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Taking a break

2008-08-14

Dear Reader

We are taking a break to recharge our batteries. The next issue of Pambazuka News will be on 4 September 2008. We trust you will survive without us until then.

Meanwhile, we hope you will enjoy this special issue on the implications of an Obama presidency for Africa. We welcome your responses to the perspectives offered by our contributors.

Best wishes

The Editors

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2008-08-17

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Third world prospects in an Obama presidency

2008-08-11

Steve Sharra

The exclamatory commentary that has accompanied Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the presumed nomination of the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate has excited, beneath it, the question of what the nomination itself, and a possible Obama presidency, might mean for the Pan-Africanist world as well as the Third World. While much of the commentary has been laudatory, there have also been cautionary tones, not to mention ambivalent ones. Beyond the excitement, caution and ambivalence of what a possible Obama presidency might entail for Pan-Africa and the Third World, what Obama himself has said in his writing, and has not said, might prove to be revelatory in attempting to explore the discussion that has exercised many minds around the world. We take this exploration by examining some of the issues that have been raised by editorialists and columnists, bloggers and other commentators in Africa and beyond. We also delve into what Obama himself has said in his two best-belling books, as we ponder how the significance of a possible Obama presidency may be realized more in the symbolic transformation of perceptions of race, racism and racial identity in the US and in the world, than in what the office of the US presidency itself is capable or incapable of achieving.

First, a word about my use of the terms “Pan-Africa” and “Pan-Africanism.” The Pan-Africa I am referring to here is the one that builds on the ideological consciousness of the global historical experiences and identities of people of African descent, and others who share that ideology for political and solidarity purposes. It is a Pan-Africanist consciousness that draws from DuBois’s hope, back in 1897, that if Africans were to be a factor in the history of the world, it would have to be through a Pan-African movement. Thus when Ghana became independent from Britain in 1957, Du Bois, unable to attend the epochal occasion due to his passport being impounded by the US government, handed over the mantle of the Pan-Africanist movement to Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, through a letter that he wrote and had delivered to Nkrumah.

The 1966 military coup that overthrew Nkrumah as Ghana’s president dealt a big blow to a Pan-Africanist movement that had achieved a great deal for people of African descent, especially in Africa. The shared African identity and global consciousness spawned by Pan-Africanist ideology played a key role in mobilizing support amongst African and Third World regions in overthrowing colonialism. In the United States, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King both looked up to the Pan-African world for solidarity in overcoming American racism. With Nkrumah gone, the ideals of Pan-Africanism began atrophying, to the extent that in the 21st century today there is no discernible movement that concerns itself with the problems that afflict Africa and people of African descent around the world. But there is no question that such a movement is as necessary today as it was in the 1950s and 60s.

In his autobiography Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama has demonstrated his awareness of both a Pan-Africanist and Third World consciousness, but for the nationalist demands of American politics today, he has not made that awareness a part of his campaign platform. But those who know Obama’s autobiographical instincts in guiding his best judgments know that his upbringing and struggle to identify himself are a core part of who he is. And it is his autobiographical narrative that has appealed to people around the globe. Thus while heeding the call to be cautious in speculating what a possible Obama presidency might do for the Pan-African world, it is worth discussing the extent to which Obama’s narrative in itself has the potential to influence new visions and energies in the study of the Pan-African world and its future prospects. Those energies have been on display in many places around the world, not least in Kenya, where Obama’s father came from.

A June 5th editorial in The Daily Nation of Kenya, where Obama’s father, a Harvard Ph.D., hailed from, offered three reasons as to why Africans were celebrating Obama’s victory. The first reason had to do with Obama being “the first African American ever to win nomination to vie for the presidency of the world’s sole super-power.” Second, Obama was considered “a son of Africa” who has excelled in the world. And thirdly, Obama was “a son of Kenya,” since Obama traced “his roots” back to his fatherland, Kenya, in “the present-day Siaya District.” The three reasons culminated into one huge hope: Africans were hopeful that “with this win, ‘their son’ will implement Africa-friendly policies that could uplift the continent from poverty.”

In the June 8th edition of The Sunday Times of Rwanda, columnist Frank Kagabo also reflected Obama’s blood connection to Africa, observing that Obama had “relatives living in third world poverty,” a fact which would help African people feel “good and know that nothing is impossible no matter where you come from.” In the Malawian parliament, The Daily Times quoted opposition Malawi Congress Party member of parliament Boniface Kadzamira as congratulating Senator Obama, paraphrasing the parliamentarian as saying Malawi was “likely to benefit if he wins the presidential election this August” [sic]. Hon. Kadzamira was also quoted offering a snippet of how Obama’s foreign policy might look like “He says he is likely to move away from the policies of sanctions, which has hurt countries like Zimbabwe, to negotiation. He says he will have tough aid conditions and will move away from the weapons of mass destruction to mass reconstruction”.

The Harvard University-based blog aggregating project, Global Voices Online, housed in the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has been culling blog commentary on the American elections from outside the United States, on a website called Voices Without Votes. Amongst the blogs the website is aggregating is [url=The World Wants Obama Coalition]http://www.theworldwantsobama.org[/url], from where a link to the [url=Caribbean World News]http://www.caribbeanworldnews.com/middle_top_news_detail.php?mid=869[/url]announced a news item titled “Caribbean United Behind Obama”. Another linked blog, Global Mania, sported the self-description, “Because the world believes in real change, too.” A round up of Kenyan bloggers by Global Voices author Rebecca Wanjiku was titled “Kenyan bloggers on Kenya’s most famous son, Barack Obama”.

But even amidst the hopes, adulations and expectations for what a “son of Africa” in the American White House could do for the continent, there have also been voices cautioning the hyped praise, and posing some searching questions. The Daily Nation’s editorial mentioned above asked: “But what is there for Africa in the American elections?” It went further still, asking: would Obama manage to “overcome the strong lobby groups that control American foreign policy and that have very little time for Africa?” More unflattering commentary came from Rasna Warah, writing in the June 9th edition of The Daily Nation, who wielded a sharp knife over the blood ties everyone was happy to evoke. Warah’s title was upfront and blunt: “We cannot lay claims on Obama; he’s not one of us". Warah went on to state: “What everyone seems to be forgetting is that Barack Obama is an American, not a Kenyan. His roots may lie in Kenya, but he was born and raised in the United States, and his loyalty lies with that nation, not with ours.”

As evidence for her argument, Warah cited Obama’s own words spoken when he visited Kenya as a United States Senator, in August of 2006. She quoted Obama as saying: “As a US Senator, my country and other nations have an obligation and self-interest in being full partners with Kenya and Africa. And I will do my part to shape an intelligent foreign policy that promotes peace and prosperity.” As for Obama’s autobiography Dreams From my Father, which Obama wrote after returning from Kenya and going to Harvard Law School, Warah suggested that “curiosity about his roots” was the real reason Obama visited his fatherland for the first time ever, in the summer of 1988. It was “not deep love for this country,” said Warah.

By far the most authoritative statement of caution if not negation came from Dr. Makau Mutua, Dean and University Distinguished Professor of Law at State University of New York at Buffalo, and chair of the Kenyan Human Rights Commission. Writing in the Daily Nation of June 5th, Dr. Mutua started out by quipping that the reaction to Obama’s clinching of the Democratic nomination was as if Obama was “poised to become” the president of Kenya, or indeed Africa. The reasons, Dr. Mutua said, were three-fold: “national, racial, and ethnic pride that a black man can become ‘king’ of the empire.” Dr. Mutua then set out to demolish the expectations edifice by pointing out “the nature of the US as a state, and the character of the American presidency” as the reasons why he was urging caution to the hype of what Obama would do for the continent. Dr. Mutua contrasted between the way Africans and Americans see the office of the president as being responsible for the mounting expectations on Obama. “Africans think of presidents as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent”, wrote Dr. Mutua, saying that in Africa that perception gave the president enormous powers which ultimately determined what citizens could gain or lose. It was what created what Dr. Mutua called “tribal barons.” Not so with American politics, in which “the American presidency is a highly circumscribed office that is subject to larger national interests on which there is consensus about the purpose of government.”

What would prevent a President Obama from being helpful to Africa then were the two core functions of the American presidency: to “develop and implement a foreign policy to enhance US interests and pursue a domestic policy that will bring economic prosperity to the nation.” It was in the service of those two functions that America’s role in the world had been historically shaped, and continued to be, limiting the scope of what an individual president could do, even as he or she brought his or her personality and individuality to what is considered the most powerful leadership position in the world. Here Dr. Mutua went deeper than anybody has been daring to, to expose America as an empire whose wealth and might have been built on a foundation that has dialectically entailed the exploitation and destruction of Africa. “Why am I pessimistic about the prospects of an Obama presidency for Africa?” asked Dr. Mutua. The answer, he offered, lay in America’s “structurally racist and exploitative relationship with Africa. In slavery – the brutal capture, transportation, sale and exploitation of Africans to build America – and the support by the United States of Cold War despots in Africa, lies the destructive relationship between black people and America.”

As an analytical insight, Dr. Mutua’s explanation went to the heart of a historical truth that has largely been avoided by most commentators, including Obama’s own positioning of himself vis-a-viz his identity. “It is partly because of these traumas,” explained Dr. Mutua, “that Africa is so underdeveloped and marginalised in global politics. That is why to America Africa has either been an afterthought or an object of pity and charity. It would require an ideological shift by the US to change its relationship with Africa to base it on equality, fair trade and investment, and a voice for Africans in global institutions.” As such, no individual American president can achieve the kind of paradigm shift that would turn around America’s image of Africa: “These are not steps that a president can take alone because they affect fundamental American interests, and would call for a realignment of US foreign policy so that it is not simply Eurocentric.”

Dr. Mutua’s realistic analysis of what the American presidency looks like and how its foreign and domestic policy mandates shape the scope and limits of what the American presidency can achieve points to an important distinction that has to be made between the president as an individual and the president as an institution. As an individual, we only have to hark back to Obama’s autobiography, Dreams From My Father. As I pointed out in my recent blog article on Obama the personal importance of Africa to Barack Obama is not only evident in the book, it is profound to Obama’s own identity. The way Obama treats Kenya in Dreams From My Father leaves us in no doubt about this. In the book, Obama takes 450 pages to offer an intimate look into his life, from early days in Hawaii, Indonesia, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, to an epochal homecoming in Kenya. The amount of detail Obama dedicates to his life in the United States and Indonesia, where he lived all his life hitherto, contrasts sharply with the one third of the book that he devotes to Kenya, where he only spent three months. His days at Harvard Law School are given a mere two sentences (p. 437).

Contrary to Rasna Warah’s suggestion that Obama went to Kenya more out of curiosity than love of the country, the answer to Obama’s deep search for identity is finally consummated and revealed in Kenya, right from the moment he steps foot on the soil. It is worth reproducing, again, the paragraph that puts Obama’s quest for identity to rest, when somebody recognizes his name in an instant:

“That had never happened before, I realized; not in Hawaii, not in Indonesia, not in L.A., or New York or Chicago. For the first time in my life, I felt the comfort, the firmness of identity that a name might provide, how it could carry an entire history in other people’s memories, so that they might nod and say knowingly, ‘Oh, you are so and so’s son.’ No one here in Kenya would ask how to spell my name, or mangle it with an unfamiliar tongue. My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances and grudges that I did not yet understand” (p. 305).

However the reasons for caution in imagining what an Obama presidency may do for Africa and the Third World are equally sobering. By the time we get to the US senate and to his next book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), Africa has pretty much disappeared from Obama’s narrative, replaced by distant references that characterize much of mainstream Western attitudes about Africa. Missing even from the Index, Africa is mentioned only perfunctorily, no longer as the place Obama spent a lifetime yearning for, but rather as the known poster child for the world’s worst maladies and disorder. “There are times when considering the plight of Africa—the millions racked by AIDS, the constant droughts and famines, the dictatorships, the pervasive corruption, the brutality of twelve-year-old guerillas who know nothing but war wielding machetes or AK-47s—I find myself plunged into cynicism and despair” (p. 319). But Obama is also aware of the progress Africa has made, citing Uganda’s success with the AIDS pandemic, and the end of civil war in countries like Mozambique. He observes that “there are positive trends in Africa often hidden in the news of despair, while at the same time clinging to an Afropessimism that warns: “We should not expect to help Africa if Africa ultimately proves unwilling to help itself” (ibid.).

Obama is also able to go beyond the average politician in his candidness about the ravages brought on Indonesia and other parts of the world by the ideological juggernaut of US foreign policy. In a chapter titled “The World Beyond Our Borders,” Obama dwells on how Indonesians find it puzzling that “most Americans can’t locate Indonesia on a map,” given the role that US foreign policy has played in the fate of Indonesia “for the past 60 years” (p. 272). Providing a brief historical account of this role, Obama describes how the CIA provided “covert support to various insurgencies inside Indonesia, and cultivated close links with Indonesia’s military officers, many of whom had been trained in the United States” (p. 273). The military then went ahead and “began a massive purge of communists and their sympathizers,” leading somewhere between 500,000 and one million deaths, “with 750,000 others imprisoned or forced into exile” (ibid.).

Obama’s candor continues throughout the chapter, noting that “our record is mixed—not just in Indonesia but across the world” (p. 280). He calls American foreign policy “a jumble of warring impulses,” at times farsighted and serving the mutual interests of both the United States and other nations, and at other times making “for a more dangerous world” (ibid.). His take on Iran ought to be enlightening in light of the current saber-rattling and familiar drum beat toward another a possible military strike: “Occasionally, U.S. covert operations would engineer the removal of democratically elected leaders in countries like—with seismic repercussions that haunt us to this day” (p. 286). Yet Obama is no dogmatic ideologue, finding himself “in the curious position of defending aspects of Reagan’s worldview” in debates with friends on the left. He charges that progressives were eager to indict US complicity in the brutalities that took place in Chile, yet were less so in criticizing oppression in the communist bloc. Nor was he persuaded that US corporations and global trade “were single-handedly responsible for poverty around the world; nobody forced corrupt leaders in Third World countries to steal from their people” (p. 289).

Needless to say, such candor is as rare amongst US politicians as is knowledge of what US foreign policy has been up to around the world, in the general populace, according to several writers and thinkers, including John Perkins, Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Carl Mirra, Stephen Hiatt, amongst others. Many of these thinkers have also pointed out how while some Third World leaders are indeed corrupt, Western multinational corporations, backed by a deliberate, strategic foreign policy, create the very infrastructure that facilitates the corruption, and are actually corrupt themselves. According to Perkins, Hiatt, Patrick Bond, John Christiansen, Amit Basole, Leonce Ndikumana, James Boyce, among others, this is done through debt ensnaring, off-shore tax havens, trade mispricing, and dubious advice from the IMF and the World Bank, whose complicity with foreign policy and multinational corporate interests has led to trillions of dollars being emptied out of Third World countries and poured into Western economies. This is the corruption and the looting of the Third World that has best been captured by John Perkins’ term “corporatocracy” in his 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Stephen Hiatt’s 2007 edited collection of essays, A Game As Old As Empire shows how pervasive the nexus of economic hitmen has become, and how closely aligned the system is between foreign policy and corporate interests.

In the final analysis, the significance of an Obama presidency for Pan-Africa and the Third World will lie less in what Barack Obama may or may not be able to do for people of African descent than in the symbolic message that his ascendancy to the most powerful office in the world will do in changing black people’s perceptions of who they are in the world, and how others view them. That has been the underlying, implicit cause of the renewed hope in what has been said by the Kenyans, the Malawians, the South Africans, the Nigerians, Caribbean commentators, and in fact every one else around the world who has joined in the celebration. While the office of the US presidency may limit Obama’s actual impact on Pan-Africa and the Third World, as Dr. Mutua warns, the symbolic importance of the achievement is what has the potential to go much further in offering a paradigm shift in the self-perception of a people whose destiny, according to Frantz Fanon, represents the possibility to refashion a new vision for the world, one beyond the limits set by European rationality and the consequences, both good and bad, that the Third World has reaped there from.

For that to happen, Obama’s own notion of what race and racism still mean in today’s America and how some minorities are overcoming it could shine some light on the path this transformation might take. Obama devotes a chapter in The Audacity of Hope to the topic of race, in which he offers both a stinging and sensitive portrayal of the bane of America’s ethnic identity, as well as the prospects of what can be achieved in breaking down racial barriers. Obama’s philosophy of race indict residual and institutional racism, but also celebrate white people and black people alike who are able to overcome the vice and chart a new path for society. Those lessons ought to apply not only to America, but to the rest of the world as well, in the apt description of the global face of Obama’s extended family as a miniature portrait of the world:

“As the child of a black man and a white woman, someone who was born in the racial melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who’s half Indonesian but who’s usually mistaken for Mexican or Puerto Rican, and a brother-in-law and a niece of Chinese descent, with some blood relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, so that family get-togethers over Christmas take on the appearance of a UN General Assembly meeting, I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe” (p. 231).


*Steve Sharra is a visiting assistant professor, Peace and Justice Studies, Dept. of Philosophy, Michigan State University. This essay was first prepared for the "The Meaning and Implications of the Obama Phenomenon symposium" held by the Zeleza Post (www.zeleza.com).

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

Obama and US foreign policy

2008-08-11

Carina Ray

Let me begin by making a few disclaimers. First, I am a registered Democrat (for lack of a better alternative). Second, I support Barack Obama's candidacy for the presidency. Third, I believe that he will pursue a more enlightened foreign policy towards Africa than George Bush has and more importantly than John McCain would.

But let's not delude ourselves, Barack Obama is not Africa's prodigal son, he is an American politician running for the presidency of the United States of America. His family ties to Africa (Kenya to be exact) have, however, given him a greater personal connection to the continent and its people than any other American presidential candidate before him. As far as I am aware he also has the most cosmopolitan upbringing of any presidential candidate to date. These facts combined with his intellectual strength, eloquence, and ability to think outside of the box suggest that if elected president he will pursue a more diplomacy-oriented and judicious foreign policy in general. With regard to Africa, the simple fact that the continent is already on his radar further suggests we can expect him to have a greater hand in proactively crafting his administration's Africa agenda, rather than doing what most US presidents have done before him: neglect Africa except when the US's strategic interests are involved, and we all know how that story repeatedly turned out. Without exception, US intervention to secure its interests in Africa has been disastrous for the continent. The Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, still hasn't recovered from decades of Mobutu Sese Seko's US-sponsored kleptocracy.
While we certainly have cause for hope, we also need to be mindful of the very real constraints that Barack Obama is laboring under and how these limitations necessarily affect his ability to imagine and enact a foreign policy that departs from the past. Inasmuch as his family ties might work in Africa's favor, they also pose a viable threat to his ability to be seen as an impartial advocate for Africa. Google the keywords "Obama" and "Africa" and in a few clicks you will come across sites like www.freedomsenemies.com where considerable space is devoted to portraying Obama as a candidate whose ties to Kenya and Islam are greater than his ties to America and Christianity.

We've already been given a stark, indeed depressing, example of how Obama has sought to counteract his detractors' claims that he is a Muslim and therefore likely to roll back America's staunch defense of Israel. The morning after he clinched the Democratic nomination he appeared in front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and gave an over-the-top pledge of his support for the Israeli state. Indeed after promising no less than 30 billion dollars over the next decade in military aid to Israel, he declared to the AIPAC audience that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." While it is conventional wisdom that no candidate could win the presidency without toeing the line on Israel, Obama's speech had the effect of making the Bush administration's stance on Israel seem progressive, despite its disregard for Palestinian humanity, dignity and well-being over the last eight years!

Rather than demonstrating where Obama truly stands on the Palestinian issue (because I do believe he would like to see a solution that respects the Palestinian people and their struggle for a viable independent state), his speech is an indication of his tendency to overcompensate for his paternal family's Islamic faith and to buckle under pressure from the right.

Indeed, his lack of sensitivity to the feelings of millions of Muslims around the world was evident even prior to his AIPAC address. In his now-famous speech on race, he blamed the conflicts in the Middle East solely on "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam," while giving Israel a free pass. Obama's remarks not only blemished an otherwise remarkable speech, but also glossed over historical facts and disregarded the complex root causes of a conflict that continues to threaten global security and stability. Here one sees so clearly that being Muslim has become the "new Black". In the post-9/11 world race is no longer the last frontier, religion and specifically Islam is. The idea that a Black man could become president doesn't seem so far-fetched in comparison to the chances of a Muslim.

If Obama has already gone overboard trying to allay fears that his familial connections to Islam pose a threat to America's "special" relationship with Israel, we ought to be equally concerned that he could respond to accusations that he is biased in favor of Africa because of his Kenyan roots, by underemphasizing Africa as a policy priority. Inasmuch as he has played down race so as not to alienate white voters, he has only played up his Kenyan roots to emphasize his worldliness as an asset that would allow him to better lead America in an increasingly globalized world. While he was widely lauded as a prodigal son when he visited South Africa, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Chad, and most especially Kenya in 2006, he is better understood as a prodigal politician, whose homecoming to Africa-given his political ambitions-must be less about "coming home" and more about beefing up his foreign policy credentials. In short, Obama's family ties necessitate that he tread gingerly when it comes to arguing that Africa should be a major policy priority.

Ultimately the promises and pitfalls for Africa of an Obama presidency are two sides of the same identity politics coin. Heads: from "Day One" he'll already have Africa on his radar and accordingly we can be optimistic that his administration will craft a more enlightened foreign policy towards Africa. Tails: he may turn the frequency of his internal Africa radar down in order to stave off accusations that he's inappropriately prioritizing Africa over other national security issues. Of course, as of now, this is all conjecture.

So what can we say, in a more definitive fashion, about where Obama stands on Africa? If we are to go by his official website Africa is featured on the list of his top eight foreign policy priorities, which in descending order are: Ending the War in Iraq; Iran; Renewing American Diplomacy; Nuclear Weapons, Building a 21st Century Military; Bipartisanship and Openness; Israel; and Africa. Rather than taking umbrage at Africa's bottom position on the list, I am pleasantly surprised that it is on the list to begin with (needless to say Africa doesn't feature at all in John McCain's foreign policy priorities). Coming in right after Israel on a list that doesn't even mention China is, I think, quite suggestive of how important Africa is to Obama. According to his web site, stopping the genocide in Darfur, ending the conflict in Congo, and bringing former Liberian president Charles Taylor to justice comprise the three main foci of Obama's Africa plan.

With regards to Darfur, Obama has already put his money where his mouth is, divesting about $180,000 of his personal financial holdings from Sudan-related stock. While I was inspired to see the forgotten genocide (my phrase, not Obama's) in the Democratic Republic of Congo addressed in his platform, I noticed that his African agenda is primarily reactive rather than proactive. Let's hope that once he wins the presidency he'll bring on board a group of advisors that can help him undo the "destructive engagement" ethos that has defined America's policy towards Africa since the Cold War. Perhaps then we can begin to formulate an African foreign policy that regards the continent as something other than a basket case. Ensuring fair trade, which would allow African producers to access American markets on more equitable terms, would be a good start. This would necessitate that Obama address the thorny question of subsidies for American farmers - a typical presidential task like this, however, could quickly turn into a loyalty test unique to an Obama presidency.

Returning to the issue of advisors, we do know that Susan Rice who served as Bill Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (1997-2001) is one of Obama's top foreign policy advisors. Should he assume the presidency, Rice would likely play a leading role in shaping his Africa policy. There are two interrelated points that need to be made with regards to Rice. First, during the 1994 Rwandan genocide she was director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping at the United States National Security Council. Reflecting on her own inaction during the genocide, Rice is quoted in Samantha Powers' 2001 Atlantic Monthly article, "Bystanders to Genocide", as saying "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." Second, she is widely acknowledged as a supporter of George W. Bush's Africa Command (AFRICOM). AFRICOM, however, has been so widely unpopular amongst African leaders and their citizenries that the US has been unable to persuade African governments to host it. These two interrelated points are important because they suggest that Rice may be more inclined to pursue a far more direct militarily interventionist policy in Africa than has hitherto been the case. Given her failings during the Rwandan genocide, it is not surprising that Rice has been particularly aggressive on Darfur, only recently scaling back her calls for the use of direct military force in favor of supporting the hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force.

Obama also appears to share Rice's pro-AFRICOM position. He is quoted as saying, "There will be situations that require the United States to work with its partners in Africa to fight terrorism with lethal force. Having a unified command operating in Africa will facilitate this action." At least Obama isn't trying to pass off AFRICOM as a humanitarian initiative, like Bush did when he misleadingly claimed that AFRICOM "will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa," while promoting the "goals of development, health, education, democracy and economic growth." Obama clearly sees it for what it is: the post-9/11 militarization of Africa.

For those who feel that the United States fails to intervene when African lives are at stake, an Obama presidency, with Susan Rice leading his African foreign policy team, may offer new hope that when it comes to Africa "never again", no longer means "here we go, again!" For those who feel that US intervention in Africa will never amount to anything more than the securing of its own vital security interests, Obama and Rice may simply be viewed as paving the way for more destructive engagement. One way in which Obama could strike a balance between these two positions is to substantially support internal African peacekeeping efforts. US logistical and financial support to the African Union (AU) would go a long way in strengthening the AU's abilities to successfully intervene in places like Darfur.

I am inclined to believe that Obama has good intentions when it comes to Africa, but that it will take a lot more than good intentions to undo and reverse over a half-century of damaging US foreign policy towards Africa. A necessary step in this direction will be his ability to listen to Africans themselves, especially those who continue to fight for democratization, human rights, and control over their own natural resources and economic rights. Fortunately for Obama there are many highly qualified and articulate African and African diaspora scholars who would be more than willing to advise him if he is willing to engage in a dialogue with them.


*Carina Ray is Assistant Professor of History at Fordham University in New York City, where she teaches African and Black Atlantic History. She is also a monthly columnist for New African magazine. This essay was first prepared for the "The Meaning and Implications of the Obama Phenomenon symposium" held by the Zeleza Post (www.zeleza.com).

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

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Obama and the continent of Africa

2008-08-11

Achille Mbembe

Barack Obama might become the next United States president. Because of his African roots, this possibility has been met with euphoria and enthusiasm in the continent. In some instances, African expectations are the expression of racial pride. In others, they are simply irrational, unrealistic and misguided.

Centuries of slave trade and systematic degradation of people of African descent notwithstanding, there might be an American legacy of compassion towards the continent.

Africa's importance to US national interests might even be growing. The continent now supplies the US with 15 percent of its oil imports. Since the end of the Cold War, the US has diversified its initiatives in Africa.

Several valuable assistance programmes with strong bipartisan support in the US congress now range from major trade agreements to the fight against HIV/Aids, malaria, tuberculosis and terrorism.

Still, the US has neither a strategic approach, nor a comprehensive policy towards the continent.
Knowledge and documentation produced by the best US universities about Africa is unparalleled. Yet, the official American imagination still represents the continent as a hopeless place with no internal dynamism, littered with failed or "rogue" states and racked by poverty, atrocities, disease and pestilence - a distant threat to global health and security.

Washington either views Africa through the prism of the continent's natural resources and the competition to reap the benefits of their exploitation or, more often than not, as an object of humanitarian and, since September 11 2001, military concerns.

Obama has said little about Africa since the start of the campaign. He might not endorse this cynicism, but nor has he indicated a willingness to significantly depart from the outdated view of the continent that has underpinned US policy since the end of the Cold War.

In fact, with the help of his Africa specialists (Susan Rice and Samantha Power, before her resignation), he has embraced a paradigm of engagement with the continent that is too heavily shrouded in ideology and dependent on too narrow a definition of US national security interests.

Africa is undergoing a complex, if at times painful, process of transformation and multiple transitions at the same time. New social actors are emerging. A hybrid urban culture is in the making. Different forms of social and political mobilisations too. As the playing field changes and Western interests are challenged notably by a strongly competitive and pragmatic China, the urgency of a new US Africa policy cannot be overemphasised.

Military or humanitarian concerns alone will serve neither the US's, nor Africa's long-term interests.

The belief that what is best for the US is necessarily best for Africa should be discarded and replaced by a deeper understanding of their shared interests in the continent and beyond.

For instance, it is not evident that a largely ideological pursuit of democracy and a blind embrace of free market evangelism is the best way to respond to the increasing appeal of a Chinese development model based on significant economic growth overseen by a disciplined, if authoritarian, state.

In theory, strengthening democratic institutions is a major objective of US policy in Africa. In reality, there are very limited funds for Africa within US worldwide democracy programmes and no articulated strategy to address the major challenges constitutional rule faces in the continent.

The external stock of capital held by Africans overseas is estimated at $700 billion to $800 billion (about R5 trillion to R6 trillion) - more than the total foreign aid assistance to the continent since independence. Most of this stock comes from illegal dealings.

Democracy and accountability could be more effectively enhanced if, instead of pious sermons on good governance, the US led a systematic and co-ordinated multinational effort to recover looted and illegally obtained African assets.

Between 2000 and 2004, US multilateral aid to Africa has doubled from $2,05 billion to $4,3 billion. Bilateral aid has tripled from $1,139 billion to $3,195 billion. But nearly half of this money is for emergency assistance. Geared towards short-term priorities, US aid assistance is so fragmented as to be almost entirely ineffective. For the past 10 years, long-term investment for growth has remained static.

Meanwhile, China's trade with Africa has diversified beyond state-directed enterprises. As Beijing offers African countries relatively beneficial trade deals combined with aid, US trade policies still constitute a major obstacle to Africa's integration into the world economy.

China has placed a high priority on maintaining strong ties with its African energy suppliers. It has heavily invested in infrastructure, treating infectious diseases and expanding training and exchange programmes. Regular high-level visits and a strict policy of "non-interference in internal affairs" are the rule. African dictators find this comforting. The most intelligent response to this challenge is neither to try to reform Africa with economic sanctions, nor to privilege a diplomacy that heckles more than it listens.

A deeper understanding of US interests in Africa would require supporting Africa's overall desire to lead herself and enhancing African institutions that promote democracy, accountability and human rights. A new US Africa policy should aim to trigger fundamental internal changes in the modes of rule in the continent. By enabling the continent to build its export capacity and soundly use its immense human and natural resources, it should hasten Africa's integration into the global economy.

If elected, Obama has pledged to double US foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012 and use it to support "failing states" and sustainable growth in Africa, roll back disease and halve global poverty.

But, development assistance is not the answer to the continent's predicament. Since 1960, the region has absorbed the adjusted inflation equivalent of more than six Marshall Plans. Yet, economic and social conditions continue to stagnate or worsen.

Africa would benefit from an Obama presidency if more resources were invested in long-term projects in rural and inland infrastructure, agriculture and health, basic and higher education, trade facilitation and enhancement, the elimination of obstacles to private investment, the development of credit facilities, support to African civil society organisations, leadership, institutions and expertise and the sound management of Africa's natural resources and open its markets to Africa's exports).

The US will not alone provide the full array of investments that are needed to overcome the continent's economic problems. But Obama could significantly strengthen and revitalise important public constituencies for Africa in the US and broaden the basis for US engagement in the continent.


*Achille Mbembe is a research professor in history and politics at the University of the Witwatersrand. This article first appeared in the July 20th 2008, Sunday Independent.

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

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Barack Obama and the graveyard of hope

2008-08-11

Wambui Mwangi

I am finding it very difficult to join in the jubilation about Senator Barack Obama. Not that I want to deny the man his victory, but my impulse to celebrate keeps deflating on the idea that the best thing that happened to little Barack was not growing up in Kenya.

I have been imagining alternative trajectories for him if he had come to know the world through the eyes of a Kenyan citizen, if his mother and grandparents had not rescued him from our chaos and contradictions and brought him up somewhere his intellect and talent could grow.

If he had grown up here, and had he somehow managed to retain most elements of his current self, he would have been another outstanding, intelligent and competent Luo man in our midst: and he would have been killed.

Yes, we would have assassinated a Barack Obama if he had remained ours, with us, one of us here in this schizophrenic cauldron we call home. This is not going to stretch the imagination of any Kenyan - after all, when we had that incredibly good-looking and charismatic home-grown hero, Tom Mboya, we shot him to death.
And when that austerely intellectual and elegant leader, Robert Ouko, threatened to look overly intelligent to the world, we killed him too. We killed Pio Gama Pinto and we killed JM Kariuki. There is no reason to suppose that Barack Obama, whose integrity of purpose and stringent sense of ethics even his enemies concede, would have survived his Kenyan roots.

He is much too intelligent, too charged with the promise of history, too bold in his claim to a shining destiny, too full of the audacity of hope, for us to have let him survive. Kenya would have killed Barack Obama, or at least his dream, as we inevitably destroy, in one way or another, the best and the boldest of us. Goldenberg whistle blower David Munyakei's challenge to his country to be bigger than our greed was met with a whimper, and then with rapid abandonment. We did not deserve him, either.

As for John Githongo, he should have known better than to take the idea of public ethics seriously - this is Kenya, after all. Let him enlighten people at Oxford instead; such considerations are too virtuous for us, too sensible, too conducive to a promising future. We do not even remark on the haunting wastage of all this shining accomplishment - Micere Mugo sings her lyrical poetry for Americans, and we do not even know enough to mourn the loss.

And yet we are all enchanted with the power of the idea of Barack Obama, the hope of him, the beauty of his life's trajectory, the universe of possibilities and probabilities that it conjures for the least of the rest of us. If someone's cousin's friend's neighbour makes it to the United States... then we all have a chance. We have a strange predilection for schizophrenic loves and loyalties; we let geography dictate our alliances and imaginary lines decide our friends. It is as if our social contract states that here, at home, we are obliged to behave like fighting rats to each other but when abroad, when released from the shackles of kin and clan and conclave, we can fly and soar and master the sky.

When Wangari Maathai is abroad, we feel that her Nobel Prize is partly represented in each of our Kenyan living rooms; when she comes home, she is just another Kikuyu politico. We preen about our athletes winning yet another international competition to anybody who will give us half a chance, but when they are at home we turn them into more fodder for militias.

Caine Prize winners are Kenyan by automatic assent, but Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kikuyu writer when at home and Yvonne Owuor is indelibly a Luo - we shrink them to fit the midget-sized visions we have of ourselves.

It is clear to all of us, and the evidence continues to accrue, that we have, collectively, a certain global competence, as Kenyans, that we produce individuals of substance and historical purpose.

Being Kenyan, however, we prefer to drown in the pettiness of our parochial quarrels when at home, and if one of us threatens to be too hopeful, too ambitious, too intelligent, too creative or too inspirational to fit into our trivial little categories of hatred and suspicion, we kill them, or exile them from our societies, or we just cause them to run away inside, hiding from us and from themselves the grandeur of their souls, the splendid landscapes of their imagined tomorrows.

Nothing but the worst for us, at home. We recognise each other by our most rancid rhetoric. We insist upon it, we cultivate it, we elevate it to an art form: Kenyan, and quarrelsome.

Kenyan, and clannish. Kenyan, and counter-productive. Kenyan, and self-destructive. Kenyan, and consistently heart-breaking. Genius everywhere, and not a thought to be had. Promise and potential everywhere, and not an opportunity to be had. Money everywhere, and not an honest penny to be earned. Helicopters aplenty, but no help for the needy. A land awash in Cabinet ministers and poverty.

I have been watching Kenyans getting high on Obamamania, and I am wondering what we are so happy about? It is perhaps that we are beginning to acknowledge what we should always have known - given a half a chance, an ever so slightly conducive context, Kenyans are more likely to over-achieve than not. At the faintest provocation, Kenyans will leap past expectations without breaking their stride or breaking a sweat, especially if they happen to have escaped the imprisoning edifice we call home and found foreign contexts to flourish in, no matter how alien.

I went to a town in the Canadian Arctic once, in the far north, where in summer the sun shines even at midnight and in the winter the world is an endless landscape of ice and snow. Here, far, far away from home, where nothing was familiar except the gentleness of elderly Inuit women and the comforting weirdness of the white residents, I was told that the local dentist had, for many years, been a Kenyan. Everybody said he had been an excellent dentist, out there in the desert of the cold. I was unsurprised.

We are an adventurous people, we Kenyans, and we take to the world outside our home as if born to a conquistador culture - we are brave and brash and bold, out there. We buy and sell things, and make money at it, out there. We go to school and excel and cover ourselves with accreditations, out there. We win things, out there. We get prizes, out there. We are at our best, out there.

However, at home, for some reason we refuse to either acknowledge or examine - we have chosen simply to set aside this capacity. Here, at home, nothing but the very lowest common denominator will do; nothing but the basest and most brutal aspects of our selves are to be presented to each other; nothing but the most cynical manipulation is the basis of our political space. We prefer to be ruled by individuals whose mediocrity is matched only by their mendacity, here at home.

We prefer to abdicate our adult responsibilities and capacity for reason to "leaders" whose lack of virtue is as legendary as our attractively exotic pastoralists. We do not only waste talent, here at home - we go out of our way to suppress and repress it. We do not only deny dreams, here in Kenya - we devour them, and ask each other, "Who do you think you are?" As if the success of another is an affront.

In Kenya, grand vision and soaring imagination is illegitimate; here, they just call you naive. Out there, you stand a chance of becoming a hero; at home, you will have nothing but the taste of ashes in your mouth. Mothers, take your children abroad.

Barack Obama has written two books, in which he discusses ideas. Ideas. This is a man with vision and conviction, and enough good ideas that even those who do not like the pigmentally-advantaged are listening, and changing their minds.

Even those who think that his name sounds suspiciously like a terrorist's are reading his books and listening to his speeches, and changing their minds. This is a man with interesting and inspiring things to say - which disqualifies him from any Kenyan-ness we would have liked to claim.

Americans like the image of them that Barack Obama has painted in words; which Kenyan leader would dare to build dreams bigger than his roots? Which Kenyan leader would ever be so foolish as to attempt inspiration instead of instigation?

Barack Obama has seduced the world by the power of his persuasiveness, and while Kenyans raise another glass to the accomplishments of "one of our own," it seems clear to me that we gave up our rights to him when we gave up our hopes for ourselves. When we settled for incompetence, and corruption, and callousness, we defined ourselves out of his universe, and out of his dreams.

We rejected Barack Obama-ness when we allowed those pangas to slash our dreams, when we watched our hopes spiral away in smoke. We allowed the ones who had done this to become the only mirrors of ourselves, and then squelched our disgraced selves back to the mire of our despondency.

Barack Obama cannot be a Kenyan, and Kenyans cannot grasp Barack Obama's dream. We have already despaired of it, and of ourselves. His dream would have died with ours, here at home, here in the graveyard of hope.

But oh, how we yearn to see ourselves reflected in his eyes...


*Wambui Mwangi is an assitant professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, Canada. This article first appeared inThe East African, June 15 2008.

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

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What about the black community, Obama?

2008-08-13

Diop Olugbala

On Friday, August 1st, I led a contingent of the Uhuru Movement into Barack Obama’s town hall meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida to raise the question, “what about the black community, Obama?” Without the benefit of a big media budget, our organization attempted to bring the serious issues experienced by African working class people across this country into the national political debate.

These issues include the targeting of African and Latino communities with predatory “sub-prime” mortgages – a scheme that has made millions for people like Obama’s chief financial advisor Penny Pritzker, while stripping black families of billions of dollars, the greatest loss of wealth our community has suffered since being brought in chains to this country. We also challenged Obama to take a stand against the police shootings of unarmed African people, and explain why he has publicly defended the judge’s acquittal of the NYC police who murdered Sean Bell.

He has said that he cannot speak out on behalf of those who have been historically oppressed for fear of offending other people. Yet in Miami, he promised the Jewish community, which considers itself a historically oppressed community, that he supports turning all of Jerusalem over to Israeli control, despite the internationally enforced sharing of that city with the Palestinians. When Obama speaks to black audiences, he attacks us, attributing our community’s poverty, not to systemic oppression, but to bad culture and lack of work ethic.
Barack Obama has criticized African fathers for abandoning our children, although a recent study showed that black fathers stay more involved with their children after a split from the mother than white fathers. And Obama says nothing of the unjust imprisonment of 1 in 9 black men of child-bearing age, the overwhelming majority of whom are locked up on minor drug or other non-violent economic violations stemming from conditions of desperate poverty. He has failed to achieve any meaningful program of economic development for the African community. In speaking to a group of black legislators, Obama said “a good economic development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks weren’t throwing their garbage out of their cars.”

Barack Obama wants to increase military spending and praised Clinton for abolishing AFDC and welfare. He has reversed his position opposing the death penalty and speaks out against reparations. He wants to escalate the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and has threatened Venezuela and Iran with military aggression. He has upheld the FISA, supporting wire-tapping and government spying on citizens. He receives unprecedented financial backing from Wall Street. His close advisors and potential cabinet members include war criminal Richard Clarke, Tri-lateral commission founder Zbigniev Brzezinski, Madeleine ‘it’s worth the price of 1 million dead Iraqi children’ Albright, and Free Trade advocates Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee.

Some argue that we must support Obama or else we are supporting McCain. We in the Uhuru Movement don’t believe our community should restrict our political options to a choice between one white ruling class party or another. In fact, the black community’s most recent experiences in the U.S. electoral arena have resulted not only in the Republican Party’s theft of our votes, but prior to that we suffered some of the worst attacks on our community at the hands of the Democratic Party administration of William Jefferson Clinton, who put 100,000 more police on our streets to murder our people, privatized the prisons to exploit our unpaid labor, and discontinued the public subsidies for impoverished children and families that had been won by African people as a concession to our movement of the 1960s.

African people’s experiences with these last several elections and the desperate conditions facing our community have created a willingness by our people to seek independent political alternatives. In response to this crisis, the white rulers put forward Barack Obama – a pied piper taking African people back into clutches of the Democratic Party. If anyone looks seriously at the positions, programs and advisors of Barack Obama, they will see that he does not stand for any kind of real change, but for the defense of the same old status quo, with a new face. America is in an economic crisis and the white ruling class hopes to save itself by deepening the exploitation of African people in the U.S. and on the continent of Africa, where the world’s biggest reserves of oil and precious minerals lie. How better to do it than with an African face at the head of state?

Our success as a people requires that we achieve our own independent political agenda. African people’s votes should be contingent on the willingness of a candidate to support and fight for that agenda. The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement has invited Barack Obama, John McCain and Cynthia McKinney to attend our annual convention on September 27-28 in St. Petersburg, Florida to clarify their position on the question, “what about the black community?’ Based on their response, we will consider endorsement of a U.S. presidential candidate.


*Diop Olugbala is the International Organizer for the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement- www.inpdum.org

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

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Barack Obama, black agency, and the burden of history

2008-08-11

Pius Adesanmi

The timeline of black agency has been determined to a great extent in the last six centuries by the need to overcome man-made historical impediments, notably slavery, racism, colonialism, neocolonialism – and their new forms in the present – on the one hand, and the necessity to validate the black world's contributions to what black luminaries like Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor have described as the "civilization de l'universel" on the other hand. This imperative of rehabilitating the black subject and relocating her within what Sylvia Wynter calls the sign of "Man" has taken such diverse routes as Indigénisme, the Harlem Renaissance, Pan-Africanism, Négritude, the Civil Rights movement, decolonization, liberation struggles/wars, and the anti-apartheid struggle. While some of these routes of black agency were largely discursive, some were praxilic, and some others were a combination of discourse and praxis. What united them was their overarching force of interpellation across global black communities. They were all grands récits that transcended their own immediate contexts of articulation to become transnational sites of black self-fashioning through a strategy based largely on the creation of an imagined community of black memory.
The fault lines of these strategies became manifest shortly after the independence era in Africa. At that point, the identitarian claims and the politics of the nation-state combined with the contested nature of memory to problematize and unhinge transnational black modes of affiliation and identification, which were organized around race and history. The nation-state, for instance, instituted an order of localized identities which was incompatible with the oneiric impulses of a transcendental black globality. For example, pan-African nationalists of the pre-independence era increasingly became Ghanaian, Nigerian, or Kenyan nationalists as national imaginaries and narratives emerged. The postcolonial irrationalities of the African state, which considerably weakened its national identity myths and created room for the reinforcement of ethnic identities, did not help matters. The pressures of localization in the arena of identity had the principal consequence of undermining the seamless globality of black memory and history. In this context, Countee Cullens's "What is Africa to Me?", a question that the generation of W.E.B du Bois answered very unambiguously by projecting Africa as a romanticized ancestral home became, for subsequent generations of African Americans, the guilty location of greedy, venal, and inhuman ancestors who "sold our ancestors" to slavery. The romanticized Guinée of the Indigénistes, depicted so poignantly in Euzhan Palcy's film, Sugar Cane Alley, became, for subsequent generations of Caribbean blacks, an absurd collection of rickety nation-states whose sorry fortunes in the modern world make continental Africans look like subjects evolving into a Hobbesian universe.

These conditions inaugurated an order of conceptual delinking from the idea of a black globality in ways so radical as to render the relationship between Africa and her diaspora fractious at best. It is only in such invidious conditions that Paul Gilroy's project in The Black Atlantic could have had the resonance it had in the Academy. The book's subterranean ideology seems to be the idea of a black diasporic world shorn of its roots in Africa. Paul Gilroy's logic is also implicitly at work in some of August Wilson's plays, where the idea of African American roots seems only traceable to the floor of the Atlantic Ocean – the mythical City of Bones – and not beyond. With Wilson and Gilroy, black history seems to start in medias res in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Alex Haley's Kunta Kinte is advised not to look beyond the Middle Passage for his roots! But these are only the positive dimensions of the conceptual split in black globality. Worse is to come with the Keith Richburg of Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa and the Henry Louis Gates Jnr of Wonders of the African World. In these two instances, the split is total and the sentiments projected on Africa range from inculpation (why did you sell us?) to revulsion and outright spite. This split is, of course, mirrored in curricular trajectories that sequester African and Africana studies in separate universes in academia. In some North American Universities, Africanists and Africana studies specialists must struggle for the rare handshake across formidable disciplinary Berlin Walls.

Against this background, the emergence and rise of Barack Hussein Obama is arguably the single most important inflatus for the transcendence of this split and the resurgence of a new kind of black globality in the 21st century. For Obama is both subject and sign. Influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure, only structuralists dared to elevate the sign above the subject. Yet the sign, Obama, leaves one with little choice than to risk this dangerous structuralist maneuver. Obama-as-sign inaugurates the moment of a transnational black consciousness not necessarily moored on contested memories and histories but on new, hitherto unimaginable possibilities and directions in blackdom. Within the schemes of globalization and transnational capitalism, where subjecthood is increasingly determined by the propinquities of MAC (mutually assured connectivity), it is significant that the iconic sign around which a new global black consciousness has begun to coalesce is an ontological summary of the orders of the moment: black but biracial; at once African and African American; Westerner but Other; Christian sired by a Moslem father; American with marginalized childhood localizations in Hawaii and Indonesia; elitist (Harvard) but rooted in the plebeian lore of Chicago's South Side! This sign is métissage ad infinitum.

The pluralized integument of this sign, the planetarity of its scopic regime, its constantly unfolding dimensions, is what makes it so apt a metaphor for the readiness of a race that has been despised and excluded for so many centuries to stake a decisive claim to the White House - the last bastion of the first person narrator of modernity and the post-Cartesian appropriator of History, the Western White male. The transcendence of the Obama sign is implicit in the rallying cry – yes we can! Beyond its immediate function as a vivifying chant for campaign rallies lies a deeper imbrication in black aesthetics. Watching Obama declaim the yes-we-can chant in the frenzied cadence of black southern pulpit performance is to be in presence of the choric, antiphonal call-and-response morphology of black oral performance, especially in Africa. "No, you can't!" has, for five centuries, been the life-force of modernity's negation of black agency. The Obama sign offers a choric, antiphonal negation of an original negation. And the consequences here have been formidable, unlike past attempts by the black world to negate the negation. Over a century ago, one black man, W.E.B du Bois, posited that race would be the dominant question of the 20th century. In "yes we can!", another black man opens the first decade of the 21st century with a dominant affirmation of possibilities. The historical significance of this sign explains why Obama-the-subject's pragmatic and politically necessary post-racial discourse and mien in the United States has cut no ice with his audiences in Africa and the black diasporic world. These audiences are interpellated by Obama-the-sign as the site of a new black globality and a new black consciousness. And, for them, that sign is unapologetically black. It is not post-racial. It needs not be.

The distinction between sign and subject is a crucial one to keep in mind in order to be able to engage the Obama phenomenon adequately. Recognition of this crucial distinction is what defines the responsibilities of the black intellectual as an interpreter of the Obama moment. Let me enter a crucial point here. I have zero sympathy for meretricious claims to intellectual objectivity or non-partisanship by those who have failed, tragically, in their duties as interpreters of blackdom's opening act in the 21st century. Only the most absurd understanding of the nature of intellection would blind anyone to the fact that intellectual enunciation and non-partisanship is a kindergarten oxymoron. I have no patience with the unimplicated intellectual.

This clarification is essential as I attempt to shed some light on what a good number of African and black diasporic intellectuals who opted for Hillary Clinton got wrong in terms of the responsibilities of the intellectual, the black intellectual. As the Obama drama unfolded, the internet (listservs, blogs, ejournals, eMags, online newspapers, African and black diasporic chat rooms, etc) was awash with the hand-wringing treatises of avowed black Hillaphiles. Some American Africans, especially Nigerian-Americans, were particularly obstreperous, weeping louder than the bereaved in their support of Hillary Clinton and their disavowal of Obama. They offered unsolicited explanations and rationalizations of their political choices even as Billary's too clever by half interjection of race and racism into the entire process increasingly made their positions slippery.

What stood out in their submissions was the facile assumption that their support of a White female candidate was evidence of (1) their newly acquired sophistication as superior human beings who have transcended race as opposed to the black/African supporters of Obama who, in their estimation, are still slaves to the congenital interpellations of race and ethnicity; (2) their sophisticated status as objective, unimplicated, non-partisan intellectuals, insofar as non-partisan is read as non-identification with their racial kind. As they pushed these positions, they almost always concentrated on the individualized proclivities of politics and choice. They tragically misread the 2008 Democratic primaries as a mere political contest between two candidates. It was a bad time to take a sabbatical from discernment. A bad time to fail to see the obvious fact that one of the candidates had become subject and sign. They failed to see that what galvanized folks from Nigeria to Saint Lucia, from Kenya to South Carolina, from South Africa to Bahia de Salvadore, was the sign and not the subject. In their histrionic quest to perform their subjecthood as postmodern African American and American African citizens of the United States who, unlike the rest of us, are above race, they failed to see that Obama-the-subject has little to do with, and absolutely no control over Obama-the-sign. Above all, they failed to understand the historicity of the sign. Follow the sign! This sign is history, not politics, as Tavis Smiley and BET founder, Bob Johnson, found out a tad late. Whether Obama eventually becomes the first black President of the United States or not is a mute point. What is important is the historical moment and order, which the sign he unleashed has inaugurated for the black race. And the black intellectual is called upon to be the first interpreter of that moment. Failing to read history correctly is excusable. However, does any black person who carries the tag, "intellectual", have the right to fail to read history at all?


* Pius Adesanmi is Associate Professor of English and Director, Project on New African Literatures at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Apart from his academic work, Dr. Adesanmi publishes opinion articles regularly in various internet fora. He has contributed to Counterpunch, Slepton and Chimurenga online. This essay was first prepared for the "The Meaning and Implications of the Obama Phenomenon symposium" held by the Zeleza Post (www.zeleza.com).

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

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Obama and Palestine

2008-08-11

Sameh A. Habeeb

We, Palestinians, are aspiring to any glimpse of hope to establishing our promising country of Palestine. Originally, that glimpse of hope grew when Israelis realized in the nineties that a real peace will not be achieved apart from an Independent Palestinian state. That time, the world agreed on that concept and peace deal (Oslo) was held in Washington D.C, after the first Bush had left office.

Regardless of Oslo and its disadvantages we started the self governing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip awaiting the transitional period in the next stages. But as many expected things went deep down after Israel approved that, it was unconcerned in any peace agreement that relied on giving us land in exchange for peace.

With the second Bush administration and his first speech at the White House, our aspirations smashed into a barrier of Zioamerican arrogance! The hope raised back momentously and excessively when the caucuses of American elections started in 2007. Followed by the appearance of Barack Husain Obama, our hope reached a peak once more. We reckoned that by this heroic Black-American we would be able to get our Independent State of Palestine.
This positive thought was strengthened for several reasons. Initially, having a black president in the White House means having the history of the Black generation who suffered the tortures of white enslavement and the discrimination as well. Surely, he knows our suffering, thus he will make sure to end our conflict. Accordingly, this president will work hard to liberate us from the occupation that we have been experiencing since 60 years.

From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah.)

Then, Barack Obama's support for the Palestinian cause has had lenghty experiences and positive stances. Going back to the nineties, he participated in many activities in solidarity of Palestine.

Ali Abunimah, ex-friend of Obama pointed out, "I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator-when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time. I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And that's just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation."

Our desired change is completely inconsistent with Obama's one currently. The change for us makes us ask why he is turning his back against Palestinians in this race. He was a sincere friend to us once.

"The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004—As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front," Obama's friend said.

So, his changing view towards Palestine seems to be unreal since he is looking to power. I, if I would be in his shoes, I would be doing as the same as he is doing.

During a speech I delivered in Lecce in Italy, I was named as Barack Obama due to the way I spoke using some of the rhetorical and public speaking tips. I was asked then, What do you think of Obama?

I was puzzled for a second, then I answered, "Obama is holding opposing views to Bush in all policies in order to improve the American image in the world. Yet, when it comes to Palestine he is as supportive to Israel as Bush and even more."

This perspective was so clear during his first speeches after he won the Nomination of his party. At the AIPAC, Obama was reciting some of the Bush ideas and schemes towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He wants to give a livable and a connected state but he didn't specify more about this state!

Finally, we Palestinians and Arab Americans have to look over this race to the White House wisely. We have two choices now. Barack Obama who is slightly supporting the Palestinians and the promise of a state. On the other side, we have one of the biggest new Bushes, John McCain, whose stances are more extreme than Bush and all the new conservatives in the US. One of McCain' s advisors said a couple of weeks ago that Palestinians should go to Jordan and establish their own country. Thus, McCain is very dangerous for us and his ideas malicious. So, let's pick the less worse of the two…Let's endorse Obama.


*Sameh A. Habeeb is a freelance Journalist based in Gaza, Palestine. This article first appeared at www.gazatoday.blogspot.com

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

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Kenya: Investigate policy brutality

2008-08-06

International Center for Transitional Justice

The Kenyan government should immediately open an investigation into the recent beating and sexual assault of civil society activists by police, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) said Tuesday.

"We join Kenyan human rights leaders in strongly condemning the police attacks on civil society activists as they prepared to hold a peaceful rally," said Suliman Baldo, Director of ICTJ's Africa Program. "The government must immediately investigate the attacks, as well as end the growing trend of police brutality and intimidation against Kenyan civil society."

On August 4, 2008, the 400 member organizations of Kenya's National Civil Society Congress demanded action from Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga in an open letter condemning "documented and verified acts of police terror, intimidation, violence and impunity."

In one such incident on July 8, 2008, Kenyan police stormed into a Nairobi hotel where a group of civil rights activists were planning a peaceful anti-corruption rally. Police beat seven of the activists, and one officer also sexually assaulted Anne Njogu, Executive Director of the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness in Nairobi.

Ms. Njogu and her colleagues were taken to a police station in Gigiri, where police again attacked the activists, beating them with police batons and kicking them.

"The sexual assault against Ms. Njogu is part of an appalling wave of violence against women in Kenya," said Debra Schultz, Acting Director of ICTJ's Gender and Transitional Justice Program. "The Kenyan government must take steps to end impunity for gender-based crimes wherever they are committed."

About the ICTJ The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) assists countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocity or human rights abuse. The Center works in societies emerging from repressive rule or armed conflict, as well as in established democracies where historical injustices or systemic abuse remain unresolved. To learn more about the ICTJ, please visit www.ictj.org


* For more information, please contact Stephen Boykewich, Communications Associate Office at + 1 917 637 3845 Mobile, 1 917 602 0084 or sboykewich@ictj.org

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

Ten years after the Nairobi bomb blast

2008-08-12

Catherine Cutcher

It was August 7, 1998. Suicide bombers exploded 700 kilos of TNT in a truck outside of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The bomb blast ended the lives of 257 people, injured 6,000, and destroyed a fragile peace in a bustling city. At the same time, another explosion rocked the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A little-known terrorist network named al Qaeda organized the attacks, led by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

Ten years later, the survivors and the victims’ families continue to mourn and to seek justice. Last Thursday, Kenyans from all walks of life gathered at the site of the blast in Nairobi, to remember the dead and to call for greater vigilance. The site has been transformed into the “August 7 Memorial Park” with monuments and gardens and trees. Once called “Ground Zero,” a site of terror and pain, it is now a place of respite, a green corner in a busy city. A granite memorial wall bears the names of the 257 dead, including 12 Americans.
I joined the memorial service last Thursday. In 1998, I was also one of the survivors, an American student learning Kiswahili and international affairs. I rode into Nairobi that day in a matatu minivan, and was just 8 blocks from the embassy when the explosion rocked the city. I recall feeling the blast deep in my body, a vibration so shocking that words cannot express. I watched in horror as a mushroom cloud of dust and smoke and debris rose over the city that I had come to love.

It has taken nearly ten years for me to get over the trauma of that day and the days that followed. The repeated scenes of blood and death and anarchy. The paranoia at any loud noises. The nightmare of uncertainty. The knowledge of so much pain and suffering all around me. The fear of being an American targeted by al Qaeda. The guilt of survival. The anger, then desperation, at my own government’s response – retaliatory attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan.

On September 11, 2001, I was back in the USA, and it was déjà vu. Twin bombings in New York and Washington, DC. Glass, steel, and concrete crumbling into dust. Lives extinguished in a gulf of flames and smoke. The fear and anguish amplified by repeated scenes in the media. The fear of airplanes, of future attacks. The utter sense of insecurity and helplessness. The mantra “Why Us?” resounding in my heart. Anger and desperation at the “War on Terror,” a war without end, without rules, without known enemies.

After 9/11, the U.S. Congress ruled to grant compensation to the survivors and the families of the victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Former U.S. ambassador to Kenya Prudence Bushnell says that “in an emotional reaction” the U.S. Congress established “a very difficult precedent.”

In the U.S. today, the Kenyan victims of the 1998 American embassy bombings have been nearly forgotten. The victims’ families and survivors in Nairobi have sought compensation for their losses in the U.S. courts. Phillip Musolino, a Washington attorney, represents hundreds of Kenyans injured, blinded or bereaved by the attacks ten years ago. He is now engaged in a legal battle over some $7 million in frozen assets from al Qaeda sources, and claims that this money should be used to compensate the Kenyans.

However, there has been a double standard for Kenyan victims of al Qaeda. American judges have not been sympathetic to arguments that the U.S. should be held liable for the damages. U.S. government attorneys insist that al Qaeda should be held responsible for the suffering and the losses, and that the U.S. was itself victimized by the attack. To add insult to injury, the surviving perpetrators were extradited to the United States, and were first charged with just 12 counts of murder, for the 12 Americans who were killed. They are now serving life sentences in U.S. prisons.

Current U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Rannenberger insists that the U.S. has already provided more that $42 million to Kenyan victims “to assist children with school fees, to provide medical assistance, to facilitate the resumption of livelihoods, for reconstruction, and for the creation of the Memorial Park.” Kenyans, however, will point out that most of these funds have been used to build a new fortified embassy and to buttress security and anti-terrorism surveillance. They insist that little has been invested in the people who were most affected by the violence.

Ten years later, the fragile peace in Kenya was once again unsettled by a very divisive election. The post-election violence claimed over 1,200 lives and displaced an estimated 350,000 Kenyans from their homes. Eight months later, many are still living in fear of the unknown, or fear of their neighbors and fellow Kenyans. Suspicions and assumptions and accusations abound across ethnic, gender, and class lines. Many still do not know where to call “home.” Terror has returned to Kenya.

And the Kenyan police are still engaged in a manhunt for al Qaeda mastermind Fazul Abdullah. Fazul organized the 1998 attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, as well as the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned coastal resort, the Paradise Hotel in Kikambala. Fazul was nearly apprehended last week in Malindi, another coastal city, where he was detected communicating with al Qaeda associates by cell phone and email. He is believed to be planning yet another terrorist attack in Kenya.

May we all remember how the events in 1998 brought together a divided Kenya in acts of heroism, mercy and solidarity. May we remember those who gave their blood, sweat and tears to save lives, to honor the dead, and to heal the survivors. Perhaps these collective memories may be the inspiration needed to bring Kenyans together across their differences, and to remind Americans of our commitment to justice and equality.


*Catherine Cutcher is a U.S. Fulbright Student in Kenya. She is a Ph.D. Candidate from the Ohio University College of Education.

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

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Thanks for the Hilary-Obama piece

2008-08-06

Angela Brandon-Hall

The thoughts you put forward on Hilary's candidature, Barack, Hilary and the albatross, are what I have thought for some time but could not express them as eloquent as you. Thanks for your indepth analysis of the subject.

Obama and historic times

2008-08-06

Jon Santiago

Thanks for your insight - Obama at the crossroads of a revolution?. These are truly historic times in which we find ourselves. Obama and the constituency will have its hands full working towards the wave of change we still too crucially need in this nation. Obama's revolutionary change is more than skin deep and it will take more than just a victory in Washington. We must all see ourselves in the solution for a new nation to arise from this opportunity.

Walden Bello on African agriculture

2008-08-12

Rafiq Hajat

I've read Walden Bello's article, The destruction of African agriculture with keen interest and, whilst I concur with the gist, I am compelled to point out some factual inaccuracies and oversights on Malawi.

1) The amount of deaths from starvation in 2001-02 is approximated at 42,000 people and not i,500 as stated.

2) The maize shortage was indeed exacerabted by maize exports (approx 65000 tonnes) to Kenya nad other countries, at the behest of the IFIs, but it was further exacerbated by unscrupulous and corrupt speculation by local traders posing as fronts fro political elites - this is now popularly known as the 'maize scam'.

3) Whilst we did, indeed, enjoy a bumper crop last year, the much heralded maize exports to Zimbabwe and Lesotho appear to have been conducted without proper consideration for maintaining an adequate buffer stock to satisfy local needs, which is why people are suffering at present, with long queues waiting interminably to buy maize at official (lower) prices at the Agricultural Development & Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) Depots - and, after leaving empty handed, are forced to buy from private traders at MK3,500 (US$24) for a 50kg bag.whilst Ministers insist that there 'plenty' of maize available.

4) The subsidised fertiliser scheme, whilst conceptually laudable, has also produced an extremely fertile ground for corruption at all levels due to a weak and opaque management framework which provide virtually no window for independent monitoring. These factors are undermine the incredible potential to wrest the people of Malawi from the perpetual despair of grinding poverty and hunger.

African agriculture: More to the story

2008-08-12

Dan Taylor

A comment on The destruction of African agriculture. Any attempt to cover a very complex subject in the space of a few pages must inevitably be somewhat superficial in its analysis. Walter Bello’s ‘The ‘destruction of African agriculture’ is a good attempt to do so but suffers from a number of analytical shortfalls. While the article starts with biofuel production it does not argue against the disastrous impact that biofuels has had on the global food crisis, and glosses over the fact that it is one of the major contributing factors at the present time. But I do not want to dwell on this and must myself be subject to the same criticism of trying to say too much in too little words.

The conflation in this article of structural adjustment, state failure and the more recent policies of global institutions in which privatisation has been mandatory for the developing world (together with the deforestation for, and use of, food crops for biofuel production) does little to clarify our current food crisis or the destruction of Africa’s agriculture. Furthermore the fact that African governments do little to promote agriculture either by investing a higher proportion of their national budget in this sector, or by enacting policies that link agricultural production to environmental and biodiversity conservation, raises some important issues of governance and accountability to their poorer citizens. But all this is old news. The point that we wish to emphasise is that the rather predictable outcome of a privatisation process should not detract from the fact that business as usual, the industrial model of agriculture, is no solution – to repeat the findings of the latest IAASTAD Report - to the current food crisis.

In this regard we want to refer to the Malawi success story promoted in the article, one that is dependent on continued donor support, affordability in the face of growing fertiliser prices, and state patronage. In attributing the success of the scheme to farming inputs, insufficient attention has been paid to the fact that rainfall in Malawi over the past two agricultural seasons has been optimal. We are delighted that Malawi farmers were able to grow more food and our wish is for this to continue. At risk of being harbingers of doom, it is clear that it cannot and will not continue – the sad fact is that Africa is susceptible to floods and droughts. The droughts will return, if not next year, then the year after, or the year after that. And at this point of time the crops will again fail. In any event donors will most probably have changed their priorities by then, but farmers’ reliance on an unsustainable model of agriculture will remain.

So what about sustainability? Part of the food crisis is the high costs of an agricultural model dependent on monocultures and fossil fuels at the expense of the environment. The threat of global warming tells us that we need to reduce risk and diversify agricultural production away from a reliance on single crops towards a diversified agriculture that is more in keeping with agricultural systems which have served Africa for millennia and more closely mimic the natural ecosystems. Hence the use of readily available local resources using farmers own skills and knowledge – in other words a range of technologies, practices and systems that require few external inputs. The article shows little concern for the environment, while even the Malawi Government is recognising the unsustainbility of highly subsidised input packages in the current economic crisis. It is for this reason that it has asked us, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, to launch a national composting programme, to reduce reliance on an intervention that it cannot afford and neither can the farmers which it is designed to benefit.

So the World Bank, with regard to subsidies in this case, is right, even if it is not for the correct reasons. And while we must recognise the mistakes of the rather short-sighted policies of the past – of which structural adjustment provides us with a devastating example – we should look forwards not backwards. The positive role that the state must play should be re-emphasised in a policy context which recognises farmers as custodians of the environment and plays an affirming role in setting the policies that empower them while making them responsible for conserving the agricultural and biological diversity on which posterity depends. This is real agency for farmers as citizens and one in which they will no longer be subject to the fads and fashions of donor policies or the edicts of global multilateral institutions.

African agriculture - IFIs not to blame

2008-08-14

Regina Birner

I am wondering how much more evidence on the pre-structural adjustment era and on structural adjustment needs to be created before our friends from the NGO community stop telling this misconceived story-line that everything was just fine in African agriculture, until the bad World Bank and IMF pressured the poor African governments into dismantling their “elaborate system of public agencies that provided farmers with access to land, credit, insurance inputs and cooperative organization.” (quote from the article).

If these systems were working so well and reached the smallholders with all these services, then why didn’t Africa have a small-holder based Green Revolution prior to structural adjustment? Why did agriculture fail to even keep pace with population growth? There is ample evidence that many of these “elaborate systems” the article refers to mainly served elites who appropriated large rents rather than reaching smallholders. To name just one source, the book by Djurfeld et al. (2005) on “The African Food Crisis - Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution” provides ample evidence on the large-farmer bias and the rent-seeking by bureaucrats that characterized agricultural policies on the continent. Independent “cooperative organization” of farmers, for example, was destroyed by authoritarian governments long before structural adjustment (as in the case of coffee farmers in Ghana).

So yes, agricultural spending has been reduced under structural adjustment, but why is the author not asking in whose pockets most of that expenditure had ended up the first place? It is also important to consider what governments actually did--as compared what they were portraying to do--under structural adjustment. As Jayne et al. (2002:1967) show for Eastern and Southern Africa, “many of the most fundamental elements of the reform programs either remain unimplemented, were reversed within several years, or were implemented in such a way as to negate private sector investment incentives.”

Other authors (Cooksey, Pletcher) also provide evidence on the same point. And van de Walle shows that many African governments and elites were quite well able to protect their own interests under structural adjustment. I would be the last one to defend the Bank’s role under structural adjustment or thereafter, and I think it is very important that NGOs criticize the Bank and IFPRI for whatever goes wrong. For example, I think it took the Bank far too long to move away from the position that “all subsidies are bad” to considering “market-smart subsidies.” And one can certainly criticize IFPRI for starting to research this topic only now. However, I wonder when the NGO community will finally start to acknowledge that one can’t blame international organizations alone - African governments themselves—especially those who were not accountable to their own people--have played an important role in the destruction of African agriculture, as well.

* Regina Birner is Senior Research Fellow International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
(for references, see below)
References Cooksey,B. 2003. "Marketing Reform? The Rise and Fall of Agricltural Liberalization in Tanzania." Development Policy Review, Vol.21, pp.67-91, 2003. 21:57-91 Djurfeldt, G., Holmen, H., Jirström, M., & Larsson, R. (2005). The African Food Crisis - Lessons from the Asian Green Revolution. Wallingford, Oxon: CABI Publishing. Jayne,T.S., Govereh J., Mwanaumo A., Nyoro J.K., and Chapoto A. 2002. "False Promise or False Premise? The Experience of Food and Input Market Reform in Eastern and Southern Africa ." World Development. 30:1967-1985. Pletcher,J. 2000. "The Politics of Liberalizing Zambia's Maize Markets." World Development. 28:129-142. van de Walle,N. 2001. African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis. Cambridge University Press. New York.

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Celebrating the penis

2008-08-12

Mahlao Diaho

On the The case of the severed penis. I would like to acknowledge the initiative by the media to bring to everyone's attention to cases like this one where a woman decided to do something about sexual abuse, especially against a girl child. I do not mean to encourage women to take law into their hands, but to point to governments that there is a problem with the justice system if some women are going this far.

I'm yet to read on a daily basis about other cases of sexual abuse, where women have not taken drastic measures to break the silence. Does that mean they are less important or all of us should cut the penis and hope it will be eaten by dogs?! How can we punish perpetrators of sexual abuse without resorting to drastic mesures like castration,lest we are labelled as having 'penis envy'?

There have been a number of meetings where a problem of sexual abuse was discussed, but it seems attitudes of some men are not changing! I think we need to have a forum where we can draw attention to the "PENIS" itsself. Discuss different ways (positive) it can be used and celebrated instead of only looking at it as a weapon or a gun as in the Zuma case in South Africa.

The ANC and the passing of Irene Grootboom

2008-08-13

Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

On Saturday, August 9, a holiday marking the contribution of women to South Africa's liberation struggle, three members of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign joined close to 500 mourners at the funeral of Irene Grootboom held at the Wallacedene informal settlement.

Eight years ago, Irene Grootboom brought her communities case before the SA Constitutional Court, calling attention to the apalling conditions faced by the adults and children living in her community.

Her case resulted in a landmark judgment calling upon the state to design and implement "a comprehensive and co-ordinated programme to realise the right of access to adequate housing." On 30 July, 2008 she died in a shack, still waiting for the SA government to meet her constitutional right to a home.

At the funeral, AEC members listened to several friends, relatives, and pastors eulogize Grootboom as a powerful fighter who put the needs of others before her own. Several people even spoke passionately about the fact that they would not have been able to get access to a house if it had not been for her tireless efforts. And as a testament to her contribution to the community, the street on which she lived bears her name.

However, the AEC members found it sad that members of the ANC were asked to speak at her funeral, with no acknowledgement that this same political party was responsible for initially opposing her court case and later failed to provide her with a home, even after being instructed to do so by the highest court in the land.

It is a shame that Irene Grootboom's funeral was presided over not by friendly legal advocates or fellow community activists, but by the same political party that left her to spend her last years in a shack. Perhaps, she and tens of thousands of her fellow citizens would be alive today if they had the decent and affordable housing that is there right.

Don't undercut strategies that save lives!

2008-08-06

Judith Baker

This loose talk about AIDS can kill people - The fate of MDGs.

It is very dangerous to say without data that bed nets, circumcision, or other AIDS prevention methods don't work. That they might not work in very extreme situations is no reason to spread the false impression that they don't work.

Both DO reduce transmission when backed up by proper health care systems - and most AIDS cases are in peaceful countries like South Africa where prevention saves lives. Yes, work to settle and prevent war.

Yes, strengthen the networks which back up women's rights. Yes, criticize abstinence only strategies. But NO, don't undercut strategies which are saving lives every day.

The mind follows the nose

2008-08-05

Samuel Ebelle Kingue

In response to the reviews of Nyamnjoh's Mind Searching and A Nose for Money: It is clear that in our society of customs and traditions, the Rulers marginalized ordinary men and women. In such of struggle, Mind Searching becomes automatically, the main stream of thoughts and behaviors for A Nose for money.

As a wellness in our modern societies, is an alternative name for financial success; the naïves believe. It is then not unusual to see that in some people’s mind, a strong wish for more develops to be the most common practice, which can give to one the ability to experience the use of power; although, an overwhelming desire to have more in itself is not a drama, as long as it is honorably deserved and tends to serve a purpose. In a Cameroonian society, where no action is bravely taken against any form of corruption which sparkling all those who have no sense of social integrity, a desire of wholeness becomes the main objective for many, as oppose of any fair portion that each individual deserves. And the fact that humdingers grab hold of the power over others is the consequence of our everlasting suffering. The search for a shelter then supplies two means of support; hypocrisy for some and passivity for others.

In my personal view, Mind Searching and A Nose for Money complement each other, and expose the “cliché” of our societies build on strong believe of human’s inequality. The two evoke the main factors of humans’ moral and physical suffering, and denounce the ability of the upper-class to support the cause of their own irresponsibility. It is then true that a strong revolution is the only alternative to normalize the will, because it is acknowledge that if you heat a strong alloy of iron above a specific temperature, it could be easily shaped.

Africa blogging roundup 14th August 2008

2008-08-13

Sokari Ekine

Sokari Ekine reviews a selection of African blogs:

Gay Uganda
Kubatana Net
The Advocacy Project
The Glory O’ Nigeria
Mostly Maurice
Black Looks
Gay Uganda
http://gayuganda.blogspot.com/2008/08/moment-of-insight.html

Gay Uganda in this powerful post, explains why he has chosen to attend a meeting of religious leaders and members of the LGBTI community to discuss HIV/AIDS. He speaks of his decision to speak out against hate speech, his loss of faith and the bitterness of his lover towards the Catholic church.
“I talked about my loss of faith, a subject I didn’t want to touch, but touched, in the heat of the moment. I talked of the anger in the community when the archbishop intimated we wanted to kill him. Yes, we do want to kill him, because of his lies, and his hate of us. That may be true now, it was not true before…..
I talked of my lover’s bitterness. He is gay, and a catholic, and with the siege on his faith by our religious leaders, he is no longer attending mass. And seeks a congregation that affirms him. And though in my pride I refuse to acknowledge any pain on my part, his pain does touch me.”

Kubatana Net
http://kubatanablogs.net/kubatana/?p=741

Kubatana writes on the need for women to be included in discussions over the future of Zimbabwe and the formation of a new group “Envision Zimbabwe Women’s Trust” whose objectives are to
“to agitate for accountability through seeking dialogue with existing power structures in order to address the various challenges affecting Zimbabweans, especially women. The group is also driven by a desire to bring perpetrators of violence to justice.
Envision Zimbabwe will be central in the process of conflict transformation through playing the intermediary role of presenting issues on the ground to relevant authorities as well as brokering the space for dialogue among all relevant stakeholders that is crucial for the realization of resolution to conflict.”

The Advocacy Project