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Making Sense of Chad

Alex de Waal

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/45872

The war for Chad is not over. It is likely to become more bloody and involve a wider humanitarian disaster before any solutions can be grasped. The next week will be critical for the future of the country–and for the wider region, including Darfur, as well.

Last weekend’s battle in the Chadian capital N’djamena came as no surprise. For the last two years, the Sudan government has been trying to overthrow the Chadian president, Idriss Deby, using Chadian rebels as proxy forces. The three armed groups involved in the latest attack were all extensively armed by Sudanese Security, which has the clear intent of cutting off the support that Deby is giving to Darfurian rebels, especially the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which has recently been on the offensive in Darfur. The timing is no surprise either. In the next few weeks, a European Union protection force (EUFOR) was due to deploy to eastern Chad and north-eastern Central African Republic. While EUFOR’s mandate (given by the UN Security Council) is for impartial civilian protection, it is a substantially French initiative, and seen by all in the region as a military protection for Deby. Khartoum and the rebels wanted to strike first.

The Chadian civil war is often described as a “spillover” from Darfur. That is a simplification. Darfur’s war actually began as a spillover from Chad more than twenty years ago and the two conflicts have been entangled ever since. Many of the Arab militia fighting in Darfur are of Chadian origin, and many of the rebels similarly served in the Chadian army or militia. The current Chadian war is best seen through four different lenses.

First, it is a continuation of the entangled conflicts of Darfur and Chad, which includes competition for power and land.

Second, there is an internal Chadian conflict. After a hopeful broadening of the base of his regime in the late 1990s, accompanied by the growth of civil politics in N’djamena, he has reverted to one-man military rule. Deby relies heavily on a very narrow circle of close kinsmen and on using state finance as his personal property, distributing largesse in return for loyalty. He is also ill and the political vultures have been circling for several years. The most feared scenario now is that Deby will eliminate the civil opposition in Chad, forcing the international community to choose between him and the rebels, whom he depicts as Sudanese mercenaries. Murdering the civilian opposition in this way is not unprecedented in Chad.

Third is Khartoum’s strategy for managing security in its borderlands, which includes treating weak neighboring states as extensions of its internal peripheries. Sudanese security helped bring Deby to power in 1990 as part of a policy that also saw it engage militarily in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic over the subsequent decade. In the same way that Khartoum uses a mixture of reward and force to control its provincial elites, in Darfur, the South and elsewhere, it uses the same tools to influence its trans-border peripheries.

Last is a regional competition for dominance through a vast arc of central Africa that has rarely been governed by state authority. This hinterland includes Chad, CAR and northern DRC, as well as the adjoining areas of Sudan. As well as Khartoum, Tripoli, Kampala, Kinshasa, Kigali and even Asmara are vying for influence across this area.

Darfur and Chad

Deby came to power in 1990 on the basis of a simple deal with Khartoum—each would deny support to the other’s rebels. For twelve years that deal held. When the Darfur rebels began to organize at scale in 2002 and 2003, Deby at first tried to dissociate himself from them. He mediated the first ceasefires in the war (Abeche in September 2003 and N’djamena in April 2004), worked to split and undermine the rebels, and even reportedly cooperated in some military actions against them. But he was unable to control his Zaghawa kinsmen who formed many of the fighters of both SLA and JEM, and by 2005 Chad was sucked into the conflict as a direct supporter of the rebels. The Sudan government responded by backing Chadian rebels, who attacked the border town of Adre in December 2005. At this point, Deby declared that Sudan and Chad were in a state of war. Even while the peace talks continued in Abuja, the Chadian war intensified, reaching its climax with a rebel attack on N’djamena in April 2006. Just weeks before the deadline for concluding the peace talks, Khartoum tried to alter the reality on the ground in its favor. It nearly succeeded. JEM forces helped sway the battle for N’djamena in Deby’s favor.

The entanglement has continued since. Deby’s favored intermediary has been JEM, which he has rearmed with weapons captured in Chadian battles. Meanwhile, Sudan has backed a series of Chadian rebels. Among them are the United Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) of Mahamat Nouri, a Goraan and former ambassador, the Rally of Forces for Change(RFD) of Timan Erdimi, a Bedeyat cousin of Deby and former army chief of staff, and a breakaway group from the UFDD headed by Abdel Wahid Aboud Mackaye, a Salamat Arab. Most of these groupings are transient—the important things to watch are the individual leaders, their ethnic affiliations and their backers.

In recent months, JEM has been on the offensive in western Darfur, broadening its own coalition to include militia from groups such as the Gimir (a group on the Darfur-Chad border that has long valued its autonomy, and which in recent years has been politically identified as ‘Arab’ though it has no Arab lineage) and Missiriya Jebel (a group from nearby Jebel Mun, which has an Arab lineage but lost the Arab language several generations ago). Chadian forces were reportedly engaged in these offensives too—though citizenship is largely meaningless along this border.

As Darfurian rebel forces—both JEM and some SLA—have rushed back to N’djamena to join the battle for the capital, we can expect to see the Sudan army and militia take the offensive against the rebels remaining in West Darfur.

Chad’s Civil War

Idriss Deby is a strongman who gained power through military prowess and external backing. He has stayed in power through the same combination, his position strengthened by oil revenues and French military cooperation. He dismantled a model World Bank program for control of Chad’s oil revenue, which had been intended to ensure that the funds were used for development, rather than patronage and arms purchases. He fixed the elections. He stays in power through intrigue, intimidation and cash.

Since 1986, when France dispatched special forces under Operation Epervier to Chad to support the war against Libya, French troops have been a key factor in Chad’s civil wars. The French have assisted the Chadian army with intelligence, logistics and medical units—the first two turning the tide of battle in Deby’s favor several times in the last three years.

Under Jacques Chirac, France’s policy towards Chad was handled by the military, whose response to the political crisis was to extend military assistance rather than to encourage talks with the opposition. But Deby was careful not to overstep the mark—he knew the friendship was tactical and feared that the French could always stand aside and allow a rival to seize power, just as it had refused to intervene to prop up Deby’s predecessor Hissène Habré in 1990. Until February 3, it looked as though French troops were going to do the same—there were reports that France had offered to evacuate Deby from his besieged presidential palace. Certainly, Deby had offended Paris with provocative remarks on the Zoe’s Ark child abduction case, when he alleged publicly that the children might be about to be taken to have their organs harvested.

But by this morning, it seems that the French government had decided that Chad without Deby was a worse proposition than with him, and swung back behind the beleaguered president. This is only a short-term option—Deby is literally fighting for his life and will do anything that is necessary to stay in power. One thing he may consider ‘necessary’ is eliminating the civil opposition. Already, civilian opposition members and civil society leaders have been rounded up and there are fears that they will be murdered en masse. Habré did the same thing just before he was ousted in 1990. Deby will then present the world with a choice—either him or Sudan’s proxies.

While Deby’s forces have regrouped, so have the armed rebels. Reinforcements have arrived and there may well be another battle for N’djamena in the coming days—a fight to the death for all concerned.

Sudan’s Management of its Borderlands

Khartoum’s strategy for managing the security threats in Darfur is seamless with its strategy for Chad. Sudanese security officers’ favored instrument is cash and they opportunistically buy support among the Darfurian and Chadian elites. They buy Arab and non-Arabs as they can. Inside Darfur, Military Intelligence is the most powerful governmental institution. For the Chad policy, it is the National Security and Intelligence Service.

This is the most recent manifestation of an approach to governing the peripheries that stretches back to the mid-19th century and earlier. Under the Turko-Egyptian rulers of Sudan (1821-83), the territory was divided into ‘metropolitan’ and ‘military’ provinces. Darfur and the South were the latter, where the center established its claim to sovereignty through making deals with local potentates. The Mahdist rulers and the Darfur sultans used much the same practice. For all of these, the border was not a line—it was a territory which extended indefinitely into eastern, central and west Africa, until it met a point at which military resistance was too great or the price of buying influence was too high. Quasi-autonomous agents of Turko-Egyptian rule ranged across central Africa, reaching the Congo river and Nigeria. The British reproduced a similar division of administrative systems within the borders of Sudan—in the peripheries they called it ‘native administration’ in the ‘closed districts’, and differed from their predecessors principally in that they preferred not to distribute weapons. Post-colonial Sudanese governments are acting in exactly the older tradition of a deep and extended borderland, seeking influence, security and profit far both within their own remoter provinces and across their national borders.

Competition for Regional Dominance

Alongside Sudan, Libya sees Chad as part of its sub-Saharan periphery. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi proclaimed the unity of Chad and Libya in 1980 and fought a long war for control of the territory, until defeated by a Chadian army extensively armed and supported by France and the U.S. Recent Libyan policy has tilted towards Deby and against his Sudan-backed adversaries. But Gaddafi was also offended by Deby’s refusal to make political compromises during peace talks in Libya last October. Anticipating the arrival of European soldiers who would act as a military bulwark, Deby took a hard line and caused the talks to fail.

The war for Chad is also a war for Central African Republic, where President Francois Bozize was installed by Chadian troops in 2003, overthrowing his predecessor Ange-Felix Patassé. With Deby endangered, the Zaghawa troops who formed the backbone of Bozize’s army have left to defend N’djamena. This creates a potential vacuum in which Chad’s competitors for influence may once again meddle. Sudan will be interested in securing this outer frontier. So will Libya, which supported Patassé. Kinshasa and Kampala will also be looking for influence there—it was a stronghold for the Congolese leader Jean-Pierre Bemba at the height of the war in DRC. Eritrea, which has its fingers in every troublespot in and around the Horn of Africa, will also be keeping its interests alive. France has a military base in CAR and could well play the role as guardian of stability.

International Policy

In the last two years, international policy towards Chad has become a byproduct of Darfur policy, and specifically the push to bring an international protection force to Darfur. After the election of Nicholas Sarkozy, French policy shifted, focusing on the use of Chad as the launchpad for humanitarian action in Darfur, including military support for a UN protection force. A European protection force for eastern Chad and north-eastern CAR (EUFOR) was authorized by the UN Security Council as a neutral international civilian protection force, distinct from the French soldiers whose mission has always been political. But it was only a substantial French military contingent that could bring EUFOR up to strength. For all the political actors in the region, EUFOR is seen as a non-neutral military protection to Deby—hence the military strike at N’djamena in the days before it was due to be deployed.

The limitations of an international protection-first policy are sharply revealed by the battle for N’djamena. A humanitarian protection mission had political implications that turned out to contribute to an escalation in violence. The Europeans now are faced with the dilemma of whether they send troops into the middle of ongoing hostilities—with the Chadian rebels having declared that EUFOR is an enemy—or whether they revert to a traditional peacekeeping approach, and seek a negotiated settlement first. EUFOR has no ceasefire commission and no formal means of dealing with the rebels, a recipe for disaster. Most likely, EUFOR will simply not deploy in Chad at all. Troop contributors will decide that they don’t do civilian protection in wartime after all.

The implications for the hybrid UN-African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) are no less far-reaching. This has the mirror-image problem—it deals with Khartoum on a day-to-day basis but there is no ceasefire commission in which the rebels are represented, so its only contact with them is through the mediation team working on the peace talks. This is wholly insufficient should the war intensify—for example if Deby regroups and decides to take the offensive by mounting attacks deep into Darfur. UNAMID runs the risk of being a target of attack or even an unwitting party to a conflict. In such scenarios, international attention will become focused on the integrity and safety of UNAMID and its members, rather than on solving Sudan’s problems.

What Next?

The prospects for Chad in the immediate future are dire indeed. The worst prospect is a massacre of the civilian opposition followed by a battle for N’djamena which causes immense destruction, displacement and bloodshed, and creates a new vortex of instability in Africa.

President Deby may survive and regroup. He might be able to do this with his domestic and Darfurian reinforcements, but France’s role will be crucial. Most probably, Chad and France will try their hardest to portray the war as a Sudanese invasion and bring it to the UN Security Council on those terms. This could be a cover for Deby to eliminate civilian opposition and counter-attack in Darfur.

The rebels may succeed in overrunning N’djamena, leaving a ruined city controlled by factional leaders who distrust one another and cannot form a government, with Sudanese security playing a leading role in brokering whatever agreement is possible. A government formed under these conditions would certainly be an international pariah.

A third scenario, familiar from Chad’s history, is collapse into warlordism. The chances for a fourth—political agreement and the construction of a civilian alternative—is fading by the hour.

* Alex De Waal is the director of Justice Africa (www.justiceafrica.org). This article was posted at www.justiceafrica.org by Alex de Waal as part of the Making Sense of Darfur Blog http://www.ssrc.org/blog/category/darfur

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

Developed countries' leverage on Africa

Ravinder Rena

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/45898

Africa is a vast continent of about 900 million people in 54 independent countries. It has a total area of over 30 million square kilometers (11.6 million square miles), about three-and-a-half times the size of the United States and 10 times the size of India. It is the second largest continent in the world after Asia. It stretches from the shores of the Mediterranean in the north to the Cape of Good Hope in the south.

Africa is also rich in mineral and natural resources with large parts of its terrain teeming with wild life and magnificent plant life. It possesses 99 percent of the world's chrome resources, 85 percent of its platinum, 70 percent of its tantalite, 68 percent of its cobalt, and 54 percent of its gold, among other minerals.

In addition, the continent has significant oil and gas reserves. Nigeria and Libya are two of the leading oil producing countries in the world. Further, Africa is the home to timber, diamonds, and bauxite deposits. Revenues from their extraction should be providing funds for badly needed development, but instead have fuelled state corruption, environmental degradation, poverty, and violence. Rather than being a blessing, Africa's natural resources have largely been a curse.

Meanwhile, Africa's enormous agricultural potential is vastly untapped, even as its vast mineral wealth and strategic significance have encouraged foreign powers to intervene in the continent's affairs. During the Cold War era, 1945 to 1990, there was increasing superpower intervention in Africa. The United States and the Soviet Union were major players on the African scene.

The 19th-century scramble for Africa saw the great powers rush to control land so they could exploit natural resources. Today, the scramble continues - the continent still a vital arena of strategic and geopolitical competition among the US, France, Britain, China, and India. The key question for many is: will the exploitation of Africa's vast natural resources benefit anyone other than the continent's elites?

Oil is perhaps the most important lure, with competition between foreign states and companies to secure resources so intense it attracts more than 50 percent of all foreign direct investment. It is noteworthy that in the year 2006, annual foreign direct investment (FDI) rose to a historic high of $38.8 billion, exceeding record levels of 2005 - a growth of 78 percent from 2004. According to the UN World Investment Report, FDI cash was concentrated in a few industries, notably oil, gas, and mining. And six oil-producing countries - Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and Sudan - consumed about 48 percent of it.

European firms represent roughly two-thirds of the total FDI in Africa. More than half of European investment originates from the UK and France, going mainly to countries with which they have historic ties. French oil companies such as Total - locked out of the Middle East through France's opposition to the Iraq war - have made large investments in Francophone countries such as Cameroon, Chad, and Gabon.

The US is interested in the region as a cheap and reliable alternative to the increasingly volatile Persian Gulf. West Africa already supplies about 12 percent of US crude oil imports, and America's National Intelligence Council predicts this share will rise to 25 percent by 2015. As is often the case with oil, military involvement follows trade. In February 2007, the US set up an Africa command (Africom), which has established bases in, and signed access agreements with: Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Gabon, and Namibia. Africa is becoming strategically important to the US because of its oil production and China's increasing regional influence.

Despite its own considerable "backyard," China is generally resource-poor and Africa offers the natural resources vital to fuel its rapidly-growing economy. China looks to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia for copper and cobalt, to South Africa for iron ore and platinum, and to Gabon, Cameroon, and the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) for timber. For oil, it has been wooing Nigeria, Angola, Sudan, and Equatorial Guinea. China is now the second-largest consumer of crude oil after the US, and was responsible for 40 percent of the global increase in demand between 2001 and 2005. Indeed, it imports 25 percent of its crude oil from Africa.

China has charmed African rulers with a triple whammy of arms sales, cancelled debt, and soft loans. Last year, President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao recently visited 10 African countries, and this increasingly close relationship was cemented at the China-Africa summit in October 2006, when Beijing rolled out the red carpet to almost 50 African heads of state and Ministers.

But while the global demand for natural resources will bring benefits to Africa - increased FDI and, as exports grow, an improving balance of trade figures - there are concerns that such demand is simultaneously fuelling corruption, environmental degradation, and internal dissent. The windfall gains from resource extraction cause more problems in Africa. They reduce a state's incentive to impose a free and just taxation system, and encourage corruption and acquisition of weaponry, in this way, generating the internal conflicts or external wars for which Africa is known.

In the form of "neo-colonization," thus, Africa is being fragmented into many pieces at the will of super-power countries, which are concentrating more on the exploitation of the continent's rich resources than providing it with development aid. For example, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) most recent report indicates that the world's major donors - which make up the 22 member countries of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) - provided $103.9 billion in aid in 2006, down by 5.1 percent from 2005. This figure includes $19.2 billion of debt relief, notably exceptional relief to Iraq and Nigeria. Excluding debt relief, other forms of aid fell by 1.8 percent.

The fall was foreseeable. In 2005, Official Development Assistance (ODA) had been exceptionally high due to large Paris Club debt relief operations (particularly for Iraq and Nigeria), boosting ODA to its highest level ever at $106.8 billion. In 2006, net debt relief grants still represented a substantial share of net ODA, as members implemented further phases of the Paris Club agreements, providing a little over $3 billion for Iraq and nearly $11 billion for Nigeria. Excluding debt relief, ODA fell by 1.8 percent. Preliminary data shows that bilateral net ODA to sub-Saharan Africa rose by 23 percent in real terms, to about $28 billion. However, most of the increase was due to debt relief grants; excluding debt relief for Nigeria, aid to sub-Saharan Africa increased by only 2 percent.

Charities and NGOs working on the issue believe that even governments that are OECD members are reluctant to investigate allegations of corruption or complicity in human rights abuses against Western companies.

In Equatorial Guinea - where US companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron are active - the regime of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema has been accused of torture, electoral fraud, and corruption. Despite this, President Nguema was welcomed at the US State Department by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in April 2006 and described as a "good friend."

The environmental impact on Africa of such Western development is also alarming. The clearing of forests for timber exports increases vulnerability to erosion, river silting, landslides, flooding, and loss of habitats for plant and animal species. In particular, gas flaring from oil production, where unusable waste emissions are burned off, pumps large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is estimated that flaring in the Niger Delta emits 70 million tonnes (68.8 million tons) of CO2 a year, out of which, in 2004 Sweden emitted 69.9 million tonnes.

The environmental and social impact of extractive industries is already acknowledged as a key factor in conflicts in Sudan and Nigeria. Indeed, non-governmental organizations fear that access to natural resources will fuel the kind of violent conflict seen recently in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Liberia. A number of initiatives have recently been launched in an attempt to deal with Africa's resource curse before the continent is further fragmented and its precious natural wealth more exploited. The developed countries should take heed of the situation and provide development aid and relief to the millions of Africans who are suffering from diseases such as HIV/Aids, as well as wide-ranging poverty, instead of merely exploiting their resources.

* Ravinder Rena is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Eritrea Institute of Technology. His most recent books published by the New Africa Press in December 2006 are A Handbook on the Eritrean Economy: Problems and Prospects for Development and Financial Institutions in Eritrea.

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

Kenya at the brink of collapse

Makau Mutua

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/45900

Makau Mutua argues that Kenya's political class has failed to nurture a democratic, rule-of-law state in which meritocracy rather than identity is the most important variable and because of it Kenya is on the brink of collapse.

In December, President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya was controversially declared the winner in a rancorous election against Raila Odinga by a margin of several hundred thousand votes. Odinga has refused to concede defeat, charging that the election was stolen. In the last three weeks, gruesome violence has erupted in Odinga's strongholds, leaving more than 750 dead and 300,000 displaced. Kenya stands at the brink of collapse unless Odinga and Kibaki can accommodate each other.

Kenya, a country regarded in the West as a beacon of hope and stability in a turbulent region, is now gripped by genocidal violence for the first time since independence from Britain in 1964. Although the immediate trigger for the killings and pillage is the contested election results, the violence has deep historical roots. Kenya is an incoherent collection of some 40 ethnic groups that the British coerced into one state in 1896. It is the failure of those groups to forge a common Kenyan national identity that has come back to haunt East Africa's most powerful country.

Successive governments have either been unwilling or unable to imagine how one builds a nation out of disparate, previously independent groups. Kenya's presidents - Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi, and now Kibaki - have been men of limited ability and vision. They preferred to exercise power through ethnic cronyism and tribal manipulation. Each deeply tribalized the state by openly favoring their ethnic elites at the expense of others.

Kenya's political class, which is lazy and opportunistic, has failed to nurture a democratic, rule-of-law state in which meritocracy rather than identity is the most important variable. That is why most Kenyans have not transferred their loyalties from the ethnic group to the state. Kenyan political parties are either personal vehicles for tribal barons or coalitions of ethnic elites. Neither Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement nor President Kibaki's Party of National Unity are driven by ideology or philosophical platforms. Rather, they are receptacles for their respective leaders and the ethnic groups supporting them.

Odinga cobbled the Orange Democratic Movement from the Luo, his ethnic group, the Kalenjin, who dominate the Rift Valley, and the Luhya - three of Kenya's largest five groups. Kibaki's Party of National Unity drew fanatical support from the Kikuyu, his own group, which is also the largest in the country. Historically, there has been bad blood between the Kikuyu and the Luo and the Kalenjin.

The Kalenjin, who have committed many atrocities against the Kikuyu in the Rift Valley, supported Odinga because he promised a quasi-federal government that would have given them control over land and the Kikuyu settlers. The Luo, who have a psychosis of victimization, had widely expected Odinga to be the first among them to lead the country.

These ethnic pathologies burst open in the aftermath of the elections that was conducted by mobilizing tribal anger and deep-seated grievances. Both the Orange Democratic Movement and the Party of National Unity made naked appeals to ethnic passions. The post-election violence has pitted the Kikuyu against the Luo and the Kalenjin, with the Kikuyu bearing the brunt of the casualties.

Some of the attacks - such as the one in which scores of Kikuyu women and children were burned in a church in Eldoret - have taken genocidal dimensions. But ethnicity alone cannot explain Kenya's descent into chaos.

Although New York-based Human Rights Watch says the attacks were planned by ODM leaders, it is the poor, unemployed, and marginalized youth who are most susceptible to the violence. Virtually no one in the middle class is directly carrying out the attacks. Kenya's history of uneven development in which half the country lives on less than a dollar a day has come to haunt the country.

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan appears to be the last hope for Kenya if the country is to avoid a civil war. Annan must secure from Odinga, Kibaki, and their respective supporters a political settlement to end the violence. They have three options: a recount of the ballots to establish the true winner, a rerun of the election, or a power-sharing agreement in which Odinga becomes the prime minister and Kibaki retains the presidency but cedes substantial powers to the Legislature. Unless the two principals respond to Annan, one of the most beautiful places on earth will be left in the ruins of a biblical catastrophe.

* Makau Mutua is interim dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School. He is author of the forthcoming "Kenya's Quest for Democracy: Taming Leviathan." This article first appeared in the January 30, 2008 Boston Globe.

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

Mozambique's Soggy Inheritance

Alec Dubro

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/45877

Among the Third World solidarity posters adorning the walls of the Valley Peace Center in Amherst, Massachusetts in the early 1970s was one particularly striking photo of a handsome, heroic Mozambican Frelimo guerilla. Above him the text read: Stop The Cabora Bassa Dam! I had no idea why we should stop it, but if the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique said so, that was good enough for me.

The dam sits astride the fourth-largest floodplain in Africa, and dam officials must decide whether to hold back or release water. In either case, it’s not helping. “There are 250,000 people living downstream of the [Cahora Bassa] dam, “ said ActionAid’s Mozambique director Alberto Silva, “This is the second year they will lose everything.”

Mozambique's control of the dam may eventually work out if purchasers like Zimbabwe are able to make payments – a very big if. Nevertheless Mozambique, one of the world’s poorest countries, has to figure out how to control not only the Zambezi, but also the Cahora Bassa and the volatile 500 million cubic meters of water churning behind it.

If only they had stuck to their original plan and stopped the dam. Among the Third World solidarity posters adorning the walls of the Valley Peace Center in Amherst, Massachusetts in the early 1970s was one particularly striking photo of a handsome, heroic Mozambican Frelimo guerilla. Above him the text read: Stop The Cabora Bassa Dam! I had no idea why we should stop it, but if the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique said so, that was good enough for me.

Fast forward to November 27, 2007. In the dam city of Songo on the Zambezi River, Mozambique took over complete control of Africa’s second-largest dam from Portugal. In a formal ceremony attended by neighboring heads of state – including Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi – Mozambican President Armando Guebuza declared, “The last mark of 500 years of foreign domination in our country has finally been removed.”

Maybe. In the 1970s, Frelimo had made the Cahora Bassa (as it’s now spelled) a high-priority target. Not only was the dam a project of the Portuguese colonial government, but it linked the Zambezi River to white Rhodesia, and was supported by apartheid South Africa and financed by transnational firms like General Electric and Siemens.

In 1975, the Portuguese relinquished political control over Mozambique but not over the dam. Nominally, Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa owned the dam , but Portugal retained 82% of the equity of the company. Nevertheless, South Africa encouraged the right-wing U.S.-backed Renamo guerillas to continue attacking the dam in hopes of overthrowing the leftist Frelimo government. Now, in an ironic switch, Frelimo had to defend the dam.

According to researchers Allen Isaacman and Chris Sneddon, the revolutionary movement never wanted it, but “sought to domesticate the ‘white elephant’ of Cahora Bassa for its own developmental purposes.” Said Isaacman and Sneddon, “Stuck with the dam, the newly installed FRELIMO government had little alternative but to discard its long-term opposition to the hydroelectric project. In a radical departure from its previous stance, it hailed Cahora Bassa as a symbol of liberation which would help the people of Mozambique achieve economic prosperity, transform the strategic Zambezi valley and bring the impoverished nation a new source of hard currency by exporting energy to markets throughout the region, not just to South Africa.”

The Cahora Bassa does bring in money, but it’s extremely costly environmentally, and it’s uncertain whether the country will actually make money on the operation. According to Agence France Presse, “Control of the dam is expected to fetch the African nation more than $150 million annually.” But, noted Mozambican Energy Minister Salvador Namburete, “From these $150 million a year, we are going to pay over 15 years a loan of $700 million (471 million Euros) from a Franco-Portugal Calyon/BPI bank consortium taken to buy the part of capital held by Portugal.”

In any case, it may not be worth it. Right now, the East African country is, according to Reuters, being hit by “the worst flooding to hit the country since 2000-2001, when 700 people died and half a million were driven from their homes.” As the United Nations World Food Program begins airlifting emergency supplies to flood victims, the Cahora Bassa is providing little in the way of flood control.

The dam sits astride the fourth-largest floodplain in Africa, and dam officials must decide whether to hold back or release water. In either case, it’s not helping. “There are 250,000 people living downstream of the [Cahora Bassa] dam, “ said ActionAid’s Mozambique director Alberto Silva, “This is the second year they will lose everything.”

Mozambique's control of the dam may eventually work out if purchasers like Zimbabwe are able to make payments – a very big if. Nevertheless Mozambique, one of the world’s poorest countries, has to figure out how to control not only the Zambezi, but also the Cahora Bassa and the volatile 500 million cubic meters of water churning behind it.

If only they had stuck to their original plan and stopped the dam.

*Alec Dubro, creator of The Washington Pox, is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, where this article first appeared.

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

Makwerekwere: Black South Africa’s Instant-Mix Kaffirs

Pius Adesanmi

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/45870

Pius Adesanmi comments on the Amakwerekwere syndrome - South Africa's xenophobia.

The letters came within two days of each other. The first was an invitation from Professor Georges Hérault, Director of the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS). Three years after my last visit to South Africa to assess the perception of Francophone African literatures in that country’s Universities, IFAS was again inviting me as visiting scholar. The second was from Chris Dunton, the well-known British Professor of African literatures who is now Chair of the English Department of the National University of Lesotho at Roma. Like Hérault, Dunton was inviting me to Lesotho as visiting scholar to present a Faculty of Arts Guest Lecture. I arranged a few other engagements and braced up for a very engaging psychic reconnection with the African continent.

I needed the return to Africa badly. I had been away from that continent for an uncomfortable stretch, carrying out my scholarly labor in the minefield of North American academe, writing Africa “from a rift”, as Achille Mbembe would put it. I also needed the trip for other reasons. I needed a reprieve from the oppression of the image: the North American media image of Africa. The African living here is in constant danger of accepting whatever image of Africa s/he is presented by the media as gospel truth. In North America, I have been consistently assailed, assaulted, and oppressed with images of Africa traceable to the colonial library: Africa-as-AIDS, Africa-as-hunger, Africa-as-civil war, Africa-as-corruption, Africa-as-the-antithesis-of-democracy, Africa-as-everything-we-are-glad-not-to-be. You get tired of the ritual of explaining to charmingly ignorant interlocutors that there is a fundamental distinction between the Africa they see on CNN and the real Africa.

I also wanted a break from Occidentalism. Fernando Coronil, the scholar who coined this term takes great pains to explain that it is not the reverse of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Coronil uses the newer concept to account for those discursive, usually innocuous processes through which the West turns difference into hierarchy and reproduces existing asymmetrical power relations. Occidentalism covers all the mundane quotidian events through which the West constantly reminds the immigrant of his otherness, strangeness, and difference:

“Oh, I love your accent. It’s awesome. Where is that from?”

“Nigeria.”

“Nigeria? You mean Nicaragua?”

This often-repeated, seemingly innocent “compliment” is usually the beginning of encounters that inevitably remind the immigrant that he does not belong… Departure date finally came around. “Be careful. Urban violence is rife in South Africa”, the Nigerian friends who drove me to the airport warned. I shrugged and dismissed their anxiety. There may be violence in South Africa; I certainly was not going to be scared of returning to Africa. I wasn’t going to be afraid of Black people in Africa. I arrived Johannesburg on a cold July morning. A delighted Georges Hérault was on hand at the airport to welcome me. We drove straight to the offices of IFAS located in the downtown area of Johannesburg. After signing my research contract papers and meeting some of the new members of the IFAS Research team, I announced to Hérault that I was going to take a stroll in the busy streets around IFAS. I was eager to get a feel of the same streets I had seen two years earlier. Hérault’s countenance changed. “Be careful. Don’t go out there with your wallet. You could get mugged.” I assured Hérault I would be all right but took the precaution of leaving my valuables in his office.

I started my walk, my reconnection with African soil, on the busy Bree street. For someone who had walked the same street three years earlier, I could not help but observe the heavy Black presence. Like the Hillbrow area, Blacks have taken over downtown Johannesburg. The official principle of separate development through which racial segregation was enforced under Apartheid seems to have been replaced by what one may call an unofficial principle of voluntary separation. While separate development instituted an order in which Blacks had to move out whenever Whites moved in, as was the case in Sophiatown, voluntary separation now induces Whites to move out quietly whenever and wherever Blacks move in. Downtown Johannesburg is a vivid example of a space in which this new South African drama is being played out. This space, which was still predominantly white during my earlier visit, has been taken over by Blacks. In large office complexes and shopping malls, one does not fail to notice the ubiquitous “To Let” signs, evidence of white retreat to other “safe” areas of the city like Rosebank or back “home” to Britain, Holland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

I stopped for a light lunch at a KFC outlet, my mind busy taking in the new realities. I finished my lunch and went back into the street. I was about to cross a busy intersection when a street sign told me I was on Fox street. Fox street! I had heard a lot of terrifying things about that street since my last trip to South Africa. It is said to be one of the most violent streets in Johannesburg. One could get mugged or killed for as little as a hundred South African rands. I looked around me anxiously. I was surrounded by a sea of inscrutable Black faces. I touched my forehead and found out, much to my irritation, that I was perspiring profusely. It was winter in South Africa! And to my utter embarrassment, I discovered that I relaxed and felt safer each time white faces appeared in the crowd. Here was I, a Black man, looking anxiously for white faces to feel safe from Black violence in an African city! And to think that back in Canada, I had dismissed insinuations that I could be scared of “Black violence” in South Africa! I reluctantly came to the realization that I was far more affected by the oppression of the image than I had been willing to admit. The image of the post-apartheid Black condition in South Africa is constantly constructed in the Western media around the problem of violence. Such stereotypical and prejudicial narrativizations of Black South Africa always have two constantly-repeated, over-sensationalized buzzwords: mugging, robbery. That image had quietly slipped into my subconscious and was responsible for my feeling so uneasy amidst my own kind in a busy street in Johannesburg. I hurried back to IFAS.

On hearing that I had arrived in Johannesburg, Professor Harry Garuba came from his base in the University of Cape Town to spend a weekend with me. As Harry and I hadn’t seen each other since 1996, we had a riotously joyful reunion. The following day, we hit town. Harry wanted to see downtown Johannesburg. He also needed to go to the Consulate-General of Nigeria in Rosebank. As we meandered our way through the ever busy Bree street, Harry could not help observing how filthy downtown Johannesburg had become. I had made the same disturbing observation myself the day I arrived but had been reluctant to accept the disturbing fact that decay of public infrastructure seems to be the story in areas of the city inhabited by Blacks. Predominantly Black areas have become an eyesore. The beautiful lawns and flowerbeds I noticed in some areas three years earlier now tell sad stories of degradation. Some of them have become open-air urinals. Harry and I were worried. We tried to place ourselves in the shoes of White South Africans discussing the now filthy streets of Hillbrow and downtown Johannesburg: “Ah, the good old days of Apartheid!”

When Harry concluded his business at the Nigerian consulate, we took a bus and headed back to Georges Hérault’s residence. I still don’t know what it was about us that gave us away as foreigners but the other passengers, all Blacks, lapsed into an uneasy silence as soon as we entered. I looked at the faces around us and thought I saw hostility. The tension was so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife. Harry confirmed my worst fears when we left the bus. I had just experienced, firsthand, South African xenophobia and I was to experience it again and again throughout my three-month sojourn in that country. Harry explained to me – with the coolness of someone used to it - that the Black South African passengers on the bus had identified us as makwerekwere, hence the naked hostility. Makwerekwere is the derogatory term used by Black South Africans to describe non-South African blacks. It reminds one of how the ancient Greeks referred to foreigners whose language they did not understand as the Barbaroi. To the Black South African, makwerekwere refers to Black immigrants from the rest of Africa, especially Nigerians. I was confounded by the fact that Black South Africa had begun to manufacture its own kaffirs so soon after apartheid.

As I later discovered after a series of encounters, Black South Africans have found an easy explanation for the myriad problems of poverty, housing, transportation, unemployment, crime, violence, decay of public and social infrastructure. “Ah, the makwerekwere! These Nigerians are all criminals! When they are not busy trafficking drugs, they are taking over our jobs, our houses and, worse, our women. All foreigners must leave this country!” What Salman Rushdie refers to as a “demonizing process” of the Other is at work here and the consequences are predictably disastrous. There is so much anger and frustration among the Nigerians I met in South Africa. Most of them have become paranoid, living permanently in fear. In a discussion with some Nigerian medical doctors in Pretoria, I observed that their anger is directed more at Black South African leaders. “Imagine these South Africans treating us like this. They think Apartheid came to an end because they fought in Sharpeville and Soweto. It means Mandela never told them the truth. Mbeki never told them the truth.”

The doctors were referring to Nigeria’s heavy moral, political, and financial investment in the anti-Apartheid struggle. Nigeria’s financial and political commitment to that cause was total and unflinching. In the 1970s-80s, the South African freedom struggle was completely woven into Nigeria’s national imaginary, so much so that a Nigerian leader, Olusegun Obasanjo, suggested we mobilized “African juju” and other maraboutic forces of African sorcery to attack Pieter Botha and free our black brothers in South Africa. And he wasn’t joking. Every Nigerian musician, from reggae singers to fuji musicians in the Yoruba tradition, waxed radical anti-Apartheid lyrics to energize the 1970s – 1980s. “Who owns the land, who owns the land? We want to know who owns Papa’s land”, crooned Sonny Okosuns. Majek Fashek, the reggae man replied: “Now, now, now, Margaret Thatcher, free Mandela”! Victor Eshiet of The Mandators screamed: “Truth is our right, Jah is our might, we must free South Africa”.

Everywhere you turned in the Nigeria of those heady decades, freedom for Black South Africans was the dominant national agenda. Black South Africans, including President Thabo Mbeki and Ezekiel Mpahlele, found warmth, hospitality, and friendship during their years of exile in Nigeria. Many of Black South Africans attended Nigerian Universities on Nigerian scholarships. When it became clear that South African whites, like their European and American kinsmen, were determined to make peaceful change impossible and make violent change inevitable, Nigerians donated money to the armed struggle. Personally, I recall donating money during special anti-Apartheid fundraisers as a high school student in Nigeria. In view of this, the Nigerians I met in South Africa had only two words to describe the attitude of Black South Africans to them: collective amnesia.

Prejudice has been the force majeure of so much of human history. Our pantheon of small-minded hate is formidable: Christian prejudice manufactured the unbeliever; Islamic prejudice manufactured the infidel; heterosexual prejudice manufactured the faggot; patriarchal prejudice manufactured the hysteric; European prejudice manufactured the native; American prejudice manufactured the nigger; German prejudice manufactured the Jew; Israeli prejudice manufactured the Araboushim; Afrikaner prejudice manufactured the kaffir. Not to be outdone, Black South Africa has manufactured the makwerekwere as her unique post-Apartheid contribution to this gory pantheon. The joy of your instant-mix coffee (Nescafé) or your instant-mix powdered milk is the considerable labor and hassle it saves you. Just pour water, add sugar to taste, and your drink is ready. The makwerekwere is Black South Africa’s instant-mix kaffir, very easily produced with minimum labor.


* Pius Adesanmi is Associate Professor of English and Director, Project on New African Literatures ( www.projectponal.com) at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Apart from his academic work, Dr. Adesanmi publishes opinion articles regularly in various internet fora. He runs a regular blog for The Zeleza Post ( www.zeleza.com) where this article first appeared. He has contributed to Counterpunch, Slepton and Chimurenga online.

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.orgThis article first appeared at the Zeleza Post (www.zeleza.com).

Great concern for Kenya

Hannah Foullah

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/45893

I am writing from Sierra Leone.

Yes the moment I say Sierra Leone, what comes to your mind is...amputations of hands, limbs, raping of women, senseless killing, blood diamonds, Foay Sankoh, Charles Taylor, Special COurt etc etc. Hey Kenyan brothers and sisters, we have been there before. Thank God it did not degenerate to factional war. But we all suffered. I have lived in Kenya for four years in the eighties. It is such a beautiful country. Why are you people allowing selfish politicians to get the worst out of you for their own ends. Both of your leaders have a moral duty to forsake the pursuit of power when lives are threatened and when the nationhood is threatened. A shame to both of them. You people should be uniting now regards the action you are going to take against both of them for sitting by and allowing all this to go on...iving their blessings by being quiet. You need to start thinking of how to make people realise that you have more that unites you as a people than what divides you. My heart is bleeding. Kenyans wake up!!

Don't allow anyone to make you pursue violence as a means to an end. Trust me, it does not solve problems. Ask Liberians or Sierra Leoneans.There are no victors in war. Get your act together. WE are praying for you. We want the people to move against the politicians seeking their own selfish gains. Address your other problems but don't allow them to use you.Pursue peace. pambazuka, please send me sites doing the hate incitement. I want to target them personally so they can see that they are really doing themselves more harm than good.
For those of you working in the interest of the people, stay strong and focused and never loose sight of your unity as a nation.

On the PZN editorial - The violence in Kenya must stop now

Lydia Tanui

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/45902

A very touching story [http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/editorial/45738]. I posted the article "Ladies and gentlemen gotab kalenjin" at Kalenjin Online(www.kalenjin.net) linking the article to us is misleading since we both cited the same source: Gerald Baraza. Thanks

* The Pambazuka Editors stand corrected - the source of the document was: [http://geraldbaraza.blogspot.com]

President Kibaki, Raila and all Kenyans stand accused

Patriot

2008-02-04

http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=23&newsid=115291

I write this letter as my final mortal action upon this earth.

I have determined to collect email addresses of the prominent people that I know and my friends and send it to them from an anonymous email address for two reasons.

First, to spare them the distress of knowing beforehand what I am doing, therefore saving them from culpability, and second, because my identity is now and in future irrelevant — it could be any of those men around the country who feel like I do.

As you might guess from my style of writing, I am a well-educated man. I am a graduate of Nairobi and Strathmore universities.

I have been privileged to be educated around the world.

I have worked in Berlin, Stockholm, London, New York and many other places. I speak six languages fluently.

Even with all these achievements, I have no more reason to live. If you will want to look for me as you read this, go to City Mortuary where I have determined to fester among the anonymous people there.

I will explain why in this letter, and like Pavlov, I shall retire. This is my only protest.

Mr Kibaki, I indict you.

You stole the election that I stood for six hours to participate in. By your actions, my life irrevocably changed. History will now forget the great achievement and legacy that you were poised to make and it shall remember that for your self-righteousness, people lost lives, property, and most of all, hope. On the blood of my people, I indict you.

Mr Odinga, my chosen president, on the blood and tears of my people, I indict you.

Because of your bitterness, justified though it is, my life irrevocably changes. My greatest achievements, my family, died in your name. My son, my heir, named after my great ancestors, went up in smoke before he could say my name, or his great name. Koitalet.

My twin daughters, Wanjiru and Sanaipei, were found by my burnt house in Eldoret, having bled out of their wounds. My wife died with the seed of six men inside her, demented and finally catatonic. This happened in your name, Sir. Because you have to get justice. Because my wife was from the wrong community. Because you must get what is yours.

You will read this and feel nothing. You will rationalise it as accepted collateral damage. Some must die in the pursuit of justice, isn't it?

Readers respond: The Violence in Kenya must stop now

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/editorial/45738

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/45901

Firoze Manji and Mukoma Wa Ngugi

I have received and read the very inflammatory and inciteful documents referenced in your editor's corner. I have also read equally inflamatory and inciteful responses from correspondents on the various Kenyan fora and blogs. I must admit that yours is the loudest voice of reason. I hope and pray that Kenyans will heed your call that THE VIOLENCE IN KENYA MUST STOP NOW!!

Thank you.

Michoma Moenga

****

I read your article with tears and a deep sense of powerlessness. I'm a doer kind of person. I feel so helpless. And then I read : WE ARE ALL KENYANS! I don't know why I felt empowered by this except that it gave me a place to start for my prayer for courage and commitment for us all. I will be on the alert to see how we might be called to help in others ways as well. God is with us.

Sally Stearns Sister of Holy Cross

****

I am a USA citizen, where our media and government promote the ignorance of the citizens so we are lulled into egocentrism. I want to understand what is happening in Kenya. How can I find out?

Nandi Lehmann

Well said, Mr. Ong'ayo

The Kenya case and media bias

Noreen

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/45889

This is the best analysis of the situation,that I have read so far, and everything Mr. Ong'ayo mentioned, has been what I and my friends have brought up as points during our analysis of the situation in Kenya. I wish you could give a copy of this analysis to Koffi Annan and his team to read as they mediate.
* Noreen is "A Kenyan in the Diaspora".

The Ballad of Sugar Moon and Coffin Deadly

by Aryan Kaganof

Mphutlane wa Bofelo

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/45899

Aryan Kaganof is a writer who possesses the rare capability to capture grotesque and bleak scenes and moments in words of a lyrical and poetic beauty that lands deep into the heart and mind of a reader like the melody of a serenading love song. In The Ballad of Sugar Moon and Coffin Deadly, Aryan Kaganof comes out as a brave and seasoned craftsman who is unflinching in dismantling the barricade between prose and poetry and between a poem and a novel. He goes into the depths of the dark and light areas of the heart of a murderer and blows to dust the false securities of the high-tech and securocratic world. Like a sharp-knife his words cut into the veil of order and security supposedly provided by the institutions of the sate, the army and the police as well as sophisticated technology. He exposes the gaps and lapses in the strictures and structures that are supposed to keep humanity in order.

The Ballad of Sugar Moon and Coffin Deadly tells the story of the romance between Coffin Deadly and Sugar Moon and their romance with death. Coffin Deadly is addicted to killing for its sake, just for the thrill and spasm that goes with the shattering shout of his Glock 19 mm parabelllum pistol and the shocked ogle of victims and onlookers whom he tells in advance what he is up to. He meets Sugar Moon at the abortion clinic, seduced by the look of greedy surprise in her eyes as he pulled out a bankroll of R200 notes, and drawn closer to her by her thin rubber-like legs and the tightness that clutches him beyond control during intercourse. The turning point in Coffin Deadly’s life is when he is rewarded not with the promised millions of dollars and the expected heroic status but time in prison for killing the most wanted terrorist in the world -Osama Bin Laden. To boot it all, this aesthetically progressive man who knows the inside-outs of Kwaito and listens to everything from opera music to house is bundled together in a cell with the crazy idiots of the Boeremag who cannot discern the poetics in Kwaito music. Inside he hears about the ill-fated death of Kwaito\Afro-Pop star Tebza of Mafikizolo fame and contemplates turning a new leaf.

Through the voice and deeds of Coffin Deadly- who personifies death and the death of conscience- Aryan Kaganof peers beneath the mask and veneer of civility and decorum to lay bare and open to the naked eye the frivolity and falsity of the li(f)e we live. Coffin Deadly commits his murders in broad-daylight, under the watchful eyes of the police and walking through the sophisticated vigilance of detectors and the security of digital cameras, electric fences and boom gates. His potent weapon is being and truthful about what he is, what he does and what drives him. All his killings and robberies are done under the public eye and yet he is the only audience of his actions. He provides the security guards, the police and the public with sincere answers of what he is up to and succinct clues that he is the murderer but they still do not get it. The only logical explanation of this is that society is too used to speaking and living a lie that it just cannot hear the voice that speaks about one real fact – death.

* Published by Pine Slopes Publications, 2007

Lethe

Stephen Derwent Partington

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/45875

When peace erupted, none of us was ready.
You remember how the sticks above our heads
were gently lowered, how our riot gear
was sloughed-off like a skin? We rubbed our chins.
And yet, the dead, they didn’t rise.

Do you recall the day the grandmas of the Rift
embraced the grandsons of Nyeri,
when the youth were given grants to raise
manyattas they had razed? We rubbed our eyes.
But still, the dead maintained their peace.

Think back: the way the Lake and Ocean rose to kiss Mount Kenya’s
peak?

The glossy adverts in the Nation and the Standard:
We congratulate our leaders for restoring
Peace and Unity, and all is well in Neverland?
The dead began to wake.

Do you remember how they asked us to forget?
In 4-by-4s, Big Men from each and every province
drove a web across the land, their shining
megaphones proclaiming: Back to work!
The dead were spinning.

And the bishops and the diplomats, the councillors
and businessmen, they gathered for a conference
outside the new Grand Regency and told us
It was all a dream, an error, so now nothing needs be done,
some things just die, are best forgotten. No? Come on!!
You must remember how the landless and the jobless dead
erupted from their coffins with a shriek?
You don’t remember?! Let me help you.
Hold this gun. I have a cutting. Take a peek.


*Stephen Partington, is the Kwani? poetry editor and a member of the Concerned Kenyan Writers Initiative.

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

PRAISE POEM

Stephen Derwent Partington

2008-02-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/45874

We praise the man who,
though he held the match between
his finger and his thumb,
beheld the terror of its tiny drop of phosphorous,
its brown and globoid smoothness
like a charred and tiny skull
and so returned it to its box.

So too, we hail the youth who,
though he took his panga on the march,
perceived it odd within his fist
when there was neither scrub
nor firewood to be felled,
so laid it down.

An acclamation for the man who,
though he saw the woman running, clothing torn,
and though he lusted,
saw his mother in her youth,
restrained his colleagues
and withdrew.

We pay our homage to the man who,
though his heart was like a stone
and though he took a stone to cast,
could feel its hardness in the softness of his palm
and grasped the brittleness of bone,
so let it drop.

We laud the man who,
though he snatched to scrutinise
the passenger’s I.D.,
saw not the name – instead, the face –
and slid it back
as any friend might slide his hand to shake a friend’s.

And to the rest of us,
a blessing:
may you never have to be that man,
but if you have to,
BE!

*Stephen Partington, is the Kwani? poetry editor and a member of the Concerned Kenyan Writers Initiative.

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

Fahamu