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This week's highlights

2007-05-23

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/highlights/41572

FEATURES: Kwesi Kwaa Prah on Mamdani's interpretation of the conflict in Darfur
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Mandisi Majavu on psychology, postcolonial theory and Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth
- The political situation and the return of Bakili Muluzi in Malawi
- Doreen Lwanga on violence and paranoia in South Africa
LETTERS:
- Responses to last week's article on solidarity with Zimbabwe
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Will the next G8 summit honour old promises?
BLOGGING AFRICA:
- Review of the North African blogosphere
BOOKS AND ARTS:
- Marian Douglas reviews the documentary film NO on rape in the black American community
AFRICAN UNION MONITOR:
- Opening Africa’s borders and challenging HIV/Aids
- CSO pre-summit activities

WOMEN AND GENDER: State of the World’s Mothers report
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Congolese flee fresh clashes
HUMAN RIGHTS: Study on Ugandan torture survivors
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: The scramble for Africa’s oil
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Risk of health crisis in South Sudan
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Another blow for Senegal’s opposition
AFRICA AND CHINA: Chinese activists look to Africa
CORRUPTION: New TI report on judicial corruption
DEVELOPMENT: African countries fight EU for survival
HEALTH AND HIV/Aids: Medicines without doctors
EDUCATION: West asked to help Zimbabwe’s children
LGBTI: Mauritian blood donor system brands homosexuals
ENVIRONMENT: Call for strong leadership to tackle climate change
LAND & LAND RIGHTS: Botswana’s bushmen seek UK support
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Nigerian journalists attacked
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: All set for eLearning Africa
PLUS: e-newsletters and mailings lists; fundraising and useful resources; courses,
seminars and workshops, jobs and books and publications

*Pambazuka News now has a Del.icio.us page, where you can view the various websites that we visit to keep our fingers on the pulse of Africa! Visit http://del.icio.us/pambazuka_news

Correction

2007-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/41561

The article 'Zimbabwe: Challenges for solidarity' in Pambazuka News No. 304 published last week (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/41422) was wrongly attributed to Shereen Essof. The article was in fact by Ronal Wesso. The information on our website has been corrected accordingly.

The politics of apologetics: genocide denial, Darfur version

Kwesi Kwaa Prah

2007-05-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/41564

Kwesi Kwaa Prah critiques Mahmood Mamdani's writings on Darfur. He posits: 'Mamdani indulges in technicist sophistry, tip-toeing nimbly around the real issues in Darfur and effectively providing solace to the Khartoum regime.'


In the aftermath of the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945, the singularly heinous crimes of Herr Hitler and his followers were subjected to global and detailed scrutiny.

The genocidal campaign against European Jewry, which he and his hordes flagitiously described as the 'final solution', was brought to the wider notice of humanity as the atrocities in and out of the Nazi death camps (the 'Vernichtungslager' and 'Todeslagers'), under Hitler’s equally mephistophelean disciple Heinrich Himmler, came to light.

It was at this time that the inane excuse by many Germans: 'wir haben nicht gewusst' ('we did not know') caught the world’s attention. Many Germans were claiming that while the devilry was going on, they saw nothing, spoke nothing and heard nothing.

In our pronouncements about the devilry that is going on in Darfur, we need to be careful not to put ourselves in a position where we offer similarly lame explanations. Even more crucial is the need to avoid providing by word and deed comfort and succour to the perpetrators of evil in Darfur.

We have seen the genocidal barbarism that Rwanda descended into in 1994, when between 500,000 and 800,000 people were butchered in three months.

This genocide was mostly carried out by two extremist Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during a period of about three months from 6 April through mid-July 1994.

Since the 1960s, the brutal carnage of the Angolan war, the Liberian war, the Sierra Leonean killing fields, the Casamance imbroglio, wars in Guinea, Mozambique, Uganda, Guinea Bissao, the incessant slaughter in both the Congos, the Sudanese wars, the Chadian civil wars, the Tuareg wars, the Central African Republic, the Nigerian civil war, the collapse of the Somali state as we knew it, the Eritrean and Ethiopian wars and other internecine conflicts have left Africans benumbed and traumatised, with little and sporadic respite from intermittent but continued blood-letting. With weak democratic institutionalisation, tin-pot dictatorships and warlordism, the immediate future of Africa and Africans look bleak.

We appreciate the fact that in all wars, all the contending parties claim God to be on their side. None invoke the devil’s name in their support. In South Africa, the truth and reconciliation process revealed some atrocities committed by the insurgents.

But, it would be grossly disingenuous to suggest that in either scope or intent, those that were fighting the racist government committed crimes anywhere near equal to the fiendish villainy of the apartheid regime.

As Herr Hitler’s war drew to an ignominious close, the greatest fear of German citizens in the face of Soviet military advances was treatment at the hands of Soviet forces who had suffered about 20,000,000 dead (military and civilian). Through these colossal sacrifices, they had broken the back of the Nazi war machine. In Darfur, we know that the insurgents have also been responsible for atrocities. But the moral standing of the perpetrators and the resistance are worlds apart; and the scale of the atrocities incomparable.

We can debate ad infinitum whether or not the tragedy of Darfur has reached genocidal proportions; or whether it is a counter-insurgency and an insurgency; or whether it is a civil war or not a civil war; or whether it is as brutal as the Iraqi case; or whether the numbers of people that have been killed in Darfur are anywhere near the numbers that have been killed in Iraq. The bottom line is that these two scenarios represent enormous tragedies in our times, and deserve the attention and anger of humanity against who are responsible for them.

The Bush administration started the tragic misadventure in Iraq with lies about weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which were never there. But the grounds for this misadventure had long been in preparation. In February 1998, Bill Clinton argued: 'What if Saddam fails to comply [with UN sanctions], or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more time to develop this (WMD) programme? He will conclude that the international community has lost its will...[that] he can go right on, and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, I guarantee you, he’ll use this arsenal.'

On 31 October 1998, Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which stated: 'it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power'. And, in that same year, 1998, the US Congress authorised President Clinton to '...use US armed forces pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 678 to achieve implementation of UNSCRs 660—667.'

In December 1998, Clinton’s national security council advisor Sandy Berger’s view was that: 'for the last eight years, American policy towards Iraq has been based on the tangible threat that Saddam poses to our security. That threat is clear'. What has so far been little appreciated is the fact that control of oil resources formed an important, but little discussed, reason for the Bush intervention to topple former US protégé Saddam Hussein.

The American public knows better now, and will know more in the future about the Bush administration’s unspoken and hidden war aims. Iraq is everyday on world television. The bombings and gore are unfailingly harrowing.

Darfur has for long been a little known place in Africa. Now, for the past four years, it has been thrust into the forefront of our imagination. People have slowly come to learn about the contradictions and conflicts of the Afro-Arab borderlands. The contestation and conflict between pastoralists and sedentary cultivators runs roughly parallel to Arab and African in Darfur, between an Islamist tradition from the north-east and a tradition from West Africa; between African language-speakers and those who prefer or rely on Arabic and Arabic customs.

Islam found a footing there in the 16th century, and took on the more mystical Sufi forms common to other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The most impoverished are the African groups. These latter also form the social bases of the insurgency. What needs to be categorically stated is that competition over resources does not necessarily lead to war and/or genocide. It is the way such competition and other allied problems are resolved which is ultimately determinant and decisive. If democratic and culturally tolerant policies are advanced, it is possible to avoid conflict.


Mamdani’s Darfur

Over the past three to four years, Mamdani has written two articles which confuse issues and intentionally or unintentionally throw dust in our eyes with regards to what is happening in Darfur, and whether or not we can describe it as genocide. The first article I saw appeared in the collection of the 2004 Editorials from Pambazuka News.[1] The second article has recently been put out in the March 2007 issue of the London Review of Books.[2]

My attention was drawn to the second article by a young colleague who asked in an email: 'I don’t know why Mamdani has been...a denialist of the racist genocide in Darfur. Please direct me to any readings which may enlighten me on this matter.' Mamdani indulges in technicist sophistry, tip-toeing nimbly around the real issues in Darfur and effectively providing solace to the Khartoum regime.

Mamdani’s implicit audience in both papers is the American public. He directs a great deal of his attention to outlining how the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, 'often identified as a lone crusader' on Darfur, has succeeded in spreading a false alarm about genocide. He effectively establishes an eloquent and bruising debate between himself and Kristof about 'naming'. But in all this, he makes controversial assertions, some of which are examined here.

In the first paper, by the same title, Mamdani asks: 'How Can We Name the Darfur Crisis?' In the second paper, the title becomes: 'The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.' The two papers cover almost the same ground, but in the recent paper, Mamdani attempts, ineffectually, to beef up his evidence. He also discusses Iraq more fully. However, with the introduction of the Iraq tragedy into the discussion, he tries to shift and dilute the argument and focus of his whole discourse from what he wants to say about Darfur: that genocide is not taking place; taking to pyhrric semantics about genocide. It is a position, an argument, stated in the passive mood.

The question could be asked more actively: 'what is happening in Darfur?' This is more direct and avoids much of his obfuscation and intellectual ducking and diving. Mamdani assembles a wealth of facts; but he does not see his way successfully out with a synthesis. In my estimation, this is partly the result of his methodological drift towards postmodernism. One cannot quarrel with many of Mamdani’s facts and some of the historically attestable substance of his argument. It is in his judgment and the way he draws inferences between these facts that his selection of saliency fails him.

It is an ironic lesson that Gen. Bashir and his dictatorship will find comfort reading Mamdani. They have committed no genocide; although about a third of the population of groups such as the Fur, Messalit, Zaghawa, Birgid, Daju, Berti, Tama, Tunjur and others have been forcibly been dislocated from their homes and villages and forced to flee across the border to the miserable safety of cross-border refugee camps in Chad through a deliberate combination of torture, rape, gunfire and aerial bombardment, by aircraft and helicopter gunships.

The murderous Janjaweed are now also operating in Chad. There are 200,000 refugees in the cross-border Chadian refugee camps. Estimates are that between 220,000 and 300,000 people have lost their lives since early 2003 through this campaign of state-sponsored terror. 2,000,000 of a former Darfur population of about 6,000,000 are now in surrealistically overcrowded refugee camps. The Sudanese government is using ethnic cleansing and forced displacement as a counter-insurgency strategy. It is useful to recall that, 'ethnic cleansing' as a descriptive phrase was a euphemism used by Slobodan Milosevic to describe the mass killings in the former Yugoslavia.

The phenomenon is hardly new. Goody reminds us that this is how the Anglo-Saxons emptied most of England of Celts, pushing them to the western extremities of the island. That was also how the Latins moved north into once German lands. From the sixteenth century onwards, European expansion involved the constant transfer, confinement or destruction of so-called 'primitive' peoples throughout the Americas, in Australia, South Africa and the Antilles. Again and again, indigenous populations were reduced to 'ethnic minorities'. Since the second world war, three devastating operations of ethnic cleansing have historically been registered in the Mediterranean, Middle East and the Indian subcontinent: the partition of India, the creation of Israel in the late 1940s and the division of Cyprus in 1974.[3]

Both the sustained brutal carnage of Iraq and the slaughter in Darfur are horrific realities of our times. There is strong similarity with respect to the main protagonists in the cycle of violence. Much of what Mamdani says about the similarities is acceptable.

In Iraq, since the American invasion and the end of the conventional war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, an insurgency against the coalition of invasion forces and the current Iraqi US-backed government has emerged and is growing by the day. The main butchers in Iraq now are the vigilantes, sectarian militia and paramilitaries pitching Shia against Sunni, and vice versa.

In Darfur, the vigilantes, sectarian militia, and paramilitaries are Arabised or Arab groups. The Sudanese government is supporting these groups with weapons and aerial bombardment to effect scorched earth policies of ethnic cleansing. In a recent article in the Al Ahram Weekly, Gamal Nkrumah quoting Sudanese First Vice-President Salva Kiir, a Southern Sudanese, writes that: 'Khartoum’s proxy militia, the ethnic Arab Janjaweed are wreaking havoc on the hapless indigenous non-Arab population of Darfur. Furthermore, the Sudanese President’s failure to hold his cronies accountable for trashing his country’s international reputation by defying the international community’s wish to deploy UN troops has exacerbated the situation.'[4]


Understanding Darfur

In order to understand what is going on in Darfur and much of the Afro-Arab borderlands we need to take a broad historical view of the situation.

It must be remembered that Arabs first entered the African continent almost 1,400 years ago. The first Arabs to enter Africa were early followers of the Prophet Mohammed who sought refuge in Christian Ethiopia in what is often called 'the first hejra' in 615 A.D.

A quarter of a century later, the Arabs, under the military command of Amr ibn al-As, by fire and sword, pushed their way into Egypt during the great movement of expansion of the lands of the Caliphate. This was during the caliphate of Umar b. al-Khattab. By the end of the 7th century, the territory of the Caliphate in Africa had expanded westwards to the Atlantic, covering what are now the countries of the Mahgreb: Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

By fair or foul means, today, Arabs and Arabised Africans occupy about a third of the African continent, and the processes of the Arabization of Africans continue. Darfur and much of the Sudan are squarely located in the frontline and vortex of this process. It is an expansionist process, which Africans must address. Is this acceptable? My view is that it must be halted. Africans are happy to be as they are. Arabisation is unacceptable.

Mamdani asks: 'Is Darfur genocide that has happened and must be punished? Or, is it genocide that could happen and must be prevented?' He argues the latter. The basic weakness in this thinking is that an ahistorical and undialectical assumption has been made in the understanding of genocide.

The point is that, genocide is not only an event; indeed it is rarely simply so. It is, more significantly, a process. by that, I mean we are not going to wake up one day and find that overnight, we have moved from a pre-genocidal to a genocidal reality. Genocide is almost always a consequence of an approach to warfare. Once the foundations and direction of a genocidal route have been put in place, baring seriously mitigating circumstances or major reverses on the war-front, genocide is fairly consequential. The question we must ask therefore: is there a genocidal process underway in Darfur? What are the politics and ideology of the insurgency and counter-insurgency with respect to the phenomenology of genocide? When we understand the ideology of the counter-insurgency we can ascertain if the intention and process is genocidal or not.

In an article, which appeared in the Washington Post on 30 June 2004, Emily Wax writing from El Geneina tells the story of three young women who walked into a scrubby field just outside their refugee camp in West Darfur:

'They had gone out to collect straw. They recalled thinking that the Arab militiamen who were attacking African tribes at night would still be asleep. But six men grabbed them, yelling Arabic slurs such as "zurga" and "abid", meaning "black" and "slave". Then the men raped them, beat them and left them on the ground, they said. They grabbed my donkey and my straw and said, "Black girl, you are too dark. You are like a dog. We want to make a light baby", said Sawela Suliman, 22, showing slashes from where a whip had struck her thighs as her father held up a police and health report with details of the attack. They said, "you get out of this area and leave the child when it’s made".'

It is important to note that this was not an isolated incident. The mind and thinking behind such cruel and barbaric acts are telling. Years ago, Joseph Oduho, one of the founders of the Sudan African National Union in the south, drew my attention to the fact that the military principle of 'ibid yektul abid' ('killing a slave with a slave'), has a history in the Sudan and was frequently heard during the First Civil War, 1956–1972.

Emily Wax’s testimony continues with the revelation that interviews with two dozen women at camps, schools and health centers in two provincial capitals in Darfur yielded consistent reports that the Arab Janjaweed militias were carrying out waves of attacks targeting African women. 'The victims and others said the rapes seemed to be a systematic campaign to humiliate the women, their husbands and fathers, and to weaken tribal ethnic lines. The pattern is so clear because they are doing it in such a massive way and always saying the same thing', said an international aid worker who is involved in health care. She and other international aid officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared reprisals or delays of permits that might hamper their operations.

She showed a list of victims from Rokero, a town outside of Jebel Marra in central Darfur where 400 women said they were raped by the Janjaweed. 'It's systematic,' the aid worker said. 'Everyone knows how the father carries the lineage in the culture. They want more Arab babies to take the land. The scary thing is that I don't think we realise the extent of how widespread this is yet.' Another high-ranking international aid worker said: 'These rapes are built on tribal tensions and orchestrated to create a dynamic where the African tribal groups are destroyed. It’s hard to believe that they tell them they want to make Arab babies, but it’s true. It’s systematic, and these cases are what made me believe that it is part of ethnic cleansing and that they are doing it in a massive way.'

In El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, about 200 miles east of El Geneina, 'Aisha Arzak Mohammad Adam, 22, described a rape by militiamen. They said: 'Dog, you have sex with me.' Adam, who was receiving medical treatment at the Abu Shouk camp, said through a female interpreter that she was raped ten days ago and has been suffering from stomach cramps and bleeding. They said, 'the government gave me permission to rape you. This is not your land anymore, abid, go'.[5]

In another report, we are informed: 'When describing attacks, refugees often referred to Government of Sudan (GOS) soldiers and Janjaweed militias as a unified group; as one refugee stated, "the soldiers and Janjaweed, always they are together". The primary victims have been non-Arab residents of Darfur. Numerous credible reports corroborate the use of racial and ethnic epithets by both the Janjaweed and GOS military personnel; "Kill the slaves; Kill the slaves!" and "We have orders to kill all the blacks" are common. One refugee reported a militia member stating, "We kill all blacks and even kill our cattle when they have black calves". Numerous refugee accounts point to mass abductions, including persons driven away in GOS vehicles, but respondents usually do not know the abductees’ fate. A few respondents indicated personal knowledge of mass executions and gravesites.'[6]

Several observers and concerned parties have indicated that the tenets of the counter-insurgency include the view that the Islam of the insurgents is inferior or ideologically deficient at the mass base of society. Islam in Darfur, for the majority, is more of West African inspiration than of immediately easterly derivation. Daoud Ibrahim Salih, a refugee from Darfur and a founding board member and president of the Damanga Coalition for Freedom and Democracy, a group that developed from exiled Darfurian refugees in Cairo expresses himself thus: 'We, the Darfurians, did not commit any crimes, just that we are African...we are very ordinary people, as you can see from the pictures. Today, genocide is happening, right now while we are speaking, for my people in Darfur...we did not take Islam in the full package, which means assimilation and Arabisation...second, they want to take the land, because Darfur is a huge area...that’s why all of the Arabic countries are supporting Sudan’s government.'[7]

Apophthegmatically, Daoud Ibrahim Salih summarises the position thus: 'To stop genocide means to stop Arabization, to stop genocide means to stop assimilations, to stop genocide in Darfur means to stop the dividing of Africa.'[8] The then United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in characteristic understatement, in guarded and diplomatic style, has described the Darfur situation as 'bordering on genocide'.

Mamdani successfully calls into question Kristof’s extravagant and fabulous numbers. He also summons to witness Obasanjo and Ntsebeza. Obasanjo’s utterances feature in both the 2004 and 2007 articles. Obasanjo in 2004, at a time he was chair of the African Union (AU) and involved in delicate negotiations between the Khartoum regime and the Fur insurgents said that:

'Before you can say that this is genocide or ethnic cleansing, we will have to have a definite decision and plan and programme of a government to wipe out a particular group of people, then we will be talking about genocide, ethnic cleansing. What we know is not that. What we know is that there was an uprising, rebellion, and the government armed another group of people to stop that rebellion. That's what we know. That does not amount to genocide from our own reckoning. It amounts to of course conflict. It amounts to violence.'

What Mamdani fails to add is that, in an address at the headquarters of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, on 10 October 2006, Obasanjo, then president of the largest contributing country to the AU's protection force in Darfur - set out the need for the AU to hand over to the UN there, while retaining its African composition: 'It is not in the interest of Sudan, nor in the interest of Africa, nor indeed in the interest of the world, for us all to stand by, fold our hands and see genocide in Darfur.'

Soon after the Darfur crisis exploded on the world scene, Ntsebeza, the well-known South African jurist, in work commissioned by the UN Security Council, had not at that stage found explicit grounds for declaring genocidal acts or intent in Darfur.

In his, 'Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide', Gerard Prunier informs us that the real logic of the war is related to a word which Nazism, the demise of colonialism and the development of scientific anthropology have marginalised into intellectual exile and political opprobrium: 'race'.

'In the 1980s Colonel Gaddafi and Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi gave an answer: Darfur was poor and backward because it was insufficiently Arabized. It had missed out in the great adhesion to the Muslim umma because its Islam was primitive and insufficiently Arabic. The situation was pregnant with the potential for enormous destruction because it fitted only too well within the broader context of racial prejudice in the Sudan.'[9]

Prunier points out that, during the 1980s, Gaddafi as self-appointed leader and modern prophet of the Arab world distributed vast quantities of arms in Darfur. His plan was to get rid of Africans and replace them with Arabs. It is the same Gaddafi who said at a press conference in Amman at an Arab League summit meeting in October 2000 that 'two-thirds of Arabs live in Africa and the remaining third must join the other two in Africa'. Mamdani is worried that an important contention of the international campaign against the Sudanese government and its proxy militias is that 'the ongoing genocide is racial: "Arabs" are trying to eliminate "Africans"'. But his objections cannot stand up against such evidence as produced here.


Arabisation and the assimilation of Africans

Arabisation has been the historical instrument for the expansion of the Arab culture and the Arab political world on the African continent. From the earliest times, the acculturation of conquered peoples, trading partners and the spread of Islam, became the motor for Arab expansion in Africa. In many parts of the world, Islam has not led to Arabisation. This is the case with Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, the countries of Central Asia, Turkey, and parts of China, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and some other areas of the world. Local cultural traditions have prevailed in spite of the penetrative influences of Islam.

For many Messalit, Fur, Birgit and Zaghawa, the Islamic religion sits astride an older African religious system. There have therefore often been combinations of indigenous pre-Islamic traits, and, at other times, Africanised and nativised Islam.

The popularity of these is what the Janjaweed see as a stumbling block to greater Arabisation. Like the Yezidi Kurds, the Fur practise, in effect, a religion, which is an eclectic mix of indigenous African pre-Islamic traditions and usages, and Islamic ones. But the injunction that 'Arabic is the language of the God' has historically seduced many to bend to the sweep of Arabisation and Arabism.

Today the Nubians are about 3,000,000 in Egypt, a country of 70 million people. In the Sudan, the Nubians are very many more. Large sections of the Nubians, in both Egypt and the Sudan, have over centuries been Arabised. But in recent years a strong Africanist recollective tradition is affirming itself societally in Egypt in tandem with similar processes in the Sudan as a whole. Among the Beja around Kasalla, the Blue Nile region, the South Sudan, Nuba and Darfur. The noose is closing around what the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLA) in its early years described as 'the Khartoum clique'.

From the onset of the postcolonial era in the Sudan, Arabisation has been an avowed political offering of the political elite. Both the military and civilian regimes in Sudan over the past half-century have upheld the policy of Arabisation. It is inherently a racist policy. Mamdani bemoans those he describes as 'demonizing Arabs'. It would have been useful to be explicit and explain this. If he is suggesting that those who are fighting Arabisation and the international campaign against genocide in Darfur are Arab demonisers, then he has clearly nailed his flag to his mast: The ideology of the war on the side of the counter-insurgency is Arabist.

There are many Africans on the continent and in the diaspora who reject Arabisation; who have no sympathy with the idea of changing Africans into Arabs; who are happy to be Africans and nothing else. They have that right. Other minorities in the Arab world continue to speak in increasing volume about the non-Arab character and otherness of their communities. They include Syriac, Moronites, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Kurds, Turkomen and Berber communities.

Many African intellectuals also took note of Osama bin Laden’s threats about Darfur. In 2006, He called for Islamist militants to prepare for a 'long war against the Crusader plunderers in western Sudan'. What such thinking cannot truly face up to is that both sides in the Darfur war are made up of Muslims, Arab Muslims and African Muslims. But, the African Muslims are regarded by their Arab fellow-inhabitants as heretics.

Most of us cannot support big-power intervention in the area, in whatever shape or form. But the AU in combination with the UN is, if well coordinated, acceptable. Many Africans are still waiting to hear, loud and clearly, Arab criticism of Sudanese government policy in Darfur. It is remarkable that the silence of members of the League of Arab States is so resounding.

The idea of assimilation and Arabisation of Africans comes to us in many guises. Ali Mazrui’s rendition of in September 2004 in an interview with an Arab media house, reads: 'I do believe that the African People and the Arab People are, at the moment, two people in the process of becoming one. So the process has been underway for centuries and they will, one day, be virtually indistinguishable, but at the moment it is a continuum, rather than a dichotomy.'[10]

An ethnic group is a group with a sense of common identity based on history, cultural affinities and solidarities of identification. Members of an ethnic group tend to identify with one another, or are so identified by others, on the basis of a boundary that distinguishes them from other groups. This boundary may take any of a number of forms - racial, cultural, linguistic, economic, religious, political - or differing combinations of these factors. Ethnic boundaries are frequently more or less permeable. Of all the factors which define an ethnic group, the racial factor is the least significant. Race is in anthropological usage, an ascribed/biological category; all the other factors are achieved categories. These latter are cultural. It is the cultural factor - understood to include language, traits and customary usages - which is the most important. It is nurture not nature which defines ethnicity. Ethnicity therefore largely overlaps with the notion of a cultural group.

Mamdani is mistaken when he writes: 'The various tribes that have been the object of attacks and killings (chiefly the Fur, Messalit and Zaghawa tribes) do not appear to make up ethnic groups distinct from the ethnic groups to which persons or militias that attack them belong. They speak the same language (Arabic) and embrace the same religion (Muslim).'

This is factually simply not correct. Arab ethnicities here include, the Baggara or Shuwa Arabs, Taisha, Rezeigat, Habbaniya, Beni Halba and others. In multilingual Africa, most people speak several languages. The fact that I speak English does not make me an Englishman. Arabic in the Sudan is a hegemonic language. In places like Darfur most people would know Arabic, but that does not make them Arabs. The Janjaweed are ethnically Arab militias armed and supported by the Sudanese government. Yes, they embrace the same religion, but the Arabs of the Sudan regard the Islam of Africans as inferior.

Mamdani writes that: 'the dynamic of civil war in Sudan has fed on multiple sources: first, the post-independence monopoly of power enjoyed by a tiny “Arabized” elite from the riverine north of Khartoum, a monopoly that has bred growing resistance among the majority, marginalized populations in the south, east and west of the country; second, the rebel movements which have in their turn bred ambitious leaders unwilling to enter into power-sharing arrangements as a prelude to peace; and, finally, external forces that continue to encourage those who are interested in retaining or obtaining a monopoly of power.'

He is correct in identifying the root cause of the conflict as the monopoly of power by what Garang often described as the 'Khartoum clique'. But why is Mamdani saying that this clique has monopolised and marginalised the populations of the south, east and west; then going on to say that the insurgents, the overwhelming majority in the east, south and west, should share power with what - in his own words - are 'a tiny Arabized elite from the riverine north of Khartoum'? In democracies, power rests with the majority. The English say, 'you cannot have your cake and eat it'.

He then goes on: 'The dynamic of peace, by contrast, has fed on a series of power-sharing arrangements, first in the south and then in the east. This process has been intermittent in Darfur. African Union-organized negotiations have been successful in forging a power-sharing arrangement, but only for that arrangement to fall apart time and again. A large part of the explanation, as I suggested earlier, lies in the international context of the War on Terror, which favours parties who are averse to taking risks for peace. To reinforce the peace process must be the first commitment of all those interested in Darfur.'

To reinforce the peace process is the democratic rights of the majorities which need to be acknowledged and respected. The simple reason why African Union organised arrangements have time and again fallen apart is, as Abel Alier years ago wrote about the post-colonial ruling class in Sudan, because they have made an easy habit of dishonouring agreements.[11] They fear the implications of democracy in the Sudan.

In Mamdani’s view, apparently one of the most irksome facts about the Darfur international campaign is that 'the conflict in Darfur is highly politicized, and so is the international campaign. One of the campaign's constant refrains has been that the ongoing genocide is racial: "Arabs" are trying to eliminate "Africans". But both "Arab" and "African" have several meanings in Sudan. There have been at least three meanings of "Arab". Locally, "Arab" was a pejorative reference to the lifestyle of the nomad as uncouth; regionally, it referred to someone whose primary language was Arabic. In this sense, a group could become "Arab" over time. This process, known as Arabization, was not an anomaly in the region: there was Amharization in Ethiopia and Swahilization on the East African coast. The third meaning of "Arab" was "privileged and exclusive"; it was the claim of the riverine political aristocracy who had ruled Sudan since independence, and who equated Arabization with the spread of civilisation and being Arab with descent'.

Is the definition of an Arab a question of taking your pick from among these different meanings Mamdani offers? The 'pejorative reference to the lifestyle of the nomad' is literally and metaphorically a joke in much of the Arab world. Arabs know too well that the historic civilisation that is Arab, came from the Arabian peninsula. It is a culture and civilisation of which they are proud. Arabisation does not result from merely speaking Arabic as a primary language. It involves the acceptance and adoption of Arab culture as a package. Yes, the Arab identity in the Sudan has been characterised by privilege and exclusivity. That is why the marginalised majority of the Sudanese are putting up resistance to its domination.

In the history of the relations between Arabs and Africans, from time immemorial, Arabs have been masters, and Africans slaves. Indeed, 'black' in much of the Arab world is equated with slave. Until today in Egypt, the so-called bawab (doorman, gate-keeper) is invariably a dark-skinned Nubian from Egypt or the Sudan. We are reminded that 'the bawab class is the lowest of the low.'[12]

Amharization in Ethiopia and Swahilization on the East African coast has not gone on unchecked and unquestioned. In our lifetimes, we know that in Ethiopia, Amhara cultural dominance has been one of the factors underlying some of the conflict we have seen in the area. Swahilization remains largely a linguistic affair. It includes in its mould Christians, Moslems, African religionists and a whole variety of African language-speakers. Swahilis in East Africa do not control the state anywhere. They are Africans. Arabization is a different kettle of fish. Effectively and eventually, it totally effaces the cultural characteristics of Africans. This is why Africans in the region, who historically were Christians before they became Muslims, today regard themselves as Arabs and are prepared to embark on genocidal wars in the service of Arabism and Arabisation.


In search of Africans

When he comes to the issue of who is an African, Mamdani shifts into postmodernist over-drive and writes that:

'"African", in this context, was a subaltern identity that also had the potential of being either exclusive or inclusive. The two meanings were not only contradictory but came from the experience of two different insurgencies. The inclusive meaning was more political than racial or even cultural (linguistic), in the sense that an "African" was anyone determined to make a future within Africa. It was pioneered by John Garang, the leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south, as a way of holding together the New Sudan he hoped to see. In contrast, its exclusive meaning came in two versions, one hard (racial) and the other soft (linguistic) – "African" as Bantu and "African" as the identity of anyone who spoke a language indigenous to Africa. The racial meaning came to take a strong hold in both the counter-insurgency and the insurgency in Darfur. The Save Darfur campaign's characterisation of the violence as "Arab" against "African" obscured both the fact that the violence was not one-sided and the contest over the meaning of "Arab" and "African": a contest that was critical precisely because it was ultimately about who belonged and who did not in the political community called Sudan. The depoliticization, naturalization and, ultimately, demonization of the notion "Arab", as against "African", has been the deadliest effect, whether intended or not, of the Save Darfur campaign.'

Mamdani must not underestimate the power and relevance of language as an identification reference point. Language is a central feature of most cultures. Arguably, it is the most crucial feature. At the same time, it is one of the principal distinguishing features of homo sapiens as a culture creating animal. It is through language that we relate societally, through language that we transact our social lives.

I personally knew John Garang, for many years. Indeed, I spoke to him on the phone, long-distance, about a month before his very strange death. Nowhere does he define an African in the political terms Mamdani writes about. Garang was always a proud Dinka from Bor. Mamdani’s so-called inclusive definition of an African as 'anyone determined to make a future within Africa' is most perplexing.

When I read this definition to an intern in the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), Cape Town, Nana Kofi Appiah, his immediate and hilarious response was that this is an invitation to the pillagers of Africa. Does this sort of idea apply to other people in other parts of the world? Does a similar formulation apply to Chinese, Indians, Arabs or Europeans? If I arrived in China or India with a wish to make a future in these places, do I, on the basis of my wishes, become Chinese or Indian?

Cecil Rhodes, Verwoerd, Ian Smith were all people who were 'determined to make a future within Africa'. Were they Africans? I dare say they never even wished to be so regarded. Mamdani’s understanding of the so-called inclusive definition of an African makes Africaness very cheap. I say, 'if everybody is an African, then nobody is an African'.

We all know that, by appearance and looks, you cannot tell a Sunni from a Shia, a Northern Irish Protestant from a Catholic, a Palestinian from an Israeli, a Pakistani from an Indian. There are numerous other such examples. Black, in Darfur, does not really help us to identify an Arab from an African. The difference is more subtle and decisive. Africans are attached to more eclectic varieties of Islam than Arabs. They are more likely to be cultivators than pastoralists. They identify themselves as Africans and speak more African languages. They form the overwhelming majority of the population. For an American audience, black as understood in African-American parlance does not help us understand the nationality dynamics of Darfur. Africans are first and foremost a historical and cultural group. They identify themselves as such. Most are black, but there are blacks who are not African. From South India through Sri Lanka to Melanesia many such groups are to be found.

Years ago, I argued elsewhere that 'the racial definition of an African is flawed. It is unscientific and hence untenable. No serious mind today would use the race concept in any way except as an instrument for poetic imagery. What I am saying is that no group of people has been "pure" from time immemorial. Notions of purity belong to the language of fascists and the rubbish-bin of science. But before my observations are misunderstood let me take the argument into another direction. Most Africans are black, but not all Africans are black, and not all blacks have African cultural and historical roots.'[13]

Additionally, one must not forget that Arabism in Africa came largely through conquest and cultural domination. Therefore, even today, Arabisation and Arabism for Africans represent instruments of thralldom in a tradition, which precedes Western colonialism by a millennium.

1 Mahmood Mamdani. How Can We Name the Darfur Crisis? Preliminary Thoughts on Darfur. In, African Voices on Development and Social Justice. Editorials from Pambazuka News, 2004. Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers, 2005, pp. 256–262.
See also, K.K. Prah. Darfur Beyond the Crossroads: Struggles of African Nationalism in, African Voices on Development and Social Justice, ibid, pp. 249-256.
2 See, the London Review of Books. Vol.29. No.5. March 2007.
3 Jack Goody. How ethnic is ethnic cleansing? New Left Review. 7 January– February 2001.
4 See, Gamal Nkrumah. Masters at holding on. Al-Ahram Weekly. 5-11 April. p.9.
5 Emily Wax. 'We Want to Make a Light Baby'; Arab Militiamen in Sudan Said to Use Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing. Washington Post Foreign Service. Wednesday 30 June 30 2004.
6 See, Documenting Atrocities in Darfur. US State Publication 11182. Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, September 2004.
7 See, Experts Appeal for Action to Resolve Darfur Crisis.
8 Ibid.
9 Quoted here from, Harakati Shaka Lumumba. Darfur: A Wake-up Call for Africa. (Mimeo), Nairobi, Kenya. 12 November 2006. Appearing in Tinabantu, Vol.3, No.1, 2007.
10 Harakati Shaka Lumumba. Ibid.
11 Abel Alier. Southern Sudan. Too Many Agreements Dishonoured. Exeter: Ithaca Press, 1990.
12 See, Amina Abdul Salam. A doorman’s lot is not a happy one. The Egyptian Gazette, 29 March 2007, p.6.
13 Kwesi Kwaa Prah. Beyond the Color Line: Pan-Africanist Disputations. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1998, p.36.

* Kwesi Kwaa Prah is director of The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) www.casas.org.za/, Cape Town.

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

The wretched of the earth: Critical psychology in the colonial context

Mandisi Majavu

2007-05-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/41566

Mandisi Majavu draws on Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to encourage an exploration of the interconnections between psychology and society in Africa.


Derek Hook (2004) argues that Frantz Fanon’s greatest source of originality as a postcolonial theorist lay in the fact that he combined psychology and politics in his analysis of colonial problems, national liberation and social revolution.

For Fanon, psychopathology in the colonial society, or any other oppressive society for that matter, can be characterised as a ‘pathology of liberty’. This means that for a psychological intervention to be sincere and relevant, the psychological services offered would have to play their part in restoring freedom in some meaningful capacity to the sufferer (Hooks 2004).

According to Bulhan (1985), for Fanon, oppression in the practice and institutionalisation of violence by the colonial state is not only motivated and perpetuated by economic motives, but also by psychological and cultural interests. The revolutionary response of the oppressed to such violence generates a new language, people and humanity. Such a response has the potential to produce a liberated society (Bulhan 1985).


Concerning violence
Fanon argues that decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon: 'The naked truth of decolonization evokes for us the searing bullets and bloodstained knives which emanate from it.' Accordingly, decolonisation is a programme of 'complete disorder' which aims to change the social order of the colonial world. It is a meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature: '[their] first encounter was marked by violence and their existence together – that is to say the exploitation of the native by the settler – was carried on by dint of a great array of bayonets and cannon'. Colonial society by its very nature is violent.

It does not, however, necessarily follow that decolonisation as a revolutionary programme is violent in nature. It might be true that most countries that have been colonised have achieved freedom through a violent struggle. However, that says more about the arrogance of colonial power than it says about the decolonisation programme itself.

This misconception of decolonisation as violent in nature characterises the false assumptions that underlie Fanon’s thinking about where the decolonisation process ought to begin. Fanon’s understanding of the colonial world is profound. However, some of his assumptions regarding decolonisation hinder how we might relate sensibly to the possibilities of moving forward, beyond pathology, to the liberated, decolonised society.

We could conceive of decolonisation as a fundamental, societal radical change in both the economy, and in social relations such as race and class relations; and that through such a programme, colonised people find their freedom; and not, as Fanon claims, through violence.

Fanon argues that violence for the colonised is therapeutic, a 'cleansing force'. But as Albert (2004) points out, 'violence has horrible effects on its perpetrators, more often than not causing them to devalue human life'. Colonial societies serve as evidence to support this view. There is no evidence to make us believe that violence perpetrated by the other side will not have the same effects.

Fanon argues that violence frees 'the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction...[and] restores his self-respect'. He does not provide evidence to support this perspective, nor does he explain his assumption regarding the ‘native inferiority complex’. He seems to assume that simply because blacks in the colony are subjected to all sorts of racist humiliation, this automatically results in an inferiority complex and self-hatred in blacks (Owusu-Bempah & Howitt 2000).

In his book Shades of Black, William Cross (1991) argues that there are at least four factors that explain why the mental health of blacks, including any propensity toward self-hatred, are not and have never been easily predicted by measures of racial identity:

- the limited generalisability of results of results of racial-preference studies conducted with three and four year old children
- the effects of black biculturalism, acculturation, and assimilation on black monoracial preference trends in racial identity experiments
- the problem of interpreting the meaning and salience of racial preference and racial identity for black adults operating with a multiple reference group orientation
- the historical failure of students and scholars of racial identity to differentiate between concepts and measures of ascriptive RGO [Reference Group Orientation] and concepts and measures of self-defined RGO.

Some of Fanon’s assumptions vis-à-vis the representation of decolonisation - the motivation that inspires natives to violently rebel against a colonial regime and the supposedly rampant inferiority complex - are unfounded. If we are concerned with building a sound postcolonial theory, then that theory ought at least to be based on sound assumptions. A postcolonial theory is needed that explains social events and psychological and political trends and phenomena sufficiently for us to situate ourselves, explain to others and understand the way things are.


The pitfalls of national consciousness
Fanon discusses how the new government of the liberated postcolonial state can betray the revolution. He argues that the middle class of the new postcolonial state is underdeveloped because it is reduced in numbers, has no capital, and is opposed to the revolutionary path. Eventually it falls into deplorable stagnation. For this middle class, nationalisation of the economy simply means the transfer into native hands of those unfair advantages which are a legacy of the colonial period. The middle class 'will be quite content with the role of the Western bourgeoise’s business agent'.

Fanon refers to this middle class as the 'bourgeois dictatorship'. He argues that they are not real bourgeoisie in the true sense of the word, but rather a 'sort of little greedy caste, avid and voracious, with the mind of a huckster, only too glad to accept the dividends that the former colonial power hands out to it'. Accordingly, after independence this middle class does not hesitate to invest the money it makes out of its native soil in foreign banks.

According to Fanon, the reason it is corrupt is because it has a permanent wish to identify with former colonisers. Consequently, it adopts with enthusiasm their characteristic ways of thinking. It is incapable of generating great ideas to manage and develop the economy, for it remembers what it has read in European textbooks.

The logic that underlies Fanon’s analysis is that the postcolonial government and its new middle class betray the revolution because, among other things, they want to be white, or to occupy the position formerly occupied by the coloniser. For example, he writes that before independence the 'look that the native turns on the settler’s town is a look of lust, a look of envy; it expresses his dreams of possessions – all manner of possession: to sit at the settler’s table, to sleep in the settler’s bed, with his wife if possible'.

History teaches us, as for example Howard Zinn argues in his People’s History of the United States, that when people are oppressed, they always rebel sooner or later. Furthermore, they do not rebel because of lust or envy, but because they believe in justice, equity and freedom.

In most cases, the revolution is betrayed due to a combination of a lack of vision for the new institutions for a democratic society, and a mixture of internal and external forces such as self-interest and the global economy.

Postcolonial politics from this standpoint is revealing and enables us not only to explain but to predict political and social phenomena. A theory based on flawed assumptions, that compels us to focus on lust, envy and desires to be white, forces us to chase psychologically reductionist dead-ends.


On national culture
Fanon’s basic premise is that native intellectuals respond to colonialism and the cultural hegemony that goes with it by rejecting Western culture and embracing a pre-colonial history and way of life. To escape from the hegemony of the Western culture, Fanon argues that the native intellectual feels the need to turn backwards towards his unknown roots, and as a result, sets a high value on the African customs and traditions: 'The sari becomes sacred, and shoes that come from Paris or Italy are left off in favour of pampooties, while suddenly the language of the ruling power is felt to burn your lips.'

The appreciation of certain Western ideas and the fact that certain postcolonial writers are influenced by Western writers and write in European languages should not be presented as a failure to create an authentic postcolonial cultural work, as Fanon presents it.

To write in an African language, or to quote only African writers, does not necessarily translate into originality. A radical postcolonial vision on culture ought not to be opposed to diverse cultures, including Western cultures, or a reduction diverse cultures to a least common denominator. The point is to enjoy their benefits while transcending prior debits.

As Albert (2006) points out the only real cultural salvation lies in eliminating racist institutions, dispelling colonialist ideologies and changing the colonial environment within which historical communities relate, so that they might maintain and celebrate difference without violating solidarity. A radical post-colonial theory would encourage individuals to choose 'cultural communities they prefer rather than have elders or others of any description define their choice for them' (Albert 2006: 47).


Conclusion
What is needed is a liberated society that is not characterised by cultural hierarchies and the one-way community assault common throughout the colonial history. Liberation postcolonial theory ought to provide us with concepts to describe and explain what it would take to build such a society and what such a society would constitute.

This essay is based on the premise that to have a growth-oriented attitude about one’s ideas, rather than a stability-oriented attitude, is healthy and the antithesis of sectarianism: 'Sectarianism is defensive and preservationist and often obscurantist and unconcerned with truth. We need instead to be self-critical and growth-oriented, and to strive for clarity and seek truth as best we can' (Albert 2004: 190).


References:

Albert, M., 2004, Realising hope: Life beyond capitalism, Canada: Fernwood Publishing.

Albert, M., 2004,. Thought dreams: Radical theory for the 21st century, Canada: Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

Bulhan, H.A., 1985, Frantz Fanon and the psychology of oppression, New York: Plenum Press.

Cross, W.E., 1991, Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American identity, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Fanon, F., 1990, The Wretched of the Earth, London: Penguin Books.

Hook, D., 2004, 'Steve Biko, psychopolitics and critical psychology', in Hook, D., ed., Critical psychology, Cape Town: UCT Press, pp. 84-114.

Owusu-Bempah, K. & Howitt, D., 2000, Psychology beyond western perspectives, UK: British Psychological Society Books.


* Mandisi Majavu, a Stephen Bantu Biko fellow, is currently working on his masters in psychology at the University of Cape Town. majavums@gmail.com

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

Muluzi's comeback

Aaron Akwete Sandie

2007-05-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/41567

Akwete Sande gives an overview of the current political situation in historical context in Malawi in the lead up to the 2009 elections.


Bakili Muluzi was a powerful politician under dictator Hastings Banda, first President of Malawi 1964-1994. As Secretary General of Malawi Congress Party at a younger age, Muluzi was dictator number two to Banda. But like all others before him, he served for a short period and was removed.

Bakili Muluzi went into business, but he resurfaced to lead the United Democratic Front – UDF in 1992 as a pressure group to agitate for political pluralism.

Muluzi, an accomplished orator backed by the faith community alongside the late Chakufwa Chihana, a trade unionist, galvanised Malawians against the one-party state. Through a referendum in 1993, Malawi adopted multi-party democracy.

In 1994 Bakili Muluzi, a Muslim in a Christian dominated country defeated Banda at the polls and began a reform process that included entrenching judicial independence, and freedoms such as press and association.

He closed notorious detention camps where Banda had kept his foes. The country saw the flourishing of non-governmental organisations in restricted areas of human rights. Independent print and electronic media houses included a state television station emerged.

A new constitution that provided for an Ombudsman’s office, an anti-corruptions bureau was adopted. New policies on gender issues, youth development and the largely successful Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) were initiated.

Muluzi’s rallying call was poverty reduction. By the end of his first five year term in 1999, despite success on human rights, free basic education which he had successfully introduced, poverty had got worse in a country with only tobacco as a major export.

It was not an easy win for Muluzi in 1999. The UDF, which had attracted all sorts of characters, lost popularity as people moved to other parties. Come elections in May 1999, Muluzi could only manage a bare win.

The second and last constitutional term for Muluzi was a troubled one. Successive droughts left the majority of people starving from 2002–2004. Newspapers were a wash with revelations of official corruption.

The most seriously affected was the ministry of education, where dubious contractors were paid for uncompleted school blocks. The Anti-Corruption Bureau Act, was not strong enough to discipline those with connections in powerful places. The civil service lost professionalism as most senior officials owed allegiance to powerful politicians.

However, the UDF had no clear succession plans because Muluzi himself harboured desire to extend his stay at state house. A slow but steady campaign for constitutional amendments for 'Open Term' and 'Third Term' to do away with two consecutive terms was waged. But parliament rejected the amendments. This campaign alienated Muluzi from most of his senior colleagues, who opted out of the party and government. Here perhaps is the genesis of his desire for return from retirement to contest again.

Muluzi anointed Bingu Wa-Mutharika, the current president and former international servant of the World Bank and COMESA as his successor. He successfully campaigned for Bingu, propping him as an economic 'engineer'. Although Bingu carried the day, it was with a very narrow margin sparking allegations of electoral fraud.

However after a few months the new president complained that the former president wanted to control him. Bingu shunned party functions leading to his being sidelined by party officials, and finally he bowed out.

It had never happened that a president could abandon a party that put him in power, elsewhere perhaps, but certainly not in this part of Africa.

However civil society and the public welcomed the move when he formed his own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Many people flocked to it and within a short period DPP won six seats in by-elections therefore becoming a ruling party by default. Bingu’s stance on corruption, arresting his former party members and convicting others in the process has further created enemies for the president.

An attempt to impeach Bingu failed due to some gaps in the constitution, which provides for that possibility. But parliament had no procedures to set the impeachment in motion. Bingu was followed by many UDF legislators reducing the former ruling party into as a second rate opposition in parliament.

However vice president Cassim Chilumpha stuck in the UD. On several occasions, he became critical of the government. President Muntharika made an attempt to sack him but the courts restricted him. However, last year the vice president was arrested on treason charges, which he is answering while under house arrest.

The departure of Mutharika from UDF sparked bitter rivalry with Muluzi. Though several attempts have been made by a public watchdog – Public Affairs Committee – PAC, it has failed to reconcile the two. Each side accused the other of sparking political tension, and the race to 2009 elections has been unofficially begun.

What began as mere speculations that the former president intended a come back is now real.

'My job when I left office was to rebuild my party. But a lot of attempts have been made by Bingu to destroy UDF, this has forced me to decide to comeback. If UDF nominates me a candidate, I will contest in 2009', Muluzi told his supporters last month.

The announcement received mixed reactions with government spokesperson Patricia Kaliati declaring that government may reconsider Muluzi’s benefits as a retired president. These include security detail, house, medical and other benefits.

President Mutharika declared that he was at war with the opposition and true to his words made unprecedented moves by deploying the Malawi Defence Force to stop a rally from being addressed by former the president in Mulanje, a place seen as Mutharika’s stronghold and where the majority of his ethnic kinsmen come from.

The vocal civil society condemned the use of the armed forces. But they were not backing the proposed comeback by former President. Some chiefs have formed a coalition to lobby fellow chiefs to deny support to the former president. Prominent journalist – Gedeon Munthali and Chinyeke Tembo have formed a coalition too – Anti-Muluzi Coalition to mobilise people against Muluzi.

Columnists and radio analysts have argued that a Muluzi comeback is uncalled for and is premised on greed. They argue that the country was denied international aid from 2003 due to corruption and over-expenditure. Poverty grew worse during Muluzi’s ten year rule. They believe Muluzi who controls the finances of his party is being used by greedy fellows who want a fortune.

Perhaps such statements will do nothing to stop the populist former president from running for office again. But he has another thing coming. A constitutional reform programme which started last year entered into second phase this month and a conference to review the 1995 constitutional was recently held.

The issues to discussed included abolishing of death penalty, a recall provision for non-performing legislators, amendments on the presidency where a former president after completing five year terms should not come back, a president should have a minimum of an academic degree, are some of the hurdles Muluzi has to contend with.

However, constitutional amendments will have to go to parliament where the combined opposition is capable of upsetting the motions which people see as targeting Muluzi who has no first degree apart from professional diplomas and honorary ones. There have been calls from civil society for a referendum on the proposed changes, which may hold hope for the former president who is still popular.

'We have no trust in our MP’s, they can be forced by their leaders to sabotage the process, and render the whole exercise fruitless', says Billy Mayaya of the Blantyre Synod of the influential Presbyterian Church, explaining the reasons for the referendum.

An analyst from the University of Malawi, wiseman Chijere Chirwa says Muluzi’s comeback is a sign of a leadership crisis in a party-UDF that ruled the country from 1994–2004. He adds that the move will alienate ambitious people, who may decide to opt out.

Muluzi cites arbitrary arrests, and flouting of constitution by Mutharika as his major reasons for comeback. 'He is overlooking the successful ending of chronic farming in the return of donor support; debt relief and eradication of corruption', argues Eric Ning’ang’a, an educationist based in the city of Blantyre.

But Adamson Muula, a popular columnist and medical practiotioner says Muluzi should be allowed to stand. Muula says Muluzi’s comeback will bring challenges because people will be able to judge whether he has any better agenda.

Bakili Muluzi is determined to deflate the tube he inflated but Mutharika will not take it lying down – the use of the armed forces is just a sign of things to come as 2009 draws closer.


* Aaron Akwete Sandie is a freelance journalist based in Botswana.


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

The psychological burden of profiling young black males in South Africa

Doreen Lwanga

2007-05-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/41565

Although there is much for Africans to celebrate in post apartheid South Africa, Doreen Lwanga is troubled by the 'psychological burden' of having to engage in the profiling of black youth when walking the streets of urban centres such as Johannesburg.


A while ago, I wrote about the psychological trauma that beggars on the New York City subway undergo, as they prepare to ask passengers for a dollar. Here, I would like to explore the psychological burden of profiling young black males in South Africa as a visitor to the country.

I recently travelled to South Africa. I had not been to South Africa since I left in 2001, following a year of working with the Lawyers for Human Rights Refugee Rights Project in Pretoria. I had promised myself never to return to South Africa because of the 'not-so-friendly' welcome I received when I was there. I had gone to South Africa assuming that I would be 'going home', but my inability to speak any of the eleven national languages prohibited me from freely enjoying the social scene.

South Africa provides hope to so many Africans on the continent. Its diversity of culture, landscape, vibrancy, peoples, history, leadership and resilience makes it the most admired and one of the most sought after destinations. It has become a favoured destination for many international Africans students and academics flock to pursue a world-class education, teaching or research experience outside their home countries. It is Africa’s economic capital.

Many Africans like me who visit or live in South Africa want to enjoy a part of it or be a part of it. We expect a 'home welcome' and a pat on the back, yet many of us, particularly from outside Southern African are profiled because we do not speak any of the South African black languages.

Amazingly, both South Africans and foreigners in the country are scared of street life and miss out on the most vibrant experience of any city. We are warned of walking in the city without clinging onto our handbag during the day and scared from enjoying the night life for fear of rape, murder or robbery in the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. The tourists and immigrants claim crime is high in these cities because there are many unemployed young South Africans. While South Africans claim it is due to the high influx of immigrants.

I remember one evening in 2000 while I was walking home from work in Pretoria at about six o’clock, two young black males came running after me. When they approached me, one pulled my bag while the other struggled to break my necklace. As I fought back and yelled for help, none of the passer-bys stopped to rescue me from these attackers. If this had happened on the streets of Kampala, the mob would surely have meted out justice onto these two robbers.

Certainly, it is expected that we all take the necessary precaution while living in big cities. I realise that it is risky to park one’s Pajeros on some streets of Pretoria or Johannesburg in the night without guaranteed security. However, I am bothered that I can safely walk the streets of Kampala or New York without psychological fear of attack, rape or murder from young black males unlike in Johannesburg or Pretoria.

Then I wonder, am I, like many other foreigners and South Africans living in these cities, too paranoid? Are we too impatient with the recently acquired public space that the new South African transition ushered in for free enjoyment of all, including young black males? Is it just young black males clearly restricting our ability to move freely within Johannesburg and Pretoria, and are they all South Africans?

Clearly we have many reasons to celebrate that the new South Africa has extended to many of us from the rest of Africa easier access to its borders without the cruel apartheid system.

However, I do not want to live a stratified lifestyle where those who consider 'to have' live under key and lock from those who supposedly 'do not have'.

I enjoy street life, and the ability to interact with local people and observe the daily lives of ordinary people. I enjoy public transport and do not want to be chauffeured around in private car hire at seven times the cost of public transport.

I hate the fact that walking the streets of Pretoria and Johannesburg makes me paranoid, particularly when as a black person I participate in black-on-black profiling.

As a black person and a self-acclaimed black nationalist, I cannot bear the psychological burden of profiling young black males on the streets of South Africa nor deny myself the opportunity of opening my Luganda or English-speaking mouth for fear of attack from my own people.

* Doreen Lwanga is an Africa Scholar, Researcher and Activist working in the areas of African security, Pan-Africanism and Higher education in Africa.


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

What can Africa expect from the G8?

Tajudeen Abdul Raheem

2007-05-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/41600

I was travelling in Germany all of last week, 13-20 May 2007, like a politician on a whistle stop campaign. My journey had begun in Nairobi. I went via Amstadam to Hamburg. From Hamburg, I travelled by road to Rostock then off by train to the beautiful Gothe town of Weimar, from where we again got on the train to Bonn via Frankfurt.

This is not election year in Germany. Even if it were, I could not be campaigning for a seat in the Bundestag, or the European parliament, since I am neither a German nor a European citizen.

But it was a campaign of a sort. I was participating in various pre-G8 summit activities and events organised by the UN Millennium Campaign in Germany, in partnership with other civil society and NGO groups, including the Catholic church, and even elements of the private sector who support the global campaign against poverty.

Many of my colleagues had doubts and wondered if it was a good use of my time and energy. One cynical colleague even suggested that I was perhaps just going just for the trip. Another who knew that this could not be the case, and that I definitely could not be going there for the weather, consoled the others with a more philosophical doubt: 'Tajudeen is a servant of lost causes who believes that he can make stones hear!'

Their cynicism is not without foundation. It is not that they do not know the significance of the most important club of the richest countries in the world. They are very much aware that G8 countries dominate global trade, commerce, finance, global institutions, corporations and disproportionately use, misuse and abuse global resources; and that against this stark reality, the rest of us look like poor tenants living on the fringes of the real estate of the G8 countries.

Rather their scepticism is based on painful lessons from previous G8 summits. Their expectation now is 'not to expect anything at all'. That way, they protect themselves against disappointment. It is not that they do not believe that there are many things this club of the world’s most powerful countries could do about the world’s problems, from poverty to pollution; but that they no longer hold their breath that they will.

I call these non-expectations the post-Gleneagles downward spiral. The G8 summit in that Scottish town in 2005 raised so much hope that the richer countries of the world were able, ready and willing to stop treating the overwhelming majority of the poorer peoples of the world as illegal tenants; rather as fellow human beings in a shared estate that respects our common humanity with dignity.

At Gleneagles, old commitments such as those contained in the Millennium Declaration, as translated into the MDGs, were renewed, while additional promises were made to fast track the end of the extreme poverty and hunger, reform global financial and trading regimes to facilitate fairer trade, write of the odious debts of poor countries, improve both the quantity and the quality and effectiveness of aid.

2005 was even declared ‘the year of Africa’ - thanks to the discredited, soon to be ex-prime minister, Tony Blair - amidst optimism that the world would stop doing wrong to Africa and start playing fair; while African leaders would also stop doing wrong by their peoples by improving governance and increasing accountability to their own citizens.

Initially there was a buzz of activities to potentially shut up the critics and cynics. Debt relief was provided for 14 African countries that were already in the HIPC initiative. Non-HIPC African countries - Nigeria for example - had some of their debt cancelled while they paid off the rest. (Nigeria paid back more to Britain in 2005/2006 than the global total of British aid – therefore raising the question: who is aiding whom?)

But the majority of the African countries, unable to pay their debts, are still waiting on bended knees at the G8 doors. The volume of aid also increased in quantity. But the old habits of tied aid, rewarding current favoured leaders, and withholding from those out of favour, lack of coordination, non-delivery and not meeting promises are still the practice.

With hindsight, even the aid increase was soon revealed to be paper money because it was mostly debt relief. And Nigeria and Iraq swallowed a larger proportion of it.

However 2005 represented a high point in both public awareness in the G8 countries and globally about these issues, forcing political leaders to take note and recommit themselves to doing something.

Today, that something is lagging behind all expectations. Aid levels are now falling because G8 leaders are backsliding and retreating from their commitments.

And yet in the troika of trade, debt and aid, aid is the weakest link, though the most visible politically.

Aid can be doubled, tripled or quadrupled. But without further significant movement on trade and universal debt relief, the poorer countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America will continue to be trapped in the vicious cycle of structural poverty, induced and reproduced by the unequal terms of global trading regimes, imposed by the richer countries through the IMF, World Bank, EU and WTO.

Poor countries can trade their way fairly from poverty to prosperity. Aid is like emergency treatment at the scene of accident. It is well appreciated, and often timely. But it does not mean that the wounded should not go for proper medical examination. For long term development, it is not aid that these African need, but a fairer trading system and opportunity to choose their own development model.

Most African countries produce what they do not consume and largely consume what they do not produce. But the price of both what they produce and consume are determined from outside, namely the EU, G8 and now increasingly China.

Therefore Africa cannot be aided out of poverty without a fundamental reform of the unequal trade that is rigged against our producers, workers, professionals and domestic companies. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprising, this is the one area where the G8 countries, the EU and the US have continued to conspire against the poorest peoples of the world in the stagnated so called development round – the Doha negotiations in the WTO.

If the G8 wants to renew the faith of its own citizens in their leadership of the world, and convince poor countries that they actually mean what they say, the answer is very simple: honour your own commitments.

Africa does not need new promises, but the fulfilment of old ones. Both the ones we made to ourselves through the African Union, Nepad and the MDGs, and those promised by the G8.

Everywhere I spoke, I told my German friends and other activists who care about international development, many of whom are as frustrated with their leaders’ broken promises that we are doubly disappointed with ours and the G8.

The next G8 summit in the East German town of Heiligendamm should not be business as usual, but business in the most unusual way. And that means two things: No more new promises, but the honouring of all the old ones. That would be a truly welcome surprise.

Response to Ronald Wesso

Dr S Dube

2007-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/41559

I am grateful for your support for Zimbabwe. SA is pathetically supporting the Mugabe regime, with no indication of supporting the masses. Thousands of refugees flock to this country every day. They are called illegal immigrants, they get arrested and deported to Zimbabwe each day. They are excluded from social services. Those qualified to do certain jobs cannot get proper papers to work, especially if their skills are not listed as needed.

I suggest that Zimbabweans themselves rise up in the diaspora. Let them stand up and be counted. If the masses would be visible...then we can start talking. Let the millions of Zimbabweans in SA rise up and be counted to air their grievances. The Zimbabwean problems will be solved by those who will take the initiative!

Dr S Dube
Department of Medical Microbiology, University of Limpopo, Pretoria

Response to Ronald Wesso's article on Zimbabwe

Christopher Dyani

2007-05-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/41569

There is a lot is to be desired as far as the Zimbabwe crisis is concerned. Factual comment has been put forward, indicating the sufferings that the people of Zimbabwe are enduring. It has been pointed out that action needs to be taken by the neighbours of Zimbabwe, the leaders of SADC, particularly by our president, President Mbeki.

Relating to the position taken by the South African government, the question is: to what extent should the government interfere with the issues of Zimbabwe? To what extent will this government be undermining the sovereignty of Zimbabwe?

The solution to the Zimbabean problem lies with the people of Zimbabwe. Those outside can provide assistance such as free and fair elections and stability during transition.

I am firmly of the view that it is unacceptable to suggest that there is power sharing amongst the elite. Many are to some extent satisfied with the actions of our governments. Dialogue is key in resolving the Zimbabwe crises, as opposed to the US kind of military infiltration and overthrow of governments. Africa still faces grave problems of division along ethnic, religious, cultural and traditional lines. To invade Zimbabwe would be fuelling already existing potentials for conflict.

Africa has suffered many conflicts. Let us give dialogue a chance and respect the work our leaders are doing. Let us find some other creative ways of addressing the problem, and not just utter solutionless comments that may have far reaching consequences.

Christopher Dyani, South Africa

Solidarity with Zimbabwe

Coral Vinsen

2007-05-21

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/41558

I am responding to Ronald Wesso's article on the challenges for solidarity with Zimbabwe activists. I am a member of Amnesty International South Africa. Our group has a great concern for what is happening in Zimbabwe. We would like to play a more active role than writing letters to Robert Mugabe and his cronies in the government, which remain forever unanswered. If we wished to offer assistance, how is this possible without endangering the human rights defenders in Zimbabwe?

Review of 'NO!' - a film on rape in the Black American community

Marian Douglas

2007-05-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/41568

Gender in the Pan-African community

NO! - a film on rape in the Black American community

Marian Douglas

'... we so called men, we so called brothers wonder why it's so hard to love our women when we're about loving them the way america loves us.' – the late Black American poet Essex Hemphill

On a warm spring evening in Washington, we drive past a building with a sign describing the address as a cultural center for expats from a certain African country. A crowd gathered outside the building is
all-male. It makes me wonder once again about the nature of gender relations in Black communities other than my own.

As I consider my life and those of my Afro-descendant sisters throughout the Americas, often I meditate on our fates had we been born, the same colours we are today, little more than a century ago.

For the past seven years or so, the month of December reminds me not only of Kwanzaa and Christmas but also of rape. In 1854 a very young Black American woman named Celia is tried and found guilty in a US court of 'law'. She is convicted and sentenced to execution for killing Robert Newsom, her rapist and the man who has imprisoned her in an institution' called – chattel – slavery. Celia is hanged on
Thursday 21 December 1854, just days before Christmas, for defending herself from repeated sexual assault.

Such is the course of American 'justice'. The fact that Celia had been raped regularly and repeatedly was treated as so 'inconsequential' that, according to Dr Melton McLaurin, Celia's biographer, the rapes
were not even mentioned during her trial for murder.

Most of what we now know of Celia's brief and unprotected life is carefully detailed in McLaurin's book, Celia: A Slave, compiled from the historical record - mostly musty and neglected Missouri legal
documents.

Her story and millions more like it form an integral but largely silenced part of what we Black Americans refer to as our 'race memory'. This memory lives within me, and even more so since my own family was enslaved in central Missouri where these events of Celia's life and death occurred.

In her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs also spills the ugly truth of being enslaved as a girl, a female, as someone's daughter and as a woman and mother. Jacobs speaks
clearly of how the unspeakable - rapes, exploitation, concubinage, violence, killing and suicide - occurred not just daily but 'yea, hourly' as Jacobs writes, to Black women and girls.

This is the context in which I viewed Aishah Simmons' film about rape within the Black community. What we now need is for our families, communities and organizations to screen and begin discussing this ground-breaking film.

For more than seven years I've researched the lives of Black women and our female ancestors in the Americas, girls and women like Celia and Harriet Jacobs. This is why I want to write about Aishah Simmons' labor of love, this documentary, NO! But Aishah's film is much more than just a movie about rape. It's also a major contribution to help us re-learn our history, an inducement to what I call 're-membering' - re-assembling, pulling together once again - the Black communities of the US and throughout the Americas, and reaching back across the Atlantic to Africa's communities, as well as the Black communities of Europe and beyond.

Because some form of sexual assault takes place regularly in virtually every society in the world, NO! is a film for all people and deserves to be shared. It also illustrates articulately how, in the Americas,
Black women's and girls' historically recent experiences of systematic, collective and societally condoned rape and sexual enslavement trace back to the roots of Europe's various colonial empires throughout our region.

In 19th century America Celia was a young nineteen year old Black woman and a 'baby mother' of two, though actually viewed as no more than a 'slave'.

Sexual exploitation and gender-based violence have been the rule rather than an 'exception' in Black women's and girls' lives in the Americas ever since the slave raids across Africa and deadly trans-Atlantic mass forced migrations of our people.

The 'crime' of our 19 year old ancestor Celia, condemned to death by America's 'justice' system, was having been selected and enslaved by the ill-fated slaveholder, "the master", Robert Newsom. Newsom
actually purchased Celia to supply him with sex. With the blessing and sanction of US law and custom, as a white man, his primary responsibility was to never acknowledge Celia nor his sexual relations
with her, nor his children born to Celia.

NO! is the first documentary where, finally, I see and hear certain connections made between our history and our contemporary, lived experiences of gender and race.

Law professor Adrienne Davis talks of how she now realizes and refers to Black Americans' chattel enslavement as the "sexual economy" it truly was. An enormous, universe-shifting, global economy not only of 'can't-see-in-the-mornin'-til-can't-see-at-night' daily servitude and backbreaking labour, but inextricably also an economy of sex and condoned and condemned sex relationships.

'Black women's reproductive and sexual relationships were an integral part of the political economy', Davis states in the film. She asserts that American slavery '... construed childbearing by enslaved women, and their sexuality, as market and economic relationships that actually created white wealth.'

Farah Jasmine Griffin of Columbia University speaks of the routine sexual assault of our sisters, largely though not only, in the American South as having been a key yet mostly unspoken reason for the massive migration of our families and kin to the US North and West, the 'great migration' of 20th USA.

Simmons is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a city that was my home in my earlier life, that's been home to other members of my family. Simmons tells me what influenced her to create NO! was 'the value of African women's lives'.

'The doc speaks for itself. It also looks at Black women's history.'

I ask about public reaction so far. 'It's a complicated answer. There's been so much resistance to my making the documentary, but NO! has a life of her own now.

'Audiences are now changing. There has been some resistance on the part of black men, as far as them being perpetrators as well as victims of racism.

'The Black community tends to rally behind Black men accused of perpetrating sexual assault. Mike Tyson was a big turning point for me. Lots of women castigated Desiree Washington.' She adds that 'when black men are brutalized by white supremacy, people rally around them...'

In this film nothing is romanticised in its reflections on boxer Mike Tyson's conviction for the rape of a woman named Desiree Washington. There's also footage of certain Black male religious leaders coming to Tyson's defense and even appearing to praise him. Black women still often find it difficult or still even prohibited for them to physically enter the pulpit or preacher's space in many Black churches. So it's pretty difficult to watch footage of Tyson as a convicted rapist being physically embraced by 'the brothers' right near that space at once sacred, masculinised, and often still exclusionary of women.

As if Tyson's welcome in the bosom of some Black religious leaders weren't enough, perhaps even more shocking is seeing and hearing Black Muslim leader (and former 'calypsonian') Louis Farrakhan caught on film as he berates, ridicules and derisively mimicks Black women in a speech to an audience. At Howard University, the audience emits a loud and collective gasp.

I was lucky enough to attend NO!'s November 2006 premiere at Howard in DC. It was a mostly Black audience of students and more mature folk, men as well as women. Following the film a lengthy Q&A session featured Simmons and Lori Robinson, another survivor of sexual assault, who's written I Will Survive: The African-American Guide to Healing from Sexual Assault and Abuse (Seal Press, 2003). Robinson recounted how two strangers took her inside her home and attacked her.

The Howard screening was sponsored by the DC Rape Crisis Center, which wisely offered on-the-spot counseling during the premiere. To support the effort I buy a dvd of the film along with Robinson's book.

NO! is divided into eight parts: 'Introduction & Devastation of Date Rape', 'Weapon of History: Slavery, Freedom, Sexploitation', 'Survivors Silenced (Who is a Race Traitor?)', 'Civil Rights & Wrongs', 'Raping
the Next Generation (Impact on Girls)', 'Holding Men Accountable: Campus, Clergy & Community', 'Unequal Justice Under Law', and 'Healing, Faith, & Hope'.

It begins with survivors retelling their own personal and varied experiences of rape and attempted rape. One adult survivor recalls being 12 years old shortly before she was assaulted by an older boy.

In the wake of ex-radio personality Don Imus's 'gutter remarks' about Rutgers University's highly successful women's basketball team, NO!'s critique of hip hop and 'gangsta rap' takes on greater meaning. Video features men surrounding themselves with scantily dressed young women.
The film depicts gangsta hip hop for what it is: a disturbing expression of something very skewed and distorted in the perception of the female, feminine part of ourselves and our own community.

Viewing these clips makes me feel self-conscious and deeply uncomfortable. I remember earlier cultural and political gender battles waged not so long ago by the late political leader, C. Delores
Tucker, who was one of Black America's leading public policy advocates. Dr Tucker raised the issue of the treatment and depiction of Black women in the music industry, not only in the United States Congress but also in local Washington and across the US and beyond. As head of the National Political Congress of Black Women, "C. Delores", as many called her, dared to speak up and speak out.

Her articulate and valid critcism of the vulgarisation and objectification of Black womanhood in so many music videos brought her ridicule by many in the music business and so-called "street" culture.

In the film Aaronette White eloquently describes her assault by someone she describes as the then-most senior Black administrator at the university she attended in the 1980s. White also remembers that at the time, another Black man advised her not to file a complaint because, according to him, no one would believe her over her college administrator attacker.

NO! also pulls together soul-stirring contributions from the older generation of sister-activists, including Spelman College's Beverly Guy Sheftall, and Johnetta Cole, former president of Spelman and
recently retired as president of another institution dedicated to Black women's higher education, Bennett College in North Carolina.

I rejoiced to hear the voices and thinking of veteran sister-leaders, like lesbian feminist writer and activist Barbara Smith, the founder of Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, and former Black Panther chairperson Elaine Brown. Barbara takes us through the early coalitions of lesbian and heterosexual Black women, fighting violence against women, especially within Black and other communities of colour. Internatiionally, did women's rallying cry in the US: 'We cannot live without our lives' reverberate elsewhere among our people?

All of us are called upon to remind each other of the truth of these words, and to teach our younger generations of boys and girls, women and men, who are coming up behind us.

Simmons' film is only made stronger by the contributions of several men. After all, ultimately it is men's responsibility simply to stop inflicting most sexual and other forms of violence.

Enter Essex Hemphill. In a video recorded before his death, the late gay Black American poet recites 'Conditions XXI', a poem he originally entitled 'To Some Supposed Brothers':

'You judge a woman by the length of her skirt, by the way she walks, talks, looks, and acts; by the color of her skin you judge and will call her "bitch!" "Black bitch!" if she doesn't answer your: "Hey baby, whatcha gonna say to a man..."'

Also within the film is a dialogue between Sulaiman Nuruddin and Caribbean-born Ulester Douglas, both working with Atlanta, Georgia-based group Men Stopping Violence.

Admits Nuruddin, 'How difficult it is to challenge my brother, wanting to protect my brother from the white male patriarchy... how I will collude or not talk or be silent about that which needs to be talked
about.'

Caribbean native Ulester Douglas breaks it down further. 'We will protect the race at any cost, even if we're killing our sisters.'

Samiya Bashir's incredible poem, "Treason" stuns the listener, just as another young Black poetess describes going to poetry slams and how after finding her "attractive", brother poets first want to protect her, up to the moment they hear her read a poem about her love for another woman.
After this fateful poem she feels the brothers' intentions and attitudes shift.
'Manhood offended', if given the chance, she says, a few of the same men, moments earlier her friends and admirers, actually would sexually assault her, ostensibly in order to 'teach her a lesson'.

Gwendolyn Simmons, who's also Aishah's mother, paints a self-portrait of being a Spelman student in 1962 and getting involved in SNCC - the legendary Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Ironically the elder Simmons' own early devotion to 'the Black liberation struggle' ventually brings her into proximity with almost being raped. She describes the would-be rapist, the type of man whom in the 1970s we called 'a movement brother'. Gwen Simmons says he was a well-known SNCC leader and 'a local Mississipian' but does not name him.

Both the poetry-slamming sister and Gwendolyn Simmons' cautionary tale remind me how often rape is very 'local'. It is most often perpetrated by males we've seen and/or know, which contributes to an even greater destrucion of trust, and the equally powerful need to heal and restore our trust in ourselves and others.

The filmmaker describes NO! as her own child; now living its own life. Simmons is very aware of obstacles and perserverance. She completed the film in 2005, eleven years after starting it in 1994.
She tells me the doc grew out of "knowing black women affected by sexual assault and the silence in our community - acute silence in our community - around this issue.'

Aishah's company, AFRO-LEZ Productions, reflects the fact that she's also an 'out' lesbian. Her film moves to break down some of the Black community's silence about loving and accepting our own Black gay and lesbian people. Lesbians and gay men are seen and heard in this film.

From Barbara Smith to the haunting, poignant poetry read by the late Essex Hemphill, to the hilarious, insightful and deeply touching Loretta Ross and others, Aishah's work honors and includes the presence and contributions of 'all her peeps' - all of our people - to our common struggle and to this film.

More than ever, these days Aishah is still busy 'running'. Travelling and too busy for a real interview for the moment, she emails me to say that NO!'s subtitled versions should be available by fall 2007, thanks to a grant from Ford Foundation. Work also is underway on the accompanying educational guide which will be available as a download on the NO! website.

This is a film about all of us as humans. It's not only about pain, but also healing, recovery and self-discovery. While some may try to frame this film as 'controversial' or 'subversive', globally Black communities will benefit by doing whatever it takes and by any means necessary to bring this documentary to the wider audience it deserves - our families, schools, religious bodies, clubs, reunions and other organisations.

Essex Hemphill died of AIDS on 4 November 1995. This line from the film is the last line in his earlier-quoted poem. Reading it on a page isn't the same as watching and hearing him fairly spit it.

'... we so called men, we so called brothers wonder why it's so hard to love our women when we're about loving them the way america loves us.'

Marian Douglas is the author of Marian's Blog - http://marian.typepad.com

--
Marian's Blog
http://marian.typepad.com

Please Sign & Share the Kampala Resolution on Women,
Peace and Conflict - http://www.petitiononline.com/WmnPeace

Review of North African blogs

Sokari Ekine

2007-05-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/41563

Over the coming weeks we will be focusing on regional coverage, starting this week with North Africa.


Neferteeti comments on a new law which she states reflects Egypt’s religious intolerance. She reports on a new law that forbids Christians who have converted to Islam from reverting to Christianity however Muslims who covert to Christianity then wish to revert back to Islam are free to do so.

According to Neferteeti, there is resentment from the Christian community who say the law is a 'step backwards' as the constitution gives freedom of religion.

'Meanwhile, Christian clergy have also voiced their concern over the new law, saying that Christians must take a serious stand against the law and object to the oppression of the government.

Morqous Aziz, a Coptic priest, recently told reporters that there would be an appeal of the ruling.

'This is...oppression against all religions and the [Egyptian] Constitution. The Pope will do something about the matter.'

Maybe people should study the religion they want to convert to a little more deeply then they wouldn’t have to go back and forth between religions.

Fellow Egyptian blogger – Faisal's Tobril takes issue with Neferteeti’s comment stating that she 'has got things wrong' about Islam and in particular her statement about Islam being too afraid to let people choose. He goes on to say:

'Do we blame Christianity, or the Aryan race, for Hitler’s mass murder of European Jews? Or do we blame one man, Hitler himself, for the actions taken by members of the Nazi party and the army of the Third Reich?

I should think the answers to the question would be: The men themselves (and not Christianity) as well as Hitler (and not Christianity nor the Aryan race).

It does not require a religious scholar nor a person of astounding knowledge to realize that the application of the different supposed rules of different religions are carried out differently from region to region and country to country. Compare Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Morrocco, Turkey and Egypt, if you need facts.'

Maghrebism is one of many North African blogs commenting on President Nicolas Sarkozy’s appointment of Rachida Dati (of Moroccan and Algerian parentage) as the new justice minister. He does not say whether he supports the appointment but responds to those people that criticise the appointment such as Morocco Time (see below).

'You know, I’ve seen this happen a lot. Apparently, we Moroccans/North Africans in Europe, are subjected to an invisible law that states that we can only be government members if that government is “leftist”.

Apparently there is also another invisible law that states that North Africans have to have the same view on immigration and integration as the “leftists”.

And if we don’t share the same views, we’re bigots, traitors and Uncle Toms.
Why can’t an immigrant child share the same views as Sarkozy? (or any other rightist politician for that matter).'

No there is no law but as Morocco Time points out there is considerable hypocrisy around Ms Dati’s support of Sarkozy…

Morocco Time describes France’s new Justice Minister, Rachida Dati as an Oreo (cookie) . She posts various quotes from Ms Dati such as:

'It’s not always easy for us to climb the social ladder. But the Republic makes success possible. Public examinations are the same for everyone.'

She goes on to respond to 'maghrebism' [see above] who supports the appointment, that in fact under Sarkozy’s new proposed laws, Dati’s parents would not even be allowed to enter France...

Actually, no, it’s not. Ms. Dati’s parents wouldn’t even have been allowed to enter France under Sarkozy’s proposed immigration policies, and that’s just one of the reasons I find her so hypocritical. She’s pursued Sarkozy for years, begging to be part of his team - obviously morals are trumped by career ambition in her case.'

Black Looks also comments on the appointment of Ms Dati and Sarkozy’s newly introduced 'Immigration and National Identity' Bill which she believes will:

'Problematise immigration and race even more and placing them in direct opposition to what he considers to be “French”. The ministry will be responsible for teaching new arrivals about France, make sure they learn French, and guide them toward acquiring a French identity. Failing to take on this national tribal identity will mean you remain forever marginalised and excluded.

Being French must be the goal of every immigrant and their descendants which for Sarkozyists means wearing a white Christian mask on your black and or Muslim face. Dati, as a long time close associate and supporter of Sarkozy, has already made donned her mask.'

SeptiC asks us to sign a petition against the proposed concert by the Rolling Stones in Israel. He received one comment saying that no one gave 'a rat's ass' about boycotting and responded as follows:

'In the eyes of the uneducated and unwilling to learn, maybe. But that only applies if your expectations are very low. Mine aren't.

Some people know damn well what's going on. A good example that I came across a couple of weeks ago is Alan Rickman of Die Hard, Galaxy Quest, and the Potter movies. Rickman directed a play based on the diaries of Rachel Corrie - the 23 year old American woman who was killed on March 16, 2003 by an Israeli Army bulldozer while she was protesting against the demolition of Palestinian civilian homes.

I wouldn't for a second think that Alan Rickman, for instance, didn't give a "rat's ass".

Artists who choose to inform themselves of the realities of the situation should act responsibly. And in this day and age, not informing yourself is simply irresponsible.

If the Rolling Stones don't, as you say, "give a rat's ass" - then we should make it clear to them that we, in turn, won't give a rat's ass about them. It's that simple.'

alt.muslim challenges the methods used by the US to combat Islamic extremism. He believes that there is another way possible by 'depoliticizing the issue and promoting a cooperation of equals'. He believes both the Muslim community and the US (Dept of Homeland Security) need to use a different approach to the issue and makes a number of suggestions.

• 'Create a proper and effective role for government. A direct and visible government role in anti-extremism efforts involving Muslims (funding lectures, creating a presence in Muslim institutions, directly addressing Muslim youth) will almost certainly backfire, as it feeds the impression that Muslims in general are on the "wrong side" of the war on terror.
• Ensure transparency and accountability on both ends. Nobody expects the US government to simply take the word of Muslim institutions and community leaders when they say they will take the necessary steps to prevent extremism from taking root.
• Give Muslims the freedom to fight extremism on the front lines. The main place that extremism thrives is not your local mosque, but on the Internet…'

Progressive Muslima News points to a BBC report on French rapper of Congolese parentage, Abd Al Malik who performs at France’s 'Metisses Music Festival'.

'His latest album Gibraltar has already won four awards, including the prestigious Victoire de la Musique. It’s an original mix of hip-hop, slam poetry and French philosophy. He sees Gibraltar as the symbolic meeting point of Africa and Europe.

The reason I called it Gibraltar was to use music to try and link our different cultures and people together…'


Moroccan literary blogger, Laila Lalami points to a number of new reads, one she categorises as 'post 9/11 fiction by Don DeLillo, Falling Man, and an essay by Orhan Pamuk called 'The Anger of the Damned'.



Egyptian Chronicle writes about an advert in an Egyptian newspaper by Animal Rights activists attacking 'officials for the ill-treatment of street dogs'. This is serious as the President has ordered an investigation being that this ill treatment of dogs could affect the country’s tourist industry. Her comment:

'I don't know really which is bad or can affect the repetition of Egypt abroad photos of a dead pregnant street dog or video clips from humans sexually and physically abused in the police stations.

When the humans take their right first we can speak about other creatures' right because don't expect an oppressed human will treat others which are weaker from him or her fairly.

It seems the President is right – when it comes to tourism and the country’s reputation more people care about the dogs than Egypt’s human rights abuses.'


* Sokari Ekine is online editor of Pambazuka News and editor of the Black Looks blog

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

Freddy Macha speaks to Pambazuka News

Freddy Macha

2007-05-24

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/broadcasts/podcasts.php

Freddy Macha, Tanzanian writer and artist, speaks to Robtel Pailey from Pambazuka News about being a journalist during censorship in Nyerere's administration. He explores the nature of music and
expresses his thoughts on a range of subjects from satirising urban life, promoting African languages and culture, and the connections between modern life and constipation.

You can find out more and hear more of his music at Freddy Macha's website.

Music in this podcast is brought to you by Busi Ncube from Zimbabwe, kindly provided by Thulani Promotions.

Africa: Chinese activists looking to Africa

2007-05-25

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0521/p01s02-woap.html?page=1

At a much smaller and more discreet gathering on the sidelines of the AfDB shindig, African and Chinese civil society groups were meeting for the first time to plan how they could at least take some of the rough edges off a relationship that has sparked controversy well beyond Africa's borders. But holding the Chinese government to account for its behavior in Africa will be a tall order for Chinese nongovernmental organizations that are still testing the political waters and have no international experience.

Sudan: China warning over Darfur sanctions

2007-05-25

http://tinyurl.com/2jaqds

International sanctions against Sudan over the conflict in Darfur would only raise the level of confrontation and prolong the suffering of refugees, China's newly-appointed envoy has said, according to an Al Jazeera report. Speaking on a visit to the region, Liu Guijin called for greater humanitarian aid into Darfur instead.

Database on CSO pre-summit activities

2007-05-22

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/aumonitor/41571

The Institute for Democratic Governance is the secretariat of the Ghana CSO coalition – AU July 2007 summit. To facilitate coordination, collaboration and networking among CSOs that wish to organise or participate in pre-summit activities in Accra, Ghana, the secretariat is creating a database on CSO/NGO pre-summit activities in the months of June and early July 2007.


The database will be accessible to all the registered CSOs and will enable visiting CSO actors to interact with the secretariat. Registered CSOs will also be updated periodically on pre-summit activities and events in Ghana. Please download the form at www.pambazuka.org/aumonitor and return it via email to au@ideg.org

Open the borders, let Africans challenge HIV/Aids together!

Interview with Wasai J. Nanjakululu

2007-05-22

http://www.pambazuka.org/aumonitor/index.php/AUMONITOR/comments/open_the_borders_let_africans_challenge_hiv_aids_together/

Wasai J. Nanjakululu is a Kenyan based in Nairobi, working on HIV/Aids policy at the Agency for Cooperation in Research and Development (ACORD). In March, Saloman Kebede interviewed him on the forthcoming debate on continental government during the next African Union summit, June–July 2007.

This interview is one of several interviews with African citizens and CSO leaders on the AU proposal for continental government. Ivy Maina, consulting with the pan-Africa programme at Oxfam, edited the interview.

Saloman Kebede: What form of continental government does Africa need?

Wasai J. Nanjakululu: We recognise that we were given artificial states through colonialism. Breaking these states overnight is a daunting task. We should instead build these states to become federal states of Africa in order to end up with a federal government of Africa. This kind of government should then identify historical links that countries share and create regional states like the East African Federation. This may help in dealing with internal conflicts.

Saloman Kebede: Why is continental union important to African citizens, especially the poor and the marginalised?

Wasai J. Nanjakululu: If the continental union’s importance is based purely on political recognition, then what good shall come out of it? It must guarantee freedom of movement and free markets that work for Africa. This will also provide an enabling environment to mount a continent-wide HIV/Aids response. By making Africa one huge market we could jointly procure anti-retrovirals and establish pharmaceutical factories on the continent. This would ease the prices of these essential life saving drugs.

Saloman Kebede: What strategic areas of focus do you propose for the integration to be successful?

Wasai J. Nanjakululu: One, we need to break open state borders. Two, let the citizens be well informed and involved in policy making at country level, in order to allow people to engage democratically in governance, wealth creation and distribution. Then, when we propose the issue of African unity then the masses will not see the leaders as having hidden motives. Three, we have to come up with a good economic policy for African unity. Finally, let us be on the look-out for reactionary processes at country level and be prepared to deal with them.

Saloman Kebede: What obstacles must the AU overcome for the continental union to be successful?

Wasai J. Nanjakululu: I believe that you only see obstacles when you take your eyes off the goals. We also need to come to a place where we can allow others to lead but not allow the stronger countries to dictate to other states. The AU must embrace a culture of empowering its people and preserve the historical links that unite us.

Saloman Kebede: What one policy would your organisation propose to be adopted in continental integration?

Wasai J. Nanjakululu: All governments seem to recognise the role of the civil society in development. I would like all pan-African organisations to be registered within the AU and given a legal mandate to operate in all African countries. We need to avoid instances as those in Eritrea where ACORD was kicked out, or where some CSOs are being proscribed from Zimbabwe. Then we shall be able to engage across the continent and create overwhelming support and ownership for continental union government from the masses.

Saloman Kebede: What milestones would you like to see achieved within the first phase - the first two years?

Wasai J. Nanjakululu: I work with a pan-African organisation that works to build and strengthen African social movement. We are present in 18 countries in Africa. By opening up borders, we will cut costs on visa and interconnection of flights. Open the borders, let people, goods and services move. I am sure that can be done at a click of a finger from our heads of states.

Saloman Kebede: What meaningful decisions should the head of states make so that this process is people driven, rights based and publicly accountable to African citizens?

Wasai J. Nanjakululu: They should open up the debate in the media to popularise the proposal and involve the civil society and national parliaments.

The views expressed here are the perspectives of the interviewee. Jacob Wasai Nanjakululu can be reached at email: jacob.wasai@acordinternational.org

Public Debates Launched Africa-Wide on Africa Day

2007-05-24

http://www.pambazuka.org/aumonitor/index.php/AUMONITOR/comments/public_debates_launched_africa_wide_on_africa_day/

May 25, Africa Union Day, marks the start of public consultations in over fifteen countries just a few weeks before 53 Heads of States meet in Accra to agree on the AU Proposal to establish the United States of Africa.

In an unprecedented decision, the Heads of States agreed in January to meet in Accra on July 2-3rd to discuss only one agenda, the establishment of a Union Government as a first step towards the United States of Africa.

Yet, despite extensive research and consultation, the proposal is yet to be placed before Africa’s 832 million citizens for consultation. Civil society organizations with support from Governments have kicked off debates in fifteen countries. The debates are an unprecedented attempt to involve the public across Africa in the decision-making processes of the African Union Assemblies.

“Without public consultation, the United States of Africa proposal will have as much chance of flying as an elephant. African governments and citizens must explore the immediate implications and opportunities a Union Government creates for ordinary citizens, particularly those affected by the denial of human rights, poverty and injustice,” said Thomas Deve of Mwelekeo wa NGO (MWENGO), one of the organisers in Zimbabwe.

In the fifteen countries, citizens will be asked to reflect on the opportunities of a Union Government for raising the bar for human rights, democratic governance and conflict. The proposed African Economic Community, a dream that recently got a step closer with the signing of common tariffs within COMESA, will be debates with an eye to an African common market that targets growth, poverty reduction and industrialisation.

“African civil society organisations are in the forefront of generating dialogue between leaders and citizens on this issue. There are many implications. A more unified voice would produce an effective collective negotiating position on global trade policies such as the Economic Partnership Agreements or with China for instance,”, said Valerie Traore, Pan African Programme Manager, African Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD) in Nairobi.

While there is general agreement among member-states on the need for deeper and faster continental political and economic integration, the proposal is controversial. Member-states are split between those calling for the strengthening of existing AU structures before taking a bold leap to the United States of Africa and those that argue that as long as the continent remains a motley gathering of fragmented states, continental integration is a futile exercise.

A Ghanaian CSO host committee is preparing to take the views generated in the public debates to the Heads of States at the AU Summit in Accra. Dr. Emmanuel Akwetey, Convenor of the Ghana AU Summit Civil Society Coalition says, “Public engagement should not end with an event at the AU Summit. It should be built into all regional integration efforts to ensure that they are relevant, responsive and accountable to African people.”

For more details of national organisers, please contact: Ivy Maina, Mobile: +254 734 949 105 (Kenya).
For the full text of the press release, including list of interviewees, please visit www.pambazuka.org/aumonitor/index.php/AUMONITOR/comments/public_debates_launched_africa_wide_on_africa_day/

Global: State of the World’s Mothers Report

2007-05-24

http://tinyurl.com/29kxw3

This Save the Children publication reports on child mortality rates in developing countries. The report includes Child Survival Progress Rankings of 60 countries, which together account for 94 per cent of all child deaths worldwide. According to the report, Egypt has achieved a 68 per cent decline in child deaths in the past 15 years. Investments in health services for mothers and children have helped improve care for pregnant women, make childbirth safer and increased the use of family planning services.

Global: Declaration on women's and girl's right to remedy and reparation

2007-05-24

http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/NAIROBI_DECLARATIONeng.pdf

At the International Meeting on Women’s and Girls’ Right to a Remedy and Reparation, held in Nairobi from 19 to 21 March 2007, women’s rights advocates and activists, as well as survivors of sexual violence in situations of conflict, from Africa, Asia, Europe, Central, North and South America, issued the Nairobi Declaration.

Zambia: Women protest army discharge

2007-05-25

http://www.genderlinks.org.za/article.php?a_id=719

The Zambian Employment Act states that employers must grant a woman 120 days of maternity leave after two years in employment, but most employers today will not fire a female employee who falls pregnant before two years. Rather, either they will give them unpaid leave, annual leave or sick leave. For the Zambia Army, which in the past never entertained employing women as soldiers, the story is different.

Global: African woman appointed HIV/AIDS Special Envoy for Africa

2007-05-25

http://www.genderlinks.org.za/article.php?a_id=720

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s appointment of activist Elizabeth Mataka as the HIV/AIDS Special Envoy for Africa is an important step for gender equality in Africa, and for addressing the impact of HIV/AIDS on women. On the same day, 21 May, the General Assembly reviewed progress towards universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, and discussed the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls.

Burundi: Coffee harvest linked to increase in gender-based violence - study

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72368

The April-July coffee harvest period in Burundi has been linked to increases in gender-based violence and the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It is not uncommon for women and children to be on the receiving end of both physical and emotional abuse during this period, CARE International, an international non-governmental organization (NGO) operating in the country, said in a new report.

Uganda: Baseline study on the situation of torture survivors

2007-05-25

http://www.redress.org/reports/TortureUganda_Apr%2007.pdf

Uganda ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1986 and is party to a number of other regional and international treaties that outlaw torture and other forms of ill-treatment. Despite this, reports of torture in Uganda continue.

Morocco: Leading human rights activist dies

2007-05-24

http://www.hrea.org/lists/display.php?headline_id=5362&language_id=1

Human Rights Watch mourns the death of Moroccan human rights activist Driss Benzekri, who died on Sunday after a long illness at the age of 57. Arrested for his left-wing student activities in 1974, Benzekri served the next 17 years as a political prisoner. Freed in 1991 by the late King Hassan II, Benzekri immersed himself in the human rights work that consumed him until the end of his days.

Africa: the struggle for human rights in Africa

2007-05-24

http://www.zeleza.com/blogging/african-affairs/struggle-human-rights-africa

According to Paul Zeleza, the contexts, challenges and prospects for human rights in Africa have changed quite considerably in recent years. Human rights discourses find favor in both political and popular circles, among the ideologues of the state and the interlocutors of civil society, a tribute to the enduring and unfulfilled yearnings for more humane societies deeply rooted in African collective memories and social psyches, and to the remarkable changes that have already taken place in Africa’s human rights landscapes.

Africa: Resurrecting the spirit of Ken Saro Wiwa

Alexactus Kaure

2007-05-24

http://www.namibian.com.na/2007/May/columns/07950BF24F.html

I'm talking about an issue that was highlighted by the late Nigerian writer, philosopher and activist, Ken Saro Wiwa - that's, the relationship between the lack of access to and control of resources on the one hand and poverty on the other. But two issues caught my attention recently and I was thus forced to revisit it. One was just an ordinary advertisement in a newspaper by UNDP Botswana looking for a consultant (an economist, of course) to mainstream poverty reduction into Botswana's national development plan.

Kenya: Freedom fighters vow to fight on

2007-05-24

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=37870

Mau Mau veterans in Kenya have vowed to continue fighting for reparations from the British government for abuses perpetrated during colonial rule in the East African country -- this after Britain dismissed the compensation claim. "We will not be silenced," Gitu wa Kahengeri, a member of the Mau Mau War Veterans Association (MMWVA), told journalists Tuesday in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

Zimbabwe: African Commission must urgently tackle Zimbabwe torture

2007-05-25

http://www.redress.org/news/PressStatementZimbabweMay07.pdf

REDRESS, the international NGO working to obtain justice and reparation for torture survivors, today calls on the African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) to firmly address Zimbabwe’s torture record, which is rapidly spiraling out of control. Recently, human rights lawyers in particular have been targeted, including Zimbabwe Law Society President Ms Beatrice Mtetwa who earlier this month was severely beaten by police when she and other human rights defenders were participating in a peaceful protest outside the Harare High Court.

Zimbabwe: Human rights in crisis - shadow report

2007-05-25

http://www.redress.org/reports/ZimbabweShadowReportMay07.pdf

This report was produced by five independent human rights organizations in response to the government of Zimbabwe’s state party report to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (African Commission). It presents a very different picture of the state of human rights in Zimbabwe to that contained in the government’s report.

Sudan: Risk of health crisis in impoverished south

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72347

The increased movement of people within Southern Sudan, including the return of hundreds of thousands of former refugees and internally displaced persons, could create a public health crisis across the impoverished region, a humanitarian official has warned.

Uganda: Displaced face psychological barrier to return home

2007-05-24

http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/4651b9e24.html

Peace talks between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have raised hopes among people in the country's northern Pader district that their long ordeal may be soon over. Most of the district's population has been displaced by the insurgency. But the security situation has eased since the launch last July of peace negotiations aimed at ending 21 years of civil war – it is safe to travel without armed escort and internally displaced people (IDP) are slowly leaving camps and returning to their places of origin.

DRC: Call to resettle displaced civilians in northeast

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72287

Thousands of civilians who were forced to flee their homes several years ago after incursions into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by armed groups from southern Sudan, should be resettled, the administrator of Dungu territory in northeastern DRC has said. "These people have not been able to return to their villages since 1999," Leandres Bwiulu said.

Somalia: Economic pressures rising with influx of IDPs

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72317

The Somali conflict has severely disrupted economic activities, increased competition for already overburdened social services and limited food availability for both host and displaced communities, an early warning agency has said. Aid workers estimate that about 400,000 people have fled the capital, Mogadishu, since February to seek shelter in other regions of the country.

Africa: Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil.

2007-05-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/41586

Amy Goodman interviews John Ghazvinian, author of the book "Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil." It’s a little known fact that the United States today imports more oil from Africa than from Saudi Arabia. More than $50 billion in foreign investment in African oil is expected over the next three years by the
United States. The book compares the global competition for the continent’s oil resources to the nineteenth century scramble for colonization.
TRANSCRIPT
Juan Gonzalez: We begin today's broadcast with a look at Africa and oil.
It’s a little known fact: the United States today imports more oil from Africa than from Saudi Arabia. More than $50 billion in foreign investment in African oil is expected over the next three years by the United States.

What has this oil boom meant for Africa’s ordinary citizens? Our first guest spent a year reporting across the continent to find out. John Ghazvinian is a journalist, who has written for publications including Newsweek, The Nation, and Time Out New York. His new book is called Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil. The book compares the global competition for the continent’s oil resources to the nineteenth century scramble for colonization.

Amy Goodman: John Ghazvinian has just returned from Nigeria, where oil has been the driving force behind a longstanding bloodshed. Protesters in Ogoniland have just ended their week-long occupation of a major oil pipeline hub that forced Royal Dutch Shell to cut their daily production by nearly 40%. In recent weeks, villagers demanding compensation and regional control over Nigerian oil have kidnapped at least thirteen foreign workers, occupied a Chevron oilfield and bombed other international oil pipelines. Two major US companies, Chevron and Hercules Offshore, are evacuating all their nonessential workers from the oil-rich country.

John Ghazvinian joins us now from Philadelphia, where he’s a visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Welcome to Democracy Now!

John Ghazvinian: Good morning.

Amy Goodman: Before we talk about Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan - and what’s not often talked about is oil there - let’s talk about the latest news out of Nigeria, out of the Niger Delta. What is happening there, John?

John Ghazvinian: Yeah, as you say quite rightly, it’s actually more of the same, to be honest. The situation in Nigeria is now as bad as I think anyone can remember it. Many of your listeners and viewers will be aware of the struggles of the Ogoni in the 1990s against Shell, and so on. That was really child's play compared to what’s been going on in the last couple years in Nigeria, and ironically we hear less about it.

But, you know, I was just there a couple weeks ago. Just in the sort of four or five days I spent in the Delta, there were twenty-nine foreigners taken hostage, kidnapped by militants. You know, it’s the same story, basically. It’s a battle over access to oil money and for resource control, and it hasn’t gone away, and it’s not about to go away.

Amy Goodman: The fact that the United States gets more oil from Africa -
now, that’s a continent versus Saudi Arabia, which is a country. That’s not often recognized by our leaders, the continent versus country issue, but that’s still extremely significant. Give us the picture of Africa, where the oil is and where many are hoping it will be.

John Ghazvinian: Yeah, actually, you know, the US, as you say, gets as much oil now from - as we do from Saudi Arabia, but actually we’re going to be getting about - you know, much more in the next few years. This is what’s significant is that by 2015, we’re going to be getting 25% of our imported oil from Africa. And, you know, this is why I wrote the book, really, because I feel like this is something we don't pay a lot of attention to. When we think of oil, we tend to think of the Middle East or other parts or Venezuela or other parts of the world. But Africa is becoming increasingly important for our way of life and our energy needs, and I think it’s important for people to have some idea what some of the issues are in some of these countries.

To answer your question, the big kind of African oil boom at the moment, or at least in recent years, has been along the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea, what some people like to call the armpit of Africa -
if you sort of picture a map of Africa, that sort of ninety-degree bend along the ocean there. You know, it’s a lot of deep water offshore discoveries that have really been coming on stream recently at places like Angola that are really up and coming. Angola has just joined OPEC a couple months ago. It’s the first new member of OPEC in more than thirty years, and it’s an African country, and it’s rapidly catching up with Nigeria. People are now talking about East Africa, that was possibly the next big margin, you know, the next kind of big oil boom for Africa.
That’s much closer to China, so it has some obvious benefits there.

But the bottom line is that Africa, as a whole, is really deeply under-explored and kind of under - it’s not really looked at as much as it could be. I mean, there’s exploration blocks the size of France that still haven’t been given away, and it’s a very hot and very exciting destination for the oil industry right now.

Juan Gonzalez: I’d like to ask you, in particular, about Nigeria.
Clearly it’s become an increasingly big supplier to the United States, yet we have all of these enormous problems there, the attacks on oil facilities, the rampant apparent violations during the recent elections, and very little attention in the American press to what is happening in Nigeria, compared, for example, to all the attention that the press gives to Venezuela, where there is not this kind of, like, dislocation of the oil industry or questions about the legality of their voting process.

John Ghazvinian: Yeah, I know, exactly. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States, which I think is something a lot of people are not aware of. We get a lot of our oil from Nigeria. You know, I don’t know why we don’t pay more attention to it. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of international media organizations don’t have someone in West Africa. They often have someone in Johannesburg and Nairobi, and that’s it, really, especially in the English-speaking world.

But Nigeria is extremely important. You know, this is a country of 130 million people. One out of every six Africans is Nigerian. You know, as I say, it’s one of the biggest oil producers in the world. It has a large and very experienced army, and it’s a real anchor for American and British foreign policy in Africa, actually.

Amy Goodman: But in Nigeria, the way - when it is covered in this country, the discussion is of the vandals, the criminals that are tapping into the oil pipelines, stealing the oil. Can you describe who it is who is organizing in the Niger Delta, John?

John Ghazvinian: That’s a very good question, and if I knew the answer to that, I’d have a lot more insight than I do. I mean, the truth is that it changes often, and these groups splinter, and often, to be honest, a lot of criminal elements also kind of jump on the bandwagon.
It really varies day-to-day, and it’s a very difficult and very complex situation to follow.

But in recent - in the last year and a half, the big kind of group, the umbrella group that’s been getting most of the attention is a group called MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
They’re kind of an Ijaw group. They have kind of inherited the mantle of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, which was also an Ijaw group from a couple years ago. You know, like I say, things have moved on a lot since the days of the Ogoni and MOSOP, but to try to say who exactly is responsible for some of the vandalism or kidnapping, or so on -

Amy Goodman: John, their concerns? Talk about who is profiting from the drilling in the Niger Delta?

John Ghazvinian: Yeah, this is at the bottom of the issue, basically, is that for more than forty years, international oil companies have, you know, pumped billions of dollars worth of oil out of Nigeria. $400 billion has gone into the pockets of the Nigerian government, and most of that money, frankly - a lot of that money - has been salted away into foreign bank accounts by corrupt politicians and then, of course, has gone away, disappeared in the form of profits to multinational oil corporations.

Who has not seen the profits from oil exploration is probably the real question, which is the people of the Niger Delta. You have people living in stone age squalor, in mud huts, you know, in swamps with no roads, no electricity, no running water. I spend a lot of time in the Delta, and I’ve seen the way people live there. And, you know, through their backyards you have thousands of miles of pipelines, ultra-modern, multi-million-dollar, air-conditioned, state-of-the-art facilities going up, and people just haven’t seen any benefits from the oil exploration.
And over time, that has turned into a fairly nasty sort of militant insurgency, as I think shouldn’t surprise anyone, really.

Amy Goodman: Talking to John Ghazvinian, journalist, who has written for many publications. His new book is called Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil. He has just returned from Nigeria. When we come back, we’ll talk about US multinational corporations versus China, and areas, countries like Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. Stay with us.

[break] Amy Goodman: Our guest is John Ghazvinian. His book is called Untapped:
The Scramble for Africa’s Oil. Juan?

Juan Gonzalez: John, before we get onto Somalia, Sudan and some of these other countries, I’d like to ask you about some old oil producers in Africa: Algeria and Libya. They both have had oil industries. What’s been the difference in their development and what’s been happening in recent years as to what’s going on with their oil?

John Ghazvinian: Yeah, as you say, those are more longstanding oil producers. They’ve probably done a slightly better job of actually bringing real development - particularly Libya - to their people, thanks to oil exploration. Libya is also a very hot new destination now. It’s now opening up to Western companies.

I don’t deal a lot with North Africa in the book, and the reason for that is, you know, North Africa is in many ways an extension of kind of Arab and Middle Eastern - sort of the political arena. What I was really trying to draw attention to in this book, which is something that I think a lot of people don’t pay a lot of attention to, is Sub-Saharan Africa. That’s just not a part of the world we think of when we think of oil. And so, I really focused, you know, kind of my - you know, my book on countries like Nigeria, Angola, Chad, Sudan, you know, Gabon, and so on.

Amy Goodman: John, can you talk about how China has emerged as a major oil player in Africa and their difference in diplomacy and strategy than the United States and the US multinational oil companies?

John Ghazvinian: Yeah. This is a very interesting question, actually. I mean, China is a big, big part of the story. They now get 30% of their oil from Africa, which is really extraordinary, and about 10% from Sudan, specifically. This is, you know, I think -

Juan Gonzalez: When you say 30%, are you talking 30% of their imports or
30% of their total oil use?

John Ghazvinian: When it comes to China, there’s not a really appreciable difference, to be honest, but 30% overall, actually - 29%, I think it is now, specifically.

But the thing about China is, you know, I think we hear a lot of this kind of Yellow Peril talk in the press, you know, that they are kind of a maligned force in Africa, and I think it’s actually a mixed bag. It is true that China goes in and doesn’t ask a lot of questions of countries like Zimbabwe or Angola or Equatorial Guinea. But, you know, there’s also a sort of, if you like, less threatening side to China's presence in Africa. They, for many years, have trained thousands of Africans in Chinese universities, sent thousands of doctors to Africa, and Africans haven’t forgotten that.

The Chinese are very good at - you know, like they came into Angola a couple years ago, and they said, “Look, you just had a thirty-year civil war, you’ve got a lot of needs. You need a new airport. You need a new railway, a new highway. We’ll build all that for you, and we’ll give you a $2 billion credit facility, no questions asked.” Now, that got a lot of criticism, because basically for many, many years, the IMF has been in this kind of longstanding battle with the Angolans, saying to them that you have to be more transparent, you have to tell us what happened to the $4 billion of oil money that went missing in the final years of the civil war, all of which is fair enough, but at a certain point the Angolans said, “Actually, the hell with you. We’re getting a lot of money from oil now. We’re getting - we have a lot more oil than we’ve ever had. The price of oil is really high. And the Chinese have just given us all this money. So we’re not going to open our books to you.” And, yes, that did get a lot of criticism, and I think it is important for people to know what happened to the missing $4 billion, and I wouldn’t want to play that down. But at the same time, it’s also very important for the Angolans to get a new railway, a new highway and a new airport. And that’s something that I think tends to get ignored often in this kind of very polarized debate over the influence of China in Africa.

Amy Goodman: Can you talk about Chad, Sudan, Somalia?

John Ghazvinian: Sure. That part of Africa, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, obviously a very troubled part of the continent, very poor and very desperate part of the world. Chad is a country that’s recently started producing oil. It’s one of the poorest and most troubled countries in the world. It’s twice the size of France, and it has about
400 kilometers of paved road. You know, the national airline has one airplane. It doesn’t even fly to the south of Chad, where the oil is.
This is a country that is one of the world's newest oil producers, but there isn’t even a single gas station anywhere in Chad. People sell, you know, gas along the side of the road in little glass jars from sort of little lemonade stands.

All of the oil gets stuck into this ExxonMobil pipeline that was built a few years ago and sent off to the coast in Cameroon and put on boats and brought to America or to Europe. Chad is a country that really has not seen any kind of benefit, you know, to its people from oil exploration, and yet this was supposed to be one of the great models.

There was this great sort of program put together by the World Bank and Exxon. You know, 85% of the money was going to go to priority sectors like schools and hospitals, and so on. It didn't really work. There was a lot of fanfare, and then for a lot of reasons it just didn’t work.

You know, but if you travel around in Chad, you see that this is a country with a lot of problems. It’s very unstable. The president is a guy who walks around with a lot of body doubles and who’s been tenuously holding onto power for the last two or three years. It’s unfortunately another tragic story of oil in Africa.

Juan Gonzalez: Could you talk a little bit about the impact of this kind of development on poor countries like Chad, the influx of oil workers -
I think you call them oilfield trash - that come in from all over parts of the world, end up working and living in these areas, and all kinds of clandestine industries arise to meet their needs?

John Ghazvinian: Yeah, it’s really extraordinary. You know, you start to see this again and again and again, as I did, you know, as I traveled through all these oil towns in Africa. You have often hundreds, if not thousands, of oil workers from all over the world sent on four-week shifts in to work on the rigs, and they’re often housed in these extraordinary compounds with kind of - behind these very high razor-wire walls in these kind of sprawling Southern California-style compounds with, you know, swimming pools and air-conditioned basketball courts, and so on, and, you know, kind of everything that you’d want, really, all the food flown in from the States or from Europe.

And then, just on the other side of the wall, you have people who are living without any running water, who are walking for miles just to fill up their buckets of water, people who are suffering from malaria, living on less than a dollar a day, and so on. I mean, the contrast is one of centuries, really - the gap, the gulf, if you will, in living styles.
And this is a real affront, actually, in the face of the people who are sitting there, who realize, you know, there’s a lot of oil in our country, there’s a lot of money being made, but somehow we’re not seeing any of that. And that’s something that you hear a lot of anger and a lot of frustration about just on a very visceral level.

Prostitution also is a big problem in a lot of these places. You know, obviously, you have these guys, and they’re all sort of men, really, who come and work on the rigs from all over the world and have a lot of money, obviously, that they bring with them. So you have girls coming from all over the place, you know, to kind of service their needs, as it were. And that obviously, you know, contributes to HIV and broken homes and all kinds of social problems, as well.

Amy Goodman: John Ghazvinian, the connection between oil production and arms sales and US military agreements with these countries?

John Ghazvinian: Yeah. The Angolans for many years, in the last years of the civil war, were, as I say, funneling billions of dollars to buy weapons to put down the rebellion that was for many years backed by the United States and apartheid-era South Africa. You know, the US military presence in Africa - the kind of US military interest in Africa sometimes gets, I think, overplayed, as well.

It comes down to three things. It’s basically counterterrorism, the kind of global war on terror, which is largely a North African and Horn of Africa story - largely it’s overhyped, to be honest. You know, these groups like the GSPC or the Salafists in Algeria are not really, you know, the next al-Qaeda, nor is there any kind of al-Qaeda presence in Nigeria, despite what some people like to claim. That’s number one.

Number two is African peacekeeping. You know, the whole slogan of African solutions to African problems, trying to get the AU to step up and kind of police Africa, so that - the US priority being not to get dragged into another military conflict like Somalia and another Black Hawk Down situation. There’s no appetite for that in the US, for obvious reasons.

And then, the third is oil and just ensuring stability, you know, making sure that there’s a stable contractual environment and a stable operating environment for multinational oil companies, so that as much oil as possible comes onto the market. Those are the sort of three priorities for the Pentagon and for the US administration, in general, in Africa.

Juan Gonzalez: Also, I’d be interested in knowing why you decided to do this book and take this trek through Africa, some of your own personal experiences in preparing it.

John Ghazvinian: Yeah, the thinking behind this book was pretty simple.
As I say, you know, when we tend to think of Africa, we tend to think of tragedy and suffering and misery, and oil. And I was trying to bring a fresh approach to Africa. I was hoping that, if nothing else, oil might focus the attention of Americans on Africa. Even if it’s just for selfish reasons, that’s fine. That’s good enough. At least people start talking about it, you know.

And really what I wanted to do was to try to bring the story to life.
You know, I didn’t want to write a book that was full of facts and figures and really boring and kind of policy wonky or academic. I wanted to kind of get under the skin of the story a bit, really try to bring it to life and go to each of these countries and tell stories and anecdotes and talk to people from all walks of life to try to really give a wide-ranging flavor of the challenges and the obstacles and what it means for Africa and what it means for the world that we’re now getting so much more of our oil from Africa. That’s kind of -

Amy Goodman: John, we just have thirty seconds, but do you think oil is a secret motive with US relations with Sudan?

John Ghazvinian: Possibly. I mean, yes and no. I mean, look, I think China is much more transparent about oil in Sudan. The US relationship with Sudan is a complex one, and for the last few years it’s had a lot to do with cooperation on counterterrorism and intelligence gathering, as well. The Sudan conflict is a lot more complicated than it tends to get presented out as in the media, to be honest, especially the Darfur conflict. And oil kind of plays a part, but it’s not the main driving factor.

Egypt: Hundreds of sit-in strikes shake Egypt

2007-05-24

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/egyp-m18.shtml

Around 300 mainly female workers at the Mansoura Spanish Garment Factory in the Nile delta have occupied the plant since April 21. The workers are staging a sit-in on the firm’s shop floor after a dispute with management over missed pay and the contested sale of the company.

Africa: Civil Solciety participation at AU summit - Press statement

2007-05-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/41602

About thirty civil society organisations from across Africa met in Accra at the SSNIT Guest House on May 18, to discuss plans for civil society participation in the up-coming African Union (AU) Summit to be held in Ghana. The African Union Summit as usual will be preceded by a series of activities, including civil society events.
Press Statement
About thirty civil society organisations from across Africa met in Accra at the SSNIT Guest House on May 18, to discuss plans for civil society participation in the up-coming African Union (AU) Summit to be held in Ghana.

The African Union Summit as usual will be preceded by a series of activities, including civil society events.

Initiated by a coalition of rights-based Ghanaian NGOs, the Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations (NAFEO) and the Centre for Research, Education and Development of Rights in Africa (CREDO- Africa), the meeting agreed to engage in events and activities on Peace, Human Rights and Development in the last half of June to precede the AU Summit.

The meeting expressed concern particularly about the following issues as among the most pressing of the problems facing the peoples of Africa;

1. Peace, conflicts and attendant problems of displaced persons and refugees
2. Human security
3. Democracy and good governance
4. Economic and social rights
5. Freedom of expression in all its manifestations
6. Food Security
7. Gender equality and women's rights
8. Environment
9. Various public health issues, especially HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria and children's health

The civil society groups also identified the following country- specific cases as some of the most critical to engage the attention of the African Union, as they highlight the problems of conflict, peace, human rights and other issues.
They are:

1. Sudan, in particular Darfur
2. Somalia
3. Chad
4. Eritrea
5. Ethiopia
6. Gambia
7. Zimbabwe
8. DRC
9. Tunisia

The events to be organised by the civil society organisations will take place around the following principal programmes and respective dates.

1. 20/21/22 June: A general assembly of, and parallel independent Africa Civil Society consultations and meetings- covering thematic and country issues
2. 25/26 June: Conference on strengthening freedom of expression in Africa and book launch on 50 years of the media in Africa
3. 27th June: Day of solidarity on Zimbabwe
4. 29th June: Presentation of African Public Health Rights Alliance “15% Now” petition, to the African Union
5. 30th June: Day of solidarity on Darfur The solidarity event on Darfur will consist of exhibitions, film shows, round table discussions, and arts and cultural programmes.

The following civil society organisations, including the Ghana NGO coalition, participated in the meeting:

1. Media Foundation for West Africa, Accra
2. Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations, c/o MFWA, Accra
3. Centre for Research, Education and Development of Rights in Africa (CREDO-Africa)
4. Union Interafricaine des Droits de l'Homme (UIDH)
5. Media Rights Agenda, Lagos
6. Media Institute of Southern Africa- (MISA, Zimbabwe)
7. Journalistes En Danger, DRC
8. ARTICLE 19: Global Campaign for Expression
9. Arab Network for Human Rights Information, Cairo
10. Darfur Bar Association
11. Observatoire des Médias Congolais (OMEC)
12. Panos Institute West Africa (PIWA)
13. Darfur Relief & Documentation Coalition
14. Save Darfur Coalition
15. Union des Journalistes Camerounians
16. Sery for Social Development Organisation- Darfur
17. ABANTU
18. Defence Against AIDS, Poverty and Underdevelopment (DAAPU)
19. Foundation for Future Christian Workers International (FFCWI)
20. African Free Media Foundation, Kenya
21. NEPAD/CCRFE- Central Africa- D.R.C
22. Amnesty International- Ghana Section
23. CHPR- Ghana
24. NETRIGHT, Ghana
25. Citizens for New Ghana
26. Youth Development Foundation (YODEF), Ghana
27. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Africa office, Accra (Ghana)
28. Ghana Committee on Human and Peoples' Rights
29. Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre, Ghana

The following networks and their respective member organisations are linked to the initiative and planned programmes of the Accra civil society meetings:

A. Darfur Consortium and its network

B. Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations (NAFEO); members-

1. AMDISS: Association of Media Development in Southern Sudan, Juba
2. CNLT: National Council for Liberties in Tunisia, Tunis
3. EFJA: Ethiopian Free Press Journalists Association, Addis Ababa
4. FAMEDEV: Inter-Africa Network for Women, Media, Gender Equity & Development, Dakar
5. FXI: Freedom of Expression Institute, Johannesburg
6. Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA), Windhoek
7. Media Rights Agenda (MRA), Lagos
8. NGE: Nigerian Guild of Editors, Abuja
9. OMAC: Organisation des Médias d'Afrique Centrale, Bujunbura
10. OTM: Observatoire Togolais des Médias, Lomé
11. National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), Mogadishu
12. SCFE: Somali Coalition for Free Expression, Mogadishu
13. TAEF: All Africa Editors Forum, Johannesburg
14. URATEL: Union des Radio & Television libres du Togo, Lomé
15. WAJA/OJAO : West Africa Journalists Association/ Union des journalists del'Afrique de l'Ouest, Bamako
16. Working Group for Press Freedom and Free Expression in North Africa, Casablanca


C. Africa Public Health Rights Alliance “15% Now!” Campaign:

1. Action Group for Health, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS (AGHA), Uganda
2. Africa Health Research Organisation
3. Africa Internally Displaced Persons Voice (Africa IDP Voice)
4. African Network of Adolescents and Youth in Population and Development (AfriYAN)
5. African Network of Religious Leaders Living with or Personally Affected by HIV and AIDS (ANERELA+)
6. Centre for Research, Education and Developmant of Rights in Africa (CREDO-Africa)
7. Coalition of African Parliamentarians Against HIV/AIDS (CAPAH)
8. Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre- CISLAC Nigeria
9. Cross-of Ministries International Uganda (CGMI)
10. Development Alternatives With Women of New Era (DAWN-Africa)
11. Global AIDS Alliance
12. International Refugee Rights Initiative
13. Institute for Democracy in South Africa- Governance & Aids Prog (IDASA)
14. Kenya Health Rights Advocacy Network (KHRAN)
15. KIGEZI Healthcare Foundation, Uganda
16. Oeuvre de Charite et Development de LEMBA (OCDL ongd/asbl)- DRC
17. POSITIVE-Generation (Cameroon)
18. Positive Women's Network, South Africa
19. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR)
20. RESULTS
21. Santayalla Support Society (Togo)
22. Society for Women and AIDS in Africa- Southern Africa (SWAA Mozambique)
23. Southern Africa HIV & AIDS Dissemination Service (Safaids)
24. Southern and East African Alliance of Parliamentary Committees on Health and HIV/AIDS (SEAPACOH)
25. Stop TB and HIV/AIDS- The Gambia
26. Tbaction Kenya
27. Treatment Action Campaign (TAC)
28. Tuberculosis National League (Cameroon)
29. Women Advocates and Research Documentation Centre (WARDC)
30. World Aids Campaign (WAC)
31. Zimbabwe College of Public Health Physicians


For more information, send enquiries to:
Media Foundation for West Africa
P.O.Box LG 730, Legon Accra, Ghana
Tel: 233-21-242470
Fax: 233-21-221084
E-mail: mfwa@africaonline.com.gh
<http://uk.f254.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=mfwa@africaonline.com.gh>

Executive Director: Prof Kwame Karikari

Senegal: Another blow for opposition

2007-05-25

http://www.afrol.com/articles/25512

It was yet another blow for the Senegalese opposition yesterday when the Council of State legalised the distribution of legilsative seats in the country, a move vehemently challenged by the opposition Parti Socialiste (PS). Until it was dislodged from power by President Abdoulaye Wade’s ruling PDS in 2000, PS had been ruling Senegal since independence in 1960. The party captured third place in the last Presidential polls.

DRC: Congo violence report criticised as "whitewash"

2007-05-25

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L24402209.htm

Congo opposition lawmakers and human rights campaigners on Thursday dismissed as a whitewash a parliament report on a government crackdown against opposition protesters in which more than 100 people were killed. They said the report on the violence in western Bas-Congo province on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 was a setback for efforts to promote good governance in Democratic Republic of Congo, which last year held its first free elections in over four decades.

Burundi: Arbour calls for stronger judiciary to build democracy

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72351

Burundi has made some progress towards democracy but it needed to strengthen the judiciary to ensure justice, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said. "Democracy cannot faction without the institution that nurtures a culture of participation and respect for justice," Louise Arbour said in the capital, Bujumbura, on Wednesday.

Global: Judicial corruption fuels impunity, corrodes rule of law - TI report

2007-05-25

http://tinyurl.com/3bpgpz

Corruption is undermining judicial systems around the world, denying citizens access to justice and the basic human right to a fair and impartial trial, sometimes even to a trial at all, according to the Global Corruption Report 2007: Corruption in Judicial Systems issued today by Transparency International, the global coalition against corruption.

Africa: African countries fight EU for survival

2007-05-24

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=37833

Anti-poverty campaigners have likened trade negotiations between the European Union (EU) and several regions in Africa to a boxing match between a schoolboy novice and a heavyweight champion. Such disparity appears particularly evident in the case of the EU's talks with governments from Eastern and Southern Africa, with whom Brussels wishes to sign an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) by the end of this year.

Global: New Cold War over Africa’s oil riches

2007-05-24

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070520&articleId=5714

To paraphrase the famous quip during the 1992 US Presidential debates, when an unknown William Jefferson Clinton told then-President George Herbert Walker Bush, “It’s the economy, stupid,” the present concern of the current Washington Administration over Darfur in southern Sudan is not, if we were to look closely, genuine concern over genocide against the peoples in that poorest of poor part of a forsaken section of Africa. No. “It’s the oil, stupid.”

Africa: "Our Common Interest" - Report of the commission for Africa

2007-05-25

http://tinyurl.com/2fhtcn

This is the report of the Commission for Africa established by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The report was addressed to the leaders of the G8 and to the wider international community. It is also addressed to the people of Africa and the world as a whole. The measures proposed by the Commission constitute a coherent package to achieve the Commission's goal of a strong and prosperous Africa.

Tanzania: Micro-finance institutions and poverty reduction

2007-05-25

http://tinyurl.com/yplera

REPOA’s Research Report 06.3 examines the extent to which microfinance institutions in Tanzania contribute to poverty reduction. The loan process and technical support provided by micro-finance institutions are studied, as well as some characteristics of the loan recipients and their businesses. The research was conducted on 37 rural and urban micro-finance institutions from four regions and over 350 clients.

Sao Tome & Principe: 100% debt cancellation for island nation

2007-05-25

http://www.afrol.com/articles/25514

The government of São Tomé and Príncipe is brimming with joy over the news that Paris Club has agreed to write off 100 percent of the country’s debts. This was agreed at a meeting of the representatives of the club’s creditor countries today after it was realised that Sao Tome and Principe has reached its completion point under the enhanced initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) in March 2007.

Africa: Medicines without doctors

2007-05-25

http://www.africafocus.org/docs07/gf0705.php

Recent internal comments from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria ("the Global Fund") suggest an intention to focus more on the three diseases, and to leave the strengthening of health systems and support for the health workforce to others. This could create a "Medicines without Doctors" situation in which the medicines to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria are available, but not the doctors or the nurses to prescribe those medicines adequately.

South Africa: Staff shortages cause key ARV programme to falter

2007-05-24

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20031670

Medecins Sans Frontieres’ (MSF) flagship antiretroviral programme in Khayelitsha is taking strain and has been forced to put patients on waiting lists as nurses and doctors struggle to cope with the growing demand. In a report titled “Help Wanted”, the humanitarian organization warns that efforts to further increase access to HIV treatment and maintain and improve quality of care are coming up against a wall due to the severe shortage of health workers.

Zambia: Malaria over-diagnosis and over-treatment

2007-05-24

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/F21C64A4-3164-4233-B72C-461952E6E64F.asp

Malaria diagnostics are grossly underused and there is widespread over-treatment for malaria in patients with negative test results in Zambia, according to the findings of a cross-sectional survey published in the May 23-30th edition of the Journal of American Medical Association. The study calls for the provision of new tools to reduce the overuse of expensive antimalarial treatments and recommends a major change in the treatment of fever in patients without malaria.

Global: Risks of ARV therapy studied

2007-05-24

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/AFE42E78-8D59-43C6-AF3E-A101470A5F7F.asp

Highly active antiretroviral therapy is linked with a moderate increase in the risk of ischaemic heart disease “of the same order as that introduced by smoking 1–4 cigarettes per day”, report a team led by Niels Obel of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. However, contrary to previous reports, this study suggests that the risk does not increase with longer duration of therapy. The study is published in the June 15th edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Swaziland: AIDS triggers wave of urban homeless

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72356

The disintegration of the extended Swazi family, partly as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, has created a new phenomenon of urban homelessness. A bitter early-winter cold front awakened Swazis this week to a problem nonexistent a decade ago: a seemingly permanent population of homeless people in urban centres.

Zimbabwe: Help Zimbabwe's children, UN tells West

2007-05-25

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=309166

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) urged Western donors on Tuesday to put aside politics and back its health, nutrition and education projects in Zimbabwe, where nearly one in three children is stunted by malnutrition. Only $2,6-million has been received towards an appeal of $13,8-million launched six months ago, leaving programmes "grossly underfunded", the agency said.

Kenya: Knowledge is Power - Community learning resource centres

2007-05-25

http://www.ugunja.org/projects_clrc.php

Community Learning Resource Centres (CLRC) are facilitied, initiated and managed by their communities. They aim to increase access to learning opportunities and facilitate activities which increase self-reliance. A CLRC is expected to catalyze community mobilization for the purpose of learning and earning. In 2004 UCRC partnered with Rambula Community Library and the Department of Adult Education to facilitate the creation of 16 CLRCs across Siaya district.

Global: Global Campaign for Education - Press release

2007-05-25

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/view_press_release.php?rID=28766

There are over 80 million children globally who are missing out on school. Two thirds of them are girls. 46 million of them are in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Global Campaign for Education is working to change this. The campaign aims to put pressure on G8 world leaders to keep the promise they made in 2000 of basic primary education for all children. The Global Campaign for Education is asking people to Join Up and add their voice by signing an online petition in the form of a human chain - over 100,000 people from around the world have joined this already.

Mauritius: Blood donor system brands homosexuals

2007-05-25

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=mauritius&id=1581

Much remains to be done in Mauritius to ensure equal rights for all citizens. The questionnaire one has to fill before giving one’s blood is an example of discrimination against gays. Danielle is gay. She did not hesitate to tell it to the person present in the blood donors’ caravan in Port-Louis when she went for blood donation. But she was astonished when she was told that she could not give her blood because she was homosexual.

South Africa: Sexual offences bill awaits more scrutiny

2007-05-25

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=southafrica&id=1584

Many gay organisations are relieved after the South African National Assembly of parliament passed the Sexual Offences Bill on Tuesday this week. This comes weeks after the Constitutional Court in the country ruled out on the Bill against these organisations where non-consensual anal penetration of males in the legal definition of rape was excluded.

Africa: Call for strong leadership to battle climate change

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72330

African leaders should champion the awareness of climate change and the threat it poses to the region among the continent’s population, urged Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. "The threat of rising seas and melting snow all seems very far [away] to people in the continent," said the Kenyan conservationist on 22 May at the UN Environment Program (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi.

Global: Mainstreaming climate change adaptation in developing countries

2007-05-24

http://tinyurl.com/2o5r2w

A Climate Change Briefing Paper published by Tearfund asserts that in developed countries progress on mainstreaming climate adaptation has been limited. Many countries have carried out climate change projections and impact assessments, but few have started consultation processes to look at adaptation options and identify policy responses.

Ghana: CSOs call for greater control over mining companies

2007-05-24

http://www.bicusa.org/en/Article.3338.aspx

The Ghanaian Chronicle reports that NGOs in Ghana have urged the government to play a greater role in regulating and mitigating the adverse impacts of mining on local communities. Ghana’s Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) and Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM) held a press conference in Ghana’s capital, Accra, arguing that gold mining seriously threatens the environment and livelihoods in areas of mining operations.

Algeria: New firm to combat marine pollution

2007-05-24

http://tinyurl.com/2l8dpt

Magharebia reports that Algeria has created a multinational company called the Oil Spill Response Company, with the mission of combating marine pollution caused by hydrocarbons. The Algerian-registered company plans to cover more than 20,000 km of coastline ranging from the Suez Canal in Egypt to Cabinda Bay, Angola.

Swaziland: Drought causes food shortage

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72335

More than a third of Swaziland's population is in need of food aid, after its worst ever harvest, said a UN food agencies' report.A prolonged dry spell has left around 400,000 vulnerable people in need of approximately 40,000 metric tonnes (mt) of food assistance until the next harvest in April 2008, according to a report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), which was based on a joint assessment mission.

Botswana: Bushmen travel to Westminster to seek support

2007-05-24

http://www.survival-international.org/news/2448

Bushman leader Roy Sesana will meet with British MPs at Westminster this Wednesday 23 May to seek support for his people’s ten-year struggle to return to their land in the Kalahari desert, Botswana. Despite the Bushmen’s dramatic court victory in December, the Botswana government is trying to prevent them returning to their land.

DRC: Call for release of reporter

2007-05-25

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/83578/

Reporters Without Borders has called for the release of Bosange Mbaka, a reporter with the Kinshasa-based publication "Mambenga", who was arrested six months ago in a round-up of presumed sympathisers of former presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba. Nicknamed "Che Guevara," Mbaka is from Equateur province, a Bemba stronghold. He was charged with stealing military property for picking up a mobile phone dropped by a soldier.

Gambia: Journalist denies charge, places responsibility on editor

2007-05-25

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/83600/

Lamin Fatty, a reporter with the banned Banjul-based bi-weekly "The Independent", who is standing trial at the Kanifing Magistrate's Court for publishing "false information", on 21 May 2007 denied ever publishing any "false information". The journalist told the court that, as a reporter, he only gathered facts and submitted them to the editors who hold the ultimate responsibility for publishing.

Nigeria: Journalists attacked

2007-05-25

http://www.afrol.com/articles/25516

At least 10 journalists working for Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS) in Nigeria have been attacked. Enraged by the public broadcaster’s relay that state elections would go ahead today, 100 armed supporters of a local politician, Christopher Alao Akala, allegedly stormed BCOS’s headquarters in Ibadan and started attacking journalists with machetes as well as smashing equipment. The attack had trapped many employees while others took to their heels.

Nigeria: Two journalists in hiding, a third gets death threats

2007-05-25

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/83586/

Reporters Without Borders has deplored the appalling threats and constraints under which Nigerian journalists work, with two of them currently in hiding because of an arrest order issued by a judge on 16 May 2007 and a third receiving repeated telephone threats because of an article published on 22 May. "The absence of change at the head of the federal government apparently means that nothing will change for Nigerian journalists, either," the press freedom organisation said.

Zimbabwe: Photographer sought by police goes into hiding

2007-05-25

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/83601/

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the Zimbabwean government to end its attacks and harassment of journalists and to stop police harassment of newspaper photographer Boldwill Hungwe. "We are very upset by recent incidents that show a pattern of media repression and we urge the government to put an end to it," said Gabriel Baglo, Director of the IFJ Africa Office.

DRC: Thousands more flee ongoing clashes in Kivu

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72346

At least 40 children are among thousands of newly displaced civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) fleeing ongoing clashes between Congolese armed forces and Rwandan rebels, officials said. "These newly displaced people come from the Ufamando group and the Gungu area," Kemal Saiki, spokesman for the United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUC) said on 23 May.

Côte d’Ivoire: Militia burns weapons

2007-05-25

http://tinyurl.com/2j2lgx

Al Jazeera reports that former members of a pro-government militia in the west of the Ivory Coast have burnt piles of weaponry in a symbolic gesture to mark the completion of their disarmament. Attending the ceremonies on Saturday, the president of the Ivory Coast hailed the disarmament as an important step towards re-unifying the war-torn west African country.

Sudan: Fresh clashes in Darfur blamed on government

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72290

A Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) faction has blamed Sudanese government forces for fresh attacks on its positions in North Darfur, saying aerial bombardment had been employed against its fighters. Sudanese government forces clashed with rebels over the weekend in the Rockero area of North Darfur state, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) reported, adding that it was unable to estimate the number of casualties following the violence.

CAR: Ensure perpetrators of atrocities are brought to book, ICC urged

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72322

The decision by the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged crimes committed during an armed conflict between the Central African Republic (CAR) government and rebel forces in 2002 and 2003 should ensure the perpetrators are arraigned in court, a victim said. "I contracted HIV [when] I was raped by Congolese rebels in 2002; I will be relieved if the perpetrators of this act of humiliation appear in court to be charged for what they did," a 44-year-old woman said in the CAR capital of Bangui on Tuesday.

CAR: Negotiations under way for demobilisation of child soldiers

2007-05-25

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72265

Rebels in northeastern Central African Republic (CAR) have agreed to negotiate the release of hundreds of child soldiers in their ranks to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), a spokeswoman said. "We [the government, rebels and UNICEF] are in agreement on the necessity for these children to be released and reintegrated into their communities as soon as possible," Anne Boher, the communications officer for UNICEF in CAR, told IRIN on Monday.

Africa: All set for Second eLearning Africa Conference

2007-05-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/41665

Kenya will next week host the second International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Development, Education and Training from 28th to 30th May, 2007 at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi. Dubbed eLearning Africa, the conference will be held under the theme "Building Infrastructures and Capacities to Reach out to the Whole of Africa".
Highway Africa News Agency

Kenya will next week host the second International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Development, Education and Training from 28th to 30th May, 2007 at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi. Dubbed eLearning Africa, the conference will be held under the theme "Building Infrastructures and Capacities to Reach out to the Whole of Africa".

The conference will also be an opportunity to reflect on spirited attempts being made to set up regional ICT infrastructure within the continent to enhance education and training services.

The programme will cover a wide range of topics, such as e-learning in medical education and the fight against HIV and AIDS, mobile learning, open source and open content, as well as eLearning in schools, higher education institutions and in the public sector.

The conference is being organized by the Berlin-based ICWE GmbH (specialists in the fields of e-learning, higher education, language training and study abroad programmes) and Hoffman and Reif (a German consultancy firm and a partnership of international experts in the field of ICT based Human Resources Development, educational Change Management and Organisational Development)in collaboration with Kenya?s Ministry of Education.

"So far, just over 1000 participants from 81 countries have already registered for the conference. We are very pleased to announce that the second eLearning Africa conference has not only grown considerably in numbers but also is once again a truly African event, with more than seventy percent of the attendees coming from the African continent", says Rebecca Stromeyer, project manager of eLearning Africa and managing director of ICWE.

Says Kenya's Education minister Prof George Saitoti. "For us in Kenya, eLearning Africa is not just another event. Hosting this large-scale conference in Nairobi gives us the unique opportunity to benefit from the hundreds of experts convening and spending some extra time in our country. In keeping with the event theme 'Building Infrastructures and Capacities to Reach out to the Whole of Africa', we will make it possible for Kenyan teachers, professors, administrators, and students - in fact for the entire educational sector - to benefit in one way or another from the capacity-building activities".

Saitoti adds that the conference is of key significance to Kenya, coming as it does at a time when the government has formulated a national ICT policy aimed at efficient service delivery and capacity building in all sectors of the economy. "eLearning Africa aims to establish and link a network of decision makers from governments and administrations with universities, schools, governmental and private training providers, industry, and important partners in development", says Saitoti.

The minister will host the first African High-Level Policy Maker and Industry Leader Round Table and Retreat, entitled 'Accelerating the Building of ICT Infrastructures and Capacities for African Educational Systems.' The conference focuses on ICT-supported education, currently a core component of the development plans of most African governments. It is noteworthy that ICTs are being integrated into many national educational systems in order to reach the Millennium Goal of "Education for All".

Launched as an annual Pan-African event in May 2006 in Addis Ababa and attracting more than 800 participants, eLearning Africa immediately established itself as a landmark for capacity building, networking and collaboration. This year's event brings together high-level policy makers, industry leaders, as well as Research and Development experts and practitioners from Africa as well as their counterparts from the rest of the world. In tandem with the conference theme, the event will reach out beyond the conference center and will feature large-scale lectures in Kenyan universities, addressing both fundamentals as well as Research and Development topics in technology-enhanced education and training.

In addition there will be two break-out workshops that address needs in rural areas and regional institutions: one held in Mombassa, on the Indian Ocean, and the other in Kisumu, on Lake Victoria. Reputable universities from all over the Continent will present ICT good practice and e-learning programmes. Among the universities expected to give presentations at the conference include the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, the African Virtual University, University of Zimbabwe, Tumaini University, Tanzania,and the University of Western Cape, South Africa.

The largest number of participants, however, will be drawn from Kenya, followed by Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda in that order. The largest group of delegates from Europe is expected from the UK, while the USA and Canada will also send representatives.

The conference has also attracted 308 speakers from 55 countries, including representatives from development organisations such as UNESCO, International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education Training (UNEVOC), the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN), and the World Bank, as well as national and governmental institutions from all over the world. Kenya, the hosting country will be represented at the conference by high-level speakers from the Ministry of Education, the Universities of Nairobi and Maseno, as well as major Kenya-based global development organisations.

Major sponsors of the conference include the European Commission, the UNEVOC and the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training. Sponsorship has also been drawn from ICT service providers and grant givers namely Intel, the Swedish Programme for ICT in Developing Regions (SPIDER), Worldwide Education (wwedu), hp, Nokia, Panasonic, Cisco and ORACLE. Kenya Airways is the official carrier.

Key highlights of the event include the 1st African UNESCO-UNEVOC Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) Summit titled "Access to and Inclusion in TVET in Africa Through New ICT-Based Solutions" Organised by the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training in partnership with the Commonwealth of Learning, the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Africa and the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training.

Innovative ICT-based TVET initiatives will be showcased and selected participants in the Summit will have the chance to present their work. Projects will also be presented on the dedicated web space 'Best Practice in Technology Enhanced TVET' on the eLearning Africa website. Other highlights will include approaches to quality assurance in eLearning programmes in Higher Education institutions. The African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) will present a successful case study in "Online Learning Opportunities for Health Professionals".

Global: Microsoft wants to 'Kill' Open Source

2007-05-25

http://tinyurl.com/ytdumt

A report appearing in Business Week states that now that the computer industry has its first accounting of how many patents Microsoft says are violated by open-source software, the question for many tech vendors is how aggressively the software giant will begin enforcement. And judging from the reaction in the blogosphere, the new disclosures inspire fear.

Global: Intel launches World Ahead Programme

2007-05-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/41663

Intel, the software giant has launched the World Ahead Programme, which aims at expanding accessibility, connectivity, education and content for the world's developing communities. The programme aims at developing low-cost full-featured PCs for first-time computer users, extending Worlwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology and deployment, training 10 million more teachers on the effective use of technology in education and donating 100,000 PCs to classrooms in developing communities to promote the effective use of technology for improved learning.
Highway Africa News Agency

Intel, the software giant has launched the World Ahead Programme, which aims at expanding accessibility, connectivity, education and content for the world's developing communities. The programme aims at developing low-cost full-featured PCs for first-time computer users, extending Worlwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology and deployment, training 10 million more teachers on the effective use of technology in education and donating 100,000 PCs to classrooms in developing communities to promote the effective use of technology for improved learning.

To be used in the programme are low-cost laptops christened ClassMate, the cheapest computer ever to run a Windows programme. Though smaller than the standard laptop, the ClassMate has the same features and currently retails at $390. However, the laptop has its unique features, key of which is a liquid proof keyboard that cannot be easily destroyed by children for which it is intended. It also comes with a small screen, which can easily be handled by children and has a Windows operating system. According to John Davies, Intel?s World Ahead Programme Vice-President, the laptops are made in Taiwan, with prices set to come down to $200 by next year for the benefit of the users.

In order to achieve maximum efficiency and efficacy of the programme, Intel will partner with local PC assemblers, whose efforts have already resulted in the development of a PC in Kenya known as madaraka (Kiswahili for independence). With over 6000 PC assemblers in Africa, Intel aims at working with them with a view to developing local Central Processing Units (CPUs) and motherboards.

Davies says schools, which will participate throughout the country, have already been identified. Negotiations are also underway with Telkom Kenya and the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) to make available WiMAX to institutions not covered by the national telephone grid to enhance e-learning. And for purposes of collaboration with the private and public sectors, Intel has held meetings with Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph, industrialist Manu Chandaria, Vice-President Moody Awori and senior officials from the ministries of Education, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Information and Communications as well as Planning and National Development.

The programme has already rolled out in 170 centres in 60 countries, including Nigeria and South Africa. "Our aim is to have participating schools connected to the Internet so as to have learning materials delivered via the same avenue", says Davies.

To enhance e-learning, Intel has also developed software to be used by participating schools. Once the programme has been adopted by pilot institutions, Intel will invite other software companies to develop the same for the local schools where they operate. So far, the programme has provided $5 million worth of content and will soon invite other content developers to modify existing content to make it relevant to individual countries. The programme starts with one laptop per class and eventually to all students in the institution having a computer to encourage personalized learning.

Intel, however, is venturing in an area that is already crowded, given that similar programmes, such as the Nepad e-schools initiative has already rolled out. "We are simply coming in to add value to the existing initiatives, not necessarily to compete", said Davies at a brief ceremony held at Nairobi's Hotel Intercontinental.

Uganda: Government invests in ICT to achieve MDGs

2007-05-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/41664

The Uganda government is taking steps to strategize ICT as a priority sector for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and to fight poverty.
According to the Information and Communications Technology minister Dr. Ham Mukasa Mulira, the first major step was the creation of the ministry. "Previously Uganda's ICT environment did not have focused ownership that takes into account multi sectoral, cross cutting and catalytic nature of ICT," he said.
Highway Africa News Agency

The Uganda government is taking steps to strategize ICT as a priority sector for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and to fight poverty.

According to the Information and Communications Technology minister Dr. Ham Mukasa Mulira, the first major step was the creation of the ministry.

"Previously Uganda's ICT environment did not have focused ownership that takes into account multi sectoral, cross cutting and catalytic nature of ICT," he said.

"This strategic decision is expected to result in an appropriately developed ICT sector through coordinated, focused and harmonized strategies and interventions to ensure maximum benefits and rapid transformation of the country,".He said The minister also pointed out that "In order to expedite the role of ICTs in a manner that compliments the private sector initiative, government has developed a national ICT master plan under which it is implementing initiatives aimed at creating an enabling environment for the sector to grow."

"There is full liberalization of the telecommunications sector and more operators are being licensed to provide telecom services," he said.

A national data transmission backbone is being set up to strengthen the infrastructure for linking up all districts in the country and major towns.

The government has also developed a policy that would ensure that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are fully integrated in the curriculum and training at all levels, an official of ICT Ministry has said.

The objective is to eradicate adult illiteracy and ensure that young people are equipped with knowledge and skills to use Information and Communication Technologies including the capacity to analyse and treat information in creative and innovative ways.

He said the ministry through the Uganda Communications Commission has also promoted e-literacy skills for all by use of multipurpose community telecentres. "Special attention is being given to the rural communities through the Rural Communication Development Fund (RCDF),".

He said government is in the process of developing district information centres after establishment of the national backbone. These centres will act as information sharing and distribution points in the districts and with such adequate infrastructure and services in place, Ugandans should have the necessary skills to fully benefit from the ICT.

Capacity building and ICT literacy are central in achieving universal education worldwide through delivery of education and training of teachers and offering improved conditions for lifelong learning, encompassing people that are outside the formal education process and improving professional skills.

He said that the ministry has undertaken initiatives leading to the shaping of the sector market through policies and regulations. These policies will address the combined conflicting challenges of promoting the sector investment and growth and ensure national and non-discriminative reach of services and benefits to all parts of the country.

Global: Report monitors political will to make the information revolution reality for all

2007-05-25

http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=5064143

A new watchdog report monitoring promises made by governments and the United Nations to ensure that information technology is used to benefit millions of people, was launched in Geneva on May 22. The fruits of the information technology 'revolution' are unevenly distributed between countries and within societies.

Online toolkit for proposal writing and funding raising

2007-05-21

http://www.gdnet.org/middle.php?oid=363

This toolkit provides tips and practical suggestions for applying for funding and proposal writing. It is based on interviews with experienced research fundraisers. Obtaining funding for your research is a difficult achievement, so this guide will help give your proposal the best possible chance of success.

Africa: Child and Youth Studies Institute: 2007 Session

2007-05-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/41603

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce the sixth session of its Child and Youth Studies Institute and invites interested scholars to send applications for consideration for selection as laureates, resource persons, and director in the session which is scheduled for October 2007. The deadline for the receipt of applications is: 31 August, 2007.
CODESRIA
Child and Youth Studies Institute:
2007 Session Theme: African Youth Cultures and the ICT Revolution

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce the sixth session of its Child and Youth Studies Institute and invites interested scholars to send applications for consideration for selection as laureates, resource persons, and director in the session which is scheduled for October 2007. The Institute is an off-shoot of the Council’s Child and Youth Studies Programme and is designed to strengthen analytic capacity on all questions affecting children and the youth in Africa and elsewhere in the world. The impetus for the introduction of the Institute was strengthened by the critique emanating from African researchers of the content and context of the developmental crises facing the continent and the link between these problems and what is now generally referred to as the Child and Youth Question. The Institute is, therefore, designed as an annual multidisciplinary forum where participants can reflect together on a specific aspect of the conditions of children and the youth in Africa and, in so doing, contribute to the advancement of the frontiers of knowledge and policy. Each session is held over a period of four weeks under the leadership of a designated director.

For the 2007 session of the Institute, the theme that has been selected is African Youth Cultures and the ICT Revolution. This is a theme that has become crucial to explore not only because of the increasingly important place which new information and communications technologies (ICTs) are occupying in the lives and outlook of the younger members of society but also the variety of cultures and sub-cultures which are being woven around them in the making of contemporary youth identity. The global ICT revolution has been refracted into Africa in a variety of forms, including mobile telephony, global telecasts delivered locally in real time, new generation video machines, new digital technologies covering an ever-widening range of applications, computers and computer-based technologies, and internet services. These new ICTs have impacted directly on economy and society in many different ways that have been the objects of some research in terms of the manner in which they are transforming broad social practices and modes of economic organisation. While there is still much more work to be done on the transformatory impact of ICTs on African economies and societies, there are even more urgent challenges in assessing the ways in which various societal players may be responding to the entry of the new ICTs into the contemporary socio-economic and political processes. Of particular interest in this regard are the youths, a social category which is generally more adaptable to technological changes but which, in any case, has figured among the quickest and largest numbers of takers in the rapidly changing technological terrain that has characterised the last two decades in Africa. In the hands of the African youth - as, indeed, the youth elsewhere in the world – ICTs have been a powerful tool in the making and re-making of identities which carry generational and inter-generational implications; they have also spurned new cultures and sub-cultures which have been the objects of anecdotal comments but hardly of systematic research. In what ways, for example, has the mobile phone become a part of youth identities and what cultures and sub-cultures have developed around it? How are the ICTs affecting inter-generational perceptions and relationships? What kinds of real and virtual communities are being forged by a generation of African youth adept at working the internet and negotiating the cyber space? Responding to these questions and others of their type calls for careful empirical research that might enable the research community to better understand the dialectics of the ICTs in relation to the youth in Africa. Under what conditions are the ICTs empowering and in what circumstances do they become disempowering of the youth? Are young Africans only in the ICTs market as consumers or are they also innovators at the frontier of the adaptation of the technologies to the exigencies of the local environment that they inhabit? Are the ICTs and the borderlessness which they imply in some cases evidence of the emergence of a new generation of globalised citizens or the harbingers of new boundaries that require to be surmounted?

Through the theme of the 2007 session, participants in the Institute are being invited to undertake a critical assessment of the different dimensions of youth cultures and sub-cultures associated with the ICTs. Participants will be encouraged to review the relevant literature that is emerging on the subject; analyse the empirical evidence which is available both from their own field work and other sources; construct conceptual, theoretical, and methodological tools that could help to deepen knowledge, as well as advance debate; and consider the challenges for further research which arise from their scholarly interventions. Among some of the topics which it is hoped the Institute will cover are: Patterns of youth communications in the ICT age, including text messages, instant messaging, e-mail groups, shared mobile phone communities, etc; popular vs. elite youth cultures around the ICTs; the youth in cyberspace and virtual communities; the emergence of new public spheres driven by the deployment of ICTs by the youth; modes of youth consumption, including fashion and music, associated with the ICTs; new processes and forms of value construction among the youth in the digital age; the variety of gender issues and patterns integral to youth cultures around the ICTs; and youth protest and solidarity in the cyber era. For the purpose of the work they would be undertaking, participants in the Institute will have access to the resources of the CODESRIA Documentation and Information Centre (CODICE) and the expertise of a team of experienced resource persons.

Laureats

Candidates wishing to be considered for selection as laureates in the Institute should normally be researchers based in African institutions and who have completed their university education/professional training. Furthermore, they should have a demonstrable interest in the Child and Youth Question. Self-sponsoring non-African candidates will also be considered for a limited number of spaces in the Institute. A total of 15 laureates will be selected from the applications received. All candidates are required to submit an application which should include:

i) A letter of request for consideration for admission into the Institute, complete with all available contact details (e-mail, telephone, and fax);
ii) a research proposal of not more than ten pages linked clearly to the theme of the Institute and with a well-defined problematic;
iii) A current curriculum vitae;
iv) An official letter of institutional affiliation; and
v) Two reference letters.

Resource Persons
Four resource persons will be selected to work with the Director of the Institute to animate the discussions and debates that would be held. The resource persons are required to deliver lectures which not only help the laureates to stimulate their reflections on the theme of the Institute but also to revise their research proposals. As such, the resource persons must have a strong scholarly track record on the Institute theme. Each resource person will be given a slot to make up to three presentations to the laureates; resource persons will also be encouraged to offer comments on the proposals of the laureates. Once selected, resource persons will be required to write up the presentations they would be making so that these can be circulated in advance to the laureates. After the Institute, they will be expected to revise their presentations for consideration for publication by the Council in a volume devoted to the theme of the session in which they participated.

Candidates wishing to considered for selection as resource persons are requested to:

i) Submit a letter of application;
ii) A copy of their curriculum vitae;
iii) An outline of not more than five pages of the issues they would like to tackle within the theme of the Institute and spread over three lectures of two hours each; and
iv) A reading list to accompany the presentation they would be making.

Director

The Director takes on the overall responsibility for managing the scientific sessions of the Institute not only in terms of designing an overall programme of presentations and discussions but also assisting the laureates to get the best out of the programme. The director is also expected to edit the proceedings of the Institute once the reports of the laureates and the revised papers of the resource persons are received. Candidates for this position should be accomplished scholars who will be able both to guide and inspire the laureates. Those wishing to be considered for this role are requested to send:

i) A letter of application;
ii) A copy of their curriculum vitae;
iii) A detailed course outline on the theme of the Institute and which should also be divided into sub-themes that they would wish to see covered during the Institute; and
iv) A bibliographic list to accompany the proposed course outline.

All applications received for consideration as laureates, resource persons and director will be screened by an independent selection committee made up of eminent scholars with expertise on the theme of the Institute. The deadline for the receipt of applications is: 31 August, 2007. Applications should be sent to:

The Child and Youth Studies Institute, CODESRIA, Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop (Angle Canal IV), BP 3304, CP 18524, Dakar, Senegal.

Tel: +221-8259822/23 Fax: +221-8241289 E-Mail: child.institute@codesria.sn Web Site: http://www.codesria.org

Ethiopia: Gender and Organization Development

2007-05-24

http://www.hrea.org/erc/Calendar/display.php?doc_id=3771

The overall aim of the course is to enhance the understanding of the concepts of gender and development, and in mainstreaming gender in institutions and programmes. The course covers the history and rationale of gender and organisational development, gender analysis and planning, methods and processes for gender needs assessment and institutional audit.

Global: The Politics of Human Trafficking: Call for Papers

2007-05-24

http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/jcr/stair/contributors.html

In the year of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, the global trade in human beings is back on the policy agenda. This illegal trade is no longer restricted to a singular westward flow across the Atlantic, but now occurs in such diverse regions as South Asia and the Middle East. The St Antony’s International Review (STAIR) invites academics, young researchers, and policy experts to submit abstracts of papers for the forthcoming issue on ‘The Politics of Human Trafficking.’

Glolbal: IFC/FT Second annual essay competition

2007-05-24

http://tinyurl.com/2ln398

On April 25, 2007, IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, and the Financial Times launched the second annual IFC/FT Essay Competition. This year's theme is: “Private Sector Development: Creating Markets, Transforming Lives.” Entries are being accepted from Wednesday, April 25, 2007 to Sunday, September 30, 2007.

Kenya: The African Satellite, Wireless Broadband & VoIP Conference

2007-05-25

http://new.aitecafrica.com/node/401

Satellites still provide a communications lifeline for a large proportion of Africa’s internal and external voice and data traffic. And wireless broadband technologies are increasingly providing the continent’s intermediate and last mile links. SatWiBB Africa is the first conference to cover both ends of this increasingly integrated and converging communications paradigm.

South Africa: Information for Change - workshop

2007-05-24

http://www.informationforchange.org.

"Information for Change: Generating, Publishing, and Applying Knowledge for Development," a workshop that will take place at the Cape Town Book Fair on Monday, 18 June, will address the following questions. What is the role of information in achieving development aims? How is knowledge generated, isseminated, and used? Where do you go to find information? What is the role of the researcher, the publisher, the librarian, and the NGO? How can publishing help make change happen? Admission is free.

Kenya: The history and impact of political cartooning in Kenya

2007-05-25

http://kenya.fes-international.de/publications.shtml

The history of cartooning in Kenya, as it is elsewhere in Africa, is indeed a work in progress. Little has been written on Kenyan journalism, and even less on cartooning. A generation ago, Kenya hardly had any cartooning significance. But in the last two decades, cartoonists have taken the media by storm. Today, all the major newspapers in Kenya feature political and comic strips. This publication sets out this history and also explores the impact cartooning has had on the political development of the country. The booklet is compiled by Patrick Gathara of the Association of East African Cartoonists (KATUNI) and funded by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Orders to Patrick Gathara (patrickgathara@yahoo.com)

Africa: Deputy Executive Secretary - CODESRIA

2007-05-24

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/41581

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites applications from suitably qualified African scholars for the post of Deputy Executive Secretary in its pan-African Secretariat located inDakar, Senegal. All applications must be received by 31 October, 2007. Any application received after this date will not be considered.
CODESRIA
Vacancy Announcement

Deputy Executive Secretary

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites applications from suitably qualified African scholars for the post of Deputy Executive Secretary in its pan-African Secretariat located inDakar, Senegal. This position is categorised as one of the most senior management posts in the Secretariat and the successful candidate is expected to function as part of a team of senior programme staff under the overall supervision of the Executive Secretary of the Council.

Established in 1973 as a pioneering, independent, pan-African and not-for-profit organisation for the development of the social sciences in Africa, CODESRIA is today widely recognised as the premier center on the continent for the generation and dissemination of multidisciplinary research knowledge. The position of Deputy Executive Secretary is a key one both in the development of the programme mandate of the Council and the realisation of the strategic institutional objectives set by the General Assembly of its members. In addition to deputising for the Executive Secretary as may be called upon, the successful candidate will also be required to:

1) Take a lead role in the development of new programmes and activities, and in the mobilisation of researchers across Africa to participate in them in accordance with existing institutional rules and strategy;
2) Be directly responsible for the management of all the collaborative and special programmes undertaken by CODESRIA in partnership with other research organisations;
3) Play a supervisory role in the monitoring of all CODESRIA programme clusters and activities with a view to reinforcing synergies, sustaining efficiency, and verifying the quality of engagement between the Secretariat and the research networks which it supports;
4) Develop proposals for the funding of the work of the Council under the direction of the Executive Secretary and produce required activity reports for those who support the various programmes and activities of the institution;
5) Undertake representational duties on behalf of the Council as may be delegated by the Executive Secretary;
6) Promote contacts with researchers, professional associations and regional organisations within Africa, across the global South and in the rest of the world;
7) Lend support to other CODESRIA programme staff for the realisation of the scientific mission and mandate of the Council; and
8) Organise research and policy dialogue meetings within programme clusters for which s/he is directly responsible.

QUALIFICATIONS

Applicants must:

1. Have a sound university education and at least seven years of post-doctoral working experience in a research and/or research training environment;
2. Have a good knowledge of CODESRIA and possess a demonstrable ability to mobilise and promote the work of African researchers;
3. Know and be familiar with the African and international scientific community;
4. Have a first hand knowledge of the African university environment and a track-record of research;
5. Have a proven experience of programme management in an academic environment;
6. Be experienced in fund-raising, resource management and the preparation of reports for funders;
7. Have a distinguished record of publication in peer-reviewed journals;
8. Have demonstrable skills in the management of personnel in a diversified, multi-cultural environment; and
9. Be fluent in French or English and have a good working knowledge of the other language.

WORKING CONDITIONS

The salary level that will be offered will depend on the successful applicant's experience and qualifications, and will be broadly comparable to those of similar posts in other international organisations.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

More information about CODESRIA can be obtained from the Council’s website: www.codesria.org It is CODESRIA policy to reflect the disciplinary, gender, generational and linguistic diversity of the African social science community in its structures. In this connection, female candidates and younger researchers meeting the qualifications set out are especially encouraged to send in their dossiers for consideration for these two positions.

HOW TO APPLY

All applicants wishing to be considered for any of the two posts are required to supply the following documents :

1. A written application;
2. A detailed CV describing the candidate’s professional experience;
3. Three reference letters, two of which must come from people living in countries other than the applicant’s country of residence; and
4. Three or four of the candidate’s recent publications.

The reference letters in support of candidates must be sealed and sent under separate cover and marked “Confidential Reference”. The application letters and other supporting documents of candidates should be sent in a sealed envelope marked “Application Documents”. Both the applications and the reference letters should be sent to:

The President
CODESRIA
Av. Cheikh Anta Diop x Canal IV
BP 3304, CP 18524, Dakar / SENEGAL

CLOSING DATE
All applications must be received by 31 October, 2007. Any application received after this date will not be considered.

Burundi: Youth Program Manager, International Rescue Committee

2007-05-24

http://ircjobs.org/jobs_details1.asp?job_id=89670

The Youth Program Manager’s primary role is to reinforce the quality of the youth program across the Country Program in line with the IRC Program Framework, the Programming Principles and the Country Strategic Plan, and to strengthen the capacity of IRC Burundi youth staff. The Manager ensures the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the UAM program. He/she is in charge of writing donor reports and of budget management of ongoing grants.

Ethiopia: Country Director, FARM-Africa

2007-05-24

http://www.eldis.org/cf/search/disp/DocDisplay.cfm?Doc=DOC24102

FARM-Africa, an international non-governmental organisation that aims to reduce poverty in eastern and South Africa, is looking for a professional with at least three years experience of leading and managing a substantial and complex country programme in Africa. Closing date: 31 May 2007.

Global: Policy Programmes Officer - ILGA-Europe

2007-05-24

http://www.ilga-europe.org/europe/about_us/job_opportunity

ILGA-Europe currently is looking to employ a Policy Programmes Officer. The post holder will be responsible for providing policy, lobbying and capacity building services to support ILGA-Europe's advocacy of LGBT rights at the European level. In particular the post holder will work with our member organisations to implement and influence European level policies in the areas of employment, social inclusion and equality.

Global: Web Manager - Open Society Institute

2007-05-24

http://www.soros.org/about/offices/newyork/webmgr

The Web Manager is the chief project manager of OSI's websites and new media initiatives. (S)he coordinates production (programming, design, editorial), develops and implements business practices and marketing strategies, standardizes and maintains content management and publishing processes, and manages a geographically distributed team of programmers, designers, editors, and writers. (S)he is also the main liaison between internal and external constituencies. The web manager reports to OSI's Director of Public Affairs. Deadline: May 31, 2007

Liberia: Livelihoods Coordinator - Concern Worldwide

2007-05-24

http://www.oneworld.net/job/view/15229

Looking for a Livelihoods Coordinator to provide technical and management support to the livelihood security programmes in the four programme counties, Grand Bassa, Lofa, Bong and Montserrado. Career sector: Management, Coordination, Leadership; Type of work : Accomodation Provided, Contract, Full Time. Closing Date: 15.06.2007

South Africa: Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town,

Closing date: 1, June 2007

2007-05-24

http://www.uct.ac.za/about/intro/vacancies/?id=182

The University of Cape Town is seeking a Vice-Chancellor to succeed Professor Njabulo Ndebele, who completes his second term of office in mid-2008, and invites applications and nominations for the post. The Vice-Chancellor is the University’s Chief Executive Officer, responsible to Council and Senate, and should be a leader who is able to provide direction and inspire others. Closing date: 1, June 2007

Sudan: Project Coordinator - Medical Emergency Relief International (Merlin)

2007-05-24

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/res.nsf/db900SID/OCHA-73GM58

The goal of the Sudan mission is to address humanitarian and health crises within South Sudan while increasing the capacity of local structures to deliver effective and quality health care services. Merlin’s programmes in South Sudan are located in Eastern Equatoria and Jonglei States and focus on the delivery of primary and referral health care services. Desirable: previous work experience in southern Sudan. Closing date: 30 Jun 2007

UK: Consultant, Organisation Sustainability - Ashridge Business School

Deadline: 6 June, 2007

2007-05-24

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/jobs/jobdetail.cfm?JobID=3042891

To help us sustain and build on our current position we now seek an Organisation Consultant with a demonstrable interest in sustainability and corporate responsibility. We are particularly interested to hear from those experienced in new business development and in managing complex projects across their life cycle. Deadline: 6 June, 2007

USA: Interns and volunteers - Feminist.com

2007-05-24

http://www.feminist.com/market/jobs/

Feminist.com is currently looking for interns and volunteers in the areas of grant writing, fundraising, web programming and design, content development, typing (to transcribe interviews, articles and book excerpts), link scouters, researchers and many other opportunities.

Fahamu