Back Issues

Obama at the crossroads of a revolution?

2008-03-20

Horace Campbell

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/46809

In a nuanced article that borrows from various disciplines such as philosophy and physics, Horace Campbell argues that Barrack Obama would only be trapped by a conservative and anti-people social and economic system if those "who are being drawn into the audacity of hope do not build their own political movement and political organization." He argues that only "only a bottom up movement can prevent Barack Obama from becoming a racial decoy for the Wall Street forces."

INTRODUCTION

The new force of the youth has now made itself felt in US presidential politics in 2008. This force is manifest in the tremendous outpouring of the collectivities of different races, classes, genders, sexual orientation and ages coming forward to support the candidacy of Barack Obama. Barack Obama was born of an African father from Kenya and a mother of European extraction from Kansas in the heartland of the United States. Obama is drawing on both heritages and is campaigning to make a break with the binary categories that perpetuates divisions and the politics of exclusion. This break is a fundamental concept in fractal theory and opens up questions of the laws of unintended consequences in politics. It is the combination of the new energy and light that emerges from the Barrack Obama campaign that sparks questions on the need for a new framework for analyzing politics. This is the framework based on truth, justice, peace and a new mode of politics. In South Africa, the term emerged to point to the ways that in which we share a common humanity.

This short statement will argue that after nearly thirty years of traditional republican and democratic politics there is a desire for hope. It is hope that goes beyond the audacity of the campaign of Obama or the kind of balancing which is inscribed in his book, The Audacity of Hope.

This hope cannot be quantified and this absence of quantification bears positive and negative possibilities. The positive possibilities can emerge from the intentionality of those forces who can build on the new self organizing tools for self emancipation and for moving the politics of this society to a new level. Without the involvement of a new constituency in politics, the Barack Obama campaign can only go so far to ignite the imagination of the youth but this fire will burn out if there are no self similar processes being developed in spaces of peace, spaces of hope and non racialized spaces.

Even if Obama were to be elected to be the President of the United States, the conditions/realities for the overwhelming majority of the citizens (especially blacks, browns, and First nation peoples) will not change overnight. The economic recession, the joblessness of millions and the massive military machine will expose whether this election discourse on change can be transformed into setting in motion a new mobilization of popular forces to struggle for a new mode of politics and economics. In the conclusion we will note that though Obama is no revolutionary, he is caught in a revolutionary moment and his message of hope has tapped into the desire for peace, reconstruction and justice…

Barack Obama is campaigning on the basis of change. In this campaign, his ideas may not be totally formed in relation to the fundamental questions facing the society, but what is clear is that his movement has tapped into a force, energy force that at this moment is unstoppable. The same youths who have grown up in the era of the information revolution and the platforms such as Face book/ My Space are using new social networking techniques that baffle the political pundits reared in the universities that taught the physics of Isaac Newton and the derivative mechanical concepts of Adam Smith and John Locke. Polling and the laws of predictability that emanate from this mechanical era has fallen short of grasping the new energy as thousands of new actors and actresses surge on to the stage of politics to identify with the break from the old politics of fear and so called War on Terror.

Millions are no longer deterred by the fear mongering of the Bush/Cheney leadership or the imagery of Islamic peoples as terrorists. Decent Christians are now seeking the gospel of peace and love instead of hate and religious fundamentalism.

UBUNTU AND THE AUDACITY OF HOPE

Barack Obama is opposed to the hierarchies of the whites over blacks and browns and uses his own life as a metaphor for calling on citizens to come together to save the planet earth. Obama has gone on record to register his opposition to the structured existence that places humans as atomized individuals without responsibility to family or society. Atomized individuals are open to manipulation by the media and are open to the Hobbesian thinking that society must be based on conflict and confrontation or ‘war of every man against every man.’ This manipulation is one form of psychological warfare against the citizens of the United States…

The idea of change that echoes from the Obama campaign has been calling for citizens to place themselves at the center and to empower themselves, firstly with their positive thinking, “Yes we can,” and more importantly by organizing to intervene in the political process. In response to this call, a cross section of the citizens of the United States from Iowa to Nebraska, from Idaho to Georgia and from Washington to Louisiana have come forward to seek the new ideas of twenty first century change. In the process there are new constituencies that have found their voice. This has led to a level of spontaneity that one could see in the muchwatched video- Yes we can.

Can the old media and the old ideas blunt the quantum leap in the consciousness of the youth that is taking place at the moment? This is the question that emerges from the discourse of the political talking heads on the same television stations that were enthusiastic cheer leaders for the illegal war against the peoples of Iraq.

These political commentators who were brought up to reproduce the misinformation of the media that tormented young people and led them into depression and isolation cannot fully understand the call of the Obama campaign to the youth that the change must begin in the youth themselves and that that have to believe in their capacity for change.

The political pundits of the mainstream media have been in the main brought up within the context of the hierarchies of Newtonian physics have been confounded by the bottom up, responsive, plural and holistic message of the Yes we can campaign.

These hierarchies have been at the base of the faulty democratic traditions of the United States that did not recognize native peoples as humans and rendered African Americans as three fifths of a human being. The same democratic tradition did not recognize women as citizens. Obama is not calling for this deformed reference to be the basis for change, he is exhorting all classes and all ages to be part of the solution, by drawing from a different tradition, the progressive traditions that sought to enrich and enlarge the meaning of democracy…

The unique experiences that Obama learnt when he was an organizer on the South Side of Chicago taught him the humility to listen to the ordinary person and it is this methodical organizing like the repetition of self similarity that one can discern in the organizational skills of Obama. The political victories in Idaho, Nebraska, the Virgin Islands and Missouri followed the scaling pattern of Obama that built up a profile in every district and in every part of the country so that he could not be pigeon-holed. After the land slide victory in South Carolina, Bill Clinton sought to compare Obama to Jesse Jackson and to limit his appeal to African Americans citizens. But the citizens of Washington State, Missouri, Louisiana and Maine voted with their heads and their hearts in response to new organizing thrust that is making the quantum leap in US politics a possibility. This leap has been reinforced by the nested loops of new social networks wired through the spaces of the information revolution.

After these victories the momentum began to build and citizens in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia signaled that they were another link in the chain of this momentous political intervention. Young people have organized themselves into new formations and have been energized by the promise that Obama would want to move in a new direction. In the past forty years the established parties benefited from the demobilization of the youth and unlike most liberal democratic states the numbers of citizens voting in the USA has been consistently below the numbers of other western democracies. Apathy and withdrawal from the system have been the outcome of the absence of realistic alternatives for the majority of the poor in the United States. This absence of participation by the youth has benefited the corporations and special interests to the point where there had been no incentive for the two parties to remove the restrictions that deter young people from participating in politics. The advent of Barack Obama is generating the long sought after alternative, hence the unprecedented turnout for the caucuses and primaries…

New experiences are being created in the midst of a new kind of political campaign that builds on these networks. The traditional media (newspapers, radio and Television stations) and the campaign of the Clintons have made clear statements about the organizational experience of the team around Hilary Clinton (Madeline Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton etc). Yet, it is this same experience rooted in the mechanistic hierarchies of Newtonian physics that is becoming the albatross of the political campaign of Hilary Clinton. Her experiences are very similar to the leader of the Republican Party, John McCain. John McCain is proud of his support for the wars against the peoples of Iraq and the merchants of death. Hilary Clinton has sought to demonstrate to the club of militarists that she would oil the war machinery while millions are without basic jobs.

Without fresh ideas when US citizens wanted a clean break with the militarism that brought the quagmire and fiasco in Iraq, Hilary Clinton could not understand that she had to tell the people that she was wrong in supporting the unjust war in Iraq. This is politics of truth that is now needed in the society. But from the position of Hilary Clinton on a possible military strike against Iran and more importantly, her base in the constituency of the financial speculators of New York State exposed the fact that thought she is campaigning to change conditions for women, she has not broken with the militarists of the society. Decency would require that Hilary Clinton rewrite her texts on her responses to war and genocide during the Presidency of Bill Clinton. In this campaign her character has emerged especially in the case of the primary in Florida. Hilary Clinton’s willingness to claim a victory in Florida when she had said she would not brought out her true character to all peoples, black and white, women and men…

The Obama campaign has been able to draw on the organizational capacities of those who want to turn truth into a political force so that the society can turn from war to peace. This is the basic force behind the momentum of Barrack Obama and his experiences of Chicago has been able to translate this (peace thrust) in order to build up the electoral profile, bringing new teams in every part of the country and creating new training spaces for the energetic to donate, participate and learn the possibilities for change. Yet, because of the limitations of the electoral system that mitigates against direct participation of the citizen beyond voting, it is urgent that those who have understood the need for a new politics build new organizations at new sites of politics.

This new urgency is especially the case in the peace movement that has been unable to build on to the aspirations of the masses of the people for justice. Five years after the illegal occupation of Iraq, the activists for peace yearn for new forms of expression and hence there is a slow learning curve that demonstrations without follow up will only frustrate those who want new organizations. In 2003 at the start of the war against the peoples of Iraq there were millions of peoples on the streets.

Yet the established leadership of the peace movement was not able to take the question of the illegal war to the court of international opinion to that the immorality of the war could be brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague…

Momentum means that when a person or object is moving, regardless of what it is - the harder it is to stop that person or object. When one consider "momentum" in terms of politics, this means that if a presidential candidate, such as Obama, sees and/or experiences a gain and/or surge in his message of peace, hope and change with millions singing, Yes we can, there could be nothing, not even bullets that can intervene in this momentum. This is the basis for a possible quantum leap in US politics to bring a new mode of politics for the 21st Century.

Obama is not a revolutionary but he has been caught up in a revolutionary moment in world history. The electoral campaign of Obama is riding on a wave of peace and change desired by ordinary Americans. There are limitations to the electoral project insofar as the task of restructuring US society is a gigantic one that cannot be done overnight. Obama may not be the solution, but is a small step in the direction of making the break with the old binary conceptions that dominated enlightenment thinking. It is the laws of unintended consequences that will emanate from this break that can lead to a new direction with the new positive bottom up organizing for transformation to a democratic society where all can live in peace.

A clear understanding of the nature of US politics and limitation of the structures of the in-built conservativsim of the system means that Barrack Obama would only be trapped by this social system if those who are being drawn into the audacity of hope do not build their own political movement and political organization. It is only a bottom up movement hat can prevent Barack Obama from becoming a racial decoy for the Wall Street forces. Self mobilization, self organization and emancipatory ideas will create new spaces so that the political space will be expanded beyond the media, the lobbyists and the ritual spaces of the White House, Congress and the Senate Chambers. Safe and clean neighborhoods, children who are reared to respect all human beings and a society that support repair of the planet earth awaits these new self organizing forces.

The campaign of Barack Obama is the story of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. These are the people who are participating because they believe that politics can mean something again. It is apt to conclude with the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism.”

* Horace Campbell is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.

** Extracted by the author from "Barack Obama, Fractals And Momentum In Politics” http://academic.udayton.edu/race/2008ElectionandRacism/Obama/Obama74.htm

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

For those wishing to watch/listen to Obama's speech, you can do so at:

http://my.barackobama.com/ObamasOwnWords

Obama's Speech and the Black Man's Burden

2008-03-20

Paul T Zeleza

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/46808

Paul T. Zeleza while recognizing the historic nature and importance of the Obama speech argues that the circumstances that made the speech necessary reveal the extent to which the United States remains an arrogantly racist society

It finally came out, the predictable ogre of race and racism that has been stalking the US 2008 elections ever since Senator Barack Obama declared his candidacy and became a serious contender for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination following a string of overwhelming victories in the bulk of the 40 primaries and caucuses that have been held thus far.

For more than a week the gullible media and giddy pundits have deliriously played and pontificated on speciously spliced and decontextualized sermons from Senator Obama's former pastor, the recently retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the Illinois Senator has tried to douse the manufactured flames.

In the end Senator Obama was compelled to give a much anticipated speech, a defining speech of his candidacy according to many of the white pundits who hog the media. And it is being called a great speech, delivered with brilliant calmness and inspiring courage. Many already regard it as historic in its searing honesty, eloquence, and fearlessness in addressing America's original and enduring sin of racism and its bitter fruits of anger and resentment among blacks and whites. I was deeply moved by this exceptionally well-crafted speech in ways that I am usually not by political speeches with their predictable banality, although I was troubled by the gratuitous obeisance to Israel and the quetionable moral equivalence of centuries old white anti-black racism and decades old white anti-black resentment.

As perhaps only a person of his complex biography could, he may have forced the nation to face up to, have a conversation about, its ugly racial past if it seeks to forge a brighter post-racial future. Senator Obama is not only biracial, but also the offspring of a recent African immigrant and an old European immigrant. Unlike many biracials of African American origin, he has no ancestry among the enslaved Africans. So he simultaneously has his feet in the intimate solitudes of the black and white worlds, of the old and recent immigrants, of Africans and Europeans who have created this complex, troubled, and fascinating country. He is a transnational biracial, a member of the new African diaspora with peculiar insights into America's racial soul and position in the world.

Only the future will tell what impact the speech itself will have on America's tortured silences and stilted conversations on race and the trajectory of Senator Obama's own candidacy. What is clear, however, is that the very fact that Senator Obama, not the white candidates, not Senator Clinton or Senator McCain, was required to address the issue of race is a disheartening testimony to the racism of America's racial discourse. Much as Africa is carelessly homogenized, stripped of the splendid diversities of its countries, conditions and contexts, and Europe is carefully differentiated, blacks in America often bear the homogenizing burdens of their race in a way the presumably unraced whites rarely do. Also, the same insidious Euroamerican racial ideologies that cast doubts on the full humanity of Africans on the continent, questions the full citizenship of African Americans in the diaspora. This partly explains why Senator Obama became answerable for Rev. Wright, for his patriotism, for his Americanness.

The racialized burden of race is also expressed in the very expectation of blacks and biracials to speak out on race, to be experts on race, to own race, to be raced in a way whites routinely are not. Typically in American public discourse, black commentators are often confined to racial commentary; rarely are they called upon to voice their opinions on the burning public issues of the day from the state of the domestic economy and international finance to foreign policy and war to pressing technological, health, and environmental matters, except where black people are victims or perpetrators. Even in this election, as James Thindwa has noted on The Zeleza Post, black commentators are notable for their limited presence among the chattering media pundits.

In this context, Senator Obama's race speech, notwithstanding its seminal significance and intervention in American racial discourse, falls into a predictable pattern. It demonstrates white America's failure to come to term with race and racism, that the enslaved Africans who were forced to come to these shores did not create racism, and their descendants do not benefit from it, and still do not, by and large, control the material and ideological apparatuses that sustain and reproduce it, that indeed the black identity imposed on, and adopted by, by a transnational biracial individual such as Senator Obama is the result of a long history of Euroamerican racialization and racism.

American can only transcend the cruel legacies of race and racism when blacks no longer bear the burden of speaking out on race and racism, when whites bear their own historic racial crosses. The fact that Senator Obama was forced to repudiate and explain his former pastor, reveal the vibrant and secluded world of the black church with its complex social gospel that is hidden from whites during Christian America's most segregated Sunday morning, and remind his nation of its imperfect union, shows America has a long way to go to build a more convivial multiracial, let alone, postracial nation worthy of all its citizens and the world's respect.

* Paul T Zeleza is editor of The Zeleza Post. This article was first published at http://zeleza.com

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

Obama and Clinton: The Tightrope and the Needle

2008-03-20

Linda Burnham

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/46807

What happens when white feminism intersects with questions or race and class? How has Race and Gender being used to derail the Obama campaign? Linda Burham tackles these questions and much more

The Clinton campaign can do all the distancing it wants from Geraldine Ferraro’s chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome, but this is not the first time Obama has been cast as the beneficiary of affirmative action.

Here’s Erica Jong, more than a month ago, on the same issue. After allowing that “Obama is smart and attractive. Maybe he’ll be president some day,” she goes on to say: “Obama is also a token – of our incomplete progress toward an interracial society. I have nothing against him except his inexperience. Many black voters agree. They understand tokenism and condescension.”

Right now, black female voter that I am, I’m most definitely understanding the condescension – and righteous indignation – of white liberal feminists who believe Obama skipped ahead of them in line. I’m also understanding the sheer frustration of women who were headed towards an easy coronation, but then got sideswiped and stalled by an upstart prince.

It appears that all the mainstream, high-profile feminists got the same talking-points memo from the Clinton campaign. Ferraro, pit bull that she is, was just a little more raw in her delivery. If you didn’t get the memo, here are the talking points.

- Though the Democrats are blessed with an embarrassment of riches, with a black man and a woman contending for the nomination, Clinton is unequivocally the only one prepared for the rigors of the presidency.

- Obama is all fluff, no substance, glib and attractive, but also a cocksure, ageist upstart.

- Given the depths of Obama’s inexperience, his present popularity can only be explained by the reverse discrimination effect: he’s unfairly benefiting from his status as a black man.

- Older white women are supporting Clinton because they recognize bottom-line competence, know how to vote in their own best interests, grow more radical with age, and are ready to make history.

- White men are supporting Obama because of their latent or blatant sexism. They’re confused by the unfamiliar choices presented them, and more freaked out by the prospect of a woman in the White House than they are by the prospect of the first African American president.

- Maybe Obama will be a candidate to consider once he’s more politically seasoned, i.e., after eight years of Clinton.

- Sexism is the most pervasive and persistent form of discrimination.

- Racism is on the run, nearly vanquished save a few remnants.

From Gloria Steinem to Robin Morgan to Geraldine Ferraro to Erica Jong, they’re all playing the same tune. Now we can’t blame the women for fighting hard for their candidate, but it is disappointing, to say the very least, that in heralding Clinton as the proper choice for every feminist and all women they have also managed to dredge up some of the least attractive features of liberal feminism.

For nearly forty years feminists have wrangled over how to integrate issues of race, class, sexual orientation and other markers of inequality into a coherent, powerful gender analysis. Women of color insist on the complex relationship between racism and sexism and the central significance of racism in the lives of people of color. White feminists nod their heads, “Yes, of course, we understand, we’re with you on that.” Then comes the crunch, when the content of your feminism actually matters – as it does in this campaign – and they revert to the primacy of sexism over all other forms of discrimination and oppression. All the tendencies that got feminism tagged as a white, middle-class women’s thing are, brutally, back in play.

There’s a lot of twisting and turning going on in the effort to explain Obama’s viability. If he’s so completely inexperienced, why are people coming out to vote for him in record numbers? Must be that racism is dead but sexism isn’t. Must be that he’s an affirmative action baby. Must be that people are mesmerized, charmed and bewitched by his silver tongue. Must be that people are voting with their hearts for hope instead of with their heads for hard-headed competence.

In fact, it must be anything except that he’s knit together a coalition the existence of which most political actors could not have predicted, much less activated. Except that his politics and presentation of self have motivated millions of new voters and re-energized previously disaffected millions more in ways that her politics and presentation of self have not. Except that voters have weighed his experience and hers and concluded that she’s not bringing appreciably more to the table than he is. Except that she’s pegged her vaunted experience to her White House years and a fair share of voters (raise your hands y’all) were not enthralled with the policies of the Clinton presidency.

It’s just not such a terribly long walk from the Clinton campaign’s insistence on Obama’s lack of experience and complete unreadiness to lead to the notion that he’s gotten as far as he has not on his own merits, but as a result of the workings of some pro-brother bias. That is, to put it baldly, the playing field is tilted in favor of the minority candidate who, despite his thin resume, has managed to leapfrog over the more qualified white candidate. There’s a reason this reminds you of every reverse discrimination complainant from Allan Bakke forward. It undermines the legitimacy of affirmative remedies for identifiable, quantifiable discriminatory practices while simultaneously denigrating the qualifications of people of color in high places, whether they got there by means of affirmative action or not.

Then there’s the basic categorical confusion. Let’s go back to that historic juncture, wherein a black man and a woman are close contenders for their party’s nomination. If his race is noteworthy, Obama the black man (regardless of how many ways his blackness has been interpreted), then so too is hers. [For those of you who believe we’re living in a post-racialist society, if you haven’t tuned out already, you’ll probably want to skip the rest of this piece.] This is a contest between a black man and a white woman. Voters orient themselves toward Obama along a broad spectrum of racial attitudes ranging from, “Of course I’m voting for the brother” to “I’d never in a million years cast my vote for an African American.” And everything in between.

The point is, most sane people recognize that Obama’s race matters. Well then, how is it that Clinton’s doesn’t? If Obama’s blackness is a positive incentive for some voters, a liability for others and a source of confusion and ambivalence for still others, how is it that Clinton’s whiteness is a big fat neutral. Is it not at least theoretically possible that some voters are positively inclined toward Clinton because she is white?

There is a brand of feminism, amply critiqued but still very much alive, that focuses on gender bias while consistently downplaying the salience of race. And the easiest way to avoid acknowledging that whiteness comes with its privileges is to avoid acknowledging it at all. Whiteness as default, normative, unworthy of note. Clinton the woman; Obama the black man. In fact, Obama as doubly favored, as a man and, with reverse discrimination and tokenism in play, as an African American. Clinton, meanwhile, is hobbled by her gender and, since her whiteness is unacknowledged, neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by her race. This is the topsy-turvy world we’re being asked to accept as reality.

I, for one, am going to take a pass on delusion. In Mississippi, though Obama took the state, 70 percent of white Democatic voters chose Clinton over Obama. In South Carolina, Obama took over 75 percent of the black vote but only 15 percent of the over-60 white vote, with similar results in Alabama. Isn’t is possible that at least some of those white voters would prefer to see a white person in the White House, regardless of gender, than an African American? And isn’t it possible that whiteness is an element of Clinton’s appeal in Ohio, Texas and, potentially, Pennsylvania, states in which Reagan Democrats (and Nixon Democrats before them) were won over to the Republican Party, at least in part, on the basis of frankly racist appeals? As long as Clinton’s whiteness is unacknowledged, so too are the dynamics that work to her advantage in this campaign.

The deep disappointment in the voting behavior of Obama-supporting men (read white men; see above) while officially chalked up to misogyny, has, in the argument of some feminists, crept uncomfortably close to a howl of anger at racial betrayal. In a Chicago Tribune article entitled “Sexism, not Racism, Thriving,” a clearly frustrated Frida Ghitis claims “We may be winning the war against racism, but sexism is putting up quite a fight….Women are voting for Clinton and blacks are voting for Obama…. If we look for someone who looks like us, for whom should a white man vote?... White men are giving their vote to Obama over Clinton [i].”

Let us grant without argument that many men, and a good number of women as well, would prefer to see a man in the White House than a woman. Is this evidence that sexism is alive and well? Indeed it is. But, as our own political processes constantly remind us, voting behavior is more than a little complex. Perhaps white men should be excoriated for their persistent sexism; perhaps we should be celebrating their transcendence of a century’s-long resistance to placing African Americans, men or women, in positions of power.

Would it be better, and for whom, if white men were to line up with white women and, as the saying goes, “vote their race?” Could this be what liberal feminists are advocating? Is Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the house?

It ought to be possible to point to the prevalence of sexism and misogyny, and their impact on Clinton’s campaign, without downplaying the longstanding, ongoing, pervasive impact of racism in the U.S. But this is not the path they have chosen. In order to bolster their case for Clinton’s relative disadvantage in the primary campaign, explain the white male vote in places like Iowa, Virginia, and Utah, and encourage white women to seize the historic moment, they impose a ranking order between racism and sexism, with sexism at the top, and insist on the declining significance of race.

Gloria Steinem: “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life…. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women [ii].”

Those of us who witnessed the response to Hurricane Katrina; who check in occasionally on the racial demographics of the incarcerated; who are aware of the racial divide in income and, more significantly, wealth; who recognize that the public schools grow ever more segregated while the push-out rate for Black and Latino students rises ever higher; who track the relative scarcity of African Americans in professional schools, as well as in a whole range of professions; who know that the infant mortality rate for black babies outstrips the rate for white babies by two to one; who watch the dynamics of gentrification, dislocation and homelessness – we are not convinced that racism is an insignificant remnant. And we’re hard pressed to understand why this argument should be any more tolerated when it comes from liberal feminists than when it comes from the more frankly racist right wing. Since I’m not running for president I can be blunt. The denial of the significance of racism is a deep and abiding form of the thing itself.

Much has been made of the gender tightrope Clinton must walk. She can’t seem too soft or too hard. She has to look attractive and expect that her hairdo, pantsuits, cleavage and ankles are all fair game for commentary. Tears will be relentlessly analyzed. She will be judged in ways that men never are. All of this is true, and an indication of how very far we have to go.

But, interestingly, Clinton can and does directly associate her campaign with a potential blow against gender discrimination. Obama cannot do the same with regard to race. Clinton regularly posits winning the presidency, breaking through that highest and hardest glass ceiling, as she puts it, as an historic win for women, more than 50 percent of the population.

Obama, meanwhile, does not have the latitude to explicitly associate his campaign with the interests of African Americans or an anti-racist agenda. Part of this is simply about the numbers. But there’s much more at work here. While Clinton has been walking her tightrope, Obama has been busy threading the very narrowest of needles. There may be dozens of ways for a white man to campaign for the presidency and, if our common history, both recent and remote, is any guide, just about any kind of white man can become president, as long as he has the cash and the connections.

Not so for the black man. At issue are not only his politics and his campaign craft, but also, crucially, how he inhabits his black manhood. (Now, up until a few months ago I couldn’t have imagined that there was any way for a Black man to become a serious contender – to thread the needle – so we’re all learning as we go here.) White folks, in general, don’t want to see any chips on the shoulders or any psychic scars on the soul. There isn’t a black male in America over the age of 10 who doesn’t have a few chips and scars, but letting them show is a major deal breaker in the halls of power. So props to Obama for a fine acting job.

There’s a bargain that white voters have struck with Obama, and here, in brief, is what it is:

“You can be black, and we’re happy to congratulate ourselves on voting for a black man, as long as you’re black in a way that doesn’t upset us, scare us, make us feel guilty, or make us feel too white.” Obama is holding up his side of the bargain, either because he’s temperamentally inclined to do so or because he’s carefully calculated what it takes to win over white voters, or some combination of the two. But the quality of his blackness is nonetheless an issue. This is the meaning of the insistence that Obama distance himself from his pastor, Reverend Wright, and from Minister Farrakhan. Way too many chips and scars. Way too little regard for what white folks think. And way too much attachment to the African American community. So, if Obama himself can’t be tagged as too black for prime time, maybe he’s too black by association.

Further, while Obama has assiduously courted the black vote, he hasn’t done so with an explicitly anti-racist message and he certainly hasn’t posited the African-American community as the core of his coalition. Why? Because to do so would sink his campaign like a hundred weight stone. This, in part, is the difference between the Jackson campaign, which built a disruptive, progressive coalition with Black voters and anti-racist politics at its core, and Obama’s liberal coalition that is inclusive of and reliant upon black voters without centralizing their concerns in a way that would scare off white voters. Jackson ran as a direct challenge to the status quo, implementing an inside-outside strategy without the burden of expecting a win. Obama’s first principle is viability, and he threads his needle accordingly.

It’s more than a little interesting that liberal feminists, so highly attuned to the ways in which gender frames how Clinton can run, are blissfully (willfully?) ignorant of how race and racism shape the Obama campaign. Black racial solidarity still reads as a threat in a way that gender solidarity does not.

One last talking point before we close: the voting behavior of white women. Every national election cycle we’re treated to lots of commentary about the gender gap and its meaning. More eligible women vote than do eligible men and women are somewhat more likely to cast their votes for Democrats than for Republicans. Clinton is undeniably running strongly among white women Democrats, especially those over the age of 50. Should we be reading this as further evidence that the older women voters get, the more radical they become, as Morgan and Steinem contend? [Steinem: “Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.” Robin Morgan: “Older women are the one group that doesn’t grow more conservative with age…”]

The two party lockdown ensures that there’s no real way to register radicalism in presidential primaries or national elections. So let’s assume that those voting Democratic are somewhat more radical than those voting Republican. In the 2004 presidential election 55 percent of white women gave their votes to George W. Bush; 62 percent of white men did the same. A significant gender gap.

Meanwhile, 90 percent of African American women and a slightly smaller proportion of African American men voted for John Kerry. In the 2000 presidential election an astounding 94 percent of African American women voted Democratic. I can’t do the math, but I suspect that if you were to subtract the overwhelmingly Democratic votes of African American women the gender gap would narrow considerably.

Younger voters from 18-29 years old cast 54 percent of their votes for the Democratic candidate in 2004. Exactly the same percentage of voters 60 and over cast them for Bush.

I just don’t see the evidence that older white women constitute a hotbed of radicalism, or even consistent liberalism. Had they followed the lead of African American women in 2000 and 2004 we all would have been spared a whole lot of grief.

Liberal feminists have every right to spend down their political capital on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hard choices have to made; political debts have to be paid. But it will not count as progress if a Clinton win is purchased at the cost of deepening the racial divide. It is inexcusable to support a candidate in the name of feminism while deploying racist argumentation, minimizing the existence and impact of racism, and denying the advantages of inhabiting the racial space called “white.” It will not be excused. Nor will it be forgotten.

*Linda Burnham is the co-founder and former Executive Director of the Women of Color Resource Center.

**Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org
I] A whole other article could be written about the disappearance of Black women in this rumble. And we have the title already at hand, the 1982 classic All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave.

II] And yet another article on the black folks who died trying to exercise the right to vote, right up into the 1960s, and ongoing black disfranchisement, down to today. The struggle for women’s suffrage was a valiant and protracted one, as is the struggle for black political enfranchisement. The distinction in the character (and timing) of those struggles speaks to distinctions in the character and quality of racism and sexism, not to the primacy of one over the other.

More...

Issa G. Shivji awarded the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Research Chair

2008-03-19

Pambazuka News Editors

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/46780

The Council, at its meeting of 13th March 2008, approved the appointment of Professor Issa G. Shivji to the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Research Chair in Pan-African Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam.

Born in Kilosa, Tanzania in 1946, Professor Shivji was for 36 years a distinguished professor in Constitutional Law in the University of Dar es Salaam's Faculty of Law. He is a professor of international renown, having built his reputation through the publication of over 18 books, numerous articles and book chapters. He has received several national and international distinguished scholar awards, including an honorary doctorate from the University of East London, UK. Professor Shivji has devoted most of his life to addressing issues on the exploitation of Tanzanians through both the national and the international economic and legal orders.

The University Research Chair is envisaged to be motivated by interdisciplinary research, which will address the socio-economic, scientific and cultural problems facing the African Continent and the country, and which will stimulate thinking and debate that takes account of the continent's historical achievements and the international challenges facing it.

The functions of the Chair will be to develop and promote ideas in interdisciplinary basic research on broad development issues from a Pan-African perspective; to reinvigorate the University as a site of rigorous intellectual debate and discussions through varied activities including quality publications; and to create opportunities for debates on development directions.

The Chair will be officially launched on 15th April 2008, to coincide with the week of Mwalimu's birthday. The occasion will be marked by lectures, palavers, a book launch and exhibitions.

Pambazuka News and Fahamu staff extend their congratulations to Issa on this well deserved appointment.

Writers' Conference in Ghana

2008-03-17

Jeffery Renard Allen

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/46717

We are writing to you to announce a writers' conference in Ghana, July 3rd-18th of this year. We hope to get the word out. The flier is attached here.

SABLE in London, U.K. and KwaniTrust in Nairobi, Kenya are two of many organizations that we are partnering with internationally.

We will be based at the New York University Campus in Accra, Ghana. We will waive the conference for any applicant based on the African continent or charge a nominal amount, depending on a given applicant's financial circumstances and need. We want to encourage any writer interested in coming to the conference to apply for travel funds, monies to cover the airfare.

We are especially anxious to get the word out to writers in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Information about our organization and the 2008 conference is available at www.panafricanliteraryforum.com The web site will be updated next week

Guns, Gorillas and Blogs

2008-03-11

Dipesh Pabari

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/46563

At a time when the International Media is painting Africans as the sole villains in the gorilla killings, Dipesh Pabari looks at the way Africans are using blogging to aid their conservation efforts in the D R Congo

29TH OCTOBER 2007 - 1200HRS: “A Ranger was killed and another was wounded in an attack yesterday near Kabaraza carried out by the Mai Mai rebels. I learned this late yesterday. The Rangers were on patrol and were ambushed by the Mai Mai rebels, who are fairly dominant in this area just north of Rutshuru. During these tense times anything can happen. And this just goes to show it.”
(Posted by Samantha Newport on wildlifedirect.org)

Innocent is one amongst several Congolese rangers who have dedicated their lives to the protection of DR Congo’s Mountain Gorillas. Their relationship to these peaceful creatures is no different from any mother to her children: unquestionable dedication. Until the recent resurgence of fighting in Eastern Congo, Innocent and his colleagues would venture out everyday to track the gorillas and mark their observations.

When renegade Laurent Nkunda refused to disarm his soldiers, violence broke throughout the region forcing the rangers out of the forests and preventing any monitoring of the Gorilla Sector. As Innocent states, “Because we have no control over our Gorilla Sector, we do not know how the gorillas are faring, or if their numbers have changed. There can be births or deaths, that we just don’t know about. With only 700 of this critically endangered species remaining in the world we need to know what is happening.” Since this time, the Rangers do not know the fate of the gorillas as the sector has witnessed intense fighting between army and rebels. The only exception to this was during a 2-week period from 14 September when rebels allowed a handful of rangers to track certain families.

More than 370,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in eastern DR Congo since the start of the year, and this month thousands more were on the move, trying to escape fresh outbreaks of violence. Innocent has been protecting gorillas for over 10 years and has witnessed 100 fellow rangers brutally murdered my militant factions emerging from a 10-year civil war.

9TH OCTOBER 2008-0800HRS: “It is 8am DR Congo time. Gunfire and shelling was heard yesterday in the Gorilla Sector until 20h00. The army, who had managed to regain Bukima, lost this position again. The rebels control the whole Gorilla Sector again. Fighting is expected to continue today. I can hear all of this from Rumangabo.”
(Posted by Innocent on wildlifedirect.org)

It is very likely that the gorillas, like the people are innocent victims of crossfire. Some of the fighters involved in the conflict are not from eastern DR Congo. “They don’t necessarily know what gorillas are and can get scared and just shoot because they don’t know what else to do. The Mapuwa family suffered from this about 5 years ago. The army mistook the family for the enemy and shot and killed two gorillas,” reports Innocent.

In a world where roads, running water and electricity are unknown, WildlifeDirect is bridging a vital communications gap that is fundamental to the sustainability of gorilla protection. The organisation was co-founded by Richard Leakey who was recently nominated by Times as one of top thinkers of the 20th Century. WildlifeDirect was established to provide support to conservationists via the use of blogs – this enables anybody, anywhere to play a direct and interactive role in the survival of some of the world’s most precious species. And does it work? “This year alone, approximately half a million dollars has been raised through the Gorilla Protection blog. People all over the world can connect directly with the conservationists on the ground and literally talk to them in person and know what happens on a day to day basis,” says Dr. Emmanuel de Merode, CEO of WildlifeDirect.

What makes the organisation even more unique is that the money goes directly to the recipients. WildlifeDirect takes no administration fee for the funds that are transferred through us so that the financial support can go to where it was intended in its entirety. Our core costs are provided for separately through grants, primarily from the European Union. This does not change the tragic fact that a survival of a species depends entirely on the goodwill of a people and the ability to communicate that.
The situation for gorillas is ever more complex for the fact that with so many people being killed and displaced in the area, their survival is not seen as a priority. Whenever people think of war, they usually reflect on the tragic loss of human life, they rarely consider the loss and damage done to nature.

7TH OCTOBER 2007 - 1200HRS: “My thoughts today are with the DR Congo where the resurgence of conflict by the renegade Laurent Nkunda has forced the rangers out of the forests preventing any monitoring since the end of August. We do not know how these gorillas are faring, we can hardly express our concern for gorillas when we know that the human population is in dire straits as a result of attacks and unbelievable acts of human atrocities. Hundreds of thousands of people are again on the move, many hundreds have been killed, more still have been injured, children conscripted into the armies and women raped and brutalized. It makes me feel helpless.” Signed by Richard Leakey

Most of the long term damage comes as a result of the very long duration of these wars. The devastation is caused in part by the war its self, in part because the human population is displaced, hungry, afraid and desperate - they cannot care for the land due to the immediacy of their problems.

They estimate that in 23 nations alone, the total cost of Africa’s 20 or more wars in recent decades have robbed the continent of 300 billion dollars a year! But nobody is really measuring the cost to the environment when the human toll is so great.

The war in eastern Congo has virtually prevented any tourism from taking place. These gorillas represent real economic value to the Congo. Tourism could generate 500$ per person per day - these animals could potentially generate 21 million dollars per year for the wildlife Authority from visitation to 15 groups of mountain gorillas alone. Of course the hotels, transport and agricultural sectors would also benefit tremendously as well, not to mention the communities who supply the hotels and trade their crafts along popular routes.

Meanwhile, only a few kilometres across the border, Rwanda is still doing brisk gorilla tourism business. The industry is a fundamental engine for the growth of the national economy and is driven by the mountain gorillas which have been, and remain, the main attraction in Rwanda, brining in over 20,000 visitors to the country each year. So much that in fact gorillas have become a national icon and an annual gorilla naming ceremony called ‘Kwita Izina’ (meaning ‘to give a name’) was established. Its aim is to celebrate and raise awareness of the gorillas.

This year his Excellency President Paul Kagame and First Lady, Janet amongst other high powered dignitaries and celebrities attended the ceremony and for the first time this year non-Rwandans had the opportunity to participate. Among a number of individuals and organisations that took part, were television channel Animal Planet, one of the world’s most accomplished Wild Life Conservationist, Jack Hannah, the family of the late Steve Irwin and gorgeous American actress Natalie Portman. Fareed, on behalf of MNET and Studio 53 got to name one of the newborn baby gorillas.

Few animals have sparked the imagination of man as much as the gorilla, the largest of the living primates. Most gorillas live in inaccessible regions in various dense forests in tropical Africa, and one subspecies, the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei), was not even known to science until 1902. Mountain gorillas are confined to four national parks, separated into two forest blocks no more than 45 kilometers apart and comprising approximately 590 sq km of afromontane and medium altitude forest. One population of mountain gorillas inhabits the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda. A census in 2002 recorded between 310-315 individuals here. The second population of mountain gorillas is found in the habitat shared by Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (Uganda), Volcano National Park (Rwanda) and Virunga National Park -Southern Sector (DRC). The Virunga population numbers at least 358 individuals and has grown by 11% in the past 12 years. However, the current resurgence is a real threat. Just a few months ago, the slaughter of 7 gorillas was a wake up call to the world.

The challenges to conservation in the Virungas is one of the hardest in the world. In addition to armed militias, poachers, charcoal trade, illegal land invasions, the primary threat to mountain gorillas comes from forest clearance and degradation, as the region's growing human population struggles to eke out a living.

Charcoal trade is major trade in Virunga National Park - $30 million a year – and involves many individuals – communities, military, and some rangers also get corrupted. Those earning money from trade did not like this, including those at iccn that were suspected of being involved. Gorillas were killed as act of sabotage to discredit ICCN and conservation in the park.

The blogs have enabled rangers to report the situation far and beyond. “Blogging about protecting mountain gorillas has been critical for the rangers in Virunga. After years of working in isolation, the guardians of this imperilled species finally have a voice. At last they can talk about the challenges they face in their daily lives and communicate with supporters all over the world. This has also led to an increased global awareness of the threats facing one of our closest living animal relatives, and we hope a great surge to protect them.” Samantha Newport, Director of Communications for WildlifeDirect.

*Dipesh Pabari is a Kenyan writer and freelance education and communications consultant. He sits on the Editorial Board for Awaaz Magazine (a journal for South Asians in diaspora) and contributes a regular cartoon column. In addition to publishing poetry, short stories and articles, he recently edited a published short story book for children entitled, The Unlikely Burden and other stories. This article was originally published in TN Magazine, January 2008)

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

Urgent Appeal: Optional Protocol to the ICESCR

2008-03-19

NGO Coalition for the Optional Protocol Steering Committee

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/46781

Dear All,

We are approaching one of the most important moments in our fight for a strong Optional Protocol. TheUN Open-Ended Working Group on an Optional Protocol to the ICESCR is meeting for its final session from 31 March to 4 April 2008. We are hoping that the Working Group can conclude its negotiations and submit a final version of the Protocol to the Human Rights Council for adoption. After being approved by the Council, the text of the Optional Protocol will be sent to the UN General Assembly for adoption and opened up for ratification by states.

The Optional Protocol will make it possible for individual, groups or organizations acting on their behalf to seek justice at the international level for violations of economic, social and cultural rights by submitting complaints to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The adoption of the Optional Protocol will also provide support to efforts to get greater recognition of economic, social and cultural rights in domestic law and before courts, and will strengthen our monitoring role, as civil society organizations.

Some states however are continuing to push for the adoption of a so called ‘à la carte’ Optional Protocol, under which states would be able to treat the ICESCR as a menu of rights and specify which rights they would be willing to accept complaints on. As the majority of states support a comprehensive instrument that covers all levels of rights and obligations in the ICESCR, the few states who are not willing to accept such an instrument have to be lobbied to change or reserve their position. Some states are also pushing for the inclusion of additional admissibility criteria such as the requirement that a complainant demonstrates that he/she has suffered “significant disadvantage” and to set a very high threshold for the Committee to find a violation. There is a risk that this small group of states may be able to prevent the Working Group from completing its work at this session or that a much weaker text will be adopted, which would make it harder for victims to access remedies.

The NGO Coalition for the Optional Protocol on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has prepared an appeal (attached with this e-mail) that will be sent to Austria, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to lobby them to change or reserve their position.  It is essential for the success of our lobbying that we can demonstrate that this appeal and the Optional Protocol have wide support. We would therefore request you to sign on to this appeal either as an individual or an organisation.

If you are willing to sign it, please send an email back to dikawa@escr-net.org, indicating your support by March 13, 2008. The next session will start at the end of the month and we must convince governments to change their positions before that.

We hope you will seriously consider being part of this initiative as well as taking further action in the next and crucial steps for the adoption of the Optional Protocol.

Review of the African Blogosphere – March 20, 2008

2008-03-20

Dibussi Tande

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/46806

The blog on natural resource issues in Liberia by
Dibussi Tande reprints an article which questions why American presidential candidates are ignoring Africa:

“Fraught with intractable violence, interminable disease and abject poverty, Africa is traditionally observed by policymakers through a humanitarian lens. However, the continent's emerging geo-strategic importance transcends such condescending colonial overtones to command the attention of the United States beyond the moral, humanitarian and security imperatives.

Distracted by long-winded plans to end the war in Iraq, one is hard-pressed to detect any semblance of serious interest on the websites of American presidential candidates that goes beyond ending the genocide in Darfur or supporting HIV/Aids initiatives in Africa…

The US strategy of indifference towards Africa's ever-growing importance is counterproductive and potentially dangerous…

To believe that one leader's ‘audacity of hope’ can transform Washington's audacity of indifference first requires all citizens to become the change they want to see. Americans deserve to hear more from their presidential hopefuls about their vision regarding the land of hope, Africa.”


Afro Dissident analyzes the recent electoral losses of Malaysia’s governing coalition which has been in power since 1957 and compares the coalition’s fate to that of the ANC-dominated South Africa:

“The key cause of this seismic shift is an increasing disillusionment with the National Front coalition’s race-based policies…
The situation faced in Malaysia has parallels with South Africa’s own politics and race-based policies. While economic empowerment of the previously oppressed is vital, the way in which it has been implemented has to a large degree been a failure…

From Malaysia’s history it is clear that SA is not the only country where ethnically-based policies inevitably lead to self-enrichment and patronage. What I sincerely hope for is that this will lead to disillusionment with the party who perpetuates these divisive and ineffectual policies - just as it has done so in Malaysia…

As long as the ANC remains in power in its current form, BEE and other racially-based policies will continue. They will persist because they are a useful mechanism to plunder resources for the personal gain of a politically-favoured few. One day other parties will eventually pose a significant challenge to that at the ballot box. But who knows when that will be. Let’s hope it doesn’t take 50 years - like it did in Malaysia. South Africa - and especially its poor - deserves much better than that.”


Rakoto Malala writes about an ongoing campaign to end early marriage practices in Ethiopia:

“As part of International woman’s day, several prominent Ethiopian artists came together to fill a 100-meter-long canvas with new paintings that promote the campaign to end early marriage practices in Ethiopia. 30 artists including Desta Hagos, Alem Teklu and Bekele Mekonen contributed to the painting that was part of events organized by UNFPA in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Population Council, and the patronage of Azeb Mesfin, wife of the Ethiopian prime minister the UNFPA representative noted that:

‘Early Marriage is one of the prevalent forms of gender-based violence in Ethiopia with negative consequences on women's and girl's reproductive health, including maternal deaths, fistula, HIV/AIDS and other negative psycho-social problems’ …
…
Studies showed than 50% of young girls fifteen or younger are forced into marriage in the province of Amhara alone despite the legal marriage age being set at 18.
However, the representative pointed out in her speech that the Ethiopian Government has made the fight against gender inequality a top-priority and that great improvements have been achieved.”


Katch Up comments on President Gaddafi’s recent statement that President Museveni of Uganda should rule as long as he is popular:

“I find it OK if you ask me. Gaddafi has a maxim that if you are popular with your people why leave them hanging? Why not give it to 'em all the way to the end?...

Reigning till kingdom come would thus be better but if. Only if the ruler is accountable enough. Kagame and Museveni are resplendent in the cloak of democracy but they don't practise it. They jump in whenever it is convenient to sort things out regardless of some funny laws that are only there to be obeyed without serving the public.

The problem is finding this leader who can be trusted. If we can then I go Gaddafi’s way. In Africa a home should always allow a father to streamline things but reasonably. Those who lord it unreasonably are not the example here.

Museveni and Kagame are not the perfect guys here but they are the closest I get to my support for the idea of putting democracy in books but bending it when a good reason comes over.”


Siasa Duni focuses on President Museveni’s reaction to land claims by the Kingdom of Buganda:

“In what has now come to characterise the President's speeches on the land question in the country, Museveni took another swipe at Mengo, the seat of Buganda Kingdom, describing officials pushing for the return of the now obscure 9,000sq miles of land, as opportunists. "I normally tune in to CBS (Buganda's radio -Central Broadcasting Service) when I have time. And you hear all this trash. They are just opportunists whose intention is only 'naalira wa?' (What is in it for me?)," he said. Museveni took time off to remind delegates that his administration reinstated traditional and cultural institutions in the country, with the sole aim of reviving lost glory and custom, before concluding that the traditional leaders have failed "and I will oppose them because I am still here."
[…]
Only last week, the Coordinator of Security Services in the country, Gen. David Tinyefuza, told Parliament that the army will not hesitate to intervene in settling civil strife in the country, a proclamation that has now been understood as a warning to anyone who stokes tribal hatred over the land debate.

Already, Buganda and the central government have locked horns over the proposals which the latter believes will help curb incessant illegal evictions in the country. Mengo insists it will only legitimise land grabbing. Commenting on the land debate, Museveni said "the talk about tribalism and division is absolute nonsense and we shall oppose them."


Grandiose Parlor comments on the controversy surrounding the award of contracts for Nigeria’s National Integrated Power Project:

“Good governance demands an impeccably transparent public sector; it simply calls for administrators that are responsible, responsive and respectful of the rule of law. If one needs any indicator to assess the level of governance in Nigeria, the inquiry of the National House of Representatives into the failed National Integrated Power Project offers plenty.

The inquiry reveals some 34 firms were awarded up to N6 billion despite not having licenses to operate as business entities as required by Nigerian business laws. The contracts were awarded during the Obasanjo tenure.
Yet, it was the same man - the former president Obasanjo - that introduced the ‘Due Process’ and public bidding for federal contracts to ensure transparency and rule of law. The “due process” was much celebrated as one of the cornerstone of his administration’s anti-corruption reforms.

To add injury to the insult, when questioned, the response of Dr Agagu, the Minister under whose watch those companies were awarded contracts reeked of blatant arrogance, or ignorance. ‘It is possible. This is how companies get jobs when tenders are advertised“, he stated in report published by ThisDay newspaper.’”


Scribbles from the Den revisits the recent “Food Riots” in Cameroon and highlights to contradiction between the needs of the people and the demands of international donor agencies:

“In her book on Development and Good Governance in Africa, Rita Abrahamsen argues that in Africa, ‘economic liberalization creates problem for the majority - who democracy seeks to serve. Leaders therefore are confused about whether to satisfy external donors or to satisfy the aspirations of its people for both are irreconcilable constituencies’.

She adds that “Demands of economic liberalization by donor institutions have eroded democratic standards because they bring poverty to the people through SAP. SAP denies the masses benefits from the government, thereby threatening 'the consolidation of democracy by exacerbating social conflict and differentiation, while at the same time undermining the state's capacity to respond to domestic demands'" (Cited in African Studies Quarterly ).

I recently came across an interesting article about the recent wave of riots that have rocked a number of countries, which gives credence to Abrahamsen's argument. Thus, while acknowledging the well-documented internal / political reasons for the recent riots in Cameroon, the article also points to externally-dictated liberal economic policies as one of the main culprits. Which leads us to wonder - rhetorically of course - if Cameroon is now being run ("governed" would be an inappropriate word in these circumstances) from Washington, DC by donor agencies...”

* Dibussi Tande, a writer and activist from Cameroon, produces the blog Scribbles from the Den

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

Mugabe changes law to allow policemen into polling booths

2008-03-21

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news190308/police190308.htm

An electoral amendment, passed by Robert Mugabe on Monday, sparked renewed fears that Zanu PF is determined to rig the March 29 election. State radio announced Tuesday that Mugabe amended electoral laws to allow policemen into polling stations to ‘assist’ illiterate people to vote. The opposition immediately slammed the amendment saying it violated agreements reached at the SADC brokered talks. Policemen were barred from being within 100 metres of a polling station because it was felt they would intimidate voters.

Police block CHRA’s ‘meet the candidates series’

2008-03-21

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news190308/chra190308.htm

Police in Harare have stopped the Combined Harare Residents Association from holding public meetings with the contesting election candidates in the capital. Mfundo Mlilo, spokesman for CHRA, said on Wednesday that the officer commanding Southerton police district had banned 16 of their planned ‘meet the candidate public meetings’ in all low and high-density suburbs south of the capital.

SA silences MPs on SADC observer mission to Zimbabwe

2008-03-21

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news200308/sasilence200308.htm

It appears that the policy of “quiet diplomacy” practiced by South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki is about to be applied to the regional observer mission deployed to Zimbabwe. South African parliamentarians assigned to the SADC team that will be monitoring Zimbabwe’s elections have been ordered not to issue independent statements.

Soldiers and police officers forced to vote under supervision

2008-03-21

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news200308/soldiers200308.htm

Over 75 000 members of the country’s security forces have already cast their votes, in an exercise that has been a closely guarded secret, according to information received by the MDC. In Bulawayo most police officers were allegedly forced to vote several times, while in Mutare soldiers were ordered to write their force numbers on the back of their ballot papers.

WOZA launches report on state sponsored violence against members

2008-03-21

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news190308/woza190308.htm

Women of Zimbabwe Arise launched a report in Harare on Wednesday, titled “The effects of fighting Repression with Love” which documents the experiences of their members over the last few years as they were arrested, assaulted, humiliated and tortured at the hands of state agents, particularly the police. Our Harare correspondent Simon Muchemwa attended the event, along with representatives from civil organisations and diplomats.

Zimbabwe: Prospects from a Flawed Election - New ICG report

2008-03-21

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5347&l=1

The latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines likely scenarios for Zimbabwe’s simultaneous presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections. Even though President Robert Mugabe has two serious challengers, including for the first time one from within his own ruling party, he probably has the means to manipulate the process before, during and after balloting, sufficiently to keep his office, though possibly only after a violent run-off. If that happens, no government will emerge capable of ending the country’s long crisis.

AU Monitor Weekly Roundup

Issue 128, 2008

2008-03-14

http://www.aumonitor.org/

This week’s AU Monitor brings you analysis from John Palmer on the lessons from the European Union (EU) for the African Union. Providing a detailed background of the structures, membership criteria and values of the EU, he asks whether regional blocs will be able to manage globalisation without strengthening collective decision making and whether they will “have to move beyond cooperation and agree to at least some elements of sovereignty sharing and supranational integration” in order to do so. However, he concludes contentiously with the assertion that the purpose of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and AU “is to foster regional economic integration” without providing analysis on how they will effectively achieve this. Indeed, civil society organisations called this week on the EU to align EPAs with Africa’s economic integration plans and “stop trying to re-colonise Africa”. While the EU remains Africa’s biggest trading partner, China’s role in Africa has become the subject of inquiry in a soon to be released report by the European Parliament Development Committee. Yet, Jonathan Holslag asserts that China is not a competitor to the EU in Africa, other than in the energy sector, and states that “transparency and good governance are the most important issues in which EU and China should act extensively and more concrete plan of action". Also vying for closer cooperation with Africa, Iran hosted a delegation from the African Union Commission to explore avenues for joint action in areas such as development, trade and industry.

In regional news, Rwanda and Burundi have launched public consultations on the East African federation to compile views from a cross section of stakeholders that can feed toward a common country position. In West Africa, the African Union will hold a land policy workshop in mid-April to, among other aims, reach consensus on “regional specificities, initiatives and lessons that should be included in the continental framework”. While in southern Africa, Southern African Development Community (Sadc) observers have arrived in Zimbabwe to observe the forthcoming presidential, parliamentary and council elections in the country. The Economic Community of Central African States is holding an extraordinary summit in the Democratic Republic of Congo on the situation in Chad, just as the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has released its resolutions on the human rights situation in Kenya and Somalia. Also in peace and security news, Festus Aboagye provides analysis of current efforts to put the difficulties faced by the joint AU – UN peacekeeping force in Darfur on the United Nations Security Council agenda. He further challenges the international community to “exercise the moral courage necessary to review that course of action, rather than blindly adhere to one fraught with insurmountable challenges”.

In development news, the African Peer Review Mechanism has hailed Nigeria’s self-assessment report which covers up to twenty two thousand households, has been translated into local languages and is said to surpass “all other reports” received so far by the country review teams. Lastly, the African Development Bank has concluded a workshop on Diaspora led investments as “the role and impact of the Diaspora and their remittances as well as their potential positive contribution to development is becoming increasingly critical for policy and strategic considerations”.

AU Monitor Weekly Update

Issue 129, 2008

2008-03-20

http://www.aumonitor.org/

The African Union (AU) has issued a communiqué this week condemning “the continuous deadly and indiscriminate attacks against civilian areas in Gaza Strip committed by the Israeli occupying forces”, which it claims constitute systematic violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people and are contrary to humanitarian law. In peace and security on the continent, informal consultations with regional and international observers and partners on the situation in Darfur were led by the AU and United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces in an attempt to bolster the political process, which may also gain momentum following the signing of the Dakar peace agreement during the Organization of the Islamic Conference between the Sudanese and Chadian presidents. The agreement, which is the “sixth peace accord in six years” between the two actors, makes provision for a monthly contact group to monitor compliance led by Libya and the Republic of Congo. Also, this week, the conflict in Anjouan seems to have reached new heights with the AU stating that it has exhausted all opportunities to end the political dispute that ensued following elections in June 2007. An African force composed of troops from Tanzania, Senegal, Sudan, Libya and Comoros is on standby for likely military intervention. Further involving the military and security architecture in Africa, General William “Kip” Ward, head of the United States Command for Africa (Africom), addressed the U.S Congress in a speech that focused on Africom’s military rather than humanitarian role in contrast to earlier pronouncements. This shift in emphasis comes as a relief to some humanitarian agencies who feared greater U.S military involvement would put the neutrality of humanitarian assistance in jeopardy.

In trade and development news, a conference of African Ministers of Trade and Finance will take place in early April in Addis Ababa. The meeting will focus on: interim agreements and regional integration in Africa; elements of African common positions in the forthcoming high level engagement with the EU; aid for trade; and the consideration and adoption of the Draft Decision/Declaration on the way forward on EPA negotiations. The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a line of credit of fifty million U.S dollars and an equity capital increase of US$6.8 million (payable), as well as US$40.8 million (callable), to support the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank, which provides development financial services, including trade and project financing. In addition, a one million dollar grant for institutional capacity building for the Bank is being provided by the AfDB-managed Fund for African Private Sector Assistance. AfDB also held a conference aimed at increasing the competitiveness of African middle-income countries (MICs) in Cairo, Egypt. The conference is focusing on three areas of competitiveness: the investment climate, science and technology and infrastructure, and is expected to conclude with actionable recommendations for the support of African MICs by multilateral development banks and development partners. Lastly, a summit will be held in April in Mumbai, India, with the said objective of enhancing partnership between India and Africa in achieving the Millenium Development Goals.

In East Africa this week, President Gaddafi of Libya, along with other Heads of States, is visiting Uganda at the close of the Afro-Arab Festival. While the aim of his visit is philanthropic and includes the opening of a mosque in Kampala, it is expected that Colonel Gaddafi and President Wade of Senegal will use their visit to rally support for the union government proposal after President Museveni surprised observers at the African Union by endorsing a gradualist approach to continental unity. In addition, “Col Gaddafi’s first visit to Uganda in seven years underscores Libya’s growing portfolio of investments in the region and the political and economic weight it wields and is increasingly willing to use to acquire and defend its interests in the region and across the continent”. Lastly, as Kenya continues to grapple with the causes and impact of the recent post-election violence, the Peace and Security Council of the AU has called for a comprehensive review of electoral procedures across the Continent while Professor Oluyemi Adeniji, who took over from Dr Kofi Annan as the chief mediator in the Kenyan mediation process, has said of the commission of inquiry investigating the contested December elections that "determining the culpability of some of the participants is going to be a daunting task". It is also expected that the AU will soon undertake a review its Declaration of Principles Governing Democratic Elections.

Algeria: Women cite problems with implementation of new family code

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/28tws4

Three years after Algeria's family code was revised, women are looking back with regret on their initial enthusiasm for the change. What appears to have been a well-intended effort to protect women and children's rights has inadvertently caused many of them to lose everything.

DRC: UNFPA joins in campaign against sexual violence

2008-03-21

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26047

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has joined forces with civil society groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Government in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to launch a nationwide public awareness campaign aimed at reducing the country’s appalling levels of sexual violence.

Global: Women key to Millennium Development Goals

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/37wdz6

Efforts to meet international development goals must focus on empowering women, Deputy UN Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said in a speech delivered at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "Empowering women is not just an end in itself; it is a prerequisite for reaching all of the Millennium Development Goals ­ our common vision to build a better world in the 21st century," she said of the targets, known as MDGs, that aim to slash a host of global ills by 2015.

Africa: Madagascar ratifies statute establishing ICC

2008-03-21

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26002

Madagascar has become the latest country to ratify the Rome Statute that sets up the International Criminal Court (ICC), the independent, permanent court that tries people accused of the most serious crimes, such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Africa: Nearly two-thirds of Africans lack access to proper sanitation, UN says

2008-03-21

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26048

Over 60 per cent of Africans lack access to a proper toilet, according to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ahead of World Water Day – observed on 22 March – whose 2008 theme is “Sanitation Matters.” The Day aims to raise awareness to the plight of 2.6 billion people worldwide who live without toilets in their homes and are therefore vulnerable to numerous

Angola: Free rein for human traffickers

2008-03-21

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=41673

There is little awareness on the problem of trafficking in persons, mainly women and children, in Angola, and no laws for cracking down on the growing phenomenon. Paulino Cunha da Silva, head of cooperation and exchange in the Angolan Interior Ministry, admitted at a workshop held in Luanda Tuesday and Wednesday that the country lacks laws to fight trafficking in human beings.

Chad: Civilians flee as government targets critics

2008-03-21

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77394

The Chadian government has continued to detain an unknown number of people without charges since rebels invaded the capital N’djamena for two days in early February, despite lifting a state of emergency on 15 March. "Detainees should be released immediately or charged with a crime and accorded all their rights, including immediate access to a lawyer and a hearing before an impartial judge to determine the lawfulness of their detention,” Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s Africa Director Georgette Gagnon said in a statement issued on 20 March.

Kenya: Greater accountability, end to impunity key to stability – UN report

2008-03-21

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26038

While the violence that swept across Kenya several months ago was triggered by disputed presidential polls, the crisis was fuelled by underlying causes including poverty and discrimination, United Nations human rights officials said today, urging greater accountability and an end to impunity to address those issues and prevent further outbreaks.

Kenya: Kenyans protest at army terror in mountain offensive

2008-03-21

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21715106.htm

Church leader Wycliffe Masibo describes seeing an elderly member of his flock whipped to death during a Kenyan army search for militiamen in his remote mountain village. Having made all the men lie on the floor, soldiers kicked and hit them, demanding they tell them where guns were kept and suspects were hiding, he and others from Chongoywo village on the slopes of Mount Elgon told a visiting reporter.

Chad: UN agency moves CAR refugees away from border area

2008-03-21

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26014

The United Nations refugee agency has begun moving some of the estimated 14,000 refugees who recently fled violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) away from the border in southern Chad to more accessible areas. Ron Redmond, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said a first group of nearly 700 people was transferred on Saturday from the border town of Maya to a temporary transit site 25 kilometres further inland, near the village of Dembo.

Mauritania: Second group of refugees welcomed home from Senegal

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/ypnz57

Ethnic violence forced thousands of Mauritanians out of their homes and into Senegal two decades ago, but the two countries and the UN are working together to bring them back home. After leaving camps across the Senegal River from their homeland last week, the second group of repatriates received a warm welcome in Rosso.

South Africa: Somali refugee community takes lead in local integration

2008-03-21

http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/47e124214.html

Over the years, many Somali refugees in South Africa have achieved substantial independence and self-sufficiency without the assistance of the UN refugee agency. These skilled traders have relied on cultural and religious ties and networks, business savvy, determination and single-mindedness to establish businesses and ensure their communities function on clearly formulated lines.

West Africa: Ghana scolded over refugee arrest

2008-03-21

http://www.afrol.com/articles/28362

The international community has been urged to pile pressures on the Ghanaian government and the UNHCR to protect the human rights of refugees in Ghana. The followed the arrest, detention and alleged mistreatment of protesting Liberian refugees in Buduburam refugee camp on Monday.

Zimbabwe: Publication of an international fact-finding mission report

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/3bj2xc

On the eve of the March 29, 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe, with Robert Mugabe in power since 28 years and seeking another term as President, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), is publishing a report entitled ZIMBABWE: Run up to the March 29 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections - A Highly Repressive Environment for Human Rights Defenders.

Zimbabwe: Tsvangirai rejects centralized vote counting

2008-03-21

http://www.africanews.com/site/list_messages/16822

Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader has condemned plans to count presidential ballots centrally, saying this will help rig the 29 March election. "I will not be part of an illegal process," said Morgan Tsvangirai, who will be challenging president Robert Mugabe alongside Simba Makoni and demanded that all votes be counted at polling stations.

China wants 40 pct of oil/gas imports from Africa

2008-03-21

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKL1727982620080317

China wants up to 40 percent of its oil and gas imports to come from Africa in the next 5-10 years, a Chinese industry official has said. "We wish to increase the imports, the oil and gas from Africa from 35 to 40 percent in the next five to 10 years," Zhiming Zhao, executive president of China Petroleum and Petro-Chemical Industry Association told reporters at an energy conference in Cape Town.

Zambia: from the World Bank to China and back

2008-03-20

http://tinyurl.com/36hrfb

African governments have often praised Chinese investment as the panacea for their infrastructure sectors. Zambia’s experience demonstrates that it is not, writes Peter Bosshard. A Chinese hydropower project on the Kafue River has brought up the whole conundrum of financial problems, environmental impacts, hydro dependency and delays that is typical for large dams.

Africa: MDGs - African prescription for rapid realisation

2008-03-21

http://www.sarpn.org.za/newsflash.php?news_id=9270

At a meeting chaired by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon last week in New York, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Africa Steering Group made various recommendations on how to achieve the eight goals on the continent before 2015, the target year. Abimbola Akosile highlights arising issues for overall development

Global: 'Poor need a voice'

2008-03-21

http://business.iafrica.com/news/316194.htm

Building an appropriate architecture of global institutions that are well positioned, rational, and well-governed remains a key political challenge, said south African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel on Tuesday. Manuel indicated that "poorer" countries needed a greater voice in these institutions.

Global: GMOs: The Genetically Modified Food gamble

2008-03-21

http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,1535

There have been few experiments as reckless, overhyped and with as little potential upside as the rapid rollout of genetically modified crops. Last month, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a pro-biotech nonprofit, released a report highlighting the proliferation of genetically modified crops. According to ISAAA, biotech crop area grew 12 percent, or 12.3 million hectares, to reach 114.3 million hectares in 2007, the second highest area increase in the past five years.

West Africa: Bad economic policies driving migration

2008-03-21

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77404

If West African governments are serious about reducing migration from their countries they must invest in improving living conditions and reducing inequality, according to sociologists, economists and other experts meeting in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, this week.

West Africa: GMOs: Benin renews GMO moratorium

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/24da3f

Benin has decided to renew for period of five years, the moratorium on the import, marketing and use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and GMO by-products on its territory, official sources told the PANA. The renewal of the moratorium, introduced in 2002, was based on the lack of a legal, technical and scientific framework on the threat of transgenic products from some member states of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) invading the sub-regional market.

Africa: HIV stigma 'burdens patients and caregivers'

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/yqsqyt

A study of nurses and HIV/AIDS patients in five African nations has found that stigma is decreasing, but burdens both HIV patients and their nurses. The researchers say that this is limiting care options for HIV patients and strategies are needed to prevent stigma.

Africa: South Africa has worst TB prevalence in the world - report

2008-03-21

http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20031914

South Africa has by far the worst TB prevalence rate in the world, with almost 1000 South Africans out of every 100 000 living with the disease in 2006. This is according to the Global TB report released in Geneva yesterday (Monday 16th March), based mainly on 2006 statistics supplied to the World Health Organisation by over 200 countries.

Egypt: New indictments in HIV crackdown

2008-03-18

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/03/11/egypt18257.htm

The Egyptian government’s new indictments against several men arrested apparently on suspicion of having HIV violate their basic rights and deeply undermine Egypt’s fight against HIV/AIDS, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called on Egyptian officials to quash the indictments and overturn the convictions of four others who were sentenced in February 2008 to one-year prison terms.

South Africa: Rural women the losers in HIV response

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/ynornd

Rural women living with HIV in circumstances of poverty in South Africa face discrimination in relationships and in communities because of their gender, HIV status and economic marginalization. A new Amnesty International report based on interviews with rural women, the majority of them living with HIV, exposes the overwhelming challenges they face in the midst of the severe HIV epidemic affecting the country.

Uganda: HIV positive religious leaders break silence

2008-03-21

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77318

Admitting to being HIV-positive is a difficult task for anyone, but David Balubenze was faced with some special challenges as the pastor of Deliverance Church Nankandulo, in Kamuli, about 100 kilometers from the capital, Kampala. Balubenze knew he was HIV-positive for a year before he told church elders and it was several more years before he informed his congregation.

Uganda: Only one third of TB patients cured

2008-03-21

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=77387

Becky Mugisha* had been ill with a hacking cough for three months before she was admitted into one of Kampala’s busiest tuberculosis (TB) wards, but she recognised the symptoms long before that. It was her second bout with the disease. The last time Mugisha had had TB, about a year before, she was put on a sixth-month course of treatment.

Kenya: Education amidst displacement

2008-03-21

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=41610

With the new academic year in Kenya underway, teacher Moses Simiyu Kalenda is once again instructing children - just not in the place where he expected to be doing so. Previously, he taught pre-schoolers at Kalaha Farm, some 400 kilometres west of the capital, Nairobi; now he works from a makeshift class in a displaced persons camp, both he and his pupils victims of the violence that erupted after the Dec. 27 presidential election.

Zambia: UNICEF sends ‘schools-in-a-box’ to flood-hit regions

2008-03-21

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26053

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has dispatched 58 “schools-in-a-box” to flood-hit areas of Zambia to help pupils whose families have had to flee their homes because of rising waters or whose school buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Each school-in-a-box, which contains enough supplies for 100 children, will be distributed to community and Government schools in Southern, Lusaka and Western provinces, among the regions hardest hit by the recent flooding.

Africa: Africa shouldn’t wait for a climatic Armageddon

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/2jh9s4

Africa is vulnerable to present, foreseen and unforeseen, natural and man-made calamities. Of great concern currently is the impact that climatic change due to global warming will have on the richly endowed continent, which, ironically, is the poorest.

South Africa: Government wants clarity, new cash in climate funds

2008-03-21

http://africa.reuters.com/country/ZA/news/usnSP74309.html

South Africa has called on rich nations to spell out whether cash for a climate change technology fund was new money, and said it was unhelpful of them to label big developing countries "major emitters". Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 energy and environment ministers near Tokyo, also called for greater clarity on the management of World Bank-administered climate funds.

Kenya: An intractable land dispute grinds on

2008-03-21

http://www.ipsterraviva.net/europe/article.aspx?id=5869

More than a week after the launch of an army operation to flush out the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF) in Mount Elgon, a district along the border with Uganda, the fugitive chief of the outlawed militia has reportedly urged an end to the campaign, but remained defiant towards government.

Western Sahara: Latest round of UN-led talks wrap up

2008-03-21

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26031

The fourth and latest round of United Nations-led talks, bringing together representatives from Morocco and the Frente Polisario, have wrapped up on the outskirts of New York City, with both sides once again pledging to continue negotiations. Also participating at the two-day talks – facilitated by Peter van Walsum, the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General – at the Greentree Estate in Manhasset on Long Island were representatives of neighbouring States, Algeria and Mauritania.

Africa: Silencing journalists with criminal defamation

2008-03-21

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/91856/

In January 2008, the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN released a report on how criminal defamation legislation is used in Africa to silence print journalists who report on corruption, mismanagement and other abuses of power. The report looked at cases of defamation-related persecution in the 17 months to November 2007.

Guinea Bissau: Newspaper journalist briefly detained

2008-03-21

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/media/46861

Atizar Mendes Pereira, journalist and director of Última Hora, a privately-owned Bissau-based newspaper was on March 11, 2008 arrested and detained by the Intelligence Service of the Ministry of Interior of Guinea Bissau. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that Pereira was interrogated for nearly six hours, before being released.
Guinea Bissau ALERT: Newspaper journalist briefly detained

Atizar Mendes Pereira, journalist and director of Última Hora, a privately-owned Bissau-based newspaper was on March 11, 2008 arrested and detained by the Intelligence Service of the Ministry of Interior of Guinea Bissau.

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that Pereira was interrogated for nearly six hours, before being released. The correspondent said the arrest of the journalist followed a publication in Última Hora which said that the Chief of Staff of the country’s Armed Forces, General Baptista Tagme Nawaie had assumed the role of promoting police officers.

Pereira later told the media that despite the psychological torture he suffered, he still stands by his story and that he would not retract even a comma.

Two organisations; National Union of Journalists and Social Communications Technicians, journalist union and the Human Rights League, have condemned the arrest and detention of the journalist. According to the Human Rights League, the action of the State Intelligence was illegal and violates the principle of the rule of law of the country.

Prof. Kwame Karikari
Executive Director MFWA
Tel: 233 21 242470
Fax: 233 21 221084
Email: mfwa@africaonline.gh.com
Website: www.mediafound.org

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Malawi: Journalist arrested

2008-03-21

http://africa.oneworld.net/article/view/159056/1/

Demands by youths in Mazabuka for Government to increase the allocation of the youth empowerment fund has riled Mazabuka District Commissioner who has demanded the Mazabuka Community Radio Management to fire a Journalist Innocent Chinyemba.

Morocco: Freedom for Moroccan jailed over Facebook profile

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/3xdmlk

A Moroccan who was jailed for creating a Facebook profile of a prince has been released from prison. Fouad Mourtada, a 26-year-old IT engineer, was freed on Tuesday after being pardoned by the king. Fouad Mourtada had been given a three-year prison term and fined 10,000 dirhams (US$1,320) in February for creating a profile of Morocco's Prince Moulay Rachid on Facebook. He was convicted after a trial in Casablanca.

Burkina Faso: Toll in meningitis epidemic exceeds 500

2008-03-21

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/SHES-7CWQFC?OpenDocument

A meningitis epidemic has killed 519 people out of 5,046 cases reported in Burkina Faso since the start of January, new health ministry figures said Thursday. Ousmane Badolo, a ministry epidemiologist told AFP "we've gone over the 500- dead mark". Dr Badolo said that of 16 affected districts in Burkina Faso, the outbreak had reached epidemic levels in eight. The last official figures issued on March 9 reported 441 deaths out of 4,061 cases.

Chad: Government lifts state of emergency

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/2ou2ab

Chad has lifted a state of emergency and night curfew imposed across the oil-rich central African nation after a failed bid by opposition forces to seize the capital, Ndjamena, in February. A government statement said on Sunday: "A curfew, which was put imposed in special circumstances, was lifted today throughout Chadian territory."

Ethiopia: Food crisis looms

2008-03-21

http://www.afrol.com/articles/28363

Ethiopia is again facing food scarcity that has put the lives of over eight million Ethiopians at risk, particularly those in the South-West Oromia region where 11 people died of hunger and lack of clean water. The food insecurity, caused by a long period of drought in Oromia region, affected close to half a million people, the National Disaster, Prevention and Control Commission confirmed.

Kenya: Crisis shows the importance of strong ICT policy

2008-03-21

http://africa.oneworld.net/article/view/159058/1/

If the Kenyan lawmakers had debated and approved the recent ICT Bill put before parliament, some of the communications issues raised by the recent political crisis in that country would have been more easily dealt with, argues KICTANeT's Alice Wanjira.

Mozambique: Emergency Situation Report, 18-3-2008

2008-03-21

http://tinyurl.com/ywf9j3

The Zambezi, Púngoè, Búzi and Licungo River basins in central Mozambique registered heavy rains during the past 48 hours, including 185mm in Beira City. River levels rose slightly but remain below alert levels. The rains are a reminder that the rainy season is not over yet and officials are warning populations that live and work near the central region rivers to move themselves and their belongings to higher ground.

Namibia : Floods: UNICEF responds to the immediate needs of affected children and women

2008-03-21

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EGUA-7CWLUX?OpenDocument

The Government of Namibia declared a state of emergency on 5 March 2008 in light of the current localised floods in North and North-East Namibia, particularly in the regions of Omusati, Oshikoto, Oshana, Ohangwena and Caprivi. The floods are due to the above average rainfall during January and February 2008 and the inflow of water from the Cuvelai river system in southern Angola.

Sudan: Deadly attacks in West Darfur breached international law – UN report

2008-03-21

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26049

Recent attacks by militias and the Sudanese army on four villages in West Darfur that left at least 115 people dead and some 30,000 displaced violated international humanitarian and human rights law, a United Nations report just released has found.

Tanzania: Medical treatment by the Internet

2008-03-21

http://africa.oneworld.net/article/view/159059/1/

Hospitals in rural Tanzania have designed ways to communicate with doctors in referral hospitals using the Internet. The Bugando Referral Hospital in Mwanza has a telemedicine unit that connects Rubya and Kibondo hospitals. The remote hospitals are supplied with a computer, a scanner and a digital camera

A Citizens' guide to monitoring government expenditures

2008-03-20

http://www.internationalbudget.org/resources/expenditure/index.htm

This Guide reflects the growing focus of civil society organizations on monitoring the results achieved by government expenditures. It offers an overview of government budget implementation, including budget execution, procurement, impact measurement, and auditing and legislative oversight processes. The Guide provides practical, tested tools that can be used by independent organizations interested in monitoring government expenditures.

Call for Proposals - SOAWR

2008-03-21

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/46865

The coalition Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) is inviting members to submit grant proposals for actions that will contribute to the following campaign objectives:
1. By the end of 2008, SOAWR will have accelerated ratification in ten countries, namely Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and two North African Countries.
2. By the end of 2008 there will be national implementation strategies and actions generated and running in eight countries, namely Gambia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa.
Call for Proposals

The coalition Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) is inviting members to submit grant proposals for actions that will contribute to the following campaign objectives:

1. By the end of 2008, SOAWR will have accelerated ratification in ten countries, namely Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and two North African Countries.

2. By the end of 2008 there will be national implementation strategies and actions generated and running in eight countries, namely Gambia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa.

As well as specifically addressing the above objectives, proposals should be for areas of work that seek to fulfil the coalitions overall aims and objectives which are:

1. To influence for the ratification of the AU protocol or (for those countries who have already ratified) implementation in national policies, laws and budgets.

2. To promote visibility and awareness of the protocol’s provisions, the real conditions facing women and girls and the accountability of states and non-state actors to realize these freedoms.

Criteria and eligibility for proposals – please refer to these guidelines carefully before submitting a proposal.

· This offer is open to members of the SOAWR coalition only.

· The total budget for supporting these activities is US$50,000.

· Applications should be for amounts between US$5,000 and US$10,000
· The grant period is from April 2008 – July 2008 · Deadline for grant proposals is: 7th April 2008
· Length of Proposal: Not more than 3 pages (excluding the budget)
. The proposal should contain (within specific country context) – objectives, activities, success indicators, monitoring and budget
· Budget: Please detail costs against 4 budget lines of: administration, publications/information materials, travel and meetings.
Preference will be given to proposals whose activities demonstrate intention to:

• Produce popular materials for rural and urban women or policy briefs for policy makers
• Impact on mainstream and community mass media
• Organise actions that lead to the creation and reform of national laws and/or public interest proceedings in defence of the rights contained in the protocol
• Directly engage high-level Government officials, celebrities and parliamentarians to speak and act in support of women’s rights and gender equality

Please send proposals in either French or English to: cmuriithi@equalitynow.org for the attention of Muthoni Murithi by the 7th April 2008.

You will receive notification of the Steering Committee’s decision within 7 days of the application deadline.

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Governance for Development in Africa Initiative launched at SOAS

Visiting Fellowships funded by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation

2008-03-21

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/46862

The Centre of African Studies at SOAS has received a tremendous boost with a donation to fund an initiative on Governance for Development in Africa, which will create a dedicated environment to support Africans to study both the legal aspects of governance and the links between economic development and governance. The deadline to apply for entry in January 2009 is 30 September 2008
Mo Ibrahim Foundation ‘Governance for Development in Africa Initiative’ launched at SOAS

The Centre of African Studies at SOAS has received a tremendous boost with a donation to fund an initiative on Governance for Development in Africa, which will create a dedicated environment to support Africans to study both the legal aspects of governance and the links between economic development and governance.

This extraordinary gift from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation aims to enable Africans to improve the quality of governance in their countries by supporting them to build their skills and talents within an expert academic environment.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s £1.375 million gift will fund four dedicated programmes at SOAS: Leadership Development Fellowships; Residential Schools in Africa; Governance Lectures; and PhD Scholarships.

Prof Paul Webley, Director and Principal explains, ‘This gift will have a tremendous impact, not only for SOAS, but for the future of Africa. We are delighted that Dr Mo Ibrahim and his fellow Trustees are working with SOAS on such an exciting project, which will have a impact on Africa for years to come’.

We encourage enquiries about Applications for PhDs on topics relating to Governance and Development in Africa and for Visiting Fellowships on the topics of Leadership and Development (the latter applies also to non-academic applicants: the scheme will target young people with demonstrable leadership potential within their sector, enabling them to develop knowledge, contacts, and strategic plans during an 8-10 week period based in London).


In order to apply for the Fellowship, one would need to send a CV together with a Statement setting out a study plan, outlining how one would use a period of eight weeks in London to develop skills, knowledge and capabilities and how this will benefit the longer term development of his/her sector and country or region.

This scheme primarily targets young people from sub-Saharan Africa who can show demonstrable leadership potential within their sector (which may be academic, government, or private). SOAS will provide weekly workshops tailored to this programme, support for fellows in making relevant contacts and meetings, and library/online research resources.


The deadline to apply for entry in January 2009 is 30 September 2008

Contact:
Angelica Baschiera
Centre of African Studies
SOAS-University of London
Thornhaugh street
Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
Email: cas@soas.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 (0) 207 898 4370

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2008 Guy Mhone Memorial Conference on Development

2008-03-21

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/46860

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites abstracts and proposals for paper presentation at the second international conference it is organising on development as part of its revamped Economic Policy Research Programme. The first conference within the framework of this initiative was convened in 2007. The theme of the 2008 conference is Re-thinking Trade and Industrial Policy for African Development.
CODESRIA
Conference Announcement and Call for Proposals
2008 Guy Mhone Memorial Conference on Development

Theme: Rethinking Trade and Industrial Policy for African Development
Date: 25 – 27 July, 2008 -
Venue: Lusaka, Zambia.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites abstracts and proposals for paper presentation at the second international conference it is organising on development as part of its revamped Economic Policy Research Programme. The first conference within the framework of this initiative was convened in 2007. The theme of the 2008 conference is: Re-thinking Trade and Industrial Policy for African Development. The conference is being convened in the context of the Council’s current commitment to promoting a critical re-thinking of all aspects of socio-economic development in Africa; it is also held to honour the memory of one of the continent’s most distinguished development thinkers and former member of the CODESRIA Executive Committee, the late Professor Guy Mhone. The conference will take place in Lusaka, Zambia, from 25 to 27 July, 2008. As a domain of research and policy action, trade and industrial policy is recognised as central to the development prospects of any country, and the countries of Africa are not an exception in this regard. What has been in contention over the years has been the most appropriate type of trade and industrial policy that would respond most effectively to the needs of countries at different stages of development. The intellectual roots of the contemporary debates on trade and industrial policy go back to the works of the earliest political economists; indeed, it constituted one of the central concerns addressed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo in their historic diatribe against the mercantilists. The metaphor of “free trade” that was deployed against the mercantilists and the interests who were its most vociferous bearers spoke to the quest for competitive advantage at a time when the modern industrial revolution was gathering steam. Not surprisingly, those that had an edge in the process of industrialisation pushed the hardest for “free trade” whilst those with an ambition to industrialise were more reticent, opting instead either for full protection or selective opening in order to nurture their nascent industries in readiness for global competition. Clearly, the trade and industrial policy framework adopted by the earliest industrial economies of the modern period like the United Kingdom, France and Germany, were crucial to their development in the first instance and the subsequent efforts they made to protect their historic advantages. Later industrialisers like Japan and the United States were to learn to calibrate their trade and industrial policy in ways which enabled them to grow their economies, overcome structural obstacles to their economic transformation, and then compete with other major players for global economic dominance. More recent and emerging industrial powerhouses like South Korea, Thailand, China and India are themselves relying heavily on trade and industrial policy as a key instrument for their economic development. Their experience suggests, as did the experiences of others before them, that the ideology of “free trade” is not to be taken on face value, and the actual practises of states need to be read much more seriously. During the late colonial period, that enigmatic phase in the history of colonial rule which, for the first time, saw the germination of some measure of development thinking in the discourses and policies of the colonial authorities, the very first steps towards the formulation of a modern trade and industrial policy for Africa were taken. These steps basically entailed the introduction of tariffs that, at one level, sought to regulate importation and exportation with a view deliberately to maximising internal revenues, reducing foreign exchange outlays, improving the trade balance, and strengthening domestic production beyond primary agricultural production. At another level, the trade and industrial policy pursued during the late colonial period was aimed at responding to emerging structural shifts in the local and global economies that also translated into social and political pressures for an acceleration of the development of the colonial economies. These pressures were aimed at moving the post-1945 colonial economies beyond the simple production and supply of raw materials, and ensuring that they occupied a higher position in the international value chain that would at least begin more effectively employ the expanding pool of skilled labour available in the colonies. It was out of the trade and industrial policy of the late colonial period that the earliest experiences of industrialisation, most of it in simple, light manufacturing activities, emerged in various parts of Africa. The basic trade and industrial policy framework developed in the late colonial period was carried over into the post-colonial period and fed into various national strategies that were aimed, among others, at accelerating the development of the local economy, attracting domestic and external investment, promoting the home market, encouraging local research and development, achieving accelerated technology transfer, reducing import dependence, achieving rapid industrialisation, and increasing local content. As in the late colonial period, the state assumed a key role in the definition and operationalisation of trade and industrial policy; indeed, within the context of the state-led model of development which African countries followed after independence, the state played a commanding role which also entailed various degrees of central planning. Within this framework, trade and industrial policy involved the state both as leading actor and a prime facilitator. As actor, the state took a direct role in investing in the economy, especially in large-scale agricultural projects and industry. As facilitator, it offered various incentives to private investors and partnered with them as necessary in order to achieve its defined objectives of accelerating local development. The tariff regime was central to the trade and industrial policy and it was underpinned by a philosophy and an incentives structure that sought to discourage the importation of a range of simple consumer goods, facilitated the importation of intermediate and capital goods, and protected local infant industries. The consumer goods whose importation was allowed were brought in either on the basis of temporary waivers to address specific national exigencies or were subject to heavy duties that aimed at ensuring that they did not squeeze locally-made alternatives from the domestic market. Subsidies were also employed to reinforce aspects of the tariff regime put in place as were tax holidays granted to investors in the manufacturing sector. As post-independence commitments to economic cooperation and integration among African states gathered momentum, the tariff policies that were pursued were also adapted to accommodate African cooperation and integration partners. Preferential trade agreements that similarly had a bearing on trade and industrial policy were also concluded by African countries with major international economic blocs such as the European Union.

If trade and industrial policy in the first two decades of independence allowed not only for a central role for the state but also contributed to the growth and expansion of import-substitution industries, the state-led model of accumulation within which it was nestled was to come under severe attack in the period from the 1980s onwards. The grounds on which the import-substitution industrialisation model was attacked and subsequently dismantled are many and are all too familiar to merit recounting here in any great detail. Suffice it to note that the model was criticised for rewarding inefficiency, undermining national competitiveness, breeding corruption, straining the foreign exchange earnings of African countries, penalising consumers, discouraging technology transfer, and obstructing the efficient allocation of investments. The economic crises which African countries experienced one after the other from the beginning of the 1980s called the state-led model of development into question and paved the way for the efforts championed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to revamp trade and industrial policy on the continent along lines which were deemed to be compatible with the “free market” principles for which they were and still remain the frontline partisans. Within the framework of the structural adjustment programme which they pursued in different African countries, the international financial institutions pushed for the liberalisation of trade and investments, the generalised opening up of national economies, the removal of tariff walls that cushioned local infant industry, the elimination of subsidies that favoured local manufacturers, the liberalisation of interests and exchange rates, the decontrol of prices, the reversal of the frontline role taken by the state, the dismantling of national planning systems, and the introduction of a variety of complementary measures designed to entrench a free market system, promote an open trade regime, and deepen the role of the private sector in national economic development. The WTO treaty framework was also to be deployed to lock-in most of the trade liberalisation policies promoted by the IMF and the World Bank, and to extend the remit of the “free trade” principle to new domains that were binding on members.

Much has been written on the consequences of the shifts that occurred in trade and industrial policy during the 1980s and 1990s from a state-led to a market-driven model of accumulation. The consequences observed are multiple but perhaps the most widely discussed has been the systematic de-industrialisation of African countries, returning many of them to a basic role in the international division of labour as producers and suppliers of unprocessed or minimally processed raw materials. At the same time, consumer goods of various kinds have flooded local economies while revenue from import duties underwent a generalised decline. Furthermore, in most countries, the promise that the market-based structural adjustment framework would, by and by, usher in new “sunshine” industries that would be less dependent on protection and subsidies but, rather forged through free market competition and, therefore, more resilient did not materialise. Yet, it is inconceivable that Africa could ever hope to turn the table of underdevelopment without an appropriate trade and industrial policy that would enable it industrialise itself with all the accompanying direct and indirect benefits. This was a message that was consistently reiterated in many of Guy Mhone’s own writings even as he urged African governments to adopt heterodox macro-economic policies in order to have any prospects of securing their development in a neo-liberal global age. It is to the kind of developmental trade and industrial policy which Africa needs to embrace that CODESRIA wishes through the 2008 Guy Mhone Memorial Conference on Development to focus the attention of African researchers. A thorough re-thinking of trade and industrial policy in Africa is made urgent by several factors, among them the prolonged economic crises of African countries that calls for the abandonment of the orthodoxy that has dominated socio-economic policy-making over the last two and half decades; the open admission by the World Bank, after 25 years of zealous experimentation, that the structural adjustment framework which it so frantically pursued had failed to meet set objectives the immense pressures that continue nevertheless to be mounted on African governments to toe the line of “free trade”; and the one-sided push by the European Union for Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with African countries. Among the themes that the conference will cover are:
1. Trade and Industrial Policy: Conceptual and Theoretical Questions;
2. A Re-Reading of Trade and Industrial Policy in the Post-Colonial Period: 1960 – 1980;
3. Trade and Industrial Policy during the Structural Adjustment Years: 1980 – 2000;
4. Trade and Industrial Policy and the WTO Process;
5. Trade and Industrial Policy in the Context of Neo-Liberal Globalisation;
6. Trade and Industrial Policy and the Dynamics of Regional Cooperation and Integration;
7. Trade and Industrial Policy and Technology Transfer;
8. The European Union - African Economic Partnership Agreements and the Challenges of African Development;
9. Beyond Neo-Liberal Orthodoxy: Trade and Industrial Policy for National and Continental Development;
10. Towards a Developmental Trade and Industrial Policy for Africa: Theoretical and Empirical Issues; and
11. Comparative Trade and Industrial Policy: Experiences and Lessons from other Regions of the World. Researchers interested in participating in the conference are invited to send their abstracts and paper proposals to CODESRIA by 30 April, 2008. If selected, the abstracts/proposals would need to be developed into full conference papers that should be received by CODESRIA no later than 31 May, 2008. Full papers adjudged to be of suitable quality by the independent selection committee that will review all applications will be notified of the results of the process by 20 June, 2008 together with information on travel and lodging in Lusaka, Zambia. All abstracts and full papers should be addressed to:

CODESRIA
(Attention: The 2008 Guy Mhone Memorial Conference on Development),
BP 3304, CP 18524,
Dakar, Senegal.
Tel: +221 33 825 98 22/23 -
Fax: +221 33 824 12 89
E-mail: conference.development@codesria.sn -
Website: http://www.codesria.org

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Global: Health Worker Migration Community of Practice - Video Conference

2008-03-21

http://my.ibpinitiative.org/public/HWMigration/

On 31 March 2008 at 1500 GMT these questions will be addressed in a 7-country videoconference hosted by the World Health Organization, Realizing Rights and the Global Health Workforce Alliance. Immediately following the videoconference will be a 3 week global dialogue to discuss the above questions as well as other issues associated with health workforce migration. To join in this discussion please register below.

Sudan: Rift Valley Institute Sudan Course - Rumbek

One week to deadline!!

2008-01-25

http://zeus.dlconsulting.co.nz/riftvalley.net/#art1

The fifth Sudan Field Course will take place from Sunday 8 June to Friday 13 June 2008 in Rumbek, South Sudan. The course is a one-week, graduate-level residential programme offering a fast-track introduction to all regions of the country. It is designed for aid workers, peacekeepers, businessmen and women, researchers and diplomats - those living and working in Sudan and those about to start.

Africa: Executive Secretary - CODESRIA

2008-03-21

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/46864

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites applications from suitably qualified senior African scholars for the position of Executive Secretary in its pan-African Secretariat located in Dakar, Senegal. All applications must be received by Monday 30 June, 2008. Any application received after this date will not be considered.
Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA)
Vacancy Announcement: Executive Secretary

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites applications from suitably qualified senior African scholars for the position of Executive Secretary in its pan-African Secretariat located in Dakar, Senegal. This position, which will fall vacant in 2009, is the most senior management post in the Executive Secretariat and the successful candidate will be expected to function as the leader of a team of senior programme staff under the overall supervision of the Executive Committee of the Council.

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

• Be responsible for the day-to-day management of the affairs of the Council to the highest professional standards on behalf of the Executive Committee;
• Lead the Secretariat in implementing the scientific programmes and intellectual agenda of the Council;
• Serve as the Secretary to the General Assembly, the Executive Committee, and the Scientific Committee;
• Be responsible for the development and implementation of the Council’s fundraising strategy;
• Negotiate and sign all contracts on behalf of the Council;
• Undertake representational duties on behalf the Council;
• Manage existing donor relations and expand the core donor base for the funding of the intellectual agenda and strategic plan of the Council;
• Coordinate the production of activity and financial reports for the funders of the Council;
• Enhance the membership base of the Council and structure a system of accountability to its members;
• Mobilise the members of the Council to participate fully in its programme of activities;
• Recruit and manage staff for the effective implementation of the Council’s work programme;
• Take a lead role in the development of new programmes and activities, and in the mobilisation of researchers across Africa to participate in them in accordance with existing institutional rules and strategy;
• Manage relations with other organisations in the interest of the Council;
• Promote contacts with researchers, professional associations and regional organisations withinAfrica, across the global South and in the rest of the world; and
• Play a lead role in the realisation of the scientific mission and mandate of the Council.

Qualifications Applicants must:
1. Have a sound university education and at least ten years of post-doctoral working experience in a reputable research and/or research training environment;
2. Have a good knowledge of CODESRIA, its institutional mandate and programme strategy;
3. Possess a demonstrable ability to mobilise and promote the work of African researchers;
4. Be familiar with the African social research environment and be recognised by the African social research community;
5. Have a first hand knowledge of the African higher education system in general and the African university context in particular;
6. Have a strong personal track-record of research;
7. Have a good grasp of trends in international social science research and programming;
8. Have proven experience of institution and programme management in an academic environment;
9. Be experienced in fund-raising, resource management and the preparation of reports for funding partners;
10. Have a distinguished record of publications;
11. Have demonstrable skills in the leadership and management of personnel in a diversified, multi-cultural environment; and
12. Be fluent in English, French or Portuguese and have a good working knowledge of at least one of the other languages.

Working Conditions

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

Additional Information

More information about CODESRIA can be obtained from the Council’s website: www.codesria.org It is CODESRIA policy to reflect the disciplinary, gender, generational and linguistic diversity of the African social science community in its structures. In this connection, female candidates meeting the required qualifications are especially encouraged to send in their dossiers for consideration for this position. How to Apply All applicants wishing to be considered for this position are required to supply the following documents:
1. A written application;
2. A detailed CV describing the candidate’s professional experience;
3. Three reference letters, two of which must come from people living in African countries other than the applicant’s country of residence; and
4. Four of the candidate’s recent publications.

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

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

Closing Date
All applications must be received by Monday 30 June, 2008. Any application received after this date will not be considered.

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