Dorothy-Grace Guerrero and Firoze Manji (ed) (2008) China’s New Role in Africa and the South: A search for a new perspective. 
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Pambazuka News 348: Tribute to Fidel Cruz Castro
The authoritative electronic weekly newsletter and platform for social justice in Africa
Pambazuka News (English edition): ISSN 1753-6839
With nearly 500 contributors and an estimated 500,000 readers Pambazuka News is the authoritative pan African electronic weekly newsletter and platform for social justice in Africa providing cutting edge commentary and in-depth analysis on politics and current affairs, development, human rights, refugees, gender issues and culture in Africa.
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CONTENTS: 1. Announcements, 2. Features, 3. Comment & analysis, 4. Pan-African Postcard, 5. Letters, 6. African Writers’ Corner, 7. African Union Monitor
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Highlights from this issue
ANNOUNCEMENTS: Remembering the Kenya 1984 Wagalla massacre
FEATURES: Blade Nzimande on Fidel Castro
COMMENTS AND ANALYSIS:
- Blessing-Miles Tendi on Britain versus Zimbabwe
- Annar Cassam on whether Kenya is a model or a myth
- John Samuel on modern day democracy as tragic divine comedy
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Jegede Ademola Oluborode on Human Rights without borders
LETTERS: Readers' comments and announcements
AFRICAN WRITER'S CORNER: A Stephen Derwent Partington poem
AFRICAN UNION MONITOR: AU Weekly roundup
Announcements
The 1984 Wajir Massacre in Kenya
2008-02-25
Kenya Somali Community of North America
February 25, 2008, is exactly 24 years since the horrific massacre that took place when the Kenyan security killed over 400 Somali men. Today, we are submitting a memo to the Kenya High Commission in Ottawa at 415 Laurier Avenue East Street from 11:00 am - 12:00 pm. This is to mark the 24th anniversary of the Wajir Massacre. This act of genocide occurred in 1984 in Wagala near Wajir. The massacre itself occurred following the rounding up of five thousand Somali men and their removal to the Wagala air strip, while their homes were being burnt to the ground. The men were detained within a barbed wire enclosure over a four day period, forced to strip and denied food and water. The massacre has been devastating to the morale of Somalis, the majority of whom are too intimidated to take any action in case of further reprisals.
To the Somalis, the Wajir Massacre is one of the gravest in a sad history of brutal massacres, including Malkameri in 1996, Garissa in 1980, Madogashe in 1982 and Bagala in 1989. Since none of these massacres has ever been investigated, the pattern of repression of the Kenyan Somali people continues.
Hundreds of families of victims of the Wajir Massacre are in the Bula Jogoo area of Wajir and are still in a state of destitution depending solely on relief aid. They have never been compensated for the massacre by the Kenyan government. At the time of the Wajir Massacre there was an international outcry and many western countries showed their concern and protested to the Kenyan government. Among them were Canada, Britain, United States of America, Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Finland, Australia, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Netherlands and Belgium. The Kenyan government has, for the first time, admitted that the horrific Wajir Massacre occurred sixteen years ago and that hundreds of ethnic Somalis were killed in the Wajir district in the northeastern province of Kenya during this massacre.
We, the Kenyan Somali Community of North America, are calling on the Kenyan Government to take the following actions immediately:
- Appoint an independent commission of inquiry into the Wajir, Garissa and Malkameri Massacres. - Compensate the bereaved families of the 381 people that the Kenyan government admitted had been massacred by its security forces.
- Immediately bring to justice those who were responsible for these heinous crimes
For more information contact Abdi Omar Chairperson Kenya Somali Community of North America (613) 728 2355 or (613) 736 1789 - Email: abdidadai2000@yahoo.com
Features
Tribute to Fidel Castro
2008-02-24
Blade Nzimande
Blade Nzimande gives a comradely appraisal of Fidel Castro the revolutionary theorist, practitioner and internationalist.
Tributes are not meant only for the departed, but are also befitting to living revolutionary legends who have served the cause of humanity with distinction, like Cde Fidel Castro Ruz, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba! Cde Fidel, as he is affectionately known in Cuba and throughout the progressive and socialist world, was until earlier this week, the President of the Socialist Republic of Cuba and Commander of the Armed Forces of the Cuban Revolution.
On the announcement by Cde Fidel that he is to resign as President of Cuba, the South African Communist Party (SACP) issued a statement in appreciation of the role that he has played in the Cuban revolution and his worldwide contribution to the struggle for an alternative, just and humane society.
The SACP, as an ally of the Cuban Revolution since its victory on 1 January 1959, thought it would be amiss not to dedicate this column to the heroic role of Fidel Castro, one of the greatest revolutionaries of our times. Cde Fidel has touched the hearts of millions of people on the globe, way beyond the borders of Cuba, due to his commitment to the building of a truly better world, free of all forms of exploitation and oppression.
Cde Fidel's struggle and that of the Cuban people mean many things to many people in the world today. But one thing is certain, to billions of starving people he has been a symbol of hope. Through Fidel's life and struggle, we today wish to highlight some of the most important areas through which his life has touched the millions, if not billions, of the workers and the poor in the world. The SACP wishes to highlight some of these, some of whom also assist us to make sense of contemporary South Africa, continental and global challenges and developments.
CASTRO AND CAPITALISM AS A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
Marx and Engels, in the 19th century both celebrated and condemned the emergence and growth of capitalism as first a European system that revolutionised the world's productive systems, as well as a cruel worldwide system of brutal exploitation. Reactionaries, some of whom former Marxists, today tend to see only the positive and developmental side of capitalism. They know that by this one-sided emphasis they have sought to distort and appropriate the ``developmental'' aspects of capitalism in order to justify their abandonment of the very fundamentals of Marxism.
Those who have progressively sought to learn and consistently uphold the fundamental lessons from Marx and Engels have highlighted the deeply contradictory nature of capitalism, thus understanding and seeking to daily expose its brutal reproduction through the underdevelopment of the majority of humanity. And that it is a system that must be overthrown as it is incapable of meeting the needs of humanity today and in the future.
The Cuban Revolution has taught us that basic human needs like education, health, gainful employment and provision of basic services need not be commodities to be sold and bought through an unequal market, but that they can indeed be provided freely to society. That Cuba today, under the leadership of Cde Fidel, has one of the best health and education systems in the world, including extraordinarily high levels of literacy, and has ably demonstrated that you do not have to be rich in order to access these basic services and become literate and skilled.
The Fidel Castro-led struggle against the brutality of capitalism also exposes the extent to which what is normally referred to as the ``rule of law'' under capitalism is at its core the rule of the rich over the poor. Capitalist rule of law, including in many instances in our very own South African rule of law, privileges the interests of the rich over that of the poor. For instance serious economic crimes committed against the poor are not defined as crimes, but as matters requiring ``regulatory oversight'' and the ``discipline'' of say, competition. What is the dividing line between, on the one hand, corruption and fraud and, on the other hand price fixing robbing the poor of billions of ands over the price of bread and other foodstuffs or collusion amongst the big banks to fix higher interest rates? Yet this daylight robbery of the poor does not get the attention of the investigative authorities of the criminal justice system, but are matters for ``regulation'' and 'competition'', not defined as corruption or fraud.
What the above mean is that crimes committed by the rich against the poor are not to be prosecuted, but those by the poor against the rich have to be heavily clamped down. This therefore means that what we normally define as the ``rule of law'' is actually the rule of the rich over the poor, including decriminalisation of some of the most criminal behavior of the former over the latter. It is perhaps important that the SACP will have to wage a massive campaign for the criminalisation of some of the worst exploitative practices of the bourgeoisie against the workers and the poor, as part of struggling for a rule of law based on the socioeconomic rights of the overwhelming majority of our people, and generally the poor peoples of the world!
Indeed one of the most serious crimes visited upon humanity by capitalist mega-corporations is the pillaging and degradation of the environment and mindless squander of non-renewable energy sources. This, accompanied by global warming and other capitalist-induced environmental dangers, poses one of the most serious threats to the survival of the human species itself, as Fidel continues to forcefully remind us. In a different world, such plunder would have been amongst the high priority crimes in the work of, for instance, organisations like Interpol, yet under imperialism they are reduced to the niceties or choices of whether to sign the Kyoto protocol or not!
FIDEL, INTERNATIONALISM AND STRUGGLE AGAINT NEOCOLONIALISM
This year, 2008, Southern Africa and the Cuban people, will be celebrating the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, the joint victory of the Angolan and Cuban military forces over the apartheid regime's armed forces, rolling back their aggression against the newly victorious Angolan revolution. The victory at Cuito Cuanavale was greatly assisted by the participation of the Cuban military forces in support of Angola. It would therefore be important to celebrate this battle as part of the celebration of the internationalism of Cde Fidel and the Cuban Revolution, and his leadership qualities in propelling the Cuban and Angolan military forces to inflict a resounding defeat over apartheid's armed forces.
Fidel's and Cuba's defence of a newly liberated territory like Angola was based on a belief that newly liberated nations, led by progressive national liberation movements, had a right to national self-determination and sovereignty. In addition such nations, like in the Cuban Revolution itself, also had a right to choose a radical and redistributive economic system as their economic model in reconstructing their economies destroyed through centuries and decades of colonial wars and plunder.
Cuba's internationalist support to the Angolan people were in support of the commitment and understanding by many such liberation struggles that progressive national liberation struggles were never just about political independence and freedom, important as these are, but that they were fundamentally about the transformation of the economic relations between the colony and the colonisers, and between the oppressed and the oppressors.
The above objective is, amongst others, aptly captured in the Strategy and Tactics document adopted by our own African National Congress (ANC) at its Morogoro conference in 1969:
``In our country, more than in any other part of the oppressed world, it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not even represent a shadow of liberation.''
It is these perspectives that also informed the Cuban Revolution's support of many other national liberation struggles. Cuban internationalism was also informed by the fact that in many post-colonial countries, aggressive imperialist interventions sought to prevent these countries from proceeding beyond formal political independence.
Unfortunately it is still the case that in many post-colonial societies political independence was not accompanied by the transformation of the colonial character of the economy, with the (colonial) ``metropole'' continuing to dominate the post-colonial economy as if there had been no political independence! Such a situation inevitably reproduced some of the worst features colonial domination by the former colonising power, albeit indirectly but very forcefully, thus producing what has come to be known as ``neo-colonialism'' -- a seemingly outdated, but a still highly relevant concept in contemporary developing world!
It was also for the fact that the Cuban Revolution managed to break out of any attempts at imposing a neo-colonial order there that it remains an inspiration to millions of people in many post-colonial developing nations.
Fidel's internationalism is no better illustrated than by his own description of the nature of the sacrificed made by Cuban internationalists in supporting many liberation struggles. Immediately after the end of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, Cde Fidel pointed out that Cuba has supported Angolan and many other struggles of the African people since its victory in 1959, without Cubans expecting any material gains for themselve, other than the satisfaction of contributing towards the liberation of those countries. To that extent, Fidel said, what the Cuban government brought home from such internationalist missions was not bags of gold or diamonds but only bags carrying the dead bodies of Cuban internationalist combatants! This is unlike those who illegally raid other countries, but hide the dead bodies from their own citizens, and instead display prominently their prized trophies -- the gold, diamonds and oil captured from what are described as ``wars for extension of frontiers of democracy'' and ``wars against terrorism''.
FIDEL AND THE BATTLE FOR IDEAS
Like a true Marxist and communist, Fidel has always understood that the prerequisite for any meaningful revolutionary advance or victory rests primarily on winning the battle of ideas. The first decisive defeat of the apartheid regime by the liberation forces was not so much on the streets or the factory floors, where the apartheid regime commanded more firepower than the stones thrown at them by the workers and the youth, but the superiority of the ideas of liberation over the bankrupt morality of white minority oppression over a majority.
The Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel, has always been exemplary in its detailed attention to ideological work amongst the Cuban masses. It is this ideological work that has been the pillar of the failure of the US imperialist aggression of its criminal blockade to defeat the Cuban Revolution. As we pointed out in the previous edition of this publication, it is imperative that we take the battle of ideas to higher levels as part of pursuing a radical national democratic revolution.
FIDEL AND MISTAKES OF THE REVOLUTION
A critical component of any revolution is that of timeously acknowledging mistakes and shortcomings in the very revolution itself, including mistakes made by the leadership in the conduct of the revolution. In other words, there is no revolution without mistakes, but the art of revolutionary work, as Lenin used to consistently point out, was that of timeously identifying such mistakes as mistakes, and seeking to learn appropriate lessons from these. In other words denialism of any sort is the biggest enemy to revolutionary advances.
[Former SACP stalwart] Cde Harry Gwala used to be scathing of those comrades who would pride themselves that they had never or do not commit mistakes in their work. He used to say true revolutionaries do commit mistakes, as it can only be those sitting back and doing nothing that are incapable of committing mistakes. Mistakes are an integral part of any revolution, including adoption of wrong policy choices at crucial moments in the progress of any revolution. The task is to admit and learn from these.
One of the most impressive features of Fidel's leadership and that of the collective leadership of the Cuban Revolution is the ability to candidly admit to mistakes. For instance Fidel and the entire collective leadership of the Cuban revolution readily engage self-critically on the extent to which for instance what is known as Cuba's Special Period (hardships faced by the Cuban revolution after the collapse of the Soviet Union) might not have been less difficult had the Cuban revolution not spent a long time trying to follow the Soviet model of socialism.
HEAP NO PRAISE ON FIDEL BUT ON THE REVOLUTIONARY RESILIENCE OF THE CUBAN PEOPLE
We have raised the points above not in order to romanticise Fidel, but to highlight some of the heroic contributions and dedication of this leader to the cause of the total liberation of humanity from the barbarism of capitalism. The achievements of the Cuban Revolution could never have been attained through an individual, but by the conscious mass of the Cuban people determined to defend the advance they had made in trying to build a better society. Therefore our task is not to romanticise but to seek to emulate the heroic actions of Cde Fidel.
Cde Fidel always emphasises the fact that much as Cuba is a very poor country, but its wealth is its people, wealth not determined by how much the rich can consume the earth's resources, but based on the determination of the Cuban people to work hard and contribute towards building a better Cuba and a better world.
For all the above reasons, we honour cde Fidel; he has never sold out the Cuban people and their revolution and he has never wavered in the light of numerous assassination attempts on his life, attempts relentlessly made by more than ten successive US presidents! In all of this Cde Fidel has not lost his great sense of humour, but instead tells many jokes about how the Americans have attempted to take away his life! After all, Fidel and the Cuban Revolution are a living proof that selfishness is not an inherently, natural human quality, but a social and political construct, fostered by a heartless capitalist system.
As we said at the Congress of South African Trade Unions Central Committee in September 2007, every revolution produces its heroes, but also every revolution produces its own traitors. Fidel is a hero and has refused to be a traitor! Indeed there is no nobler a cause than that of loyal service to the interests of the workers and the poor.
Fidel and the Cuban Revolution remain an inspiration to the justness of the struggle of the SACP to accelerate a radical national democratic revolution as our most direct route to a more humane alternative for our country, a socialist South Africa.
We say to Fidel, you deserve your rest. Uyibekile induku ebandla mfoka Castro!
Asikhulume!
*Blade Nzimande is general secretary of the South African Communist Party. This article first appeared in Umsebenzi, Volume 7, No. 3, 20 February 2008.
**Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Comment & analysis
Britain should help Zimbabwe by staying away
2008-02-26
Blessing-Miles Tendi
Blessing-Miles Tendi argues that because Britain lacks the moral authority to comment on or interfere in Zimbabwean affairs, it would serve the Zimbabwean search for freedom and justice by keeping away.
Since 2000, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe government has cast the Zimbabwe crisis as a struggle by Britain, an ex-colonial power, to re-colonise its former colony by supporting and funding the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. Britain has blindly walked into Mugabe’s anti-colonial trap consistently, which has exposed Zimbabwe’s internal opposition to harmful labels such as ‘sell-outs to the imperialists’.
Britain has expressed its frustration with Southern African leaders’ unwillingness to censure Mugabe publicly and to force him into retirement. A number of factors explain Southern African leaders’ stance on Mugabe and chief among them is that for a long time the MDC was distrusted by regional leaders and perceived as sell-outs to new-imperialism. Britain bore responsibility for this false perception of the opposition in Zimbabwe because its anti-Mugabe stance made Zimbabwe’s opposition easy prey for Mugabe’s anti-colonial constructions. Britain is partly responsible for the failure of a democratic opposition to replace the undemocratic Mugabe in elections since 2000.
Mugabe has also proved adroit at articulating British double standards on global human rights promotion to bolster his refutation of Western criticism of his government’s human rights record. Britain dilutes its moral authority when it calls for its national cricket team to boycott tours of Zimbabwe because of the country’s poor human rights record but remains silent when its national team tours Pakistan, which is also a grave human rights violator. Britain’s condemnations and targeted sanctions against the Mugabe government would command more moral authority if the same human rights standards were applied everywhere evenly. Failure to apply human rights standards evenly results in staunch claims to sovereignty in the non-Western world. The danger lies in the fact that some of these claims are merely pretexts for internal repression – something Mugabe is guilty of.
After Britain’s involvement in the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq its moral authority is at its lowest ebb internationally. Thus, it is breathtakingly naïve for the Foreign Secretary David Milliband to insist, as he did in Oxford this month, that despite Britain’s failures in Iraq, Britain has ‘a moral duty’ to intervene in undemocratic countries – and by force if necessary – in order to spread democracy internationally. Very few countries still look up to Britain as a champion of human rights and democracy, and none in Southern Africa will countenance its involvement in their internal affairs. ‘We are tired of being lectured on democracy by the very countries which, under colonialism, either directly denied us the rights of free citizens, or were indifferent to our suffering and yearnings to break free and be democratic’ – remember these utterances by the Tanzanian government, one of Britain’s favoured donor recipients in Southern Africa, in 2004?
Britain has, as a starting premise, the logic that its modern day standing as a developed democracy automatically confers the moral authority to censure what it considers to be less democratic countries such as Zimbabwe. But its flawed history of intervention and interference in Zimbabwe has left it with little or no moral credibility there. Britain granted Rhodesia’s white settler community ‘responsible self-government’ in 1923. However, the country remained a British colony and Britain retained the right to veto legislation affecting the black African majority. Rhodesia’s white minority passed various laws that subjected the blacks to treatment as subhuman. Not once did Britain exercise its veto power to strike down Rhodesia’s dehumanising and racist laws.
In 1965, Rhodesia severed ties with the British crown by declaring the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). Britain was called upon to use military force to rein in the rebellious UDI government’s perpetuation of white minority rule. Prime Minister Harold Wilson ruled out the use of force. He chose to impose sanctions and declared that the UDI government would survive the sanctions for no more than 6 weeks. Rhodesia weathered the sanctions until black majority rule was attained in 1980, after a peace settlement a year earlier, which brought to an end one of the most bloody and bitterly fought liberation wars in Africa.
In the 1980s, Britain venerated Mugabe while he massacred 20000 civilians in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland province. The reason? According to Roger Martin, Deputy British High Commissioner to Zimbabwe (1983-86), ‘no British government wanted a couple of hundred thousand British citizens appearing with cardboard suitcases at Heathrow, the sudden expulsion of whites if we had pulled the rug on the aid [to Zimbabwe] and as it were denounced Mugabe [for the massacres].’
In spite of assurances Britain made to the Mugabe government at independence, to fund the redress of racially biased land distribution in Zimbabwe, in 1997 it declared that it did not accept ‘a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe’. 3 years later a violent programme of land seizures from white farmers without compensation began to unfold. Zimbabwe is what it is economically today partly because of these land seizures.
Foreign Secretary Milliband has called for international monitoring of Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections, saying conditions for the poll are ‘far from free and fair’. But Britain should be the last to speak out and it should desist from prejudging the forthcoming elections publicly because this is exactly what Mugabe wants Britain to do. Already, Mugabe has said his party’s 2008 election campaign will focus on resisting Britain’s regime change agenda in Zimbabwe. Mugabe has set his anti-colonial trap for Britain and if Milliband’s comments are anything to go by, Britain is walking into it once again. Britain would better serve the struggle for democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe by taking a back seat in the country’s elections next month because it has no moral authority in Southern Africa. Groupings such as the European Union and the Southern African Development Community should take the lead not Britain because it risks aiding Mugabe’s re-election bid.
*Blessing-Miles Tendi is a researcher at Oxford University.
**Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Kenya: model or myth?
2008-02-25
Annar Cassam
The present void as exists in Kenya, says Annar Cassam, is very dangerous for it renders both the elections and the observer missions irrelevant and robs the voters of their democratic rights twice.
Nearly two months after Kenya's rigged elections and Kibaki's "victory" claim set the country on fire, there is one question that has been on everybody's lips and it has still to be answered.
How can it be that this "model" African country,this island of stability, democracy, good governance, economic excellence and humanitarian solidarity in an otherwise chaotic, conflict-ridden and backward part of the continent, can so quickly collapse into tragedy? And this as a result of rigged elections which take place all the time and all over the world, but seldom with such horrendous consequences?
This perception of Kenya being the exception, the model, is widespread, among Kenyans especially and in the outside world but is it really justified, is it not more fiction than fact?
It is difficult to square this image with one simple truth universally acknowledged, that, Kenya is one of Africa's most corrupt countries. Its history of state corruption is not a secret, nor is it complicated to understand, thanks to the country's vibrant and vigilant press and to well-documented investigation reports of major financial scandals, such as the Goldenberg scam (under Moi) and the recent AngloLeasing scam (under Kibaki).
For those who wish to know more about Kenya's endemic culture of corruption at the highest level,a seminar with John Githongo would be useful. Githongo is the former head of the country's anti-corruption unit, now living in exile in London, having fled Kenya in fear for his life in 2005. The myth about Kenya's economic status has long been promoted by representatives of the World Bank and IMF who imagine that Kenya, by virtue of its hosting the "most powerful economy" in East Africa and the UN Office in Nairobi, exists in some other parallel universe, far away from African realities.
However, the people of Kenya are now poorer than ever. According to the Financial Times, in 1990, 48% of the population lived below the poverty line. "Today, four decades after independence, 55% of Kenyans subsist on a couple od dollars a day"(FT.1/1/2008).
Since independence in 1963, the international donor community, led by the UK, has contributed some $16bn in aid. It is also under their watch that Kibera, so-called "the largest slum in Africa" has expanded and festered in the capital city where about 1.2mn people live without clean water and sanitation amenities, many of them without employment or adequate medical care. Vast amounts of Kenya's arable land are owned by the three ruling families,namely, Kenyatta,Moi and Kibaki. Half of the nation's wealth is in the hands of 10% of the population.
Kenyan MPs earn allowances amounting to tax-free salaries of more than $10,000 per month. This is a democratic model very few African countries can afford to emulate. The international community, so massively present in Kenya, has been complicit in fabricating the "model" country myth, to the detriment of the suffering of the Kenyans.The parallel universe complex referred to earlier afflicts the UN Office in Nairobi, the only UN HQ to be based in a developng country, the others being in New York, Geneva and Vienna.UNON is also the seat of two Specialised Agencies, UNEP (environmental programme) and HABITAT (human settlement) and to an ever-expanding network of international organisations, NGOs and commercial enterprises providing financial, policy and logistic support for the many conflict ad disaster-prone populations in the region.
But the plight of the ordinary citizens seems not to be in the mandate of the leadership of this privileged group of international experts who live in daily contact with Kenyans who look after their children, drive their cars, provide security for their property, etc. In the last 10 years, Kenya has become a major exporter of fresh vegetables and flowers to European markets. In the Lake Naivasha area, acres of land lie covered under green-houses where a water-intensive, high-tech industry produces millions of fresh roses to be flown to Holland (for very low prices). The environmental damage caused to local water resources and the hardship this means for the local rural population's ability to grow food crops is a case study for our experts.
Myths can take on a life of their own, unaffected by concrete realities which in Kenya are only too visible. The so-called economic success story should be seen in context. For, however impressive may be the gains on the Nairobi Stock Exchange, the tonnes of agricultural exports, the thousand of tourists, the millions of dollars in aid funds and the 6% growth rate since 2006, this cannot hide the misery and the humiliation of over half the population which used to live on $2 a day before the current breakdown.
It is time to re-consider the continued presence of the UN Office in a country whose government holds such a record of mismanagement and corruption ... and now of election fraud. Kenya's Central Bank, the main beneficiary of the money the UN and allied networks spend in the country will feel the loss,(the "UN business" is said to provide 20% of Kenya's annual forex earnings) but the UN's leadership must surely demand some basic standards of ethical behaviour from the host government, both for its own integrity and credibility and for the sake of the millions of Kenyans now in obvious distress and disarray.
As for the spread of democracy, the Kenyan debacle provides an opportunity for a fresh look at the role of observer missions which arrive in developing countries as watchdogs for the godess of free and fair elections. Is it really enough to fly in, observe, declare this or that and then vanish? Some serious attention needs to be paid to a code of ethics and follow-up mechanisms which can apply in situations where a mission's verdict on rigged elections is ignored and power is grabbed by the faudulent party.
The present void as exists in Kenya is very dangerous for it renders both the elections and the observer missions irrelevant and robs the voters of their democratic rights twice.
Finally, a word about the man who would be president for the second time. By having the elections rigged and then clinging to the trappings of power, Kibaki has shown an abysmal lack of moral principle and leadership. While the country self-destructs and his people turn on each other, while chldren are burnt to death, women and girls raped and many thousands become refugees in their own land, Kibaki has contributed strictly nothing by way of a solution. This is dereliction of duty and reponsibiity which is contemptible and which must be condemned. Kenya, after all is no man's personal property and elections, even when rigged, are not a passport to impunity.
* Annar Cassam is Tanzanian, former Consultant at UNESCO/PEER Nairobi and former Director, UNESCO Office, Geneva
** Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/
The New Divine Comedy of Politics: The Priest is back
2008-02-21
John Samuel
John Samuel argues that the opiates of new conservatism, fundamentalism and other forms of politics of exclusion- make a bad divine comedy of Politics and makes a tragedy of democratic process.
In the beginning there was word, word was with God and word was God. Then the Priest came to represent the Word and the God. Then came the sword. Sword was with the Prince. And sword was the Prince. Then prince became the state and State became the sword. Then came the trade. Trade was with the merchant. Trade was Merchant. Merchant became the Market. Market became the Missionary. Hence, the World was made of words, swords and trade. Word was spread through the sword. Words sustained the sword. Then trade helped to spread the word and the sword. Here began the divine comedy of words, sword and trade. Priests, Prince and Merchant ran the world with their words, swords and trade. This divine comedy is the mother of all politics.
Politics is the dynamics of power-relations in a given society at a given point in time. Power relations often get channeled thorough and negotiated by social institutions. Historically, socio-cultural institutions like religion, clans, tribe and family played a very important role in channeling, mediating and negotiating power and political process.
Divinity was evoked to legitimize and sustain power in the realm of religious institutions and religion often subcontracted such process to family by “legalizing” and legitimizing the most important events of human life- birth, death, and procreation through male-female relationships.
Religion created the soft-power through beliefs, knowledge, myths, rituals and institutions. Such a sense of soft-power was a pre-requisite to build hard power through the sword. Priest became the first ideologue of political power. He gave moral legitimacy for domination through patriarchy. The Brahmin, Mullah, Monk, or the Bishops interpreted the world and legalized the words- by making the norms, canons and law. Priests played multiple roles as philosophers, theologians, teachers, sorcerer and alchemists. Priests created the “order of things”. Priest was a necessity for the entry and sustenance of the Prince. The most common form of evident power was always the “physical” contestation to acquire and dominate. This gets institutionalized through weapons, army and war. Military provided the bull-work to dominate and sustain power for the Prince- from Darius to Alexander to the Romans, from Genghis Khan to Ottomans Turks, from Napoleon to Hitler, and from Stalin to George Bush!
Power was legitimized by the Priests, disguised as philosophers or teachers, and sustained by the Military of the Prince. The hegemony at given time was managed through the process of creating consent (often through religious –social networks) and coercion (by the Military power of the Prince). Priest and the prince together made the Law and Order- where they combined the power of the word and the sword.
With the emergence of trade, market, and surpluses, money began to play a role in shaping politics. Eventually the art of politics was managed by the Prince (with weapons and army), Priest (who derive authority from the divine) and the Merchant (who financed war). The entire colonial project and imperialist politics were driven by the old power trinity of the Prince- Priest and Merchant. They used trade, sword and bible to appropriate territories, markets, culture and human mind. In many ways religions and priests provided the moral and ideological framework to capture and dominate the world. Most of the major religions spread across the world either through sword or trade. Hence, the priest was an ideological necessity to give moral veneer to any act of atrocity and domination. All major religions have the smell of blood acquired through war and plunder at one point or other point in history. Patriarchy, totem and taboo and identity based contestation became the underlying factors to acquire, sustain and manage power relationships.
Then the nation-state came. Prince, Priest and Merchants were not supposed to be in charge. “We the people” were supposed to be in charge of the modern manifestation of power. New institutional formations came into being to channel, negotiate and sustain power. That is how political parties came in as a modern social- and political institution, in the context of the liberal democratic politics and state.
With the separation of the Church and State, a relatively secular democratic process emerged in many of the countries in Europe and other parts of the world. Secular democracy became the flavour of the month. Thus the priest and the merchant retreated to background of the political process. The emergence of the political parties helped to replace the old political nexus of Prince-Priest and the Merchant. In the process, the new power-elites competed with each other, in the name of various political parties, to capture and sustain the state power. Those leaders in the business of capturing and sustaining state power, through “democratic processes, became the modern day equivalent of the Prince.
In the course of democratic exercise of capturing and sustaining the state power, merchants once again came to the forefront as the financiers of the political parties and electoral process. This nexus of political elites and powerful corporate elites appropriated the modern state and institutions of governance. With the emergence of neo-liberal policy framework, the cash-rich corporate leaders began to influence political and policy making process through financing political parties, electoral process and through knowledge- media network.
While this new nexus subverted the democratic process and appropriated the policy making process, political party leaders lost the moral authority to influence society or people. This made them increasingly dependent on religious institutions and networks to seek social legitimacy and to gather votes. They needed the blessings of Bishops- Mullahs or Swamis or Monks to sustain to their State power and electoral base. Thus, the priest too returned to the forefront of the political process.
So the old nexus of the Prince, Priest and Merchants are back in their new avatar of the power trinity of political leaders- transnational corporations- new religious networks and leaders. In spite of secularism and democracy, religion refuses to fade away from politics (with their divine commissions, sanctions, authority and vested interests). Religious leaders and networks too adopted a marketing approach, using modern media, advertisement, high-tech networking and strategic influence to increase their power and presence. Military and market are still in charge in most of the countries in the world. In many cases, both the religious institutions and the military are in the business of discrediting, undermining and sabotaging political parties to sustain their power. Media often play a subservient role to Market and Religion- as both are sources of revenue. Instead of being the fourth-estate among the democratic institutions, Media has become the pimp of the new power trinity... They have successfully appropriated the state power and institutions of governance- by subverting the political process.
The interesting thing is that most of the authoritarian military regimes do not touch religion and many a time they rule in collusion with religion or religious institutions. Such religious institutions or network are also well entrenched social network to channel power, to collect information, to manage, to control and to dominate through power-networks of the prince and the priests. The prince and the priest tend to seek validation and resources from the merchant to sustain the power. All three of the “power-characters” see political parities as a necessary modern evil! This new power nexus has either appropriated political parties as an instrument to capture state power or discredited political parties to directly capture the state power through military coup.
Thus democracy has been reduced to a formal electoral mechanism or a farce. Democracy is often used as a mere veneer of legitimacy to capture and sustain State- Power. In fact, the priest is back in the form of new conservatism, in the form of vote-bank, in the form of new fundamentalism and in the form of new identity politics. As the political parties and leaders get seduced into the big money and corrupt practices, the religious leaders (Bishops, Mullahs, Swamis and Monks) tend to influence society through their media, social network and identity politics; harvesting on the new insecurities and paranoia in the context of consumerism, advanced capitalism and terrorism.
Thus Politics itself is being turned into a Divine Comedy- where Priests once again return to the centre stage with their divine aura and new marketing techniques to become the king-makers in the postmodern world. Prince and Merchants get into in to a new power-sharing. In the process, state becomes subservient to market, with the blessings of the Priest. Citizens are reduced to consumers or believers- who are ready to buy and follow, who are ready to kill themselves or be killed for their beliefs. When the citizens are robbed off their sense of agency, most of the “mass” end up as the puppets of the merchant or priests and they dance to tune of the prince. This dancing of “mass” –alienated from the sense of agency- to the tune of Priests – to the tune of new conservatism, fundamentalism and politics of exclusion- make a bad divine comedy of Politics. It makes a tragedy of democratic process.
It is high time to reclaim the state and democratic process from the new avatars of the old nexus of Prince-Priest – Merchants. It is also time to ensure that the Bishops-Mullahs Swamis and Monks do not make a divine comedy out of democracy.
* John Samuel is a human rights activist and is currently International Director of Actionaid, based in Bangkok.
**Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Pan-African Postcard
Sourcing Human Rights Issues for Global Agenda – Whose Agenda and how timely?
2008-02-26
Jegede Ademola Oluborode
Jegede Ademola Oluborode makes a case for human rights being a collective responsibility everywhere all the time
As an activist, one of the most pressing concerns which have agitated my mind in recent times is the way and when human rights issues evolve for national as well as international attention. Quite frequently, I have been tempted to question the agenda of these issues by asking the following: Whose issues are they? And how involving and timely is the process of defining, identifying, building consensus and designing interventions on the issues?
I am governed in this skepticism because apart from being unimpressed by the timing of human rights issues, I have been bordered by the response of political leadership to issues of widespread human rights significance and traumatized by the attention given to less significant issues being glamourised as most significant. In the many times that I have done this, I can not help but to notice that relevance has often been compromised for glamour. Indeed, more often than not, the agenda for human rights issues is dominantly the “King’s Agenda and not people oriented”! Sad enough, this trend has also found its way into the global stage.
I will make my self clearer with a story I have thought out for this purpose! For the sake of this story we will assume the existence of a Kingdom, a King and a fierce Lion. Let’s go now into the storyline!
Once upon a time, the subjects of a kingdom converged to seek the gracious audience of the King on the issue of a fierce lion which comes attacking at will, maiming lives and killing many in the kingdom. The king granted them an audience. Having listened to the concerns and comments so movingly related by the people about the strange lion, the king proceeded to ask their spokesmen “where is the Lion?” To which the entire people replied “it has fled away.” Then the King said “if the Lion has gone, then there is no trouble because “the trouble has gone.”At this stage, the king’s officials requested the people to leave the palace. Bewildered and disappointed, the people dispersed.
The Lion continued with its preying and subsequent reports on its attacks met with the same question and response of the king “where is the lion”, “if the Lion has gone, then there is no trouble because the “the trouble has gone.”
One fateful day, the king’s only son went on a royal visit to a neighbouring village. As providence would have it, the Lion came attacking once again and on that occasion, it was the one and only son of the king who fell prey to the ferocious animal. Shocked by the incident, the people’s initial challenge was how to inform the King about the tragedy as they were afraid of his possible reaction and wrath. But they summoned the courage to make the decision about informing the King.
As usual, they arrived at the palace to request the audience of the king who came out in the full regalia of a happy ruler to attend to his subjects. Now, listen to his royal majesty’s first comment “hope it is not the Lion again because you will only have one response from me which is, if the Lion has gone, then there is no trouble because the trouble has gone.” The spokesmen of the subjects said “Long live the King, you are right, it is the Lion, and it has eaten up your one and only son.” The King shouted wild in response “TROUBLE HAS COME!”
Any time political leadership, whether national or international, moves the nation or world around an issue; let’s bother to inform them that we hope it is not their “only son who has been killed”. Let us go further to ask them about how seriously the issues affect so many. Indeed, quality and positive human rights activism lies in being able to foresee issues and take steps to check them, for the fence around the hill is better than an ambulance in the valley-prevention is better than cure!
* Jegede Ademola Oluborode is a legal practitioner and a human rights activist in Nigeria.
**Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
Letters
Africom and solidarities
2008-02-26
Tony Vacca
To the NCBL, to Mark P. Fancher (principal drafter of Africom threatens the sovereignty, http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/45604#comments), Jeffrey L. Edison and Ajamu Sankofa, the editor, and to all those who comprehend what "interconnected" is all about:
First, thank you for this enlightening information in the form of your article. This is powerful stuff, and I am sorry to say, all too familiar to me. My knowledge of American history and of African history is rudimentary, but I certainly know enough to hear a familiar pattern revealed by your report.
We have long ago run out of pages on which to chronicle the litany of horrors committed against African peoples on and beyond the African continent. (This could be said for many parts of the world, but none more dramatically than the African continent and it’s peoples.) I mean, if we really are all connected, and if our fates ultimately lie in our own hands and in our ability to act on this connection, then it should be clear that the so-called spiritual high road is actually the fastest, cheapest and most effective way to create a truly sustainable world economy. And, if we believe the overwhelming majority consensus of science, aren't we all literally descendants of Africa?
This is tough for some people to embrace, but I never understand why. Our mis-guided, myopic, and divisive notions of nationality might be better focused on how we are all members of a greater, integrated, interdependent family, simply living in different parts of the world. And please, could we do this sometime BEFORE we create the NEXT world-wide crisis of our own making?
“Ain’t it time we look to ourselves to assess
if we are wisely using the powers we possess?
Ain’t it time we took our visions seriously
and embrace the common ground of our humanity?
Ain’t it time for our actions to add up and be
a wave of our wondrous diversity?
Ain’t it time to sleep with and make love to our dreams
Until our dreams become our reality?
Ain’t it time?”
So yes, I get your point.
That’s why I do what I do. Along with Senegalese nationaI, Mr. Massamba Diop, (tama drummer with Baaba Maal) I am the co-founder of the Senegal-America Project.
This project is about how the music can sound and how the world can look when we realize that we are actually all connected.
Maybe we have something in common here? I’m sure of this: The friends we make, up close and personal, doing our projects one-on-one are the medicine against the poison of ignorance and self-defeating greed. We do our work; music, education, health and social issues, art, all for our mutual, immediate and long- term benefit.
This may be pushy, but hey, we could use some help.
Oh we’re doing amazing things, it’s just that we are going slower than we are capable of going. It’s all grass roots, people-oriented work. Things like concerts and workshops in schools in America and in Africa, to get young students in the mid-set of realizing their issues are shared by others their age on the other side of the world…and that they can begin to create and work on projects that address these issues together. Things like money and resources to build and supply school buildings, mosquito nets to prevent malaria, arts exchange projects to show how something they do in their world can change the environment of a friend they’ve never met, who lives thousands of miles away.
This is the medicine against Africom, and we have it in vast supplies. Everyone wants to be part of this. We could use a little help to put it all together in an even more effective way.
Check out the Senegal-America Project at the site of our non-profit arts organization: http://www.arts-are-essential.org/senegal.about.php
You can also go to my web site and read my take on the Senegal-America Project. It's:http://www.tonyvacca.com/senegalamerica.
Forthcoming Zimbabwean Elections on 29th March
2008-02-25
The Global Zimbabwe Forum
The Global Zimbabwe Forum would like to express its dire concern at the current state of the preparations for the forthcoming harmonized elections that are due to be held in Zimbabwe on 29th March 2008.
We would like as Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, to state in no uncertain terms our unequivocal stance on the following issues:
The outcome of the forthcoming elections will be highly compromised by the fact that over three million eligible voters who are now living outside Zimbabwe will be excluded from participating in the process. We believe that the exclusion of the Diaspora vote is a fundamental flow that brings the credibility of the elections into question.
We also note with concern the rather inconclusive nature of the SADC mediation process that was being led by President Thabo Mbeki. Should Zimbabweans expected more from this rather protracted process.
We further call upon SADC and Africa in general to ensure that the elections are held in accordance with the expectations of the SADC Protocol on Elections that was adopted in Mauritius in August 2004.
We urge all the interested political parties and independent candidates in the forthcoming elections to promote a spirit of peaceful election campaign process. Political violence must be condemned unconditionally.
We endorse current efforts to mobilize some Zimbabweans in the Diaspora especially those living in the SADC region to return home and vote in the forthcoming elections.
While we respect the individual members' preferences of candidates of their own, we do not endorse any candidates in the elections since we are a politically non-partisan organization but urge the Zimbabwean electorate to vote for a candidate who will seek to promote the democratic ideals of Zimbabwe especially the interests of the diverse Diaspora community.
We urge all Zimbabweans at home to go turn out in their numbers on 29th March and fully exercise their right to elect the leaders of their own choice.
Issued in Johannesburg on Monday 25th February 2008 by
The Global Zimbabwe Forum c/o The Zimbabwe Diaspora Forum 4th Floor, Noswal Hall, Braamfontein Johannesburg, South Africa Tel/Fax: +27113393629
African Writers’ Corner
Weekly Obits
For Prof Joyce Nyairo
2008-02-26
Stephen Derwent Partington
There she is, dead again,
that grandma with her jowls
and battered cardigan,
her headscarf and her
grainy backstreet photograph.
From week to week
her image stares to haunt us.
It’s the text that brings her
sharply into focus:
Loving mother of…
The grandma of…
An in-law through some cousin
to a councillor from such
and such a ward…
And, yes, the family will meet
at somewhere rural
and the hearse will leave
from such and such a Home
at 10a.m. (not prompt), proceed
to some small church
where she will Rest in Peace
Forever be Remembered
when Promoted to His Glory…
For us all, the same old story.
But her age in days like these,
her stunning age. Indeed,
the obit’s whole normality
earns which: our envy? Praise?.
*Stephen Derwent 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
African Union Monitor
AU Monitor Weekly Roundup
Issue 125, 2008
2008-02-22
http://www.aumonitor.org/
The AU Monitor's Monthly Discussion Paper Series presents its current paper, based on the "Open Letter to Africa's Present and Future Leaders" written by the 2007 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellows. Among other recommendations, the letter urges "the establishment of a high-level African Union led campaign to fight tribalism and inequality in all its forms across the continent." Forum members are encouraged to contribute to the discussion and answer the proposed questions.
This week's AU Monitor brings you news from the African Union, where only half of its member states have ratified the Protocol establishing the African Human Rights Court. The Court's President Gerard Niungeko urges the remaining African states to ratify the protocol to enable "individuals and non-governmental organizations to approach the Court with their cases".
The second ordinary session of the AU Conference of ministers in charge of Youth (COMY) has called on the private sector to implement youth activities at national and sub-national levels in order for youth to play a significant role in the development of the continent. It was concluded that "Africa's victory against poverty, violence, insecurity and bad governance lies in the continent's capacity to empower the youth so that they could take control and develop its resources".
In other AU news, the AU Commission and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will meet this week to exchange views on recent African developments, human security concerns and discuss ways of enhancing economic growth on the continent.
Mozambique, considered one of the strongest economic performers in Sub-Saharan Africa, will host the 43rd Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in May 2008. The meeting will bring together 1500 participants and is being held on the theme: "Fostering Shared Growth: Urbanization, Inequality and Poverty".
In U.S.-Africa news, Ambassador Cindy Courville, the first full-time U.S. envoy to the African Union (AU), speaks of a growing U.S.-Africa relationship and highlights the monetary assistance the U.S. has provided for the continent.
While Abid Aslam reports on the recent visit of U.S. President George Bush to Africa as being a way to "polish his image and advance U.S. interests", highlighting both positive and negative U.S. initiatives in Africa, Horace Campbell outlines the motives behind Bush's visit as an attempt to coerce African countries to sign on to the proposed U.S. Africa Command (Africom). Campbell calls for activists to "oppose the plans for the remilitarization of Africa under the guise of fighting terrorism in Africa".
In regional news, the East African Community (EAC) Secretary General Ambassador Juma Mwapuchu has stated that the Kenyan situation has affected regional integration processes and has had ramifications on the entire EAC region. Ambassador Mwapuchu pledges that his organization will play a central role in resolving the political situation in Kenya.
Also regarding the situation in Kenya, a coalition of Kenyan human rights organizations have presented a Memorandum to the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR), addressing concerns and recommendations to restore peace in Kenya following the contested presidential ballot of December 2007.
In environmental news, the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) recently held a conference on their "great greenbelt initiative", a 15 km wide greenbelt containing wildlife that can serve the region's economic interests as well as the development of a network of inland basins and other social infrastructure. Further, Peter Bosshard of International Rivers analyzes the potential downside to China's State Environmental Protection Agency's (SEPA) Equator Principles, highlighting that it could serve as a risk to regions with weaker environmental standards, such as Africa.
Finally, a recent reception of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) called for countries to intensify capacity building efforts by mobilizing existing resources, in order to increase development of the continent and end dependency on Western countries.
Fahamu - Networks For Social Justice
www.fahamu.org
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