaccounted number of innumerable rural and urban young people across the breadth and depth of Ethiopia. Above all, the media and others should not exclude and must include the voice of the opposition for justice, freedom, democracy and dignity for all Ethiopians.

* Professor Mammo Muchie , Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter, Berhanu G. Balcha, Vice- Chair of NES-Scandinavian Chapter, Tekola Worku, Secretary of NES-Scandinavian Chapter.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Lawyers in Neoliberalism

Issa G Shivji

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/36468

Issa Shivji, on the occasion of his retirement as Professor of Law from the University of Dar Es Salaam, tackles the role of lawyers in propping up the neo-liberal system. This is an extract from the full version of his paper presented on the subject, which can be read by clicking on the link provided at the end of the article.


Neoliberalism generates a transnational legal intelligentsia to serve and oil it. Globalization globalizes corporate capital. The neoliberal elite globalizes the so-called ‘rule of law’. This is not the ‘rule of law’ embedded in liberal political values of the Enlightenment period. This is the ‘rule of law’, firmly rooted in the exigencies of the ‘rule of capital’ in the service of a corporatocracy. As Cutler says the ‘law that is being globalized is essentially American or Anglo-American in origin, promoting the values of neoliberal regulatory orders.’ Central to these values is the expansion and protection of property relations and private appropriation of surplus value.[1]

Thus the legal elite is involved as consultants to draft legislation on privatization; setting up enabling institutional frameworks in which corporate capital can function without let or hindrance. It is involved in drafting contracts to enable corporate capital to exploit underground minerals and overground bio-resources. It is involved in facilitating commodification of education and health; water and energy; customary land and traditional medicinal plants. It is involved in drafting intellectual property laws to protect modified seed plasma and herbal medicines, the knowledge of which is looted from peasants and pastoralists of the Fourth World.

Laptop consultants fly from capital city to capital city; conduct a week or two of ‘rapid rural appraisals’, churn out policy papers, make power-point presentations to stakeholder workshops, where state policies are made and endorsed.

The transnational legal intelligentsia is also divided between the First and the Fourth Worlds. The legal elite is based in the First World; the legal ‘masses’ or ‘messengers’ are based in the Fourth World. The international consultant is paid five times more than a local consultant and 10 times more than a local civil servant. Research and local analysis is done by the ‘legal messenger’; the international consultant does the power-point presentation and expounds on the norms of ‘international best practice’. A local lawyer tells me that if he wants to get a tender he has to associate with a Northern law firm. A number of local law firms are thus associated.

Consultancy gobbles up billions of dollars annually. Action Aid says almost one-fifth of total aid goes to pay consultants and so-called technical experts. Donors employ 100,000 technical experts in Africa. Tanzania pays US$500 million annually to foreign consultants more than three times what it received annually in direct foreign investment between 1994 and 1999. [2]

Consultancy is touted as one of the main functions of our University in the new Draft Charter. In the 1970s, the mission of the Faculty of Law was to produce society-conscious lawyers using the historical and socio-economic method. We did Legal Aid to assist workers, peasants, women and children. Now we are chasing the phantom of producing corporate lawyers. In terms of the Draft Charter, the University shall advance its objects ‘in close association with industry and commerce.’

Corporatisation of the university is part of the neoliberal ideological attack on critical thinking, on intellectuals who would ‘Speak Truth to Power’, to use the words of Edward Said. [3] It undermines the university as a critical site of knowledge, as a mirror of society. No doubt, temptations are great and none of us is immune.

As I approach the end of my oration, allow me to be a little nostalgic, to do a little soul-searching. At 60, I guess, you will also permit me to be a little immodest. In 1968, we in USARF, launched a cyclostyled journal called Cheche, named after Nkrumah’s The Spark and Lenin’s Iskra. Its first editors were three fine young persons, Zakia Meghji, Henry Mapolu and Karim Hirji.

The first issue carried my The Educated Barbarians. Reading it today, one feels a little embarrassed. In twelve pages it has some 20 footnotes, carrying half a page text in them with numerous quotes from Baran, Nkrumah, Fanon, De Castro and so on. No “respectable” publisher would accept it but then, at that time, we did not care. We did not write for publishing. We wrote as a part of ideological struggles. Clumsy and crude in style and somewhat mechanistic in thinking, it surely is. But The Educated Barbarians unmistakably exuberates anger, passion and commitment. We were in the period of radical nationalism called ‘socialism.’ Young people were angry at the world as it was, and intellectually committed to understand it better, and passionate to change it for the better. We discussed Fanon while we worked in cashew nut farms around the University, taught literacy classes in Mlalakuwa based on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, built our own shelters, called houses, through self-help. Comrade Joe’s (Professor Kanywanyi) stands testimony to it.

Today, perhaps, my writings may be more scholarly, more intellectually refined. I can’t say. I am not supposed to say. Only my peers are allowed to evaluate. You need to be an Ali Mazrui to self-evaluate! But whatever be the intellectual verdict on them, I can say one thing about them, and no one can prevent me from saying it, these writings are not passionate like the ‘educated barbarians’. Maybe I am more educated now, but less moved by injustice, and therefore, perhaps, more barbaric! Once, reading a draft of my article recently, my daughter quipped, ‘papa, you are not angry enough’. And it is not a matter of age; one doesn’t grow out of commitment, passion and devotion because of age! We have to look for explanation, not justification; and explanation lies elsewhere.

Neo-liberalism has taken its toll and the language of consultancy has displaced and replaced the language of conscience and commitment. As individuals, we can only agonize and gradually forget even to diagnose the ills of our society. ‘Organise, don’t agonise’, my friend Chachage says, and goes back to his desk to write Makuadi wa Soko Huria. That, too, we need to do. It is better than flying off to Johannesburg to attend another conference on how to implement the imperialist-driven NEPAD.

I don’t know if our world is better than it was thirty years ago. But I do know that neither our country nor our continent is. Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s destroyed the little achievements in education, health, life-expectancy, and literacy that we had made during the nationalist period. Neo-liberal policies of the last ten years have destroyed the small industrial sector - textiles, oil, leather, steel, farm implements, cashew nut factories – which had been built during the period of import-substitution. Most important of all, we have lost the respect, dignity and humanity and the right to think for ourselves that independence represented. The large majority of our people, workers and peasants, as the Arusha Declaration dignified them, have been transformed into ‘the nameless poor.’

Workers and peasants who were supposed to be the makers of history and motors of development have become the subject-matter of PRSPs – poverty reduction strategy papers. Private sector is the engine of growth, we are chastised day in day out, and history has ended, we are lectured. ‘Carbon’ copies of PRSPs are produced in country after country by laptop consultants. The poverty reduction strategies are a condition precedent for getting debt reduction. Meanwhile, debt rises; it used to be around US$8 billion, now it is over US$9 billion. Paying debts is like chasing a mirage! The goal-post keeps shifting.

Meanwhile, funded by millions of dollars of further aid, we hire a De Soto to tell us that we are too stupid to recognise ‘the mystery of capital’ and understand ‘why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else’. We are sitting on trillions of dollars of ‘dead capital’. We have to breath legal life into these ‘dead’ assets and lo! behold, we’ll all be as capitalist as the West. The question is who would have the trillions of dollars at the end of the process, and who would be dead. History teaches us that the trillions accumulate in capitalist Centre leaving behind the dead, the mutilated, the malnourished, the divided and the conflict ridden, in the Periphery.

In the 1980s, financed by Mahatir Mohammed of Malaysia, Mwalimu Nyerere chaired the South Commission to look into how the capitalist West rides roughshod over the Rest, (my words, their message). Among other things, it found that the world was skewed and lop-sided and divided and suffered from unequal power relations. And it found that this was the result both of the history of colonialism and the contemporary unequal world order.

In its restrained language it said: ‘The widening disparities between South and North are attributable not merely to differences in economic progress, but also to an enlargement of the North’s power vis-à-vis the rest of the world.’ [4] The South Commission found that there was a reverse process of flow of resources from the poor South to the rich North. ‘… [I]n recent years’, it said, ‘developing countries have had to make net debt-related transfers of nearly $40 billion per year to developed countries, and there is little prospect of a reversal of this perverse flow of capital from poor to rich.’ [5]

In the year 2000s, President Mkapa was appointed a member of Tony Blair’s Africa Commission on poverty. In two sentences the Commission dismissed Africa’s 50-year history thus:

Africa’s history over the last fifty years has been blighted by two areas of weakness. These have been capacity – the ability to design and deliver policies; and accountability – how well a state answers to its people. (p. 14 ) [6]

So, Africans don’t have the capacity to think and African states don’t have the capacity to design policies. They are ‘blighted’ by lack of accountability which is a code word for legendry ‘corruption’ and the so-called “bad governance”.

In the 1960s, the West Germans were asked to pack and go and take with them all their aid baggage because they were using aid to pressurize Tanzania not to accord any diplomatic status to the East Germans. Today “good governance” demands that we pass anti-terrorism laws, even at the risk of dividing our people, because that is the foreign policy of some bushy bully of the world.

Yes, indeed, the world has changed. Yes, indeed, times have changed. Yes, indeed, we have a new form of imperialism called globalisation. Yes, indeed we must change. The question is change in what direction, for whose benefit and in whose interest. Edward Said says the basic question for the intellectual is: ‘how does one speak the truth? What truth? For whom and where?’ [7] The basic question today is whether this neoliberal, Thatcherite counter-revolution is for the benefit of the masses or the narrow neo-liberal elites? No social, economic and political change can be described, let alone analysed and understood, except from the standpoint of a particular class, a particular people, a particular nation and, universally, from the standpoint of humanity. And, certainly, the present cannot be understood and changed for the better without understanding better the past. No intellectual worth her name can condone bestiality, which is what imperialism is.

For us the lawyers, the least we can do is to ask, in the paraphrased words of Edward Said: How do we lawyers address authority/power: as professional supplicants, or as its unrewarded, amateurish conscience?

* This is an extract from a paper entitled ‘Lawyers in Neoliberalism’, presented by Issa G. Shivji, Professor of Law, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on the occasion of his formal retirement. For the full paper, please click on the link below.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Notes:

[1] A. Claire Cutler, 'Historical Materialism, globalization, and law: competiting conceptions of property', in Mark Rupert and Hazel Smith eds. (2002) Historical Materialism and Globalization, London: Routledge.
[2] Action Aid International (2005), Real Aid: An Agenda for Making Aid Work, p. 22.
[3] Dr. Ali Mohamed Shein, Vice President, The Guardian, 10/06/2006.
[4] Tanzania Investment Centre, Tanzania Investor, http://www.tic.co.tz/Ipa_printinformation.asp
[5] Edward W. Said (1993), Representations of the Intellectual, The 1993 Reith Lectures, London: Vintage.
[6] The South Commission (1990), The Challenge to the South, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 3.
[7] Ibid. p. 19.
[8] Said 1993, op. cit. p. 65.
Lawyers in Neoliberalism

Authority’s Professional Supplicants or Society’s Amateurish Conscience



Issa G. Shivji

Professor of Law
University of Dar es Salaam
Tanzania




15th July, 2006

Valedictory on the occasion of formal retirement from the
University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.











DEDICATED TO

my unforgettable friend and comrade


CHACHAGE


very sad news of whose passing away I heard
just as I finished writing this lecture





Eulogizing Professor Hernando De Soto’s book, The Mystery of Capital: Why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere Else, Baroness Thatcher says:
The Mystery of Capital has the potential to create a new, enormously beneficial revolution, for it addresses the single greatest source of failure in the Third World and ex-communist countries – the lack of a rule of law that upholds private property and provides a framework for enterprise. It should be compulsory reading for all in charge of the wealth of nations. ,
Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Britain and Ronald Regan, the former President of the United States, were the political pioneers of neoliberalism in the post-Cold War world. Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History asserts that with the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy in the whole world, history has come to an end. He supplied the intellectual and ideological weapons for neoliberalism. Hernando De Soto , we are told the most-sought after consultant by ‘poor’ countries, supplied the mechanism for turning trillions of dollar worth of assets of the poor, what he calls ‘dead capital’, into ‘living’ capital. Unless the poor of the Third World are brought into the capitalist mainstream, West’s capitalist civilisation is at risk, he warned. ‘In the business community of the West’, he says, ‘there is a growing concern that the failure of most of the rest of the world to implement capitalism will eventually drive the rich economies into recession.’
The mechanism to breath life into dead capital is to construct a legal system which will enable the assets of the poor to get titles and thereby make them negotiable and salable on the market. In his ‘neoliberal revolution’, De Sotto, says, lawyers have the role of a vanguard. Let me quote him:
Once [neoliberal] reformers have the poor and at least some of the elite on their side, it will be time to take on the public and private bureaucracy who administer and maintain the status quo – principally, the lawyers and technicians. …
No group – aside from terrorists – is better positioned to sabotage capitalist expansion. And, unlike terrorists, the lawyers know how to do it legally. (Interpolation mine)
In this oration, I will try to give some glimpses of the role of law in Tanzania’s jump from the frying pan of state nationalism into the fire of corporate neoliberalism. First, I will give sketches of the process of accumulation of capital underlying colonial, neocolonial and neoliberal phases in the context of land and labour regimes; then I will refer to some leading labour cases paving the way towards neoliberalism and finally raise the question whether Tanzanian lawyers have been “terrorists” sabotaging neoliberalism or technicians oiling it.
Accumulation by Dispossession
Nature did not posit people with money, property and capital on one side and people with nothing but their capacity to labour on the other. Nor did Nature ordain that there shall be the rich, powerful and privileged North and the poor, disadvantaged and servile South. The propertied and the propertyless, capitalists and proletarians, the rich and the poor, the landlord and the landless, the gargantuan plantation owner and the Lilliputian peasant-producer, the powerful and the powerless were created through human agency in a historical process. Friday was not born a Friday. He was created by Robinson Crusoe. And a Crusoe could not have captured and tamed a Friday without a gun. The ‘savage cannibal’, as Crusoe characterized the original state of his Friday, could not have been rescued without the use of the gun. And a god-fearing Friday, as Crusoe named him, could not have been disciplined into an obedient slave without the threat of it. Friday stood in awe, astonishment and bewilderment at the gun. ‘…he would not so much as touch it for several days …; but would speak to it, and talk to it, as if it had answered him, when he was by himself; which, as I afterwards learned of him, was to desire it not to kill him.’ Eventually, Crusoe taught Friday how to handle the gun and even gave him one, but only after he had taught him the rules from the Bible not to kill and be obedient, loyal and stand by the master. In Malcom X’s memorable phrase, the field nigger had become a house nigger.
So, what is the genesis of colonial labour and capital?
Land and labour were central to the colonial project. Land and labour were central to the neo-colonial project and now they are very central to the neo-liberal project. In 1923 the colonial state passed the Master and Native Servants Ordinance. In the same year the Land Ordinance was enacted. A year earlier the Governor had enacted the Hut and Poll Tax Ordinance. The years of the enactment may be co-incidental. The logic was not. The tax law was not to raise revenue, although it also did that. It was meant to flush out labour of producers to go and work in mines and plantations; to use their muscle power by compulsion or habit, more by compulsion than habit during the early colonial times. Every owner or occupier of a hut was liable to pay a tax prescribed by the governor. A hut was defined as ‘any hut, building, or structure of a description commonly used by natives as a dwelling.’ A native was neither a citizen nor a person. In the colonial parlance, the ‘native’ was the indigenous inhabitant of the land invaded by the colonialist, the ‘primitive Negro’ in the phraseology of Governor Byatt, the first military ruler of Tanganyika. If the native housed more than one wife in his hut, which was not uncommon, then he was liable to pay tax for each one of them. This was the tax on ‘plural wives’, as it was called. Wanyakyusa revolted against it in 1928, and migrated to Nyasaland. During the German period, one of the main grievances of the rebels was tax; the other was land. In 1894, Macemba, the Yao chief, led a protest against tax. The protest was crushed in 1899, the chief fled to Mozambique while his followers were imprisoned. In 1902 Mpoto from Kitangari was hanged for leading a tax protest.
Where a person did not own a hut (or perhaps did not have a wife!), he was liable to pay a poll or head tax, a tax on one’s existence. ‘Every able-bodied male native of the apparent age of sixteen years or over,’ section 4 decreed, ‘… shall pay annually a poll tax of such amount as the Governor … may prescribe’. The tax had to be paid in cash. The option was to grow a cash crop for the metropolitan market or go out to labour for capital in sisal plantations of the Eastern Province, or coffee farms of the Northern Province or tobacco farms of Southern Province and Southern Highlands. These were the labour-importing areas. Western, Lake and Central Provinces were labour-exporting areas.
Every year thousands of Wanyakyusa, Wangoni, Wayao, Wamakua, Wamakonde, Wapangwa, Wabena and Wafipa from the south and south-east; Wanyamwezi and Wasukuma from the Western and Lake Provinces; and Wanyaturu, Wairamba and Wasandwe from the Central province trekked hundreds of kilometers to employment centres. These were the so-called manamba or migrant labour. Migrant because they could not afford to take their families and settle on the plantations. Manamba were given bachelor wages, bachelor rations and bachelor camps. The families were left behind to fend for themselves. So, while the man became a semi-proletarian, the woman became a semi-peasant, both subsidizing colonial capital which reaped super-profits by imposing sub-human conditions of labour.
The law permitted a ‘native’ liable to pay tax to discharge his obligation by providing equivalent amount of labour on any government undertaking or on any ‘essential public works and services authorized by the Government.’ The labour of tax-defaulters built the infrastructure of the colonial economy. ‘Hundreds of miles pf roads were cut, tens of buildings were built and maintained, dams were constructed and agriculture works carried out by the sweat and blood of … tax-defaulters’.
Under the Master and Native Servants Ordinance breach of contract was a criminal offence. The offence was called desertion. There were other offences relating to discipline, absenteeism, insulting or assaulting the employer etc. Criminal law applied to civil relations. Force dominated the economic process. State both created and maintained the labour market not through economic instruments but by instruments of violence.
‘Free’ labour was preceded by forced labour and force was used to create ‘free’ labour. The producer had to be separated from his means of production, land. Capitalism was born out of the womb of feudalism. Feudalism tied the serf to land. Capitalism ‘freed’ him from land and turned his muscle power to a commodity for sale on the labour market. He was free to sale his labour or starve. There is freedom to work or not to work. You may even have a right to work, as we have in our Constitution, but no one has an obligation to give you work. The Court of Appeal pronounced in the case of Timothi Kaare v. Mara Co-operative Union. that the right to work ‘by its very nature cannot be absolute.’ The High Court further qualified the right to work. Article 22(1) which provides for the right to work, the judge said, is qualified by Article 11(1) which stipulates that the ‘State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity, make adequate provisions for securing the right to work …’. When the Court talks about the right being limited ‘by its very nature’, it is talking about the ‘capitalist nature’ of work and the ‘economic capacity’ of the State to secure the right is also determined by the capitalist system. Capitalism by definition needs an army of unemployed, the so-called industrial reserve army, by which it ensures control of wages, curbs labour militancy and upon which it can draw during booms, and to which it can throw out workers during bursts.
Creation of ‘free’ labour is one side of the story. The other side of the story is the creation of land as capital. Just as labour, by nature, is not a commodity so land, by nature, is not capital Hernando De Sotto’s mysterious discovery of ‘dead capital’ in non-Western countries worth trillions of dollars is a fantasy! Capital is not a thing. It is a relation. That is elementary political economy. Land becomes capital only under certain conditions and within certain relations of production and economic system. The first condition is to establish a monopoly of access to land called ownership. The second condition is that it must be negotiable.
Ownership is not a relation between a person and a thing. It is a relation between a person and a person. Ownership of land means that the owner can exclude others from access to it. My right to own a piece of land means my right to exclude you from it. And when the State guarantees my right to own, it undertakes to exclude others from it by law, meaning disguised force.
Negotiability of land can only be assured by separating possession from ownership. That is done by issuing a title, a paper representation of my ownership. Armed with a title an owner can pass his right to own and his right to exclude any one else. Just as the State guarantees my ownership, so it enables the transfer of my ownership through a system of registration. BwanaPesa X sales a coffee farm in Meru at a profit to Moneybag Y in London who transfers it at a profit again to Goldenberg Z in Washington without any one of them having ever possessed or seen the farm while all of them have used land as capital. The State guarantees the title and the integrity of the sale through law backed by force. Law and force are like a ring to the finger. But before the Moneybags can have their land as capital, they must get rid of those who are using land as means of subsistence to feed their families. That process is also accomplished by force, naked force.
Opposing Government proposals based on the recommendation of the East African Royal Commission (1953-55) which had recommended individualization, registration and titling of customary lands – something very similar to what De Soto was to say half a century later, albeit in a somewhat mystified language – Mwalimu Nyerere wrote in 1958 that land ‘is simply God’s gift to His living creation.’ The article was significantly titled ‘Mali ya Taifa’ or ‘National Property’. A High Court judge in the case of Tanganyika Cigarette Company, which I shall discuss later, tells us that ‘normally, in my view, it is the Government which is the custodian of national interest.’ In bourgeois jurisprudence, ‘nation’ is often conflated with ‘state’ which means ‘national property’ meant ‘state property’. That is exactly what the Land Ordinance of 1923 did, as we shall see presently. That is what precisely Mwalimu was defending. Mwalimu was a politician, not a political economist. He did not explain how a gift of God became property in the first place, and state property, in the second place.
A 19th century French anarchist Proudhon roared, ‘Property is theft.’ Marx corrected him. Original property was not only theft but robbery, that is, stealing accompanied by force, as lawyers would define robbery. Marx called it primitive accumulation, in the sense of original accumulation. In the process of primitive accumulation, which included the gruesome slave trade and ruthless colonialism, force was the dominant agency. Force was the midwife of the birth of capitalism. ‘..capitalism comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.’ Original robbery accomplished, ‘Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham’ (Marx’s phrase) took over. Owners of commodity-capital and commodity-labour-power meet on the market and supposedly exchange equivalents as if they were free to do so; as if they were equal, as if both owned their property; and both driven by Benthamite self-interest. This is what Marx called ‘expanded reproduction’, meaning accumulation of capital by appropriating surplus value in the place of production, and realizing it through the process of exchange of commodities, on the market. Theoretically, this is supposed to be regulated by a purely economic process. In practice, of course, there is a lot of fraud, cheating, deception and forceful expropriation.
Rosa Luxemburg argued that the second aspect of accumulation, akin to primitive accumulation, relates to the relation between capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production, like subsistence and small producers as in the colonial situations. In this, extra-economic force is central to exploitation. So, in Tanzania, like many other African countries, small peasant and pastoral producers were in substance exploited by colonial capital while formally still retaining ownership and control of their means of production, land. Supplying male semi-proletarian labour to plantations that were paid bachelor wages, while continuing food production by peasant woman, was a method of subsidizing capital. Sale of cash crops on the world market at consistently unequal terms of trade was another mechanism of exploitation. Selling crops to marketing boards, both during colonialism and after independence, below international market prices, was the third method of exploitation. Peasant producers had no choice on whether or not to produce cash crops. By-laws required them to produce minimum acreages of cash and food crops. Failure to do so resulted in criminal sanctions-six month’s imprisonment.
I explained earlier the two necessary conditions for land to become property and a commodity – monopoly of ownership and negotiability on the market. In both of these, force and law play a central law. In creating original conditions, force played a dominant role; in maintaining the conditions law, or disguised force, predominates. The mix between law and force depends on historical and social circumstances. Extra-economic coercion continues to play a role in production in many economies of the periphery. The two aspects of capital accumulation, one based on ‘expanded reproduction’ and the other on what was called ‘primitive accumulation’ and which David Harvey calls ‘accumulation by dispossession’ continue to jostle. We may also add, short-hand, that the politics of the two tendencies are ‘nationalist’ and ‘imperialist’. In the post-independence period the local manifestation of the imperialist tendency was neo-colonialist. Since Thatcherite-Reaganite days of the late seventies imperialism has been re-christened globalisation and its local manifestation is called neo-liberalism. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela even wages a war – albeit of words – against neo-liberalism. I have digressed. Let me come back to land!
The Land Ordinance, that masterpiece of legal British draftsmanship, expropriated all lands of Tanganyika in two sections. Section 2 declared all lands, occupied or unoccupied, ‘public lands’. Section 3 vested all public lands and interests over them under the control and subject to the disposition of the Governor to be held for the use and common benefit, direct or indirect, of the ‘natives’. In one fell swoop, the ultimate ownership and control of land was vested in the State and the State became what the Court of Appeal was to call some sixty years later, a ‘superior landlord.’ Colonial courts were more circumspect. They did not call the colonial state a superior landlord but acted, behaved and decided as if it were one.
The Land Ordinance gave powers to the Governor to grant various interests on land, the largest of which was what came to be called the granted right of occupancy. A right of occupancy was defined to be a right to occupy and use land and, with an eye on the Mandate, it included the ‘title of a native or a native community lawfully using or occupying land in accordance with native law and custom’. These were christened by courts ‘deemed rights of occupancy’. Plantation owners and immigrant communities were given granted rights of occupancy for a term of up to the maximum of 99 years. Their lands were surveyed and their titles were registered. Farmlands which had not been surveyed were ‘owned’ under offers of a right of occupancy, also registered, which were, to all intents and purposes, as good as granted rights of occupancy.
Indigenous producers and communities had customary titles, theoretically in perpetuity. They were not registered. The Ordinance was ambiguous on the legal status of customary titles. Courts filled in the ambiguity. In the case of Muhena bin Said (1949) the High Court of Tanganyika under, Sir Graham Paul, the Chief Justice, decided that customary titles and interests were ‘permissive’. ‘Natives’ and ‘native communities’ possessed, occupied and used land with the implied permission of the Governor. When the colonial state wanted the peasants to grow cotton, coffee, cashew nuts for metropolitan markets or food for manamba, the Governor’s permission would continue to subsist and the ‘natives’ would continue to use and occupy land. When the Governor wanted to alienate customary lands to settlers, immigrants or companies, he could do it without legal restraint. He would be deemed to have withdrawn his ‘constructive’ permission from the customary owner. In short, customary rights were recognised by law, thanks to the Mandate requirements, but not protected by it, thanks to courts in the service of the State.
To sum up then:
(1) The relationship between the State and the grantee of the right of occupancy was regulated and protected by law. His title was guaranteed against the whole world, as lawyers would say, including the State. The rights and obligations of the grantor, the State, and the grantee, the ‘title-holder’, were governed by civil law. ‘Due process’ under the Land Acquisition Ordinance was available to the grantee to challenge any adverse actions of the State, such as compulsory acquisition.
(2) The relationship between a customary owner and the State was administrative, not legal. The obligations of the customary owner in relation to land use were enforced by criminal law through minimum acreage laws.
(3) Relations among customary owners were governed by customary law. Relations among titled owners were governed by civil law. The registered title was superior to customary title. In case of conflict, customary owner gave way to an owner with the certificate.
The result was lack of security of tenure for customary owners. The fragility of customary title dogged the land tenure system. It was this system which Mwalimu defended in 1958 in his article ‘Mali ya Taifa’. Contrary to widespread belief even among some legal writers, land was not nationalized by socialist Mwalimu; it was nationalized by the colonial, capitalist state in 1923.
The land tenure system premised on state ownership and insecure customary ‘rights’ reflected and reinforced the system of accumulation by dispossession. It was this system which allowed forced villagisation of millions of people in the 1970s without changing the land tenure regime. This was the system which allowed town planners to extinguish customary rights in peri-urban areas simply by declaring them planning areas. It was this same system which enabled parastatals, like NAFCO (National Agriculture and Food Corporation), to alienate forcefully thousands of acres of land in Hanang to establish the wheat project with aid from Canada, in the process burning down huts, bulldozing houses, mowing crops and beating up men, women and children. Land was then ‘mali ya umma’ and umma, the public, was represented by the State, as Mwalimu told us.
In the neoliberal era, the same system of land tenure allows the State to appropriate land, this time around not for parastatals, but for private investors. Under ‘state nationalism’, the State could dispossess a customary owner because land was ‘mali ya umma’, public property. Under neoliberalism the private investor – a former Zimbabwean settler, a Boer farmer from South Africa or a US seed company experimenting on GMO – can dispossess a customary owner, through the State, because the State says it is in ‘public interest’. And ‘public interest’, judges keep reminding us, is the same as state interest.
In the transition between ‘state nationalism’ and ‘neoliberalism’, as ideas of private property began to gain legitimacy, courts were inclined to give customary rights certain protection. But the process was very contradictory. Courts were not prepared to hold up customary rights against the State, or the private investor, who had obtained his right through the State. In the case of Mulbadaw v. NAFCO, where a registered Ujamaa village was challenging the alienation of land to a parastatal, the High Court decided in their favour on the ground that the ‘due process’ under the Land Acquisition Act had not been followed. The villagers entered their land to repossess it. NAFCO appealed and filed a stay of execution. The Chief Justice expeditiously granted it. The Field Force Unit as expeditiously evicted the villagers forcefully for the second time around. On appeal, the appellate judges agreed with the High Court that customary rights could not be acquired without following the processes under the Acquisition Act, but decided against the villagers on the ground that they had not produced evidence in the High Court to show that they were ‘natives’ and only ‘natives’ could claim customary rights.
The dispute was not resolved. Since then the Hanang people have filed several court cases through the Legal Aid Committee but most have failed because of various technical reasons. Meanwhile, a new element has appeared. NAFCO is a specified corporation to be privatized by the privatization agency, the Parastatal Sector Reform Commission (PSRC). Peasants are demanding that the NAFCO land should be returned to them. The State is saying it is not in ‘public interest’ to do so. Public interest demands that they be privatized. Against NAFCO, peasants could complain to the president and the prime minister and the party and file human rights complaints to shame the State. But when the Hanang lands have been sold to a private investor, most probably a foreign company, where will they complain? To the market, I suppose!
To hold that customary lands could not be acquired without due process was a legal advance, although it did not have great practical consequence in that case or later. That advance was built on in another case of Akonaay where the Court of Appeal, while reaffirming state ownership, held that customary title was property and therefore protected by Article 24 of the Constitution which provides the protection of private property and payment of fair compensation on compulsory acquisition. But what is fair compensation in the case of a customary title? It does not include value of land as such. Hitherto, the land law of Tanzania did not recognise that bare land has value and can be sold on the market. This is because the state was the landlord and it extracted ground rent from customary owners by other means, mainly, extra-economic coercion through or without law. Furthermore, the State as the owner could alienate land and therefore the alienation of land, where the state deemed necessary, took place by force rather than the market. Disposition of land among private owners was restricted and required the consent of the State.
While courts began to take hesitant steps in the 1980s and 1990s in the direction of changing the status of customary titles, by and large they left the main premise of the land tenure regime, i.e. state ownership, intact. This was the basis on which was predicated the dispossession of customary owners. Vesting of radical title in the State was so fundamental that the Government rejected the recommendation of the Land Commission, which I had the honour to chair, that village lands should be vested in the village assembly and should not be alienable even to the State or for ‘public purpose’ without consultation with, or consent of, the village assembly. The Government took the position that land should continue to vest in the President as was established by the colonial government. The President as Head of State was responsible for development and therefore he should control land and be able to take it whenever required for public purpose. If the Land Commission’s recommendation were accepted ‘the Government will be turned into a beggar for land when required for development’. The crux of the Government position was:
The Investment Promotion Policy will be impossible when the Government does not have a say in land matters. Land has to remain in the hands of the Government … .the Commission has not given enough reasons for the departure.
The new Land Acts (No. 4 ad 5 of 1999) passed in 1999 therefore maintained the ultimate ownership of the State. The new law also did away with the necessity of prior consent thus making land negotiable on the market without hindrance. The crunch is of course to promote investment for which the State has to make land available, which means it has to appropriate the land of peasant and pastoral communities. The so-called Land Bank created by the Tanzanian Investment Centre is a case in point. Village lands are identified and set aside by administrative instructions. The then TIC’s Director of Investment was reported in 2004: ‘Over 2.5 million hectares of land in Tanzania have been surveyed and found suitable for investment. The figure constitutes some 62.5 per cent of over four million hectares managed under the Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC). The remainder is categorized as land that is potential for investment where additional surveying or infrastructure is required.
Only four years after its passing, the Land Act was amended as a result of the pressure from Bankers’ Association. Bankers wanted the rules of foreclosure in case of default relaxed. This was done. The Land (Amendment) Act, 2003 also for the first time permits sale of bare land. Previously, the price for land was supposed to be only for unexhausted improvements, not for bare land.
These changes were made ostensibly to enable Tanzanian peasants to use their land as collateral. In reality, no commercial Bank would give a loan to smallholder owning 5, 10 or 20 acres, which is the lot of the peasantry. In practice, it means that the so-called investor for whom land is alienated by the State, or who has obtained a derivative title from a customary owner, would use his title as collateral to get a loan. (Under the Land Act a non-citizen can obtain a right of occupancy or a derivative title if it is for investment purposes.) Again this is an apt reflection of accumulation by dispossession. First, land is acquired at a throw away price because it is for investment and that is in ‘public interest’; secondly, that land is used to obtain loan from a Bank which carries the deposits of Tanzanians, and thirdly, when profits are made from the land and “capital” of Tanzanians, they are expatriated and accumulated in a sub-imperialist centre, like South Africa, or in imperialist countries themselves. This is the heart of the neoliberal accumulation by dispossession.
This is also at the heart of De Sotto’s project called Mkurabita or Property and Small Business Formalization Programme. When registration and formalization of the assets of the poor is talked about, it is not the garages under the tree or wamachingas’ kiosks that are being referred to. The central property or asset here is land, customary land. In that respect, the programme is a non-starter. It is virtually impossible to survey and demarcate and issue titles to millions of smallholders; even if that were done, no commercial Bank would offer loans to smallholders. What it does mean though is to register large chunks of village land as a preparation for alienation. As experience shows, this can only be done through force, fraud, deception, corruption and so on, behind the backs of villagers.
I have barely sketched the neoliberal processes of accumulation by dispossession. We are witnessing many other. Selling off of parastatals at ridiculously low prices is one. The privatization of NBC and TTCL is a case in point. Using taxpayers’ money to first refurbish a loss-making parastatal before privatizing it is another. Commodification of land, education, health, water, energy, all of which we have witnessed, is third. Thus public goods are appropriated for private benefit where private capital is allowed to make profit out of public resources. The vicious debt-trap in which the creditor’s loan is revalued ever so often while the debtor’s payment is devalued is the fourth example.
As public resources and State assets are swallowed up, workers and peasants are spat out to join the ‘surplus population’, as Malthus called them, or the poor, the less poor, the more poor, as poverty reduction strategy papers categorize them. Next, I will briefly give a few glimpses of the legal process of the creation of ‘surplus population’ or redundant workers.
Glimpses from Labour Law
In 1982, only seven years after the railway was handed over to the Government, the Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority or TAZARA declared some 300 workers redundant. 96 per cent of these were skilled craftsmen who had participated in the building of the railway and were trained on the job by Chinese experts. The Uhuru railway, as it was fondly called, was built in the heyday of post-independence nationalism and in the midst of Cold War politics. The British and the Americans were dead against Tanzania accepting a Chinese offer for building the railway but they were not prepared to build it themselves.
On receiving redundancy letters, workers were shocked, ‘sisi ndiyo tulipendekezwa na Mabingwa wa Kichina kubakia makazini kutokana na uhodari wetu, uvumilivu na nidhamu juu ya kazi’ lakini ‘sasatunaona ajabu sisi wenyewe tena ndiyo tumekuwa mzigo wa kwanza kushushwa wakati wa uendeshaji wa Reli hiyo’. Spurned by the state trade union, JUWATA, which endorsed the Management’s decision, Hamisi Ally Ruhondo and his 115 fellow workers, sought the assistance of the Legal Aid Committee of the University of Dar es Salaam.
In the 1980s, there was hardly any law on redundancy in the country. But that could not deter the then socially conscious and intellectually committed lawyers of the Legal Aid Committee. Creatively deploying a little used subsection of the Security of Employment Act, the Committee filed a Trade Dispute Inquiry in the Permanent Labour Tribunal, now called the Industrial Court of Tanzania. After a long drawn out and contested trial, the workers obtained an award of reinstatement. Employing the services of a leading private lawyer in town, TAZARA instituted a judicial review in the High Court seeking an order of certiorari to quash the award. TAZARA’s counsel argued that the Minister who had made the decision based on the report of the Tribunal exceeded his jurisdiction because he embarked on settling a trade dispute that did not exist. Quoting the letter of JUWATA’s Secretary General, TAZARA’s lawyer forcefully submitted that the sole representative of all employees in Tanzania (section 4(1) of the JUWATA Act, 1979) had amicably settled the trade dispute. The judge agreed.
Undeterred, Hamisi Ally Ruhondo, his comrades and their lawyers marched on to the Court of Appeal. On 26th March, 1986, that is, 42 months after they had lost their jobs and livelihoods, TAZARA workers won their case in the highest court of the land. The Court of Appeal held that the statutory provision on consultation requires ‘meaningful consultation’ with the trade union branches at the place of work and before the decision on redundancy has been made. The Court restored the order of reinstatement. Since then Hamisi Ally Ruhondo has become a cause celébrè, being cited again and again in numerous cases of redundancy that were filed in the wake of neo-liberal privatization of the 1990s.
One such case happened almost twenty years later. As irony would have it, the case involved the workers of the Central Line built by the Germans in the first decade of the twentieth century during the heyday of colonialism. Since then it has always been owned, maintained and run by the State. In the post-Arusha Declaration period, it came under the management of a statutory corporation, the Tanzania Railways Corporation, which was one of the 400+ parastatals destined to be privatized. Anticipating redundancy, as has been typical with the privatization practice, and getting no response from the Management or the Parastatal Sector Reform Commission (PSRC), the Tanzania Railway Union (TRAWU) filed a suit in the High Court through a private advocate.
In Tanzania Railway Workers Union v. Tanzania Railways Corporation and PSRC, the Union wanted the court to declare that the defendants were bound to consult the trade union branches at places of work before any redundancy took place, and that any redundancy without prior consultation would be null and void. The Union also sought an order of injunction from the court restraining the defendants from carrying on the redundancy exercise. Pending the hearing and determination of the case, the Union applied for an interim injunction restraining the TRC from effecting any redundancy. The real bone of contention was of course the interim injunction because as the defendants’ lawyers asserted and the court realised, granting an interim injunction would stall the privatization process. Just around this time, President Mkapa, while on a visit to Kampala was reported to have tersely commented that he would have a law enacted to abolish injunctions because they were obstructing development, meaning privatization! The President’s anger could not have gone unnoticed by the judges. In a candidly undisguised ruling, uncharacteristic of courts, the judge said:
I am of the opinion that there will be a lot greater hardship to the respondents and mischief to society generally, if the temporary injunction is granted than there would be to the applicant’s members if it is refused. Needless to emphasise, TRC is a publicly-owned enterprise. Those who run it, and, and who are now opposing this application, are not doing so, i.e. opposing the application, for their … own personal interests or benefits. They are doing so on behalf of the public or society at large. It is the public or society therefore which will suffer if this application is granted. The whole declared policy of privatisation, which of course, may not be commending itself to all, will be thwarted. This will not be in the public interest. I find and hold on this principle therefore for the respondents and against the applicant.
The application for temporary injunction was dismissed. Eventually, the suit itself was withdrawn by the Union. Obviously it would not have made sense to continue.
There have been many more cases on redundancy but none of them has succeeded, particularly those that were seeking injunctions. Judges of both the High Court and the Court of Appeal have shown greater impatience and less sympathy towards the workers, seeking to stall the process of privatization or demanding awards as redundancy payments.
The case of COTWU (T)-OTTU Union and another v. Hon. Iddi Simba, Minister of Industries and Trade & 7 Others the workers of the National Shipping Company, NASACO, through their trade union, were seeking an order of mandamus obliging the minister not to renew the licenses of 29 private companies. The workers’ position was that the minister for trade had granted the licenses contrary to the Government policy as embodied in Cabinet Paper no. 5 of 1997. The Cabinet paper stipulated a number of steps in the process of liberalizing the shipping trade. The thrust of the Cabinet paper was that the Government would retain at least 40 per cent of the shares and that first preference in the sale of shares would be given to NASACO employees and citizens of Tanzania, and that private people would not be given licenses until a proper regulatory framework had been put in place. Contrary to this policy, the incumbent minister issued shipping licenses to some 29 private companies. Pending hearing of the application for leave to apply for prerogative orders, the workers applied for a temporary injunction to restrain the minister from renewing the licenses as and when they fell due for renewal.
In a judgment, full of rhetorical questions, the judge denied the application on three major grounds. One, that the so-called Cabinet Directive had neither ‘official head, nor official tail’; it could have easily been prepared in Manzese or Mchafukoge. Two, that the respondents, and public interest, would suffer irreparable injury rather than the applicants and, finally, that the companies whose licenses were sought to be restrained were not a party to the action.
Perhaps the most interesting and explicit remarks were made in the context of ‘public interest’. This deserves to be quoted at some length for its vehemence:
We do not need lecturing, that the Port, is not only a gateway for Tanzania Mainland, but also serves Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and areas of Zaire. How would the economy be affected? [if the licenses are not renewed] Under such circumstances, to say that, it is only the workers who are likely to suffer injury, and that the balance of convenience is in their favour, is sheer murderous selfishness, forgetting millions of Tanzanians, who benefit by the revenue that Government gets from taxes at the port, forgetting millions of Ugandans, Burundi, Rwanda etc. …
The temporary injunction, should not therefore be mechanically granted, the interest of society should be given serious weight. In this case, injunction if given will cause injury, economic loss, to not only our Country, but too, to nations neighbouring us and I cannot think of granting it, for it can neither be said that the applicants can suffer irreparable injury more as compared with the one to be suffered by millions of people, nor does the balance of convenience favour them.
In actual fact, NASACO was one of the most profit-making parastatals and its pre-mature restructuring and privatization led to the ‘millions of Tanzanians’ suffering continuous losses from which they have not recovered to this day. It is not unusual for the courts to deploy concepts like ‘public interest’ or ‘national interest’ or ‘interest of society’ when it suits the conclusion they want to arrive at, while being very technical in other cases. In one of the early cases, the trade union, OTTU, directly challenged the privatization of the profit-making Tanzania Cigarette Company (TCC) by filing a suit for declaration against the Parastatal Sector Reform Commission. The Government was proposing to sell the shares of the Cigarette Company to a foreign multinational, R. J. Reynolds. OTTU, on behalf of workers, sought a declaration that the sale of shares was prejudicial to national interest and contrary to Government and CCM policies. It applied for a temporary injunction pending hearing of the suit. PSRC’s response was that the trade union or employees did not have any proprietary interest in the shares and therefore had no locus standi to file the suit. The judge, denying injunction, observed:
The plaintiff says that he can block the respondent’s intended measure on grounds of national interest and public policy. But normally, in my view, it is the Government which is the custodian of national interest. As to whether employees, or individuals, can stand up, as against their own Government, in defence of national interest is a matter which, again, requires investigation and I cannot here say that the applicant has such a clear case, based on national interest and public policy, as would warrant the issuing of an injunctive relief pending the determination of the suit.
Professor Griffith in his book The Politics of the Judiciary sums it well when he says that the concept of the interests of whole society is made on a political assumption that the interests of various classes in the society are homogenous, which is not the case. He continues:
From all this flows that view of the public interest which is shown in judicial attitudes such as tenderness towards private property and dislike of trade unions, strong adherence to the maintenance of order, distaste for minority opinions, demonstrations and protests, support for governmental secrecy, concern for the preservation of the moral and social behaviour to which it is accustomed, and the rest.
As the privatization exercise has advanced, cases on redundancy have multiplied. In more recent judgments the Court of Appeal has gone even further, not only to narrow the scope of consultation but divest itself of the very jurisdiction to hear redundancy cases. In Nurdin Ibrahim & 147 Others v. The Director General of Tanzania Harbours Authority, the Court of Appeal accepted that consultation with the Local Joint Industrial Committee was sufficient because it had 20 members of the Field Branch.
In another decision delivered two years ago the Court of Appeal decided that all disputes, whether contractual or otherwise, including, redundancy, between an employee, or employees, and the employer are trade disputes and therefore only the Industrial Court has original jurisdiction. The High Court cannot entertain them. The effect of this judgment is to deny workers access to the High Court in the first instance and, therefore, various remedies in equity such as injunctions and damages.
Immediately after independence, a number of pieces of legislation were passed restricting the right of an employer to dismiss a worker. The chief among these was the Security of Employment Act, which provided a procedure to be followed for imposing a disciplinary penalty. It also created Conciliation Boards with power to hear complaints and order reinstatement in case it found the dismissal to be unlawful or the termination to be unfair. The Conciliation Board could order reinstatement in which case the dismissed employee had to be reinstated and paid the arrears of wages for the time that the employee was out of employment.
The principle that a worker who was out of employment because of the employer’s unlawful or unfair act could not be denied arrears of wages was accepted by the courts through a number of cases fought by the Legal Aid Committee. These achievements, so to speak, have been reversed by the recent decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of Pius Sangali & Others v. Tanzania Portland Cement Co. Ltd. In that case, without even referring to its own previous decisions, the Court decided that the employer had discretion to reinstate a worker or not and also discretion to pay arrears of wages. Thus the Courts had nibbled away at the right to job-security by the time the new labour legislation came to strike the last blow.
The Employment and Labour Relations Act 2004, and the Labour Institutions Act 2004, were drafted by a South African consultant and financed by Denmark. There was supposedly a tri-partite Task Force to consult and guide the process serviced by the Legal Consultancy Services Committee of the Faculty of Law. The new laws are based on the premise that ‘law should provide a minimum of employment protection with maximum flexibility’, to quote the report of the Task Force. Thus, for instance, there is no procedure for termination except an elaborate Code of Good Practice on termination which is not legally binding. In effect, the restrictions imposed on termination of employment by the Security of Employment Act have been removed. As one commentator put it, ‘Employment is no longer necessarily full-time or life long.’ This is a far cry from the days when one young Kenyan lawyer trained in the Faculty of Law of this University tried to argue before a constitutional court in his country that employment was covered by the right of protection of property since a worker had a proprietary right in employment. Courts, of course, jealously guard the right to property but they would have no patience with any one arguing that there is ‘right to work’ and that right to life includes right to livelihood, which is employment.
Neoliberal economists say there should be labour mobility in the economy. Liberal lawyers say workers should have the right to move from one employer to another because they are not slaves. Capitalists say it is not their business to provide jobs. The State says that it is not in business, therefore, it cannot provide jobs; it can only facilitate job-seeking. So, it establishes Labour Exchange Bureau with aid from donors. Where unemployment is rampant, and unemployment inherent in the system, labour mobility translates itself into the “right” of a worker to move from employment to unemployment via a Labour Exchange Bureau.
As the State has transformed from being ‘nationalist’ to becoming ‘neoliberal’, its role has changed from one of legislating job-security to one of facilitating job-seeking.
The new labour laws are elaborate and this is no place to go into details. But, interestingly, while employment is not regulated or protected the right to strike is severely regulated. The colonial concept of prohibiting strikes in essential services has been brought back. For other strikes, there are prescribed procedures to be followed. Whereas, as I showed earlier, Courts consistently refused to grant injunctions to workers restraining employers from snatching away their livelihoods, the Employment and Labour Relations Act gives powers to the Labour Division of the High Court to issue injunctions to restrain any person from participating in an unlawful strike or lockout or engaging in any prohibited conduct (section 84). The Court has powers to order damages for any loss attributable to an unlawful strike or conduct. Courts will also presumably have common law powers to sequestrate the property of a trade union, for breaching an order of injunction. It was the combination of injunction, damages and threats of sequestration of property that Margaret Thatcher used in the 1980s to break the back of the militant miners’ union in Britain. In a situation, where trade unions are not strong, nor do they have a long history of struggle, the consequences are likely to be worse if labour is subjected to the vagaries of the market and the whims of the employers without any statutory protection. The neo-liberal language about labour and capital being social partners is as spurious and meaningless as the term international community is to describe imperialism.
I could go on and on but I will not. It is time to turn the search light onto ourselves, the lawyers. What has been our role in this process of mageuzi from ‘state nationalism’ to ‘neoliberalism’?
Lawyers in Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism generates a transnational legal intelligentsia to serve and oil it. Globalization globalizes corporate capital. The neoliberal elite globalizes the so-called ‘rule of law’, a lá Thatcher. This is not the ‘rule of law’ embedded in liberal political values of the Enlightenment period. This is the ‘rule of law’, firmly rooted in the exigencies of the ‘rule of capital’ in the service of a corporatocracy. As Cutler says the ‘law that is being globalized is essentially American or Anglo-American in origin, promoting the values of neoliberal regulatory orders.’ Central to these values is the expansion and protection of property relations and private appropriation of surplus value.
Thus the legal elite is involved as consultants to draft legislation on privatization; setting up enabling institutional frameworks in which corporate capital can function without let or hindrance. It is involved in drafting contracts to enable corporate capital to exploit underground minerals and overground bio-resources. It is involved in facilitating commodification of education and health; water and energy; customary land and traditional medicinal plants. It is involved in drafting intellectual property laws to protect modified seed plasma and herbal medicines, the knowledge of which is looted from peasants and pastoralists of the Fourth World. Primitive accumulation!
Laptop consultants fly from capital city to capital city; conduct a week or two of ‘rapid rural appraisals’, churn out policy papers, make power-point presentations to stakeholder workshops, where state policies are made and endorsed. The transnational legal intelligentsia is also divided between the First and the Fourth Worlds. The legal elite is based in the First World; the legal ‘masses’ or ‘messengers’ are based in the Fourth World. The international consultant is paid five times more than a local consultant and 10 times more than a local civil servant. Research and local analysis is done by the ‘legal messenger’; the international consultant does the power-point presentation and expounds on the norms of ‘international best practice’. A local lawyer tells me that if he wants to get a tender he has to associate with a Northern law firm. A number of local law firms are thus associated.
Consultancy gobbles up billions of dollars annually. Action Aid says almost one-fifth of total aid goes to pay consultants and so-called technical experts. Donors employ 100,000 technical experts in Africa. Tanzania pays US$500 million annually to foreign consultants more than three times what it received annually in direct foreign investment between 1994 and 1999.
Consultancy is touted as one of the main functions of our University in the new Draft Charter. In the 1970s, the mission of the Faculty of Law was to produce society-conscious lawyers using the historical and socio-economic method. We did Legal Aid to assist workers, peasants, women and children. Now we are chasing the phantom of producing corporate lawyers. In terms of the Draft Charter, the University shall advance its objects ‘in close association with industry and commerce.’
Corporatisation of the university is part of the neoliberal ideological attack on critical thinking, on intellectuals who would ‘Speak Truth to Power’, to use the words of Edward Said. It undermines the university as a critical site of knowledge, as a mirror of society. No doubt, temptations are great and none of us is immune.
As I approach the end of my oration, allow me to be a little nostalgic, to do a little soul-searching. At 60, I guess, you will also permit me to be a little immodest. In 1968, we in USARF, launched a cyclostyled journal called Cheche, named after Nkrumah’s The Spark and Lenin’s Iskra. Its first editors were three fine young persons, Zakia Meghji, Henry Mapolu and Karim Hirji. The first issue carried my The Educated Barbarians. Reading it today, one feels a little embarrassed. In twelve pages it has some 20 footnotes, carrying half a page text in them with numerous quotes from Baran, Nkrumah, Fanon, De Castro and so on. No “respectable” publisher would accept it but then, at that time, we did not care. We did not write for publishing. We wrote as a part of ideological struggles. Clumsy and crude in style and somewhat mechanistic in thinking, it surely is. But The Educated Barbarians unmistakably exuberates anger, passion and commitment. We were in the period of radical nationalism called ‘socialism.’ Young people were angry at the world as it was, and intellectually committed to understand it better, and passionate to change it for the better. We discussed Fanon while we worked in cashew nut farms around the University, taught literacy classes in Mlalakuwa based on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, built our own shelters, called houses, through self-help. Comrade Joe’s (Professor Kanywanyi) stands testimony to it.
Today, perhaps, my writings may be more scholarly, more intellectually refined. I can’t say. I am not supposed to say. Only my peers are allowed to evaluate. You need to be an Ali Mazrui to self-evaluate! But whatever be the intellectual verdict on them, I can say one thing about them, and no one can prevent me from saying it, these writings are not passionate like the ‘educated barbarians’. Maybe I am more educated now, but less moved by injustice, and therefore, perhaps, more barbaric! Once, reading a draft of my article recently, my daughter quipped, ‘papa, you are not angry enough’. And it is not a matter of age; one doesn’t grow out of commitment, passion and devotion because of age! We have to look for explanation, not justification; and explanation lies elsewhere.
Neo-liberalism has taken its toll and the language of consultancy has displaced and replaced the language of conscience and commitment. As individuals, we can only agonize and gradually forget even to diagnose the ills of our society. ‘Organise, don’t agonise’, my friend Chachage says, and goes back to his desk to write Makuadi wa Soko Huria. That, too, we need to do. It is better than flying off to Johannesburg to attend another conference on how to implement the imperialist-driven NEPAD.
I don’t know if our world is better than it was thirty years ago. But I do know that neither our country nor our continent is. Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s destroyed the little achievements in education, health, life-expectancy, and literacy that we had made during the nationalist period. Neo-liberal policies of the last ten years have destroyed the small industrial sector - textiles, oil, leather, steel, farm implements, cashew nut factories – which had been built during the period of import-substitution. Most important of all, we have lost the respect, dignity and humanity and the right to think for ourselves that independence represented. The large majority of our people, workers and peasants, as the Arusha Declaration dignified them, have been transformed into ‘the nameless poor.’
Workers and peasants who were supposed to be the makers of history and motors of development have become the subject-matter of PRSPs – poverty reduction strategy papers. Private sector is the engine of growth, we are chastised day in day out, and history has ended, we are lectured. ‘Carbon’ copies of PRSPs are produced in country after country by laptop consultants. The poverty reduction strategies are a condition precedent for getting debt reduction. Meanwhile, debt rises; it used to be around US$8 billion, now it is over US$9 billion. Paying debts is like chasing a mirage! The goal-post keeps shifting.
Meanwhile, funded by millions of dollars of further aid, we hire a De Soto to tell us that we are too stupid to recognise ‘the mystery of capital’ and understand ‘why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else’. We are sitting on trillions of dollars of ‘dead capital’. We have to breath legal life into these ‘dead’ assets and lo! behold, we’ll all be as capitalist as the West. The question is who would have the trillions of dollars at the end of the process, and who would be dead. History teaches us that the trillions accumulate in capitalist Centre leaving behind the dead, the mutilated, the malnourished, the divided and the conflict ridden, in the Periphery.
In the 1980s, financed by Mahatir Mohammed of Malaysia, Mwalimu Nyerere chaired the South Commission to look into how the capitalist West rides roughshod over the Rest, (my words, their message). Among other things, it found that the world was skewed and lop-sided and divided and suffered from unequal power relations. And it found that this was the result both of the history of colonialism and the contemporary unequal world order. In its restrained language it said: ‘The widening disparities between South and North are attributable not merely to differences in economic progress, bur t also to an enlargement of the North’s power vis-à-vis the rest of the world.’ The South Commission found that there was a reverse process of flow of resources from the poor South to the rich North. ‘… [I]n recent years’, it said, ‘developing countries have had to make net debt-related transfers of nearly $40 billion per year to developed countries, and there is little prospect of a reversal of this perverse flow of capital from poor to rich.’
In the year 2000s, President Mkapa was appointed a member of Tony Blair’s Africa Commission on poverty. In two sentences the Commission dismissed Africa’s 50 year history thus:
Africa’s history over the last fifty years has been blighted by two areas of weakness. These have been capacity – the ability to design and deliver policies; and accountability – how well a state answers to its people. (p. 14 )
So, Africans don’t have the capacity to think and African states don’t have the capacity to design policies. They are ‘blighted’ by lack of accountability which is a code word for legendry ‘corruption’ and the so-called “bad governance”.
In the 1960s, the West Germans were asked to pack and go and take with them all their aid baggage because they were using aid to pressurize Tanzania not to accord any diplomatic status to the East Germans. Today “good governance” demands that we pass anti-terrorism laws, even at the risk of dividing our people, because that is the foreign policy of some bushy bully of the world.
Yes, indeed, the world has changed. Yes, indeed, times have changed. Yes, indeed, we have a new form of imperialism called globalisation. Yes, indeed we must change. The question is change in what direction, for whose benefit and in whose interest. Edward Said says the basic question for the intellectual is: ‘how does one speak the truth? What truth? For whom and where?’ The basic question today is whether this neoliberal, Thatcherite counter-revolution is for the benefit of the masses or the narrow neo-liberal elites? No social, economic and political change can be described, let alone analysed and understood, except from the standpoint of a particular class, a particular people, a particular nation and, universally, from the standpoint of humanity. And, certainly, the present cannot be understood and changed for the better without understanding better the past. No intellectual worth her name can condone bestiality, which is what imperialism is.
For us the lawyers, the least we can do is to ask, in the paraphrased words of Edward Said: How do we lawyers address authority/power: as professional supplicants, or as its unrewarded, amateurish conscience?
***

Global: Geneva Call

2006-08-23

http://www.genevacall.org/news/testi-events/gc-20jan06.htm

Geneva Call and the Program for the Study of International Organization(s) of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, sponsored a landmark workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in November 2005, entitled “Women in Armed Opposition Groups in Africa and the Promotion of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights”.

Côte d’Ivoire: Child Labour Rampant

2006-08-14

http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991224855&Language=EN

According to a 2003 ILO study covering 1,500 cocoa producers in Côte d’Ivoire, there are over 5,000 children working in the country’s cocoa plantations. These children may or may not be paid and are not receiving any form of education. Most come from the neighbouring countries and are victims of the child trafficking rackets organised with Burkina Faso, Benin and Mali.

History as connected, and not mystery

Jacques Depelchin

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/36474

Thank you again for trying to show how apparently disconnected histories are indeed connected and converging toward a world more and more emancipated from the shackles of a genocidal system (see http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/36276) I was surprised that you referred to the Irish. Not that the example is out of place, but because the African continent continues to be the most fertile ground for comparing what the Palestinians are enduring. By African, I do mean also those who were taken away. By African I include Haiti, yesterday and today.

The collective punishment currently inflicted on the Palestinians is very much like the collective punishment which has been unleashed, and has not stopped, against the descendants of those who, against all expectations, overthrew slavery by battling all of the biggest armies of the time (France, England, Spain). From 1791 through 1804, without the help of any humanitarian organization, those who were considered less than humans rose to say no to a dehumanizing system. For that act, the descendants of the slaves who managed the unthinkable have been severely punished. The treatment of Haitians today derives from exactly the same motivation as the one which has triggered the wrath of the Israeli state, supported to the hilt by the so-called International Community, against people who are simply asking to be treated like everyone else: with dignity WITHOUT THE CRUTCHES OF HUMANITARIANISM. The system has not just been bankrupt. What we are observing is worse than genocide: one of the victims of genocide has been anointed to inflict collective punishment. Collectively, how did we get to this point? Before colonialism there was something else. During WWII Hitler was THE Evil and we well remember what he inflicted to the Jews. But what if EVIL did stem from something other than a mad person? What if EVIL can also be seen at work during previous phases of our collective history? What if EVIL is genetically rooted - so to speak - in the system which rose out of turning masses of humanity into fodder for the continuation of a system which seems not to know when, where and how to stop. Are we going to be reduced to being mere spectators to the next phase, namely the turning of the Planet into an unlivable place?

"Sheer wonder" at column on Middle East

Edetaen Ojo

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/36473

I read Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's article in sheer wonder and disbelief as he twisted facts and history, abused logic, and conveniently ignored other inconvenient facts to premise an illogical argument. I think in the end, the article belittled him as an intellectual (see http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/36276) No matter how much he likes the Hezbollah and Hamas, no matter how much he sympathizes with their cause, if he wants to make an intellectual argument on the issues, then he must respect the facts, he must be balanced, he should be fair and just, and he should try to be logical, otherwise he should simply abandon any claim to intellectualism and focus on demagogery and propaganda.

He roundly condemns Israel which, at least in this case, is exercising its right of self-defence as a nation. He cannot run away from the fact that Israel has a right to defend itself. He fails to even acknowledge that Hezbollah provoked this latest violence, with no provocation at all, six years after Israel withdrew from Lebanon. He does not have a single critical word for Hezbollah for this. He prefers to ignore the facts as it suits his purposes better to award to the Hezbollah the victory for "expelling" Israel from Lebanon. He stands logic on its head and moves into the realm of untenable speculation by declaring that "it is clear to anybody that even if the two soldiers were not abducted Israel would have found another reason for 'reinvading' Lebanon."

He refuses to acknowledge that the Lebanese government bears any responsibility by omission or commission. He closes his eyes and intellectual mind to the fact that Hezbollah is continuing to fire hundreds of rockets daily into Israel, also killing innocent civilians, and remains unrepentant. Perhaps in his mind, the death of innocent Israeli civilians, women and children means nothing! They are fair game in his human rights mind. There is no suggestion in his article that Hezbollah itself, which started all this, should stop. He twists the facts and alleges "a campaign of blockade and sanctions that punishes the Palestinians for voting democratically" when the truth is that Western governments (Europe and the United States) have simply said that they cannot continue to support a government that has committed itself to the destruction of another State and refuses to renounce terrorism.

He blames Britain and the United States for their "uncritical" support for Israel while himself betraying his uncritical support for Hezbollah and Hamas, despite the atrocities they are committing in the Middle East, even against Arabs! Whatever his beef is with the Israelis, the Americans and the British, he is an intellectual and must think like one. We do human rights work, but it is based on the principles of truth, fairness and justice. If we start to propagate falsehood, or become unfair and unjust in our human rights work, we lose the moral high ground and have nothing else. Dr Abdul-Raheem should take the pains to establish the facts fairly, he should try and see all sides to the issue, and understand the different perspectives. Otherwise, he will not stand a chance in hell of proffering any realistic or workable solution. He certainly lost me with his article.

Children, Youth and Development

Christina Clark

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/36467

Book Review: Ansell, Nicola. 2005. Children, Youth and Development. London and New York: Routledge.

Nicola Ansell’s ‘Children, Youth and Development’ provides a much-needed critical introduction into young people’s experiences in contexts of poverty, ‘development’ and globalisation. Although 90% of young people under the age of 18 and 85% of 15- to 24-year-olds (p. 1) live in the Third World, Ansell rightly points out that insufficient attention has been paid to the ways in which they experience, and are affected by, global processes. This book is a step towards correcting this imbalance, by offering a comprehensive, but succinct and readable, overview.

It adopts a textbook format, with clear explanations, interspersed with boxes, tables and figures. Each chapter contains bulleted lists of principal themes, key ideas, discussion questions and further resources. The book begins with a definition of key terms, and chapters outlining conceptualisations of childhood and youth, global processes of ‘development’ and globalisation, and cultural contexts at local levels. These chapters maintain a careful balance between young people’s common experiences of age-based discrimination, with recognition of diversity due to gender, disability, ‘race’, class, familial contexts, religion, etc. Ansell also manages to highlight the ways in which young people may experience global processes differently than adults, while situating these within multiple relationships and contexts. Although writing in clear, pedagogic language, Ansell does not ‘dumb down’ complex debates, but highlights critical insights into complex issues. In particular, she contextualises and challenges Western ‘exportation’ of childhood and youth ‘models’, as well as development and globalisation processes, into Third World areas.

Chapters 4 to 6 explore three key areas in which young people interact with global processes: health, education and work. Each chapter provides an overview of different conceptualisations of each theme. Ansell then highlights key issues and debates in each area, as they relate to young people. She offers critical analysis of the ways in which international policies affect young people’s access and choices, with particular attention to effects of structural adjustment policies on social service provision, and international legislation regarding children’s work.

Chapter 7 uses UNICEF’s term “children in especially difficult circumstances” (CEDC) to focus on children in war, those with disabilities, children exploited for labour and commercial sex, street children, children affected by AIDS and children in institutions. This chapter marks a problematic departure from the contextualised and historicised approach adopted in the rest of the book. By mirroring UNICEF’s CEDC framework, Ansell implicitly reinforces labels such as ‘street children’, even while problematising them. This is apparent in her change in terminology: from emphasising ‘young people’ as a broad and diverse group, to specifically focusing on ‘children’ and portraying certain circumstances as inherently ‘difficult’. While other chapters situate young people vis-à-vis broader social processes at micro, meso and macro levels, chapter 7 groups together a vast array of different groups and does not allow enough space to interrogate issues in depth. This leads to some problematic generalisations about categories of young people, which detracts from more nuanced arguments made elsewhere in the book.

Ansell’s concluding chapter returns to her more critical analytical perspective in evaluating issues surrounding rights, participation, activism and power. She historicises and critiques the emergence of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and argues that rights are not ends in and of themselves; improving young people’s lives in the Third World also requires broader structural changes. The chapter also provides a good introduction to the potential and challenges of young people’s participation. It concludes with the necessity of political change, recognising young people as actors, but also the structural challenges they face.

At the beginning of ‘Children, Youth and Development’, Ansell sets out four principles guiding her approach: recognising the diversity of young people in contrast to homogenising discourses; focusing on social contexts in which young people live, rather than exclusively on young people themselves; highlighting the importance of young people not only for the future as ‘human becomings’, but also in the present; and, approaching them as actors in their own lives, rather than “merely objects of development or victims of history” (p. 6). With the exception of the shortcomings in chapter 7, the book achieves these objectives and thus provides a timely overview of the diversity of young people’s experiences in complex ‘development’ and globalisation processes in the Third World.

* Christina Clark is a Commonwealth Scholar at the Department of International Development, Oxford University, where she is currently completing research on the political roles of Congolese young people in Uganda.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Global: Film Review - United 93

Colin Asher

2006-08-22

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2006/asher0706.html

During war time you need enemies, heroes, and justification — in that order. I was reminded of this triple imperative as I watched the film United 93, which supplies these ingredients, more or less in this same order. United 93, the first of several major media releases to deal with the events of September 11, 2001, has been the cause of much debate, most centered over whether we as a nation are ready to be re-traumatized.

Sierra Leone: Review of a Documentary Film

Lansana Gberie

2006-08-22

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=10793

Dramatic atrocities, extreme human suffering and the cruelties and psychosis of dirt poverty and slum life make for memorable documentaries, and the Sierra Leone civil war (1991-2002) combined all of these in excess. Man Den Nor Glady'O, a 57-minute documentary produced by charmingly named Rice N Peas, an alternative London-based production company, is the latest to relentlessly focus on these vulgar aspects of the country's recent and current condition.

Tanzania: Puppet theatre explores voter awareness

2006-08-21

http://www.comminit.com/africa/experiences/pds32003/experiences-2404.html

In 2000, Small World Theatre (SWT) collaborated with Tanzanian performers to find out what prevents people, particularly women in economically poor communities, from participating in elections by voting and standing as candidates. The project used drama - participatory theatre - as a research tool. The main focus was on uncovering attitudes and constraints to women's participation in the democratic process in the light of the upcoming (October 2000) multi-party election (the first multiparty election was in 1995).

USA: Spike Lee turns cameras on New Orleans

Oliver Burkeman

2006-08-22

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1851743,00.html

Film director Spike Lee's long-awaited four-hour documentary about Hurricane Katrina was due to receive its world premiere last night, watched by 16,000 people who lived through the tragedy. The first half of Lee's $2m (£1.05m) documentary, When the Levees Broke: a Requiem in Four Acts, was scheduled to be shown to a sell-out audience in the New Orleans Arena. The venue is next door to the Superdome, the sports complex where more than 15,000 people sought shelter during the hurricane last year.

African Blog Roundup

Sokari Ekine

2006-08-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/36405

White African - White African (http://whiteafrican.com/?p=262) is a blog largely devoted to developing communication technology ideas in Africa. In this post he is asking why there is a lack of interest from e-commerce sites on the potential of the African market:

“As the mobile telecoms and banks of East Africa try and develop platforms that allow people to tie into their particular system, they end up missing the big picture. It’s not about your particular bank or phone platform, it’s about people being able to trust and pay using an agnostic payment system. Meaning, the credit and payment system should interact with all banks and phones regardless of type.”

He poses the challenge of starting an African type PayPal scheme which was started with only $3 million and suggests the name “Afripay” – time is of the essence:

“As I mentioned to someone while in Kenya last week, it’s not as if there isn’t a banking mogul’s son who isn’t looking to try his own thing, or even an investor that would turn away a chance at millions.”

The Moor Next Door - The Moor Next Door (http://wahdah.blogspot.com/2006/08/white-boys-cant-fight-jihad-that-is.html) takes up the issue of racial profiling of US Muslims suggested by US Congressman. The Moor Next Door believes this is discriminatory and that it cannot work:

“Sure, you can profile Muslims, who come in all shapes, sizes and colors; but there really is no reason to profile Americans that happen to be Middle Eastern, who are really more likely to be Christian or atheist anyway. You'd probably have more luck picking up a terrorist by choosing the white guy with a blonde beard and a funny cap than the swarthy guy with chest hair popping out of his shirt and a uni-brow.”

He gives the example of the DC sniper who was an African American Muslim convert and not an Arab and as he quite rightly points out the whole idea shows the ignorance by the Congressman who seems to confuse being Muslim with being Arab and vice versa.

Naija to the core - Naija to the core (http://aramide.blogspot.com/2006/08/proudly-nigerian-tribute-to-nigerian.html) celebrates Nigerian literature by highlighting the various authors and the literature prizes they have won recently. Commenting on 18-year-old Onyeka George Nwelue he writes:

“Onyeka George Nwelue began to write at the age of eleven and won the THOMSON Short Story Prize in 2000 (at the age of twelve) with 'Chants of a Poet'. He was nominated as the International Library of Poetry Best Poet of 2005, and won the Outstanding Achievement in Poetry Silver Bowl and the 2004 Afro Poet of the Year. He is presently both the founder and editor of Flames magazine and BritNig Poetry Club, based in Lagos, Nigeria and Wales, UK.”

Zimbabwean Pundit - Zimbabwean Pundit (http://zimpundit.blogspot.com/2006/08/life-in-zimbabwe.html) points to an article by Nelson Katsande in “Ohmynews International” on the life of prostitutes on the streets of Harare.

“Tsitsi, 15, ran away from poverty and abuse in the Musana communal lands. She was lured into prostitution by her elder sister, who died of HIV/AIDS six months ago. Tsitsi started prostitution at the age of 14 after having been subjected to physical abuse by her father. She reported the matter to her mother, who accused her of lying. She later made a report to the police and her father was arrested. He is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for child abuse as well as cattle rustling.”

What is heart rendering is that the stories here are similar to those of young girls across the world. Children are abused and instead of finding support from within their families and communities they are accused of lying and in some cases driven out to fend for themselves when they become pregnant. In Zimbabwe like many other African countries the situation is made worse as children are often abandoned as they become HIV/AIDS orphans which then puts them at risk of contracting the same illness that killed their parents."

Chippla’s Weblog - Chippla's Weblog (http://chippla.blogspot.com/2006/08/babangida-and-presidency.html) posts on the presidential hopes of Nigeria’s ex military dictator, Ibrahim Banbaginda who he writes was one of the country’s most corrupt leaders in a country full of corrupt leaders.

“Nigeria surely does not need an expired politician as its potential leader and surely not one who misused an eight year opportunity at the helm of affairs. A Babangida presidency in 2007 would be a huge joke and nothing but that. It is up to reasonable and thinking Nigerians who have the means to prevent this from happening. The National Electoral Commission of Nigeria would be wise to ban all previous Heads of State and Presidents from contesting at the polls again—though I doubt it has the power to do so. These people ought to retire from party politics. They have practically nothing to offer to young Nigerians, who in every sense have become both the present and the future.”

The NEC may not have the power to ban previous dictators from running but the National Assembly only needs to make a constitutional amendment to ensure these people never have the opportunity to lead Nigeria ever again.

On the occasion of the 16th International AIDS conference, Black Looks - Black Looks (http://www.blacklooks.org/2006/08/blogging_against_aids.html) blogs against AIDS by posting an interview with Masias Cowper:

“...who’s been HIV positive for 13 years discusses her status and the problems of disclosure that continue to exist and the forming of new relationships. She talks about disclosing her status to her family which she describes as 'the worst thing ever'. It took her 6 months and when she did disclose to her partner the reaction was violent and negative even though it was he who was the source of the infection. Slowly she began to come out to her family and her workplace despite being fired from her job. '...five years after my diagnosis was five years of recovery' - recovering her rights as a woman, to love, to be reproductive, to be respected, to be in a relationship, have a job, participate in her community."

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks, www.blacklooks.org

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Global: Reflection on women's rights issues at the AIDS conference

2006-08-21

http://www.awid.org

The International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada this week (August 15-19) attracted more than 24,000 activists, policymakers and scientists to reflect and strategise on responses to the global pandemic. Celebrities such as Bill and Melinda Gates, Bill Clinton and Richard Gere, brought much needed public attention and media to the feminization of HIV/AIDS, however, it also highlighted the danger of having these personalities dominate the discourse and promote a depoliticized analysis of women's rights, as was often witnessed in Toronto this week.

Global: Women Matter - In All of the Millennium Goals

2006-08-23

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34412

In order to advance towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), gender equality cannot merely be limited to a number of specific objectives, but must be the lens through which all the targets are viewed, say experts and representatives of women's movements in Argentina.

Benin: Country bans sexual harassment

2006-08-23

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2842/context/archive

The Republic of Benin's National Assembly voted July 17 to pass the country's first comprehensive sexual harassment legislation aimed at protecting girls and women in schools, workplaces and in homes, according to the Women's Rights Initiative, a program of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Mauritius: Trauma for young lesbians

2006-08-23

http://www.africafiles.org

Gemma's sexual orientation goes against norms and values imposed by society. In the eyes of her parents and society, she must be either depraved or mad. The story of two young women takes place in Mauritius, the island that prides itself on having one of the most mature democracies in the region and advertises itself as the island of "sun, sea and sand." That freedom turned to trauma for two young women whose only crime is their passionate love affair.

Sierra Leone: Women's rights need protection

2006-08-21

http://www.civicus.org/new/media/AmnestyInternational.doc

Amnesty International launched a campaign to highlight the problems faced by women in Sierra Leone in accessing the justice system. Every day, women in rural Sierra Leone face discrimination and violence at the hands of the men in their homes and communities. When they try to access justice to address such abuses, they are often faced with further abuse and violence - often as a result of local chiefs exceeding their legal authority and imposing punishments against women based on customary law.

Tunisia: Promotion of the rights of Arab women is 'central issue'

2006-08-21

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=17250

Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali reiterated his support for the promotion of the rights of women in the Arab world as ''a central issue in the process of development and modernization''. Speaking on the occasion of Tunisia's celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Personal Status Code, which granted Tunisian women their rights, President Ben Ali said, ''the various contemporaneous world changes show that a society's attainment of progress and invulnerability depends on the freedom and rights women enjoy in that society, and on the duties and responsibilities they assume therein.''

Global: International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition

2006-08-23

http://www.hrea.org/feature-events/abolition-slavetrade-day.php

The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition (August 23) is an important occasion to remind the international community of the particularity of this tragedy, of its persisting consequences for modern societies, and of the role played by both enslaved Africans and abolitionists in bringing to an end this crime against humanity.

Global: Mixed start for new human rights council

2006-08-23

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/06/30/global13685.htm

The first session of the new U.N. Human Rights Council was largely successful in laying a foundation for its future work, but there are signs that it may repeat some of its predecessor’s mistakes, Human Rights Watch said today (July 30). The inaugural session of the council concluded today. " The council’s singling out the Occupied Palestinian Territories for special attention is a cause for concern. The human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories deserves attention, but the new council must bring the same vigor to its consideration of other pressing situations. "

Global: UN action on rights for disabled faces snags

2006-08-23

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/22/news/nations.php

A UN convention that would protect the rights of the world's disabled has made progress but still faces difficulties and lacks U.S. support, UN and American officials said. The leadership of the committee drafting the treaty "was pleased by the progress on a number of key issues" but 150 proposed amendments received over the weekend "could jeopardize reaching an outcome," Thomas Schindlmayr of the UN Secretariat helping with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said Monday (August 21).

Côte d’Ivoire: UN condemns nation's prison conditions

2006-08-23

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55168

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cote d'Ivoire issued a scathing report on the country's penitentiary system, saying people were being held in overcrowded, unsanitary, crumbling prisons, with severe malnutrition a leading cause of death. The report also cited extended provisional custody, lack of health care and aging infrastructure as among the problems in Cote d'Ivoire's 33 prisons.

Rwanda: Country proposes eliminating death penalty

2006-08-21

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060818/D8JISDP00.html

Rwanda's government has proposed eliminating the death penalty for genocide to encourage European countries and Canada to extradite suspected masterminds of the nation's 1994 mass killings, the attorney general said Friday . Rwanda has repeatedly demanded that Western nations extradite any genocide suspects they know are living in their countries, but some nations have expressed reservations because of the death penalty.

South Africa: Shoprite Exploits Workers, Claims Union

Press Release

2006-08-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/36326

SACCAWU (South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union) members employed by Shoprite have been engaged in lunch hour pickets effective from 18 July 2006. The pickets, which are but just a component of a protected industrial action, were in response to Shoprite's unreasonable refusal to grant workers an increase of a mere R300.00 or 10%, whichever is greater and also improve their other conditions of work.
MEDIA STATEMENT ON THE SACCAWU SHOPRITE DISPUTE OVER WAGES, CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT AND UNILATERAL IMPLEMENTATION OF LATE TRADING

SACCAWU (South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union) members employed by Shoprite have been engaged in lunch hour pickets effective from 18 July 2006. The pickets, which are but just a component of a protected industrial action, were in response to Shoprite's unreasonable refusal to grant workers an increase of a mere R300.00 or 10%, whichever is greater and also improve their other conditions of work.
As we informed members of the media fraternity in the previous Media Briefing, the parties' failure to reach agreement, despite the attempts by the CCMA ; were by no means informed by Shoprite's inability to afford but rather informed by the company's capitalistic principle position and sheer naked greed to maximise profits at the expense of workers, who by the way are the generators of the very profits. Further to this, Shoprite arrogantly demands that workers should agree to a divisive yet inexplicable and contemptuously discriminatively staggered increase. In terms of their proposal, those workers doing duty in suburbs and rich predominantly white residential areas should be afforded a higher increase, whislt those in townships, rural and poor black residential areas should be afforded less increase.

The reasonable, just and fair demand by workers is informed by the reality that the wealth they have generated for Shoprite can indeed afford and sustain an increase of R300.00 or 10%, given that the same company granted its CEO an increase of 372% in 2005, with the nerve to grant him even more increase this year (said to be in the region of R99 million), we find it not only unreasonable but equally incomprehensive and downright sickening.
In fact Shoprite Holdings (SHP) said that due to an exceptional profit of a capital nature of approximately 150 million Rand as a result of the sale of a property portfolio, earnings per share for the 12 months ended June will be 35% to 45% higher than those of the prior comparative period.
(Extracted from the Sundaytimes.co.za <http://Sundaytimes.co.za>). Retail group Shoprite Holdings on Monday (10 July 2006) reported that for the 12 months to July 2 it had increased turnover by 12.8 percent to approximately R33.5-billion, compared to the compared to the corresponding 12 months of 53 weeks in 2005.
Workers further demand that all non-fulltime workers be offered uniform, at the cost of the company. This is not unreasonable since Shoprite demands of the same workers to be presentable and well groomed at all times. Who in their right minds would expect any person to pay for clothes that they otherwise would not have the slightest interest in? You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see the sheer madness in Shoprite's refusal to offer uniform to non-fulltime workers whilst expecting them to wear uniform, not just any but a specific set of uniform.
For years now we have been attempting to secure a collective agreement that would regulate the relationship between the parties. Despite the basics of such agreement being dictated by the LRA (Labour Relations Act), the parties still have to develop and design the details that are in line with their own and unique circumstances. Yet again, Shoprite has been digging its heels, unreasonably so, to enter into and conclude a Relationship Agreement. This intransigence is premised on their desire to hold the relationship to ransom and thereby create a climate to render the Union a subordinate partner in the relationship.
The other issue in dispute is the Agency Fee which Shoprite stubbornly refuses to negotiate and agree, to despite the LRA providing the framework and directive from which the parties should engage. Shoprite instead foolishly proposes that the Union directs the Shoprite National Shopstewards Council to withdraw levies paid by members and further agree that Shoprite rather contributes R1.50 per non-fulltime worker and R2.50 per fulltime worker to the Shoprite Shopstewards Council levy account. We are still trying to make out what this company takes us for when they refuse to grant an increase but subtly boast about their financial capacity in this regard!
This, we view as an insult to the extreme!
In a quest to satisfy their insatiable appetie for super-profits and the greed, Shoprite resolved to introduce super-exploitative, insociable and very inhumane working conditions in the form of unilateral late trading.
Whilst this would effectively mean that workers would knock off at hours that are out of the ordinary, the company has steadfastly refused to engage in consultation with the Union. Of course such refusal is influenced by the fact that the Union has questioned the issue of safe and reliable transport, child care, compensation for night work as well as other areas resulting from this work reorganisation. Workers are not like furniture that can be moved around depending on the mood of their employer, hence the dispute in this matter!
Workers and members of the progressive organs of civil society marched in all provinces on 28 July 2006, in protest against the company's shocking ill-treatment of its employees and handed over memoranda outlining the demands. In true arrogant nature of Shoprite, they reponded by claiming that the Union was exaggerating and manufacturing untruths. What they conveniently did not notice was the fact that information around their CEO's2005 package was in the public domain. They also conveniently forgot to declare that the same CEO was about to be afforded a further ninety million rand (R90million) package this year!
Shoprite also made some feeble attempts to justify their blatantly unreasonable position on their refusal to grant workers a decent Wage Increase, provision of free Uniform to non-fulltime workers, concluding an agreement on Agency Fee as well as entering into a Relationship Agreement.
No capitalistic rhetoric, public relations, pretentious patriotism or social responsibility grand standing can ever make up for appaling industrial relations and discrimination so arrogantly displayed and practiced by hypocritic Shoprite.
Shoprite has also been at pains trying to bulldoze workers to accept their own exploitation and agree that late trading is necessary even though it was unilaterally implemented, there is no consideration on its impact on workers, their families and family life.
We are sick and tired of employers like Shoprite who consistently rake in billions and billions of rands year after year but refuse to recognise the immense contribution of ordinary workers. We also refuse to be brainwashed into believing that it was the efforts of the CEO that amasses wealth for Shoprite. We argue that it would be almost impossible to notice if the CEO or those of his kind and standing were to be removed from their ivory towers. Can anyone imagine a Shoprite without all these employees who are so less regarded and contemptuously treated by those with power and authority?
Consequent to the unacceptable attitude displayed by Shoprite, the workers have declared that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and resolved to intensify the struggle against Shoprite!
We therefore have no choice but to announce the following:
1. Effective from Thursday, the 10th of August 2006, SACCAWU members will engage in a full-blown strike action. This will result in complete and total withdrawal of labour.
2. Effective from the 10th of August 2006 SACCAWU is calling for a boycott of the entire Shoprite Group of Companies made up of:
* Shoprite
* Checkers
* OK Furniture
* OK Foods
* OK Mini Markets
* House & Home
* Hungry Lion
* USave
* Freshmark
* 8 'til late
* Computicket
* Rainbow Finance
* Meat Market
* Sentra
3. We will further be filing notices of solidarity or secondary strikes in all companies that provide services to or for Shoprite, particularly those organised by SACCAWU.
4. We also will call for a blacking action wherein our members in those companies merchandising and/or sub-contracted by Shoprite will refuse to handle any job associated with Shoprite.
5. Those within Shoprite will refuse to do any work or perform any task or function that would otherwise ordinarily be performed by those workers who are on strike.
6. We will be mobilising the Alliance and the civil society behind our "Boycott Shoprite Campaign".
7. SACCAWU have already made representation to COSATU and will be outlining the exact role that should be played by COSATU and Affiliates in solidarity with Shoprite Checkers workers.
Whilst we are still open to constructive engagement, we refuse to be treated with contempt and like a group of ignorant individuals. We will continuously intensify our action against the company until the workers' reasonable, fair and just demands are met!
In the interim we have commenced programmes relating to a possible Black Christmas Campaign against Shoprite Group of companies, since our members have vowed to fight for as long as it takes.

Issued by SACCAWU on this, the 8th day of August 2006 at the SACCAWU Head Office, Braamfontein.

Zimbabwe: Peace Project

2006-08-23

http://www.ijr.org.za/transitionaljustice/zim/zpprepaug

Incidences of politically motivated violence have continued unabated in all provinces. The arms of the state such as the police have reportedly continued to harass opposition MDC members and sympathizers. The month was characterized by cases of assault, intimidation and harassment, arson, malicious injury to property. In one extreme case a murder was recorded in Mashonaland East Province.

Africa: The crisis of refugee militarisation

2006-08-21

http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/rdr.cfm?doc=DOC22535

This book focuses on the militarisation of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), especially in Africa. The planned and spontaneous arming of refugees and IDPs threatens access to asylum as well as protection. This book attempts to explain why displaced people arm themselves or how militarisation affects the local and host populations.

Global: AIDS meeting says refugees, IDPs should get greater access to treatment

2006-08-22

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/UNHCR/d93ca99972da84fe4132965ebd008127.htm

In humanitarian emergencies, provision of things such as shelter, food, water and sanitation to refugees and the displaced are given greater priority than medical risks such as HIV/AIDS. As a result, preventative and curative treatment for sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS is limited. The relationship between humanitarian crises and HIV/AIDS is complex and each situation must be examined individually.

DRC: At least 10 die a day in Gety displaced camp

2006-08-22

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55183&SelectRegion=Great_Lakes&SelectCountry=DRC

At least 10 people are dying every day in displacement camps in Gety, in the northeastern district of Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo, according to Modibo Traore, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Bunia, capital of Ituri. According to OCHA-Bunia's recent statistics, two-thirds of the deaths are children younger than five years, whose immune systems have been weakened by malnutrition.

Somalia: More refugees arriving

2006-08-22

http://www.newsfromafrica.org/newsfromafrica/articles/art_10753.html

At least 100 Somalis are arriving daily in northeastern Kenya, fleeing mounting insecurity in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. "One week alone we had about 1,800 people arriving in Dadaab refugee camp," Emmanuel Nyabera, the spokesman for the Kenyan office of the UNHCR, said. Those arriving in Dadaab are generally in good health, but many are visibly exhausted from the long journey, he said.

Sudan: Slow IDP return to south while Darfur crisis continues unabated

2006-08-22

http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpCountrySummaries)/AA1D687D6D477153C12571C600364BD0?OpenDocument&count=10000

More than one year after the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended 21 years of civil war between the central government and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, there are still an estimated five million internally displaced people in Sudan, including 1.8 million from the separate conflict in the western Darfur region.

Uganda: Fewer 'Night Commuters' But Children Still Vulnerable

2006-08-14

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55082

The number of children in northern Uganda who take refuge in towns every night from their rural homes for fear of being abducted by rebels has dropped but thousands of children are still vulnerable, aid workers said. In Gulu district, where abduction of children by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) was rampant, the number of ‘night commuters’ has fallen from 25,000 in February 2004 to less than 4,000 at present, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Kenya: Constitution in the Spotlight Again, as Elections Near

2006-08-23

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=34390

The fraught process of constitutional review in Kenya marked another chapter this week, with an announcement by President Mwai Kibaki that there would be no partial reform of the constitution ahead of general elections next year. This came after certain parliamentarians proposed changes, dubbed "minimum reforms", saying another whole scale review of the constitution was not feasible before the 2007 poll; the reforms include having the president stripped of his exclusive right to appoint members of the 21-person Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK).

Malawi: Rights groups demand Bingu’s impeachment

2006-08-21

http://www.afrika.no/noop/page.php?p=Detailed/12565.html&d=1

Human rights groups and a prominent lawyer said last week (August 17) President Bingu wa Mutharika has gone too far with his constitutional violations and have since called for his impeachment as a lasting solution to the governance crisis rocking his administration. But government has challenged the groups to go ahead, arguing that others have tried the same before and failed.

Southern Africa: Two Days, And Lots of Problems

2006-08-23

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=34366

A call has been made for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to involve civil society in its decision-making process -- in deed, as well as in word. This comes ahead of the annual SADC summit for heads of state and government that gets underway Thursday (August 16) in Lesotho's capital, Maseru. The constitution of the 14-member grouping provides for the inclusion of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the process.

Swaziland: Traditional chiefs find new constitution disagreeable

2006-08-23

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55185

Swaziland's chiefs have condemned the new constitution as a plot by political progressives to "steal the country" from them. At a gathering of traditional leaders, called this week by the country's executive monarch, King Mswati, chiefs discussed the new constitution, which includes a Bill of Rights permitting freedom of assembly and speech, among others.

Togo: Political agreement aims to end 12-year feud

2006-08-23

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55209

The Togolese government and opposition parties have agreed to end a 12-year political impasse that had put off foreign donors, hurt the economy and triggered unrest last year that sent tens of thousands of people fleeing across the border.

Zimbabwe: "We want to show all is not well," SADC protestors

2006-08-23

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=34366

As the annual summit of the Southern African Development Community got underway Thursday (August 16), Zimbabwean activist Bishop Shumba was on hand in Lesotho's capital -- Maseru -- to remind regional leaders about the political and economic difficulties in his country.

Global: Time to tackle corruption in education

2006-08-23

http://www.id21.org/education/e1jh1g1.html

In some developing countries massive amounts of funds transferred from ministries of education to schools are leaked. Bribes and payoffs in teacher recruitment and promotion and selling of exam papers can bring the teaching profession into disrepute. Illegal payments for school entrance and other hidden costs help explain low enrolment and high drop-out rates.

South Africa: Former MP faces jail

2006-08-23

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5272520.stm

Former South African MP Tony Yengeni has lost his final appeal against a four-year jail sentence imposed for defrauding parliament. Mr Yengeni formerly headed parliament's defence committee and was chief whip of the governing ANC party. He was convicted in 2003 after it was found he had received a large discount on the purchase of a luxury car, from a firm bidding for an arms contract.

Global: Civil Society’s Policymaking Role - A Work In Progress

2006-08-23

http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/state/2006/0619workinprogress.htm

Few would dispute that civil society organisations (CSOs) have grown substantially in number and influence over the past decades. But, are these groups at a point now where they play a determining role, alongside government, in public policy-making?

Global: IMF - Shrink It or Sink It!

2006-08-23

http://www.focusweb.org/content/view/985/27/

At a meeting in April 2006 in Washington, a group of about 40 global justice campaigners agreed that the time was ripe for a decisive campaign to shrink or sink the IMF.The urgency of eliminating the IMF's singularly destructive influence on the lives of peoples and countries in the Global South and former Soviet bloc has not diminished one bit over the 25 years (and counting of "structural adjustment" and the "Washington consensus."
At a meeting in April 2006 in Washington, a group of about 40 global justice campaigners agreed that the time was ripe for a decisive campaign to shrink or sink the IMF.

The urgency of eliminating the IMF's singularly destructive influence on the lives of peoples and countries in the Global South and former Soviet bloc has not diminished one bit over the 25 years (and counting) of "structural adjustment" and the "Washington consensus."
Even as we recognize the crises of confidence, solvency, and mandate facing the IMF, we remain mindful that the institution continues to exert unparalleled control over the economies of dozens upon dozens of countries, and that the world's most powerful countries are scheming to rehabilitate it and even make it stronger.

We have reached an unprecedented moment in the history of the contemporary global economy. The system's pillars are starting to shake, maybe even crack.

• Between June and December 2005, the IMF and World Bank for the first time agreed to support 100% multilateral debt cancellation for some client countries. The plan is inadequate - too few countries, too many prior conditions -- but it represents an important break from past stagnation, and a step forward for campaigners across the world.

• Starting in December 2005, many middle-income countries, including most of the IMF's largest "debtors" - Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Turkey, Uruguay, Serbia - announced that they would pay off the IMF's claims ahead of schedule. (Thailand's similar move in 2003 foreshadowed the current trend.) Several government officials have explained their decision as a bid to liberate themselves from IMF domination.

• The unprecedented build-up of foreign reserves, particularly in East Asia, is widely interpreted as being motivated, in part, by the determination to avoid having to turn to the IMF again in case of financial crisis.

• In response, the IMF and the countries that control it have begun to worry about the future of the IMF, both in terms of its solvency and its role. The institution was largely dependent on loan repayments, and those look set to diminish rapidly, with losses predicted soon. And an IMF that doesn't lend to and oversee middle-income countries loses an important function. At the April
2006 IMF/WB meetings, a new mandate for the IMF began to take shape, with the clear intention of salvaging an institution in danger of losing its standing.

• Even as the new role of the IMF is fabricated, it is clear that the forces controlling it - the countries of the G7 and a few others -have different agendas for the institution. Within the U.S., the most powerful single "shareholder," the political and financial elite are split on the utility of the IMF, and there is considerable doubt whether the U.S. Congress would approve a "quota increase" to increase the dues paid to the IMF.

• In July 2006, the "Doha round" finally seems to have collapsed, raising questions about the viability of the WTO and the future dimensions of the global trading system, which the IMF and World Bank have done so much to construct and maintain with their conditions.

The IMF's moment of crisis is our moment of opportunity. Failure to seize it now could indefinitely prolong and intensify the catastrophic consequences of the IMF's power.

Many organizations firmly believe that the world would be better off without the IMF. Others acknowledge the immense damage it has done, but hesitate to call for its abolition out of a commitment to multilateral governance of the global economy, or apprehension of an even more dangerous successor arrangement. But all of those joining in this campaign recognize the urgency of radically reducing the IMF's powers, and of using this moment to make that happen.

Our call is for a campaign to disempower the IMF. We must eliminate its "gatekeeper" function investment in development finance, a powerful role which means its approval is required for developing countries to access aid. We must eliminate its power to impose conditions, such as deregulation, privatization, and service reduction, and an overarching market-fundamentalist paradigm on national economies. And we must develop a practical and just vision for the global economy which leaves the IMF on the margins.

In recognition of the successful strategy to defang the WTO ("shrink or sink"), we are calling for the IMF to be shrunk - its powers reduced. Should that prove infeasible or inadequate, we call for sinking it -- its outright elimination.

Among the likely strategic goals and tactics of the campaign:

• Persuade Southern and ex-Soviet-bloc country governments to refuse to sign new loan agreements or enter into any new programs with the IMF.

• Persuade governments to repudiate the "debts" claimed by the IMF.

• Persuade governments to review, and ideally abandon, IMF-supported programs such as the HIPC debt management scheme, the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) process, and Poverty Reduction & Growth Facility (PRGF) programs.

• Expose, through the media and popular education, the destructive impact of IMF programs and the existence of better alternatives.

• Use innovative advocacy strategies with institutions, governments, parliaments, the private sector, and civil society to build pressure for the marginalization of the IMF.

• Use skepticism in Northern governments to target the PRGF for closure.

• Demand parliamentary hearings as fora to examine and expose the IMF.

• Conduct citizens' audits of the IMF's performance and impact, and urge parliaments and other official bodies to do likewise.

• Popularize the option of withdrawing from the IMF altogether.

• Organize popular referenda to demonstrate public rejection of IMF programs.

• Develop a broad consensus about alternative methods of global economic governance.

Two public conference on campaign strategies and an alternative vision for the global economy will be held prior to the IMF/World Bank meetings in September 2006 in Singapore (the site of the meetings) and in nearby Batam, Indonesia. We encourage all those committed to liberating the world from the disastrous reign of the IMF to attend and contribute to shaping and implementing this vital campaign.

To endorse the campaign, send an email with your name, organization, and country to: anoop@focusweb.org <mailto:anoop@focusweb.org> You can also endorse, and see the full statement on which this announcement is based, by visiting http://www.focusweb.org/content/view/985/27/

Global: The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy

2006-08-23

http://www.counterpunch.org/roelofs05132006.html

In recent years, nations have challenged the activities and very existence of non-governmental organizations. Russia, Zimbabwe, and Eritrea have enacted new measures requiring registration; "Open Society Institute" affiliates have been shut down in Eastern Europe; and Venezuela has charged the Súmate NGO leaders with treason. In Iraq and Afghanistan, staff of Western charitable NGOs (CARE and Doctors Without Borders) have been assassinated.

Global: Ranking the rich

2006-08-21

http://www.oneworld.net/link/gotoarticle/addhit/137835/8/100689

This year's ranking show a slow but steady improvement in the commitment of rich countries to growth and poverty reduction in poor countries, says the Center for Global Development, but fall far short of leaders' soaring rhetoric. The UK and U.S. rank 12th and 13th.

Global: International AIDS conference closes with call to deliver universal access

2006-08-23

http://www.aids2006.org/admin/images/upload/1242.pdf

A sense of hopefulness tempered with growing impatience marked the end of the XVI International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2006) today, with scientists, clinicians, policymakers, people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and other community leaders and caregivers calling for an accelerated pace to scale up HIV prevention, care and treatment programs in resource-limited settings.

Global: Medical bills push people deeper into poverty

2006-08-23

http://www.id21.org/health/h1dm1g4.html

In some developing countries public health clinics charge patients for medical consultations. These medical fees, together with a loss of earnings due to ill health, have catastrophic consequences for families already living in poverty.

Côte d’Ivoire: Abortion - Illegal, Sought After, Sometimes Fatal

2006-08-23

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=34430

Poverty, civil war, fears of religious persecution: any one of these can push women to have abortions. In Côte d'Ivoire, however, all of these factors are present, leading to what some claim are substantial increases in the termination of pregnancies. This is despite the fact that the procedure is illegal in this West African country.

DRC: The silent storm of HIV/AIDS

New video and campaign

2006-08-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/36414

The silent storm of HIV/AIDS is ravaging communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where over 2.6 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. Some one hundred thousand people have died of AIDS and more than 700,000 children have lost one or both parents to this preventable disease that, if not tackled directly by government policy, has the potential of evolving into a raging pandemic.
Witness press release
www.witness.org

The silent storm of HIV/AIDS is ravaging communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where over 2.6 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. Some one hundred thousand people have died of AIDS and more than 700,000 children have lost one or both parents to this preventable disease that, if not tackled directly by government policy, has the potential of evolving into a raging pandemic. To date only 3% of those needing anti-retroviral treatment are receiving it.

"Awaiting Tomorrow" tells the story of people living with HIV/AIDS in the war-torn Eastern region of the DRC and advocates for the provision of: free HIV/AIDS testing, medical care and medication, including home based care, nutritional and psychological support; outreach on testing and prevention particularly targeting youth; awareness raising and legislation to end discrimination against all affected people; and the building of infrastructure to make critical medical assistance accessible. To view an excerpt of the video, please visit www.witness.org

The Congolese government, supported by the international community, must comply with their international obligations to take all necessary measures to guarantee the rights of persons living with HIV/AIDS, including the right to health and the right to information on prevention, testing and treatment and the promises made through the Millenium Development Goals. Act Now to call on President Joseph Kabila and the Congolese government to immediately address this emerging crisis:
<http://www.witness.org/index.php>?
option=com_content&task=view&id=562&Itemid=234

Please note that director and producer of Awaiting Tomorrow, Bukeni Waruzi, who is a child rights activist based in Uvira, Eastern DRC, is currently at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto. To contact him directly, please email: bukenibeck@yahoo.fr <mailto:bukenibeck@yahoo.fr>

South Africa: Beetroot battle at world AIDS conference

2006-08-23

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20031487

Beetroot, lemon, garlic and African potato were at the heart of a bitter conflict between Health Minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and AIDS activists over government’s AIDS programme at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto over the past week (August 15-19).

South Africa: Super resistant XDR TB rears its head in KZN

2006-08-21

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20031478

A study from KwaZulu-Natal has revealed shocking details of a super-tuberculosis strain – XDR TB – that is resistant to all first and second line TB drugs and has an extraordinary high death rate. South Africa does not yet have any drugs to treat people with XDR TB.

Zimbabwe: Girl Child Network wins award

2006-08-23

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/219556/11561748410.htm

The Girl Child Network of Zimbabwe, an American Jewish World Service grantee since 2004, was awarded the United Nations Development Program Red Ribbon Award on Thursday, August 16, at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto. This newly-created award provides worldwide recognition to an organization that has been creatively addressing HIV/AIDS prevention in Zimbabwe for the past seven years.

Global: Engendering education

2006-08-21

http://topics.developmentgateway.org/indigenousrights/rc/ItemDetail.do?itemId=1069136

In developing countries, girls lag behind boys, according to the latest World Bank research. The discrepancy is explained in part by the fact that male teachers discriminate against girls. Girls are perceived as less intelligent while boys are given more opportunity to talk and participate.

Global: International Working Group on Education

2006-08-23

http://www.unesco.org/iiep/eng/networks/iwge/recent.htm

IWGE is an informal group of aid agencies and foundations. It was created in 1972 to enable donor agencies to exchange information and work closely together on education issues. Since 1982, it has devoted itself to the development and promotion of basic education.

Botswana: Using English to teach maths

2006-08-23

http://www.id21.org/education/e3dk2g1.html

Educationalists often assume that teachers, students and textbooks speak the same language. In Botswana government policy requires English - one of the country's official languages to be used as the language of instruction for math from the second grade of primary school. How can maths teachers cope when many of their pupils are not fluent in English?

Kenya: Stopping Pregnancy From Being the End of the Educational Road

2006-08-23

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=34137

Are the effects of teenage pregnancy on the education of girls being addressed with sufficient vigour in Kenya? With statistics indicating that pregnancy accounts for 31 percent of all school drop-out cases among girls, this is a question that begs asking.

South Africa: Education in the doldrums

2006-08-23

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=54957

A new school curriculum aiming to overhaul the legacy of inferior apartheid schooling and bring South Africa's education system more in line with the demands of a global economy has stumbled at the first hurdle.

Swaziland: Reading project to improve critical thinking

2006-08-23

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55161

Pre-school children in Swaziland are the focus of a novel large-scale reading project that aims to push literacy levels to 100 percent among the adult population and encourage independent thinking. Although the country of about one million people has a literacy rate of more than 80 percent - relatively high compared to other countries in the region - this figure is misleading, according to the Swaziland Reading Association, as the ability to read does not necessarily translate into critical thinking.

Middle-East: Israeli Apartheid

Bruce Dixon

2006-08-22

http://www.blackcommentator.com/192/192_cover_Israeli_apartheid_dixon.html

Imagine, if you will, a modern apartheid state with first, second and eleventh class citizens, all required to carry identification specifying their ethnic origin. First class citizens are obliged to serve in the armed forces, kept on ready reserve status until in their forties, and accorded an impressive array of housing, medical, social security, educational and related benefits denied all others.

SOUTH AFRICA: Xenophobia has an economic cost

2006-08-24

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=54914

A dangerous tide of xenophobia in South Africa, which stereotypes people from the rest of the continent as criminals and competitors for scarce jobs, is obscuring the positive impact immigrants are making, according to the government and advocacy groups.

Global: Need for Water Could Double in 50 Years, U.N. Study Finds

2006-08-23

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/world/22water.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

More than two billion people already live in regions facing a scarcity of water, and unless the world changes its ways over the next 50 years, the amount of water needed for a rapidly growing population will double, scientists warned in a study released yesterday (August 21).

Global: Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century

2006-08-23

http://www.ren21.net/pdf/IAP_InterimReport_060601.pdf

Timely for the second anniversary of the Bonn renewables 2004 Conference, REN21 has prepared an new Interim Report on the implementation status of the Conference's main outcome: the International Action Programme. REN21 is a global policy network that provides a forum for international leadership on renewable energy. Its goal is to bolster policy development for the rapid expansion of renewable energies in developing and industrialised economies.

DRC: Environment minister may stir up trouble

2006-08-23

http://www.afrika.no/noop/page.php?p=Detailed/12601.html&d=1

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Environment Minister Anselme Enerunga has allegedly being illegally trading exotic birds for weapons to arm renegades in the volatile east of the country, according to allegations passed onto Business Day by intelligence sources.

Niger: City takes steps to protect forest

2006-08-23

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=34210

As fears of its destruction mount, city authorities have taken steps to protect the forest, or the greenbelt, around Niamey and evict squatters living within its confines. The forest protects the city from encroaching desertification and the extremes of Niger's climate. Although an ultimatum to vacate the greenbelt was issued Apr. 30, IPS has verified that the forest is still being occupied by the squatters.

Nigeria: Solar Power Brings Relief to Villagers

2006-08-23

http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=34210

Bishop Kodji, a small fishing and canoe carving island in the Atlantic Ocean off Nigeria's sprawling commercial hub of Lagos, has become the first village to be electrified under the Lagos State government's pilot solar energy project. Before setting up the project, the village, with a population of 5,000, had not known electricity since its existence.

Somalia: Islamic courts ban trade in charcoal and wildlife

2006-08-23

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55234

The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which controls the capital, Mogadishu, and much of south and central Somalia, issued a directive on Tuesday banning exports of charcoal and rare birds and animals, an official told IRIN. The Executive Committee of the UIC issued the directive after a full committee meeting agreed to the ban, Sheikh Abdulkadir Ali Omar, the UIC Vice-Chairman, said. "The decision was reached after the committee was briefed on the dangers posed by the indiscriminate cutting of our trees," he said.

Kenya: Pledge to redistribute land

2006-08-23

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5275670.stm

The Kenyan lands ministry has said it will repossess all land owned by "absentee landlords" in the coastal strip and redistribute it to squatters. The ministry says it will seize such land in Coast Province by next Monday (August 28), in line with a presidential decree. The land question is a particular problem in the province, where half of the 4m residents are squatters.

Nigeria: Government hands Bakassi to Cameroon

2006-08-21

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4789647.stm

Officials from Nigeria and Cameroon have held a joint ceremony in the disputed oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to mark its transfer to Cameroon. Nigerian troops completed their withdrawal and transferred control of the northern part of the territory. The rest of the peninsula will remain under Nigerian civil administration for the next two years, in line with an International Court of Justice ruling.

Uganda: Land conflicts and their impact on refugee women's livelihoods

2006-08-22

http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/research/opendoc.pdf?tbl=RESEARCH&id=44c882912

This paper presents the preliminary findings of a study of land conflicts between refugees and host communities in Southwestern Uganda and their impact on refugee women's livelihoods. Uganda has a long history of hosting refugees that dates back to the 1940s when it hosted Polish refugees.Refugees were placed in gazetted areas in close proximity to the local population. As the refugee situation became protracted, hospitality gave way to a competition fpr resources such as agricultural and grazing land, water and forest resources.

DRC: Concern over media hate messages

2006-08-23

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=19557&Cr=democratic&Cr1=congo

The top United Nations envoy to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has expressed concern about hate messages in the local media, which are inciting Congolese to target and take revenge on “white people and foreigners,” a spokesman for the world body said.

Africa: Trophy for Impartial Coverage

2006-08-21

http://www.comminit.com/awards2006/awards2006/awards-1364.html

Africa Free Media Foundation (AFMF)/ World Free Press Institute (WFPI) Trophy for Impartial Coverage Encourages print, broadcast and electronic media to offer balanced news and opinions and thereby promote democracy and peaceful coexistence in Africa. The awards are presented to media outlets which exhibit impartiality in covering war, conflict, election and politically motivated trials.

Nigeria: Death threats against Daily Independent political affairs editor

2006-08-23

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=18639

Reporters Without Borders has voiced concern about death threats against Wole Olujobi, a political affairs editor with the privately-owned Daily Independent newspaper, who suspects the governor of the southwestern state of Ekiti of being responsible for this attempt to intimidate him.

South Africa: Freedom of expression legal clinic opens

2006-08-23

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/76510/

Victims of censorship in South Africa, especially the poor, will now have better access to legal justice, thanks to a new legal aid clinic opened by the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI). FXI has recently been registered as a law clinic, which enables it to provide free legal services to members of the public whose rights to freedom of expression have been violated.

South Africa: Highway Africa around the corner

2006-08-23

http://www.journalism.co.za/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=4383&CAMSSID=0155b35d4ed0f3bfa8beaa1c2d61e072

Each year, more than 500 delegates from across the globe attend the Highway Africa conference, the biggest gathering of African journalists in the world, to discuss issues relating to the impact of technology (internet, mobile technology, convergence) on journalism, media and society. This year’s 10th edition of this prestigious conference will see a gathering of media practitioners, private companies and NGOs meet from 11 to 13 September. The meeting will be a reflection on and celebration of the past ten years of the conference and a springboard for the future of the conference.

USA: Black History Museum To Have a Story for All

2006-08-23

http://topics.developmentgateway.org/culture/rc/ItemDetail.do?itemId=1069950

The future National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC will fight the tendency not to dwell on slavery and other negative events because these experiences are often essential to African American culture. It will also provide inspirational stories and lessons, and highlight the importance of African American history to the United States.

Africa: Privatisation of security and military functions

2006-08-21

http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/rdr.cfm?doc=DOC22517

This document considers whether the privatisation of security greatly undermines the very foundation upon which state authority rests, and if so, how. It further deliberates upon as to whether private military companies (PMCs) represent security actors of and for the state, or whether they represent autonomous agents who work above and beyond the state, and again how this reinforces or challenges the notion of the state monopoly over all forms of organised violence.

Global: Geneva Conventions of 1949 achieve universal acceptance

2006-08-23

http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/geneva-conventions-news-210806

For the first time in modern history an international treaty has achieved universal acceptance. The recent accessions by the Republic of Nauru and the Republic of Montenegro to the 1949 Geneva Conventions confirm the status of these conventions as the most widely accepted international treaties and represent a landmark in the development of protection for victims of armed conflict.

Global: NATO's 21st-century task - going from 'Europe' to 'global'

2006-08-23

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0821/p02s02-wogi.html

Ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union, NATO has been working to transform itself from a cold-war, Europe-focused bulwark against a communist threat to a military and political alliance relevant to the world of the 21st century. The answer has been for an expanded NATO - now including some of the very Eastern European nations that were formerly considered the enemy - to broaden its sense of defense and to take on out-of-area challenges that are seen as crucial to global security broadly and the West's well-being specifically.

Somalia: Seven countries to send troops

2006-08-21

http://www.afrika.no/noop/page.php?p=Detailed/12582.html&d=1

Seven countries yesterday (August 18) resolved to deploy soldiers to keep peace in Somalia in a few weeks. They have started revising an Operational Deployment Mission Plan for presentation to the UN Security Council to allow for the lifting of an arms embargo in the region. They are Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and Uganda.

Sudan: Armed youth voluntarily disarm in Jonglei

2006-08-23

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55224

Young men eyed the 1,300 guns laid out in a field in the southern Sudanese town of Akobo. The rifles would once have been worth a fortune to these members of the Lou Nuer, who typically used weapons to defend themselves or to raid neighbouring villages. Arms were once considered integral to life in this region. But in July, more than 1,000 men and boys in Akobo County relinquished their weapons to local authorities, asking nothing in return.

Sudan: Children still victims of war

2006-08-23

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55241

Children are still being recruited by the Sudanese army and various armed groups, despite the signing of formal peace and ceasefire agreements, a United Nations report has found. "It is clear that thousands of children are still associated with armed forces in southern Sudan, awaiting demobilisation," UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said in a report. "Recruitment continues to be widespread because the war in southern Sudan has created a plethora of government-aligned militias or other armed groups," the report added.

Uganda: Government rejects rebel demand for reconstituted army

2006-08-23

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55222

The Ugandan government has rejected a demand by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) for a reduction in the size of the army and the induction of rebel fighters into the military when a final peace deal is struck. During talks in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, the LRA had said reconstituting the Ugandan People's Defense Forces (UPDF) was the only way to achieve lasting stability in the country. "Uganda shall constitute and build a new national army that guarantees security, peace and sustainable prosperity of the people of Uganda," according to a LRA position paper presented to southern Sudanese mediators.

Africa: Continent slow to adopt low cost fibre

2006-08-21

http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=1116&s=news

With the EASSy fibre cable coming on stream in 2008, Africa could be expected to increase its use of cheaper fibre links for connectivity. A new report, however, suggests there are still many reasons satellite will remain the dominant transmission medium on the continent for the next three to five years.

Global: FreeFax

2006-08-21

http://freefax.com/

freeFAX.com is powered by the international tpc network which is a collection of fax servers in many locations around the world. Each fax that you send from freeFAX is routed through the tpc service and directed to the closest fax server to the recipient. The fax is usually sent within a few minutes but could take longer depending on fax traffic at the local fax server. After your fax has been delivered you will receive an e-mail confirmation from the server that sent the fax.

Global: Ubuntu Hacks - Tips & Tools for Exploring, Using, and Tuning Linux

2006-08-23

http://www.knowprose.com/node/16123

www.knowprose.com reviews: "The major chapters in this book deal with things from getting started (you're not using Ubuntu yet? Hello?) to setting up a server for a small office. 100 hacks, 414 pages, and a tuning fork on the cover (which must be confusing Darwin, wherever he is). This is one of the books I really went into because I use Ubuntu on one of my systems."

Global: UN agencies to coordinate implementation of WSIS outcomes

2006-08-21

http://www.choike.org/cgi-bin/choike/nuevo_eng/jump_inf.cgi?ID=4651

Implementation of the outcomes of the recently concluded World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) gathered momentum with the launch of the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS). High level representatives of twenty-two UN agencies met on Friday, 14 July 2006 at ITU Headquarters in Geneva under the chairmanship of ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi to facilitate the process.

Africa: Reconnect Africa is a Unique Online Publication

2006-08-14

http://www.reconnectafrica.com/

The August issue of ReConnect Africa is now online. Connecting Africa to the global world, ReConnect Africa is a unique online publication and portal that provides readily accessible information, articles, interviews and jobs in Africa. With essential services for employers who recruit, manage and develop African human resources and careers advice, services and information for graduates and professionals in Africa and the Diaspora seeking opportunities in employment and business in Africa.

South Africa: Youth Struggles

2006-08-14

http://www.aluta.org/index.html

ALUTA.ORG is an NGO for the youth by the youth. We are a goup of dynamic conscious youth determined to struggle for change. We want unity in diversity. We want the voices of youth to be heard. We call upon the youth of the world to rise up, unite and agitate for social change.

Africa: Women's fund launches campaign

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/36463

The African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) launched a campaign in support of its HIV/AIDS Fund on Monday, August 14 2006 at the Brassaii Restaurant, 461 King Street West, Toronto, during the 15th International AIDS conference in Toronto, Canada. The initiative, known as The 13 Campaign was launched during an awards ceremony organized by the AWDF, Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and Action Aid International to honour Stephen Lewis, the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa who has done a lot of work to draw the world's attention to the pandemic in Africa, and to the experiences of African women who have borne the brunt of the pandemic.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THE AFRICAN WOMEN’S DEVELOPMENT FUND LAUNCHES 13 CAMPAIGN

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) launched a campaign in support of its HIV/AIDS Fund on Monday, August 14 2006 at the Brassaii Restaurant, 461 King Street West, Toronto, during the 15th International AIDS conference in Toronto, Canada. The initiative, known as The 13 Campaign was launched during an awards ceremony organized by the AWDF, Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and Action Aid International to honour Stephen Lewis, the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa who has done a lot of work to draw the world’s attention to the pandemic in Africa, and to the experiences of African women who have borne the brunt of the pandemic.
During the awards ceremony, the organisers of the event also initiated the Stepten Lewis Fighting Spirit Award, which would be given to an African woman who has done exceptional work in HIV/AIDS in Africa. This year’s award went to Siphiwe Hlophe, of Swaziland Positive Living (SWAPOL).
The number 13 is very symbolic for the AWDF, even though for many in some parts of the world, 13 is regarded as an unlucky number. According to the 2004 UNAIDS report `Women and HIV/AIDS: Confronting the Crisis’, for every ten African men infected with HIV, there are 13 African women. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 13.1m women are infected. By focusing on the number 13, the statement the AWDF is making is that the situation can be turned around. By mobilising human and financial resources, women need not be infected and those who are infected need not die, but live positively.

The statistics have changed since this UNAIDS report, but the the AWDF will symbolically freeze these grim statistics by using the number 13 as a brand for the campaign to mobilise funds and resources to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on women. The campaign seeks to use the number 13, to get individuals and groups to mobilise thirteen others, and also to make donations with the number 13 in mind. People can, therefore, make a donation of US$13, US$130, US$1,300, US$13,000, US$130,000,000 etc.

In November 2005, the AWDF launched a HIV/AIDS Fund in Accra, Ghana in order to increase the amount of resources available to women’s groups in Africa working on HIV/AIDS. The 13 Campaign was conceptualised by one of the AWDF’s guests at the launch, Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro, Executive Secretary of the World YWCA, a global movement of 25 million women and girls in 124 countries.
The AWDF is an Africa-wide fundraising and grant-making initiative, which aims to support the work of African women’s organisations. The vision of the AWDF is for African women to live in a changed world in which transformed women can live with integrity and in peace. To realize this vision, the organization’s mission is to mobilise financial, human and material resources to fund local, national, regional and international initiatives for transformation led by African women. Since the AWDF started making grants in October 2001, it has awarded up to US$2.7 million to 311 women’s organisations in 39 African countries.
For further enquiries on the event, please contact Ms Vera Doku, Communications Officer, AWDF. Tel: 021 780476/7 or 021 782502; E-mail: vera@awdf.org

Siphiwe Hlophe

Siphiwe Hlophe is the Director and a founding member of Swaziland Positive Living (SWAPOL), which was formed in 2001 after she and four other women were diagnosed HIV positive. Ms. Hlope is a strong advocate on the rights of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), especially women, and is the Chairperson for International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Swaziland. Before assuming the directorship of SWAPOL, Ms. Hlope, who holds a degree in Agricultural Science was working at Swaziland’s Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, where she was the Project Manager working closely with women in the rural areas, training them on initiating income generation projects to alleviate poverty and to earn a living. She is also a member of the UN Secretary General TASK Force on issues of Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS.

In addition to this, Ms. Hlope has immense experience in the labour movement, where she has serves in various capacities. Presently, Ms. Hlope is the Treasurer for Swaziland Federation of Trade Union (SFTU), the Vice-president for Swaziland National Association of Civil Servants (SNACS). She also was instrumental in initiating the formation of the women’s wing under Swaziland National Association of Civil Servants (SNACS) and Swaziland Federation of Trade Union (SFTU).

Global: Special offer for Pambazuka News readers

2006-08-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/36465

QuickGuides are 24 page books, readable in an hour, covering the fundraising and management needs of both large and small organisations. QuickGuides are the perfect way to learn about a subject quickly and easily, and because they are written and reviewed by knowledgeable professionals from all around the world they will be useful wherever you operate as they are not country specific. And with 6 new titles to add to our current 22 and more planned for 2007 - from sources of funding to events planning, motivating staff to marketing – it’s all there.

South Africa: Bursary Programme To Bring African Talent To Sithengi 2006

2006-08-14

http://www.sithengi.co.za/news/stories/bursary_programme_to_bring_budding_african_talent_to_sithengi_2006?section=/news

A new bursary programme, funded by the Goethe-Institut, Germany's Cultural Institutes abroad, will help budding film professionals from all over Africa enter the Sithengi Market mix this year. The Goethe-Institut with its branches in Sub-Saharan Africa, will offer fifteen bursaries of 1000 euros each to students across the continent wanting to attend the 2006 Sithengi Talent Campus.

Global: Excellence in Environmental Journalism Awards

2006-08-21

http://www.iucn.org/

Reuters Foundation and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) launch the 2006 Media Awards for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. The awards, aim to help raise global awareness of environmental and sustainable development issues, by encouraging high standards in environmental reporting worldwide. Journalists working in print and online media are invited to submit entries to 2006 Reuters-IUCN Media Awards.

Global/UK: One World Fellowship Scheme

2006-08-21

http://www.owbt.org/pages/Fellowships/Fellowships%202006/fellowship2006.html

The 11th One World Fellowship Scheme, run in collaboration with the British Council, is currently open to applications to join the 2006 programme. Aimed at senior radio and television broadcasters from developing countries, the scheme brings a select group of broadcast professionals to the UK for a 2 week period in November. During this time a packed and varied programme is set up, tailored to meet the interests of those selected to participate.

Global: Mama Cash Grants

2006-08-21

http://www.comminit.com/funding2006/grants2006/funding-46.html

Mama Cash Grants support women's groups that champion a woman's right to control her own body. Grants range from 500 euros to 20,000 euros. Applications for The Netherlands and Europe as well as the Global South (Asia and the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean) and the former Soviet Union, can be submitted throughout the entire year.

Global: Trust Fund for the Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People

2006-08-21

http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/second_trustfund.html

Applications for the next round of Trust Fund grants are open now. There will be no exceptions made for proposals submitted after the deadline. In selecting previous projects, the advisory group carefully considered projects from the UN Permanent Forum’s seven diverse socio-cultural regions, as well as whether the project could access other funding sources and whether the project was a capacity building opportunity for indigenous organisations.

Global: 2007 International Human Rights Lawyer Award

2006-08-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/36396

Nominations are sought for the 2007 International Human Rights Lawyer Award (formerly the International Rule of Law Award).The award is presented annually by the ABA Section of International Law to recognize distinguished foreign lawyers who have suffered persecution because of their professional activities.
2007 INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER AWARD

ABA Section of International Law

Deadline: September 15, 2006

Nominations are sought for the 2007 International Human Rights Lawyer Award (formerly the International Rule of Law Award).The award is presented annually by the ABA Section of International Law to recognize distinguished foreign lawyers who have suffered persecution because of their professional activities.Presentation of the Award serves to publicize unheralded efforts and human right issues deserving of greater awareness.

The selection process for the 2007 Award has begun and the ABA Section of International Law encourages nominations deserving of recognition.

Nominations should identify and describe the reasons in support of eligibility, the human right issues addressed, and the nature of persecution suffered.

The 2007 Rule of Law Award will be presented at either the Spring or Annual Meeting. Nominations are due by September 15, 2006. The 2007 Human Rights Lawyer Award recipient will be chosen by the Section Selection Committee upon recommendation from the Chair.

Nominations and questions should be emailed to:
Russell@kerrlawfirm.com <mailto:Russell@kerrlawfirm.com>.

Global: Funding for sexual minorities

2006-08-23

http://astraeafoundation.org

Astraea's International Fund for Sexual Minorities supports groups, projects, or organizations working towards progressive social change which are led by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) communities and directly address oppression based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity/expression.

South Africa: Film Submission For The 2006 Cape Town World Cinema Festival

2006-08-14

http://tinyurl.com/pcyfu

The Cape Town World Cinema Festival (CTWCF) will once again showcase the latest international, African and South African films in its programme this year. The focus is on world cinema and more specifically, films from the south. The programme consists of features, documentaries and short films.

Global: Certificate in Conflict Resolution, September 2006

2006-08-23

http://www.respond.org/spp.asp

Certificate in Conflict Resolution, September 2006. Run by RTC and the Centre for Forgiveness and Reconciliation at Coventry University. A two week course which aims to provide a greater conceptual understanding of conflict, violence and peace and the forces of conflict dynamics, and a range of practical conflict handling skills.

UK: Strengthening Policy and Practice

2006-08-23

http://www.respond.org/spp.asp

Strengthening Policy and Practice. 20 - 24 November 2006 and 16 - 20 July 2007. A one week course designed to meet the needs of staff working in international, national and governmental agencies with advisory and management responsibility for relief, development, rights and peace-building programmes. Held in Birmingham, UK.

UK: Working with Conflict course

2006-08-23

http://www.respond.org/spp.asp

Working with Conflict course. April 23rd - June 29th 2007. An intensive, practical and participatory course for practitioners working for peace and justice in situations of instability and conflict. The overall aim of this course is to provide participants with a broad understanding on a variety of issues and topics relevant to their work and situation, thereby contributing to the capacity of organisations and communities to work for positive change. Held in Birmingham, UK.

UK: Mango Training

2006-08-23

http://www.mango.org.uk/training/

Mango provides practical financial management training for NGO staff and board members working in development and humanitarian aid. Mango’s courses are carefully designed to meet the real needs of staff working in the field and behind the scenes at head office. Upcoming courses include: Financial Management for Development NGOs: Foundations, Tools & Strategies; Financial Management in Emergencies; Practical Financial Management for Programme Managers: Working with Local Partners and Getting the Financial Management Message Across.

USA: UN Conference of NGOs - Achieving the MDGs

2006-08-21

http://www.unngodpiconference.org

The Conference aims to build on what has already been accomplished by greater NGO and civil society participation in many of the debates taking place at the United Nations, including Informal Interactive Hearings by the General Assembly President with NGOs, civil society and private sector representatives. Speakers at the Conference are being asked to illustrate their work on the ground by real-life examples of effective partnerships to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Ghana: Chief Financial Officer

2006-08-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/36331

Chief Financial Officer wanted for enterprise development financial institution in Accra, Ghana. The CFO will provide leadership, direction and expertise in financial management and administration of the bank; establish and enhance overall financial controls; comply with locally acceptable accounting principles; and ensure profitability and sustainability of the bank. For consideration, email your CV to ReConnect Africa at: careers@reconnectafrica.com <mailto:careers@reconnectafrica.com> or editor@reconnectafrica.com <mailto:editor@reconnectafrica.com>

Kenya: Programme Officer

Open Society Institute for East Africa (OSIEA)/Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AFRIMAP)

2006-08-23

http://www.osiea.org

The Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA) and the Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project (AfriMAP)—both projects of Open Society Institute (OSI)—are hiring a Programme Officer. The position will be based in Nairobi, Kenya, in the OSIEA office.
DEADLINE PASSED

Namibia: Country Coordinator

IAP Worldwide Services, Inc.

2006-08-21

http://www.comminit.com/vacancy2794.html

The incumbent will independently provide support services to satisfy the overall operational objectives of USAID Namibia. S/he must have 5 years of senior experience managing HIV/AIDS programmes, ideally in a developing country context. Applicants must be U.S. citizens able to obtain a secret security clearance. Application deadline August 18.

Nigeria: Country Representative/Immunization Specialist

Immunizationbasics - USAID

2006-08-21

http://www.comminit.com/vacancy2784.html

The successful applicant will manage a multi-state programme to improve the coverage of routine immunisation in northern Nigeria. S/he must have a Masters Degree or MBBS, plus advanced public health training and 10 years experience working with ministries of health in Africa.

South Africa: Foundation Phase Teacher Trainer

The Open Learning Systems Education Trust

2006-08-21

http://www.comminit.com/vacancy2797.html

This organisation is looking for applicants with a strong interest in the education transformation process in South Africa and in providing sustained related in-service teacher development and support at primary school level. S/he must have sound knowledge of the National Curriculum for Foundation Phase and a tertiary teaching/education or relevant field qualification.

Southern/Eastern Africa: Coordinator - Seed Security/Alternatives to Genetic Engineering

African Biodiversity Network (ABN)

2006-08-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/36418

The ABN is now looking for a dynamic, energetic and skilful person who can take on the job of Coordinator of the seed security and alternatives to genetic engineering thematic area of the network.
~ COORDINATOR: SEED SECURITY / ALTERNATIVES TO GENETIC ENGINEERING THEMATIC AREA ~
FOR THE AFRICAN BIODIVERSITY NETWORK (ABN)

INFORMATION
Position: Coordinator Seed Security and Alternatives to Genetic Engineering thematic area
Type: Full-time
Location: Africa Based – Kenya, South Africa or Ethiopia
Term: 1 year probationary period, three year commitment, extendable

The African Biodiversity Network (ABN) aims to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, and protect local communities in Africa. It seeks to achieve this through promoting biodiversity-related rights, policy and legislation, and supporting viable ways forward for diverse livelihood systems. The ABN is an informal network of African NGOs and individuals, who are engaged in promoting these activities in Africa and strengthening alliances with like-minded others internationally. Specific objectives are: network support and development, capacity building, and catalysing wider action.

ABN’s work focuses on four thematic areas: seed security, alternatives to genetic engineering, cultural biodiversity, and community ecological governance. The work in each thematic area is led by a thematic coordinator. Since its origin, the ABN has successfully combined activities at the international level, with a strong presence at the regional and national levels, and strengthening work with local and community-level initiatives.

The ABN is now looking for a dynamic, energetic and skilful person who can take on the job of Coordinator of the seed security and alternatives to genetic engineering thematic area of the network.


RESPONSIBILITIES

• Under the direction of the ABN steering group, responsibility for the overall coordination and further development of ABN’s seed security / alternatives to genetic engineering thematic area activities.
• Support partners and other groups in the region in their efforts and activities for seed diversity and against genetic engineering and, and facilitate regional communication and collaboration amongst them.
• Establish, develop and nurture new partnerships and collaborations with organisations active at the national and regional level in Africa.
• Monitor international and regional developments that affect farmers in Africa and their control and rights over biodiversity, and communicate them to the network.
• Maintain good communication and information flows within the network related to activities and developments on seed diversity and genetic engineering.
• Develop plans with partners and then manage the disbursement and allocation of funds according to workplans agreed at the annual meeting and adjust these throughout the year to best align with changing and emerging requirements.
• Complete activity and financial reports and respond to reporting and information requirements as needed by the secretariat and funding partners.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
• Experience in working with NGOs, networks and farmers organisations in Africa.
• Good knowledge and practical experience in the area of genetic engineering and seed security issues in Africa, both at the technical and political level.
• Excellent communication and writing skills in English.
• Affinity with ABN issues, values, processes, visions and goals.
• Ability to work autonomously as well as in a highly multicultural team.
• Good facilitation skills and ability to motivate groups and plan strategically.
• Willingness and ability to travel within Africa and abroad if required.
• Computer literate with the ability to use basic software packages, email and internet.


TERMS OF EMPLOYMENT

The work can be performed from South Africa, Kenya, or Ethiopia, but a reliable communication infrastructure (phone and high-speed internet) is essential. Set up costs will be provided.

ABN seeks an initial three-year commitment for this position. Salary will be commensurate with experience. Starting date: late 2006 or early 2007 depending on what arrangements can be made with the successful candidate.


HOW TO APPLY

Applicants should send a CV and application letter to abn.seedscoordinator@gmail.com no later then 30 September 2006. Applications must include full contact details, as well as the names and telephone numbers (including mobile phone, if possible) of three references.

Interviews will take place in mid-October. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted, so thank you in advance for your interest in the ABN.

Interview costs of short listed candidates will be met. Receipts will be required.

Zimbabwe: Artistic and Communications Manager

The Tonga Project Online

2006-08-21

http://www.comminit.com/vacancy2816.html

The successful candidate will promote, preserve and disseminate information relating to Tonga heritage using multimedia methods. S/he must be familiar with the arts industry and committed to the development of the arts and have experience in producing multi media products. Applicants must be able to write and speak English fluently.

Fahamu