Current Issue

African liberation Movements and the ‘end of history’

2008-10-02

Henning Melber

When liberation movements take power, their governments are often marked by military mindsets, categorising people as winners and losers and operating along the lines of command and obedience. Such trends are evident in southern Africa. Democratic discourse in search of the common good would look quite different.

A knee-jerk reaction of ‘Tiers-Mondisme’ is to show solidarity with the struggle for freedom among the ‘wretched of the earth’. Sometimes, struggles are glorified, as was the case back in the 1960s. Frantz Fanon’s book ‘Les damnés de la terre’ (the wretched of the earth) was paradigmatic. His manifesto became a call to battle for the Algerian resistance movement against France, the colonial power.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the introduction. He was quite selective in his argumentation, tending in some spots to glorify violence as an act of emancipation. Indeed, he seemed to see violence as a purifying force that would turn the colonised into full citizens. Fanon himself however spoke out against excessive post-colonial authoritarianism. In penetrating analyses and withering criticism, he described what he had seen, mainly in West Africa, up to his death in 1961.

Fanon critisised the authoritarian attitudes of the African elite, which usurped young states in the course of decolonisation, and their abuses of power when securing privileges for themselves and turning entire states into instruments of control. His early warnings went largely unheeded, however. Not until the 1990s, when the shortcomings of revolutionary movements could no longer be ignored, did Fanon’s analyses come back into the foreground.

VICTORY IN PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE?

When liberation movements in the so-called third world took up arms, they enjoyed support from the socialist countries as well as solidarity movements in the West. Organisations such as the PAIGC, MPLA, and FRELIMO challenged Portugal’s colonial power. Their resilience in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Angola, and Mozambique even had repercussions in the Lisbon metropole. They triggered the Carnation Revolution, bringing an end to Portuguese colonialism in Africa in the mid-1970s.

In Rhodesia – today’s Zimbabwe – the ZANU and ZAPU liberation movements fought the white minority regime under Ian Smith, which had declared unilateral Independence (UDI) from the British Empire. Colonial rule came to an end in 1980 when the Lancaster House Agreement was signed and ZANU subsequently won the elections.

In Namibia, the United Nations negotiated a transition period for independence, which was ultimately implemented in 1989–90. South Africa had occupied the country in violation of international law. SWAPO fought against this illegal occupation for a quarter of a century.

Four years later, the Namibian model of controlled change helped South Africans hold their first free elections, which were won by the ANC. The former liberation movement thus assumed political responsibility, and it did so in a legitimate fashion.

One must bear in mind that armed resistance was part of the solution both in South Africa and Namibia. It led to negotiations for transitional arrangements towards majority rule. The compromises required from all sides contributed to the transitional periods working out. At the same time, a decidedly patriotic form of writing history turned the independence struggle soon thereafter into a myth.

ZIMBABWEAN TRAUMA

It bears repetition that the unscrupulously violent character of Zimbabwe’s ZANU regime already revealed itself in the early to mid-1980s, when a special unit killed an estimated 20,000 people, mainly in Matabeleland, where the opposition ZAPU had most of its supporters.

The soldiers of the fifth brigade trained by North Korea, took no prisoners. They killed, tortured, raped and humiliated anyone who seemed suspicious (and it was enough to be Ndebele); men, women, and even children. The only organisation to protest was the local catholic church, which raised its voice to protect the victims. The rest of the world, including those who had originally shown solidarity, had little to say; after all, it simply couldn’t be true.

The violence did not stop until ZAPU agreed to sign a pact with the ruling party. ZANU basically took them over. None of this hurt the Mugabe government’s bilateral and multilateral standing. To the contrary: up to the late 1990s, Zimbabwe was considered a success story, an example of successful transition. Indeed, in 1994 Queen Elizabeth II personally bestowed knighthood upon President Mugabe, who had assumed comprehensive executive powers in the meantime. Not until June of this year was his knighthood revoked.

WOUNDS OLD AND NEW

When a new opposition party, the MDC, took to the political stage in Zimbabwe and turned out to be a serious competitor at the end of the 1990s, the ‘Chimurenga’ (struggle) became a permanent institution. Violence became the customary response to political protest. As political power shifted away from Mugabe after he lost a referendum in 2000, his regime became only more violent.

In 2005, Mugabe and his people launched Operation ‘Murambatsvina’ (Drive Out Trash) in raids on pockets of opposition in Harare and other major towns: more than 2 million people are estimated to have lost their already meagre livelihoods in the process. There is no need to delve into the recent escalation of violence, since the election troubles were reported in detail worldwide.

An estimated third of Zimbabwe’s people has fled the country for political and economic reasons; from exile, they try to support family members who have stayed home. All of this is sad proof that life under a liberation movement is not automatically better than it was under colonialism. The human-rights violations of SWAPO have also been downplayed. In the 1980s, the organisation imprisoned thousands of its own members in dungeons in southern Angola, accusing them of spying on behalf of South Africa. These people lost their liberty in spite of never having been proven guilty; indeed, they were not even brought to trial. Many of them did not survive the torture. Those released are scorned even today.

It could have been different in South Africa. The ANC government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission talked about human rights violations committed by its own members. But the final report containing these findings was never published in its original form. So far, ANC omissions have not been discussed openly.

VICTIMS BECOME PERPETRATORS

There is nothing new about military movements that are supposedly justified in ethical and moral terms quickly losing their legitimacy. Since the French Revolution, liberators have often turned into oppressors, victims into perpetrators. It is not unusual for a new regime to quickly resemble an old one. That has happened time and again around the world.

The Indian psychologist and sociologist Ashis Nandy, one of the founders of critical post-colonial studies, has dealt with this issue in depth. The Intimate Enemy, his book of 1983, discusses how liberators tend to reproduce the past rather than offering genuine alternatives. In this light, the “anti-imperialist” Robert Mugabe turns out to be merely the final executor of the policies of the racist colonists Cecil Rhodes and Ian Smith. Armed combat merely created new repressive institutions of the state for the dominant group within anti-colonial resistance. Former PLO activist Yezid Sayigh argued 1997 in Armed Struggle and the Search for State that this was also happening in the Palestinian liberation movement.

Such power structures often revolve around individual commanders who act to the benefit of their crony supporters. Resistance movements normally adopt rough survival strategies and techniques while fighting an oppressive regime. That culture, unfortunately, takes root and is permanently nurtured. In sum, it becomes questionable whether there is a true difference between the political systems they manage to throw out and what they establish in their place.

In May 1990 Albie Sachs had already spoken of this trend in respect to South Africa. In a lecture at the University of the Western Cape, this South African lawyer, who was crippled by a parcel bomb in Mozambique during his 24-year exile, expressed his doubts about ANC activists being ready for freedom. He worried about the habits they had cultivated. As Sachs put it, the culture and discipline of resistance may have served a survival strategy in the underground, but these skills were certainly not those of free citizens.

Maybe this is why Nelson Mandela became a global icon in his lifetime; the many years he spent in prison kept him away from the daily intrigues and power plays prevalent in an organised liberation movement. Mandela preserved a spirit of human compassion and tolerance that a life of struggle and exile might not have afforded him.

This may sound cynical but might be close to reality. Jacob Zuma, a product of the struggle, cultivates a ‘Zulu warrior culture’. He emerged as a populist alternative to the more intellectual, somewhat aloof Thabo Mbeki, and will probably soon be South Africa’s next president. Zuma has an international reputation for various allegations of corruption, charges of sexual abuse and martial rhetoric (his favourite song is ‘Bring me my machine gun’).

Disappointed by the limits of the liberation they have experienced, many people are looking for substitute saviours. Fortunately, the number of those for whom fundamental values of democracy, liberty and human rights matter more than submissive loyalty to an organisation is growing.

Raymond Suttner is an example. He used to operate underground in South Africa as a member of the ANC, and spent years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner. As a member of parliament and later as ambassador, he represented the ANC government before returning to the academic world from which he originated. In November 2005, he pointed out that ANC ideology and rhetoric do not distinguish between the liberation movement and the people. He thus argues that the liberation movement is a prototype of a state within the state, one that sees itself as the only legitimate source of power.

‘END OF HISTORY’

As we now know, post-colonial life looks a lot like the colonial era did in respect to day-to-day life, the reason being that socialisation factors and attitudes from armed struggle have largely shaped the new political leaders’ understanding of politics, and their idea of how to wield power.

In governmental office, liberation movements tend to mark an ‘end of history’. Any political alternative that does not emerge from within them will not be acceptable. This attitude explains the strong sense of camaraderie between the Mugabe regime and the governments of Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa over many years. Typcially, any political alternative cropping up in these countries as a result of disillusionment with post-colonial life will be discredited as part of an imperialist conspiracy designed to sabotage national independence.

These governments never seem to even consider the possibility that their own shortcomings may be the reason why opposition forces are becoming stronger. Instead, they only think along the militaristic dichotomy of friend/foe, leaving no legitimate alternative to their own hegemony.

At the same time, the sad truth is that the opposition forces that do stand up against such governments tend to only add to the problem, rather than to provide a solution. All too often, they only want to share the spoils of the state apparatus and its bureaucracy among their cronies once they are strong enough to constitute a true power option. Again, the relevant categories of thought are only winners and losers.

Democracy however is about something completely different: compromise, and even the search for consensus, in pursuit of the public good. To achieve that, one does not need military mindsets, but rather a broad political debate.

* Henning Melber is Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala, Sweden. This text was published first in Development and Cooperation, October 2008.

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

The weight of ‘change’?: AFRICOM and the US presidential election

2008-10-02

Beth Tuckey

With the US-backed AFRICOM programme launched this week, Beth Tuckey exposes the limitations of plan conceived more for the protection of American military interests than African social development. With both Barack Obama and John McCain content to fully endorse President Bush’s existing plan, the author demonstrates how both the Democrat and Republican campaigns are sacrificing important dialogue on AFRICOM for the sake of remaining neutral, bipartisan, and uncontroversial.
In many ways, the outward tone of US foreign policy toward Africa transcends partisanship. While policies concerning the Middle East and Asia are often highly politicised, developing countries in Africa and many in Latin America tend to receive similar public treatment from both Republicans and Democrats. This general trend is reflected in many of the Africa policy proposals by the McCain and Obama campaigns, each eager to win the moral vote by supporting HIV/AIDS treatment programs and ending the genocide in Darfur.

But behind the public remarks about mutual partnership and common ideals lies a foreign policy that sustains the Bush approach to global interaction; defense heavy, diplomacy light. It goes beyond the bipartisan provision of basic services and promotion of peace in Africa and toward a more strategic narcissism about the role of the US in Africa in the coming years. The new US military command for Africa, AFRICOM, became an independent, fully-functioning body on 1 October, one month before the 2008 presidential election. If presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain truly wish to campaign as ‘agents of change’ or ‘mavericks’, they must insist on an alternate strategy for approaching the African continent.

AFRICOM, Donald Rumsfeld's final plan as Secretary of Defense, will be established just before President Bush leaves and will give unprecedented access to the military on the continent. It is one of the final battles in the Pentagon’s coup over the State Department, allowing the US to continue its ideological war against terrorism and to use soldiers to secure oil supplies. In many ways, it is the Bush agenda in the Middle East relocated onto African soil.

Despite this, top Africa policy advisors from both campaigns said at a forum in Washington last week that they wish to help AFRICOM realise its full potential. Their rationale is that it will help control violence on a continent that is in desperate need of peace and stability. Never mind that AFRICOM’s mandate involves direct military-to-military training and equipping, rather than support for an African Union (AU) that conducts multilateral peacekeeping missions. Never mind that AFRICOM’s stated goals involve protecting American interests, rather than ensuring that the African people’s primary needs and desires are met. Never mind that many African governments and African civil society strongly oppose AFRICOM. No, the next administration will ignore all of that in the blind belief that the US can unilaterally bring peace and prosperity to the African continent.

The fact that both campaigns have made an effort to distance themselves from Bush’s mistakes in the Middle East and yet also endorse a policy that is so clearly a repetition of the current administration’s ideology is deeply troubling. Ultimately, it legitimises Bush’s strategic interests in Africa rather than pursuing a new, just, and diplomatic foreign policy. It shows that both Obama and McCain believe that the current US approach to Africa is the right one and that unless it affects popular opinion, perhaps Bush’s AFRICOM isn’t so bad.

After all, they praise nearly every other Bush initiative in Africa, good and bad – from the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) – as well as previous administration’s initiatives such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The attitude is really one of ‘any attention to Africa is good attention’, rather than ‘yes, we are providing aid to Africa but perhaps standing up a military command undermines our ability to be effective partners.’ Each of the campaigns is sacrificing important dialogue on AFRICOM for the sake of remaining neutral, bipartisan, and uncontroversial. Any political agenda that either the Republicans or Democrats may have in Africa remains quiet, and until the American people voice their concerns, it will likely remain so.

Ultimately, what Barack Obama or John McCain decide to do with AFRICOM within the first year of their presidency will reveal a great deal about the extent to which these candidates are willing to divorce themselves from Bush’s legacy. Citizens should pressure them on this issue; AFRICOM is not simply another feel-good, do-good Africa policy. Its roots are in the neoconservative agenda that has expanded the US military around the world and threatens diplomacy and development. Both campaigns have expressed a desire to reinstate diplomacy in US foreign policy, but their tacit approval of AFRICOM counteracts that goal. Obama and McCain cannot float a benevolent Africa policy with a weight like AFRICOM pulling it down.

The establishment of AFRICOM reveals a certain self-interested neglect for a foreign policy that works for all people. Yes, the next president must be able to protect US citizens, but he must not compromise the rights of others who will inevitably fall victim to a continuation of the last eight years of US interaction with the world. At the very core, it is Bush’s Middle East all over again, and for two candidates who are running on ‘change,’ a different approach is strongly advised.


* Beth Tuckey is the associate director of Program Development and Policy at Africa Faith and Justice Network (AFJN) in Washington, DC.

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

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Unchallenged disparities: gender and socio-spiritual disparities during Ramadan

2008-10-02

Salma Maoulidi

As Muslims globally come to the end of the holy month of Ramadan, Salma Maoulidi explores the continuing spiritual and secular inequalities experienced by Muslim Tanzanian women. Focussing on the gulf between spiritual goals and worldly reality, the absence of an effective redistributive alms system, and the differing realities faced by female and male followers, the author questions the extent to which a symbolic ritual of deprivation and sacrifice has been turned into a calculated wealth generating opportunity.
Millions of Muslims globally are nearing the last stretch of observing the obligatory fast that occurs each year during the ninth months of the Islamic Calendar, Ramadan. In the past most saw this time as a deeply spiritual time, a time in which to reconnect at the deepest level with the human state on the one hand and much higher spiritual state on the other through acts of physical discipline and spiritual meditation.

Increasingly however Ramadan is seen as the only time in the year where Muslims are urged to be on their best behaviour. In stressing the importance of good behaviour over this period, one of the pre-Ramadan sermons I heard recently even seemed to imply such conduct to be less relevant during other months. Appointed and self-appointed religious representatives entice believers to observe magic formulas guaranteed to attain maximum rewards at this time. Surely only a fool would forgo the perks available in Ramadan: the first 10 days are those for Rehma (bounty); the following 10 are for Mughfira (repentance and forgiveness) and; the last 10 are for Shifaa (reprive from the hellfire; Itqun-minnanaar).

From the last Friday before Ramadan officially starts to the Eid Prayer (which concludes the end of the month of fasting and the beginning of a new lunar month), believers are doused with sermons urging reverence and selflessness in promise of bounteous reward. Comprises one of the five articles of faiths, the fast is in essence more than an act of devotion. It is a spiritual expression of a serious political question, highlighting social inequalities whether on the basis of income, class or ability.

Thus on the one hand the believer is grateful for the bounties bestowed on them while all the while experiencing what it means to go without. This personal experience with deprivation aims at opening the believer’s consciousness about what it is to be destitute and hungry, an experience that is conceived to make them more compassionate towards those less fortunate. Hence even those unable to observe the fast for medical reasons, old age or infirmity are urged to instead feed the hungry at least one meal daily for the duration of the month.

I do not wish to engage in a sermon of my own about the merits of fasting. What I want to do is to be build on the premise I offer on the significance of Ramadan to draw attention to the stark contrast between what fasting should attempt to achieve and what the reality actually is. I speak to these 'illusions' because I believe that in order to have meaning fasting should not solely be approached as a ritual but as a political statement of the values we propound and promote as believers, as humans, as citizens.

What I speak to demands that we go beyond understanding one's engagement with faith or religion as only a matter confined to those purporting to intervene at an individual level devoid of social realities and experiences. Rather, a religious experience should also speak to larger social issues and causes beyond the promise of scriptural salvation and rituals: it should form the basis of a movement for social transformation in a manner conceived by social justice advocacy as a driving ideology.


WHY IS THIS NECESSARY FOR MUSLIMS?

A daily food price soar is now almost at the onset of Ramadan, effectively making this month the most expensive of the year in household food budgets. Indeed, one fish as big as one's palm in the central market in Zanzibar now costs between 2500-3500 shillings (approximately two and half to three and a half dollars) while one plantain can cost between 500-2000 shillings. A bunch of four or so cassava or yam sticks costs about 1000 shillings. Mineral water has gone up, as has the famous fruit juice and ice cream by Azam.

Yet local incomes are well below a living wage and it is difficult to see how in these circumstances a believer can honestly and adequately provide for his or her family during this month. In much the same vein, it is not clear how one can extend a sense of generosity to others when their own personal needs are far from being met.

Who is responsible for this market ruse? How is a symbolic ritual of deprivation and sacrifice being turned into a calculated wealth generating opportunity? Interestingly, those who engage in and benefit from the price hikes are Muslims who also claim to be observing the fast on the same terms as other believers, that is seeking spiritual absolution from worldly vices. In practice they show little compassion for those who have to pay high prices for food commodities or for those less well off, who may in addition have large families to feed. In fact during Ramadan a large consignment of expired foodstuff on the market was destroyed indicating the level of greed prevailing during the month of Touba (repentance)!

The adverse economic conditions lead many people to fail to observe the fast. How can they fast when they are not guaranteed a meal a day? Significantly, how can they fast when the meal that they may receive is nutritionally substandard? Those who speak to the medical benefits of fasting are clear that fasting is beneficial to people in the right state of mind and health not people who are mal- or under-nourished.

A few years ago people broke fast out in the open and every passer-by by would be invited to partake in the meal. It was also common just before the mat was laid out for dishes to be exchanged from one household to another. Often this would involve delicacies associated with the holy month such as vipopo, kaimati, uji wa shurba, chila or viazi vikuu kwa utumbo. People are less generous today. With most are barely putting enough on the table, no one wants their neighbour to know what they are having for breakfast. Foods that were previously anathema during Ramadan like rice and maize meal are now commonplace, not only during the late meal but also during breakfast.

Religious personalities who are often invited to big iftaar affairs speak out sparingly about such inequalities. At best they urge food vendors against raising food prices but rarely do they go beyond an appeal to make the price issue a question of equity and resource imbalance between the haves and have-nots, between global and local markets. Perhaps their privileged status during Ramadan and during social functions removes them from the common folk experience with hunger and with deprivation.

The government too has been unable (or unwilling) to regulate price hikes during religious holidays but particularly during Ramadan. Instead there has emerged a class of well-to-do businesspeople who use Ramadan (and likewise Fridays) for publicity. They mobilise huge numbers of beggars under the pretext of giving charity. Effectively they perpetuate poverty by making it 'sexy' to those who feel entitled to handouts as a result of being 'orphaned', 'widowed' or 'poor'. Accordingly there has emerged a class of charity prowlers who make it their business to scout the homes and businesses of big names to collect envelopes and food rations.

The manner in which alms is administered by these rich families renders redundant the concept of respecting another's human dignity and confidentiality as an integral value in who you give to and how you give. Rather they engage in an arrogant display of wealth with very little intention to make a difference to a deserving case of need, with people queuing outside for hours before they are attended to.

Because there is no system for tracking aid to particular families or one to address the structural causes of economic and social inequalities, this ineffective and unsustainable manner of helping out the less fortunate persists. It is telling that these individuals rarely give to more empowering and sustainable causes to end poverty when asked, or that their philanthropy extends only to handouts in doggy bags.

Equally important to highlight is the religious experience for women during Ramadan. Like their male counterparts women too seek all the blessings associated with the month. Yet it is clear that the experience of women and men during Ramadan differ starkly, though few speak out on these as if they are normal and natural. Consequently, believers and preachers go through Ramadan not seeking to upset the status quo. If anything, they boldly perpetuate it.

As already mentioned Ramadan is a time for spiritual reconnection. Most people thus spend their time attending religious forums (darsa) or in deep mediation. In addition to the fast and giving alms others perform supplementary prayers performed mainly at night. However, it is clear that only men have exclusive privilege to this spiritual connection as if both men and women were to partake in the same then there would be no meal at sunset.

To allow ample time for the gender division labour and duties during Ramadan the work day in Zanzibar has been reduced by one full hour. Most men, however, clean up after work and attend religious forums that begin after lunch and go on until late afternoon just before the sunset prayer. When they come home they expect food to be on the table. They eat first and hurriedly race against time for the announcement of the last prayer of the day. After the prayer they may stay on for additional Ramadan prayer (Taraweeh), after which they may remain outside fraternising with friends and colleagues before retiring for the day.

The spiritual dimension of women during Ramadan has already been cut out. Above all it is telling how many weddings take place just before Ramadan, a trend dubbed the 'hearth bride'. Most women, if employed, will spend the whole day at work, and then come back home to begin the preparations for the evening meal. A woman may have an opportunity to read some passages of the Qu’ran before beginning preparations for the late night meal. Clearly their devotion during Ramadan is in service to others while men are encouraged to think selfishly only about their own salvation.

This is an arrangement that is supported by most religious figures undoubtedly because it proves convenient for men's ability to achieve spiritual connection. Women on the other hand don't need this spiritual connection as their religious devotion is limited to cooking for others and remaining confined to the home where it is easier to justify their continued drudgery resulting from their productive and reproductive roles. For this reason the attendance of women at Taraweh prayers is low even in women's mosques.

Thus religion and religious worship is once more used to justify and maintain inequality, in this case gender inequality. More troubling is the fact that many women are pushed to internalise this feeling of inferiority not only in daily but also in religious life. Through selective interpretations and propaganda women are made to feel lesser than human, with religious edicts no longer encompassing the religious community in its entirety but rather serving as rules carved out on the basis of sex differences.

During Ramadan I become all too aware of what I am denied as a female follower of a religion whose congregation is increasingly intolerant of women as spiritual beings and only views women in their sexual and reproductive roles. It also makes me very aware of the limited spaces available to point out such anomalies. Certainly, it is our failure to give meaning to what we preach and say we believe that allows for such disparities to remain unchallenged, just as it is our inability to comprehend the spirit of Ramadan (and religious observance generally) that confines us to rituals as the ultimate expression of who we are and what we believe.


* Salma Maoulidi is a lawyer with a passionate interest in human rights and women's personal law, with many years experience of development work in Tanzania. In 2000 she was among the founders of the Sahiba Sisters Foundation, an organisation created to build the leadership and organisational capacities of Muslim women and youth.


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

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Can Africa’s new foundations break the dependency cycle?

2008-09-17

Bhekinkosi Moyo

In a review of the current state of philanthropy on the African continent, Bhekinkosi Moyo argues that African organisations are becoming progressively more autonomous from northern donors and able to pursue their own agendas. With organisations such as TrustAfrica and the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) taking the lead on independent, local solutions, the challenge remains to take a conscious political step to build the sustainability, independence and autonomy of civil society across the continent.
This article attempts to answer three related questions. The first is whether new African philanthropic foundations such as TrustAfrica and the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) have the clout needed to raise money from the North and use it on their own terms to set their own development agenda. Put differently, can these institutions engage on equal terms with their northern partners? The second relates to dependency, which has characterised relations between the non-profit sector and its donors, particularly from the North. Can the new institutions break the dependency cycle? The third question is whether these institutions and the new generation of African philanthropists will break with or recreate power imbalances that have existed over the years between northern donors and southern recipients.

These questions are tackled by reference to TrustAfrica and AWDF, partly because these foundations were established to change perceptions about Africa and to begin to imagine an Africa capable of deciding her own destiny, but also because the two foundations have over the past five years been involved in work that has sought to address these very issues.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN AFRICA AND THE WORLD

Can they do what is expected of them? Let’s examine the background. Globally, it is worth noting that philanthropy has undergone a number of recent radical changes. The current buzzword is ‘philanthrocapitalism’, a shift from the traditional foundation model to using business techniques to address social challenges. In Africa this has not yet been a major issue, but indications are that soon there will be a proliferation of creative capitalists. South African Mark Shuttleworth is one who springs to mind.

But there have also been major philanthropic developments in Africa. Whereas yesterday it was the powerful northern foundations that drove the development agenda, today the tide is turning. New African foundations are at the forefront of development initiatives and are setting priorities. There is also a steadily increasing number of foundations set up by rich Africans right across the continent and a proliferation of foundations set up by former heads of states, sports men and women, musicians and other celebrities. Developments like these have raised the hope that resources can in the long run be mobilized from within Africa. The platform for a collective African voice on many of these issues has been created and perceptions have begun to shift from negative to positive.

LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD

So far, so good, but in the current aid landscape, African foundations will have to continue raising donor aid, at least in the short to medium term, both from the North and from Africa. At this juncture, it is not the source of money that is an issue but rather the terms under which aid is given and its subsequent use. Can the new African foundations mobilise resources from their northern counterparts while engaging with them on an equal basis? Arguably, the very emergence and existence of these institutions is an indication of their capacity to do so.

RECOGNISING THAT AFRICA’S CHALLENGES SHOULD BE ADDRESSED BY AFRICANS

Perceptions about Africa are slowly changing in the donor world and it is now widely accepted that there can be no sustainable development if resources are not moved closer to the hands of local foundations and institutions. Africans, in short, need to address Africa’s challenges. Support for local philanthropic institutions is crucial, and there is evidence that this has already started. The very creation of these foundations is testimony to the fact that their northern partners think they have the capacity and legitimacy to raise resources and to use them to support locally set priorities. The Ford Foundation, for example, has sought to build local capacity to set local agendas and seek local solutions through many projects such as the International Fellows Program and its Philanthropy Initiative in Africa. TrustAfrica is a product of that process. Comic Relief (UK) has a direct funding partnership with AWDF and with the Nelson Mandela Foundation. This demonstrates an appreciation of local capacities. There is still some way to go, of course, hence the need to raise awareness about supporting local philanthropic institutions.

LETTING GRANTEES SHAPE THE AGENDA

In a way, therefore, TrustAfrica and AWDF have already begun leveling the playing field between North and South. Both were established to serve as platforms for Africans to set their own agenda. TrustAfrica, for example, has since its early days as the Special Initiative for Africa sought to seek local solutions to African challenges. One of the principal methods it used was to convene at least three continent-wide meetings between 2001 and 2006 around citizenship and identity, regional integration, and peace and security. Because of these consultations, TrustAfrica was mandated to work on these thematic areas. This was further consolidated by more consultations in the period 2007-08 around these themes and others such as religious pluralism, African regional organisations, and philanthropy in Africa. As a result, TrustAfrica has supported priorities that are set by different stakeholders across the continent. With this mandate and scope of work, TrustAfrica can legitimately engage with northern donors on equal terms.

The same approach is used by AWDF in its quest to strengthen women’s movements through a feminist philanthropy agenda. AWDF is a social change organisation established for and by women to mobilise resources and address structural issues that confront women. Most of AWDF’s work is done through grantee constituencies, women’s networks and other coalitions. Hence there is a focus on capacity building and peer-learning among AWDF grantees. The result is that AWDF’s thematic areas, just like those of TrustAfrica, are shaped by grantees.

DISPELLING THE UNTRUTHS AND THE HALF-TRUTHS

Another way of leveling the playing field is through the production of credible knowledge, and both institutions are concerned about the myths and untruths that are associated with Africa. A number of research studies are being commissioned and conducted to correct misconceptions about Africa and African giving. The ‘State of Philanthropy Initiative’, for example, is one such project championed by TrustAfrica.

Challenges still abound, however. For example, there is still a tendency to treat African foundations as grant-makers or intermediaries. Although grant-making is their function, it is not their identity. Beyond intermediary roles, these institutions add value by the nature of their work, most of which is conducted with partners, networks and coalitions right across the continent and beyond.

The other challenge is that there is a lack of formal infrastructure to support African philanthropy. However, there is a move by TrustAfrica and AWDF to establish by 2009 an African grant-makers’ association. Through this network, African institutions will be able to leverage funding as well as engage with other global philanthropic associations.

THE DEPENDENCY QUESTION

The question of dependency is one that these institutions have begun addressing. Although they still raise their funding primarily from outside, there is a strong drive towards raising resources from Africa as well. AWDF, for example, launched a $15 million endowment fund campaign in South Africa in November 2007. A significant amount of money was raised at the event, and today the campaign has two paths: the legacy fund and the ‘seizing the moment fund’. Increasingly, AWDF hopes to raise more resources from Africa.

Likewise TrustAfrica is developing a fundraising strategy that will raise resources from African professionals in different parts of the continent as well as exploring the possibilities of airline contributions to bolster its endowment fund.

TOWARDS A DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIP?

The concentration of power and resources in particular organisations and individuals affects the way they view those that they support. In the quest to address issues of social change, traditional philanthropic institutions, like venture philanthropists and other types of philanthropist, have failed to change the status quo. It is too early to tell whether the new African institutions will at last transform social relations and tackle head-on the supremacy embedded in all forms of philanthropy. It is worth noting one thing however. The very emergence of these new institutions in Africa is a step towards developing a different and unique philanthropy in the continent that also shares in the universality of other philanthropies. The new African philanthropists need to be aware that the resources at their disposal might tempt them to set agendas for their recipients and recreate imbalances. If they are not alive to this danger, their added value will be diminished and the hype around them will become ‘hot air’. These foundations must thus make a conscious political step to build the sustainability, independence and autonomy of civil society in Africa.

* Bhekinkosi Moyo is Research Fellow at TrustAfrica. Email moyo@trustafrica.org He wishes to acknowledge the input of Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, AWDF Executive Director.

* This article is reproduced with the kind permission of the editors of Alliance Magazine where it first appeared under the title"Can the new African foundations level the playing field?"

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

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Ethiopia at the millennium plus one

2008-10-02

Mammo Muchie

A year on from Ethiopia’s new millennium, Mammo Muchie highlights the country’s historic role as the cradle of African nationalism. Arguing that reparations remain due from the period of fascist Italy’s occupation in the 1930s, Muchie stresses that it is only through rediscovering her essential civic-nationalism that Ethiopia will locate her glory and re-energise African nationalism.
Exactly a year ago, Ethiopia said goodbye to the old millennium and welcomed a new one. Today, this 11 September, 2009, starts Ethiopia’s long walk to a third millennium. It remains open whether this third millennium will prove to be a period in which problems are resolved, people are fed and cared for, and the nation is free and united under the principle of civic-nationalism and patriotism. Is it the time for the making or re-making of Ethiopia as a nation to go strong, free and united with hope for the vast expansion of its possibilities?

Time to end the politics that keeps the country humiliated with unending hunger, disease and ignorance. Time to end the scar of ethnic divisions, human-made disasters, knowledge deficits and rule by tyranny! Time to create a sustainable political system where open, transparent, just, free and honest governance reigns supreme across the breadth and depth of the land by employing principles of solidarity, justice and the expansion of human rights, and not the crazy scramble of using anything and any means to seize power for self-interest, for the individual or a section of a community or a portion of the people, even if this means breaking and degrading Ethiopia as a united entity, identity, history, civilisation and nation!

This is indeed time to pause and reflect whether Ethiopia can move in a new direction or remain on the beaten path of the past and its present divisive trajectory. This new beginning at this significant moment can refresh us with the ululation of ‘inquitatash!’ (‘happy new Ethiopian year’) during this millennium plus one day, means making a new millennial new year resolution for all Ethiopians to come to a historic unity over the defining principle that matters to Ethiopia’s timeless survival, that is, to upholding Ethiopian nationalism as a defence of African national dignity and the African national spirit, national purpose and national passion. Today, nothing less and nothing more is imperative than standing for Ethiopian nationalism as the cradle of African nationalism. Ethiopians, East, West, North, Central and South must unite under one civic-Ethiopian patriotic and national purpose, strategy, passion and project.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION NO. 1: DEBUNK ALL POLITICS THAT FRAGMENTS AND DIVIDES ETHIOPIA

It is ironic to see how self-absorbed and inward looking Ethiopians have become specially those who dabble in politics, and who fight for power to pursue one or another political opinion, position, project or programme. Ethiopia has suffered from a politics that destroys what it should use as a resource to build itself and African dignity. Its history should not be rejected by those who put first their self- or group interest. Its history must be appropriated properly and justly. It must not be condemned. It must be used as something from which to learn. Today’s generation must have an intelligent commerce with the past. Successive political groups have railed against Ethiopia’s historical achievement that other fellow Africans respect, instead of using it as a resource to build a united future for all the people living within it.

It is indeed odd to find some Ethiopians who fight the idea and reality of Ethiopia and who carelessly undermine a nation that has been seen by Africans as the birthplace of their nationalism to advance forward African peoples’ sacred and still incomplete quest to reclaim their humanity, justice, full rights, dignity, solidarity and liberty.

The best present for all Ethiopians today is to send the message loud and clear to all near and far: Some Ethiopians who deny their ‘Ethiopian-ness’, who fight, undermine, ethnicise, vernacularise, racialise, segment, fragment and divide Ethiopia are not just undermining their nation and the history that Africans have used from that Ethiopian data to feed their national imagination. They must be informed with clarity and confidence that they are indeed undermining the African nationalist imagination by attacking the Ethiopian effort to attain historic national unity from its diversity. They are undermining the birthplace of African nationalism to quote Africa’s own tried and proved son, Nelson Mandela. They are undermining indeed the role played by Ethiopia in constituting the historic unity of African nationalism.

Today the Ethiopians from Eritrea, Tigray, Gambella, to the Oromo lands and so on, who share the collective historical achievement of Ethiopia, that Africans the world over respect, constitute a majority. Those who connive directly and indirectly to undermine Ethiopia (and also Africa) are very few along with their internal and external allies.

At this millennium plus one moment, it is time we put foward a resolution to isolate these divisive and negative forces, by strongly underscoring the national historicity of Ethiopia’s diversity by recognising also that this historicity is the birthplace of African nationalism. Let Ethiopians convert their mathematical majority into a political majority with a strong sense of history and purpose. Let them all resolve and proudly stand up denouncing and condemning those who have been destabilsing Ethiopia’s future by undermining the historic unity of its diversity with the added affront to fellow Africans and their human dignity.

We believe that given a free dialogue, all Ethiopians will rise to the defence of Ethiopia as a united nation, as one people, as a historical unity built from diversity, and most importantly, as the birthplace of African nationalism. To all Ethiopians on 11 September 2008, on Ethiopia’s New Year Day, we say unite and rise above all the petty divisions and restore Ethiopia’s role as the most authentic historical source for furthering Africa’s national project and purpose.

RESOLUTION NO. 2: THE DEMAND TO COMPENSATE ETHIOPIA IS JUST!

After we wrote in the Network of Ethiopian Scholars (NES) 21 demanding Ethiopia be compensated by its ex-colonial master, there were various reactions from different sources. Some tried to suggest that Ethiopia has been compensated already. But there were others who wrote to us, whatever the overtures from latter day Italian regimes, far from getting full compensation, Italy’s loot from Ethiopia has not been fully recovered yet: “Badoglio took half of the silver in the then Bank of Ethiopia, and over 100 cases of loot, which enabled him to build his palacious house in Rome, while Graziani personally took 70 cases. Italy has still not returned the most important part of Ethiopia’s looted National Archives - the Ministry of the Pen Correspondence between Ethiopia and Italy - or the small aeroplane Tsehai assembled in Addis Ababa.”(1)

Far from the material losses to Italy by Ethiopia, the tragedy that continues to afflict Ethiopia today is that the ethnic and vernacular divisive politics was fully experimented upon during the fascist aggression. This disintegrative politics was planted as a cancer in Ethiopia by the Italian fascist aggression. For this divisive cancer that they left behind, no repayment can be enough! The fascist strategy was founded on ‘political subversion’ of Ethiopia starting since 1933! Ethiopia’s historic national unity was deliberately subverted with the aim was of bringing about the country’s complete disintegration. Mussolini, and his generals De Bono, Badoglio and Grazziani and others bribed, cajoled, fought and subverted the various internal chiefs in order to bring about the compete ethnic and vernacular disintegration of Ethiopia. The cancer they planted still plagues Ethiopia and indeed like other colonial powers that have done similar things in other parts of Africa, its remedy has remained elusive to Ethiopia as well even, sadly, to this day.

When Ethiopia fell under fascist occupation, the hope of African nationalism at the time also turned into despair. There cannot be enough monetary compensation to this outrage against Africa too! What is fascinating is to read today how those who have struggled their whole lives for African national dignity and identity reacted to the fascist aggression against Ethiopia in 1935! It is edifying to hear their morally uplifting, committed, determined and honest reactions and feelings.

In his autobiography Dr. Kwame Nkrumah relates his reaction to the fascist assault against Ethiopia. He was in London at the time of the savage attack on the way to the United States, when he saw the newspaper poster ‘Mussolini Invades Ethiopia.’ He said he was immediately and naturally seized by a strong outrage:

‘At that moment’, it was almost as if the whole of London had declared war on me personally. For the next few minutes I could do nothing but glare at each impassive face, wondering if these people could realise the wickedness of colonialism, and praying that the day might come when I could play my part in bringing about the downfall of such a system. My nationalism surged to the fore; I was ready to go to hell itself, if need be, in order to achieve my object.’(2)

Nelson Mandela felt a similar outrage: ‘I was seventeen when Mussolini attacked Ethiopia, an invasion that spurred not only my hatred of that despot but of fascism in general.’(3)

For many Africans the world over Mussolini’s fascist aggression, that was opposed by only a few countries, amongst them notably Haiti and Mexico, in 1935 proved a ‘turning point in African history.’ The only un-colonised nation in Africa was threatened with colonial enslavement. This radicalised Africans the world over creating strong African national movement and sentiment with a readiness to preserve what Ethiopia symbolised as a country that resisted successfully direct colonial enslavement. Were Ethiopia to succumb to the same fate that others had done in Africa, it appeared to them that their dream to be strong, free and proud would be subverted and may not be indeed realised. Other Africans fought for Ethiopia to preserve that hope that they too would be free if they fought to keep Ethiopia as a free and historically united nation.


They felt that their future independence was tied to the destiny of forestalling Ethiopia’s fascist colonial subjugation. It is a historically recorded matter that Africans across the continent tried to rally support under difficult conditions and those people of African origin scattered around the world tried to supply both military and financial support for Ethiopia’s anti-colonial struggles.

The demand for compensation for Ethiopia is not just a matter to recover monetary redress. It is above all a struggle to excavate the root of our current malaise and redress the political injustices that Ethiopia continues to suffer to this day by forces that try to create a rupture between Ethiopia’s proud history and the struggle to recover Africa’s full national dignity by the historical unity of Ethiopia’s diversity with the rest of Africa. The demand must continue and must be redoubled. All who believe in Ethiopia must struggle to right the historic injustice that Ethiopia continues to suffer by revisiting Ethiopia’s negative and limiting encounter with the colonial experience since the 15th century!

RESOLUTION NO.3: TRANSFORM POLITICS FROM THE ART OF DESTRUCTION TO THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE!

When political groups split into nine or ten groups, it is very often nothing to do with having major differences in principles. Those who say they uphold Ethiopia, who are also the majority, can live within one broad political front, against those who have tried, like Italian fascism before them did, to decompose the nation into different ethnic and vernacular nations, nationalities and peoples. It is ironic those that profess division of the Ethiopian nation as the birthplace of African nationalism tell us they have a front to club them together with the counter-intuitive politics of keeping Ethiopia’s survival by dividing it, whilst those who uphold Ethiopian unity and joined forces to do election together have scattered now!

It is important that all those who say they stand for Ethiopia’s historic unity in its diversity form a united front and strongly re-establish Ethiopia’s place as the cradle of African nationalism without too much procrastination.

Ideally those that oppose Ethiopian civic-nationalism can also form a front and a clear contest can emerge where opposed ideologies, national sentiments and programmes can oppose each other by creating the principle of competition with consultation and the vice versa, provided there is a prior agreement on a workable and tolerable level playing field for the play out of the parties forming a front around civic nationalism and those opposing it with vernacular-ethnic nationalism.

That is the only possible concession to ethnic nationalism that can be tolerated, that is to say, provided there is a democratic and clear playing field, a contestation involving the struggles that are freely conducted for the votes, voices and choices of the people can be mounted. There is no doubt civic-nationalism and African nationalism will win over ethnic-vernacular nationalism in Ethiopia as a springboard to re-energise African nationalism.

The national politics must gravitate towards these two broad positions: those who uphold Ethiopia’s civic-nationalism versus those who uphold the country’s vernacular-ethnic nationalism. A clear democratic space must be created where those who win can govern so that the problem of transition from tyranny to democratic governance that has been so elusive for Ethiopia can be achieved without continuing further the suffering and enormous sacrifice incurred over centuries.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The millennium plus one should be a time to realise the richness of Ethiopia’s history as the cradle of African nationalism.

Those who reject this history must be resisted. The majority that stand for Ethiopia’s civic nationalism must not be indifferent. All must work over time to gain time to establish Ethiopia as part of the story of the recovery of African identity and dignity.

The political subversion of dividing Ethiopia has been one of the ugly legacies of Italian fascist aggression against Ethiopia. The struggle to compensate Ethiopia is a struggle to understand and expunge this cancer from Ethiopian political life. The demand must continue.

As those who stand for Ethiopia’s historic unity with diversity are the majority, there is an urgent need for all those engaged in civic-nationalism to form a united front and confront those who dabble in vernacular- and ethnic-nationalism to prevent and subvert Ethiopia’s history as the critical resource for Africa’s national identity, as already has been amply recognised.

If, as in South Africa after the crime of apartheid fascism, there can emerge a unitary state with civic-nationalism, there is no reason why Ethiopia cannot try to form a unitary state on the debris of ethnic-federalism, provided there is the political will, the determination, the imagination and the historic sense and civilisation to attain this ideal. Let Ethiopia upgrade into civic-nationalism and patriotism and not degrade into vernacular-nationalism. Let Ethiopia form a unitary state on the basis of civic nationalism. Only when it attains its various components’ historic unity on a civic- national basis or foundation can Ethiopia recover to re-energise and sustain by stimulating African national dignity ever more and more.

Let us make a millennium plus one resolution to convert the struggle by any means necessary since the European Scramble for Africa (or even earlier starting in the 15th century if necessary), to finding solutions by any means necessary from today to sustain the long-term future of Ethiopia as a united people, nation and country! Let us all resolve Ethiopia must live on as a cradle of African nationalism that it is as is inscribed in history!


(1) Richard Pankhurst, e-Mail communication, 9 September 2008.

(2) Quoted in John. H. Brown, Public Diplomacy Press Review, USC Centre for Public Diplomacy, 22 May 2004.

(3) Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p.402.


* Mammo Muchie is the chairperson of the Network of Ethiopian Scholars (NES) and a professor at Aalborg University.


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

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Struggle with no borders: Capitalism, nationalism and xenophobia in South Africa

2008-10-02

Dale T. McKinley

In a potent critique of the post-apartheid state and its role in the wave of xenophobic discrimination to have gripped the South African nation, Dale T. McKinley explores the roots of the country’s ‘macro-nationalist paradigm’ and its consequences in the shape of the contemporary pogroms of African foreigners. Highlighting the ‘changing of the nationalist guard’ aspect to the ANC’s 1994 election victory, the author argues that the state’s dominant discourse of ‘nation-building’ has its natural corollary in the idea and practice of xenophobia directed at non-South African nationals.
While the violent intensity and geographical spread of the recent attacks on immigrants that took place across South Africa certainly surprised most of us, we should not have been surprised either that such attacks happened or at the state’s response to the attacks, given the political and socio-economic context within which the post-1994 South African state was formed and has functioned. It is only by locating and analysing this context, with particular reference to the ‘marriage’ of a nationalist politics and ‘nation-building’ alongside economic neo-liberalism (both within and outside South Africa), that we can understand and critically appraise the reaction and response of the South African state to the recent xenophobic pogroms.

When the dominant force in South Africa’s liberation movement landscape, the African National Congress (ANC), came to power in the 1994 elections, it took political control of an established state built to secure the dominant interests of a national bourgeoisie. The only difference was that now the state was in the hands of a movement whose main aim was to build and secure the interests of a black nationalist (as opposed to white nationalist) bourgeoisie. In this sense, the democratic victory of 1994 represented, above all else, the triumph of a majority (black) bourgeois nationalism over a minority (white) bourgeois nationalism.

This state-centered ‘changing of the nationalist guard’ was overlaid by the ANC’s acceptance (indeed, embracing) of South Africa’s capitalist political economy, within the context of a dominant, global capitalist neo-liberalism. As soon became clear through the ‘new’ state’s adoption of an overtly neo-liberal macro-economic policy/development framework (GEAR), the desire was to pursue a de-racialised, national capitalism whilst simultaneously pursuing full-scale (re)integration into a global capitalist economy through adherence to the ideological demands of its neo-liberal foundations.

In both theoretical and practical terms, these strategic and ideological choices on the part of the ANC leadership demanded the creation of a dominant discourse of ‘nation-building’ as a means to politically legitimise the role and character of the ‘new’ bourgeois/neo-liberal state and the ‘place’ of those under its leadership. Historically denied any meaningful national or international ‘belonging’, the majority black population were now told that they could achieve both as the ‘real’ owners of a state dedicated to securing their national identity as well as their (nationally-located) international status and position. What was being consciously constructed was an inherently false and exclusivist nationalist identity and politics (in essence, an ideology of sorts), to be secured by political loyalty to a ‘new’ South African state claming to represent the ‘national will and interest’ (both domestically and internationally).

Such a macro-nationalist paradigm was, and is, designed to create the illusion that the struggle for political and socio-economic liberation by the black majority is defined by the active and loyal participation of an ‘authentic national subject’ that supersedes all other ‘identities’ of social relations under capitalism (for example, class). It is an illusion not only because it has been clear (since 1994) that the fundamental decisions of the South African state have not been forged, or even informed, by the interests and needs of the majority of so-called ‘national subjects’, but also because under capitalist neo-liberalism such a ‘subject’ is effectively non-existent.

It is within such a context that the South African state has constructed and fed the idea and practice of xenophobia. At its conceptual heart, xenophobia is a fear of the ‘other’, with the ‘other’ most often being defined by differential (contemporary) nation-state ‘membership’. Thus, and only thus, can the idea or concept of a legal, political and social distinction between, for example, a ‘South African’ and a ‘Zimbabwean’, be made. In turn, xenophobia cannot exist in practice without the competing ideological and institutional constructions, by the national state, of such ‘national identities’.

In this regard, the South African state has been remarkably consistent in its contradictory ideational, discursive and practical xenophobic constructions. At the same time that the state, from its 1994 installation, has presented South Africa (and ‘South Africans’) as the new and natural leaders of a continental (black African) ‘renaissance’, it has systematically instituted immigration policies that have facilitated and favoured non-black African immigration whilst simultaneously constructing a web of sub-imperial presences across the continent, ostensibly designed to enhance South Africa’s (corporate dominated) ‘international competitiveness’ status.

The result, creating and assisting in the exploitation and displacement of other African ‘nationalities’ (in the name of the ‘national interest’ and nationally defined ‘economic growth’) whilst using South African ‘nationality’ as the litmus test for societal acceptance and integration of those who have, not surprisingly, made their way to the ‘new’ South Africa. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in relation to Zimbabwe. Somewhat similarly, the state has, through its implementation of neo-liberal socio-economic policies inside South Africa (which have fundamentally undermined any meaningful redistribution of political and socio-economic power/capital) made a mockery of substantive ‘citizenship’ for the majority of South African ‘nationals’. It is the ‘classic’ ruling class recipe for constructed tension, prejudice, competition and conflict amongst the ‘have-nots’ (whatever their nationality). All the while of course, none of this applies to the respective ‘haves’, who long ago placed themselves above and beyond such non-consequential identities such as nationality.

Under such a state-led rubric, the parallel constructions of internal (South African) xenophobic attitudes and practice have flourished. The coercive forces of the state – most notably and consistently through the conduct and actions of the police services - have thus treated African immigrants as if they were, a priori, criminals and charlatans intent on destroying the imagined ‘national community’ of ‘authentic’ South Africans. The endemic corruption in, and venality of, several departments of the state – Home Affairs and Housing have taken the lead – have criminalised the desperation of poor African immigrants and thus contributed substantially to their parallel illegalisation in the eyes of both the ‘law’ and amongst many with whom they live. Leading ANC politicians, alongside sizeable sections of the mainstream media, have also been remarkably consistent (despite transparently hypocritical denials to the contrary) in their reactionary populisms that have sought to portray African immigrants as the main cause of a host of South Africa’s economic and social problems.

For a long time prior to the recent xenophobic pogroms, the social inheritances of the state’s sustained construction of a xenophobia-friendly South Africa were clear to see for anyone paying attention. Whether it was throwing Mozambicans off a moving train, the deportation of tens of thousands of assorted ‘foreigners’ every month, the aiding and abetting of Mugabe’s scorched-earth politics in Zimbabwe, the blaring media headlines about trouble-causing ‘aliens’ or the murder of scores of Somali shop-owners, there was ample evidence to show that the so-called ‘rainbow’, ‘African renaissance’ nation was a mirage. The reality was, and remains, that one of the most defining socio-political features of post-apartheid South Africa is a narrow, chauvinist nationalism.

Once the pogroms began, intensified and spread, the response of the state was predictably tragic. For the first several days there was a deafening silence, a silence that was so cynically and contemptuously consistent with the ways in which the lives of the ‘non-existent’ had, for so long, been treated by the South African state. The complete absence of any political, moral or social leadership (not to mention basic human empathy) from the state, most clearly visible in the pathetic, half-hearted response of the police services to the ongoing violence, only gave further succour to the xenophobes. A state-constructed, xenophobic and chauvinistic nationalism, combined with the catastrophic socio-economic impacts of economic neo-liberalism, had finally broken ‘free’. The state could not own up to its own creation.

The dishonest attempts to blame ‘a few criminal individuals’, the empty calls for ‘African unity’, the hypocritical praise for humanitarian ‘patriots’ and the belated mobilisation of a few state resources and personnel that followed, confirmed what many have long known and have tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to expose: that the South African state is a state whose very existence and legitimacy has been built on the social and physical corpses of the poor and downtrodden (whatever their nationality). It is the logical ‘outcome’ of the kind of post-apartheid politics and ideology that has not only been embraced and celebrated by those who have benefited from it, but has been tragically imbibed by many of those who are oppressed by it.

Any national state is but a reflection of the (national) society that gives it both form and life. While a collective (South African) ownership of responsibility and shame for the recent xenophobic pogroms is both needed and required, it is also the role and character of the state, along with the content of the policies that flow from it, which desperately need and require radical change. That is a struggle that demands we all throw off the yoke of nationalism. It is a struggle that must know no borders.

* Dale T. McKinley is an independent writer, lecturer and researcher. He is an activist within the Anti-Privatisation Forum as well as the Social Movements Indaba.

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

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Statement on the change of leadership of the ANC government

2008-10-02

Amandla Publishers

Amandla Publishers agrees with Archbishop Emeritus and the Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu that ‘[i]f South Africa was a democracy, there had to be certainty that those who led it were as uncorrupt as possible. It is a court of law that will ultimately decide whether [leaders are or not].’ Through publishing its bi-monthly Amandla! magazine, Amandla Publishers contributes to building left and working class organisations and debates.
The recall of Thabo Mbeki by the African National Congress’s (ANC) National Executive Committee has less to do with the performance and policies he put in place as president and more to do with the internal conflicts in the ANC. If Thabo Mbeki's recall truly stemmed from his policies and leadership style he should have been recalled a long time ago. He should have been fired for ramming through economic policies that left the structure and ownership of the economy largely unchanged, along with policies like the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy which liberalised the economy and helped drive tens of thousands of jobs and widen inequality. His HIV/AIDS policies resulted in the avoidable death of hundreds of thousands of people living with the condition, who were denied proper medication, nutrition, access to basic services and information about the disease. His attack on free debate and his interference in independent state institutions such as the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the Medical Research Council, the Medicines Control Council and others were sufficient for him to have been impeached by a consistent ANC-dominated parliament committed to the constitutionally guaranteed independence of public institutions in an open and democratic society. These current conflicts centre on the allegations of corruption linked to the arms deal and the factional struggle for power and privilege associated with access to positions in the ruling party and government, including black economic empowerment ‘deployments’. Amandla Publishers adds its voice to the many South Africans calling for a full investigation into the arms deal so that those implicated in corruption can be prosecuted and those falsely accused can be cleared. A full and transparent investigation must occur.

Amandla Publishers supports the call for a judicial commission of inquiry into the arms deal whose hearings and report must be open to the public, and following which each and every individual implicated in corruption and other crimes must be subject to criminal prosecution without fear, favour or prejudice, while those unfairly accused of corruption and other crimes should be publicly cleared. We call for public vigilance and mobilisation in support of the progressive values of our constitution. We call for sustained social mobilisation to advance the socio-economic interests of the poor and working people and the building of left voices and platforms.

The political leadership of our country seems to waver on its commitment to a modern, plural, open, progressive and vibrantly democratic system, a neglect which underlines the need for poor and working people to actively and robustly use their social power (including those progressive aspects of the South African Constitution) to advance their interests.

This crisis also shows that South Africa needs a different politics: a progressive popular politics, an efficient state providing quality public services, clean governance untainted by fraud and corruption, transparency and competence in the state and all public institutions.

For this we need campaigning trade unions, political parties, civic organisations, social movements, community based organisations, churches and others united behind practical and easily understood objectives. As Amandla Publishers, we commit ourselves to work with others to contribute to the building of such organisations that promote social and economic growth and development that prioritises and meets the needs of ordinary poor and working people.


* Amandla! is a new and exciting popular Left monthly magazine launched in South Africa in April 2007 by Amandla Publishers (www.amandla.org.za). The publication provides coverage and analysis of current political, economic, social processes, events and struggles from a radical left perspective.

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

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Pambazuka News French Edition no. 71: Mauritania: The coup d’état

2008-10-02

Mauritania: ‘The coup d’état and separating the political wheat from politicians’ chaff’

Kaaw Touré & Ibra Mifo Sow (2008-09-26)

http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/features/50830

Kaaw Touré and Ibra Mifo Sow interview Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallah, the daughter of deposed former president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallah. She responds to questions about her father’s detention, her family’s security and her father’s record as president. She applauds international condemnation of the 6 August coup, and the will of the Mauritanian people to see constitutional order restored.

Food Crisis: How Uganda won the Rice War

G. Pascal Zachary (2008-09-26)

http://www.pambazuka.org/fr/category/comment/50829

G. Pascal Zachary looks at how Uganda has succeeded what has become a trend in Africa, whereby governments are caving into free market ideals to the detriment local production and self-sufficiency. By simultaneously promoting the cultivation of a new strain of rice that boosts local production and lobbying successfully for a 75% duty on imported rice, Uganda is now able to satisfy local demand and produce surplus for export as well as invest in the infrastructure of agricultural production with money that would have otherwise been paid to import rice from countries that subsidize their own farmers.

Angola: State wants to shut down AJPD

2008-10-02

Angolan authorities files legal action to close down the Angolan non-profit AJPD – Association for Justice, Peace and Democracy. AJPD is one of the non-profits which are most committed to the development of culture of human right in the country. The State relies the lawsuit on unconstitutional arguments and invalid proceedings. AJPD CANNOT BE ELIMINATED!
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PUBLIC STATEMENT

AI Index: AFR 12/006/2008
5 September 2008


Angola: Stop the Continued Harassment, Intimidation and Closure of Human Rights Organizations


As Angolans go to the polls in the country’s first legislative election in 16 years, Amnesty International today called on the Angolan government to stop harassing and intimidating human rights activists, and closing down human rights organisations in the country.

The organization said that the crackdown on the activities of human rights activists is very troubling, especially as Angola is preparing for its second-ever presidential election.

In recent years human rights activists in Angola have faced a hostile environment. Government officials often threaten to ban human rights organisations. The most recent case will shortly be decided by the Constitutional Court and is an attempt by the government to ban the Association for Justice Peace and Democracy (AJPD). The case against AJPD comes just months after authorities officially closed the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Angola and almost two years after the banning of Mpalabanda (Associação Cívica de Cabinda).

In 2007 four prominent human rights organizations in the country received threats of closure. The Director of the Angolan Government's Technical Unit for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (UTCAH) made statements accusing the organizations of using human rights as a cover for breaking the law and threatened to close them.

Amnesty International considers the harassment, intimidation and closure of human rights organizations in the country an infringement of the guarantees of freedom of association, assembly and expression contained in Angolan national law and international human rights treaties and standards. These treaties and standards include the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Charter) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), both of which Angola has ratified, as well as the Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, commonly known as the United Nations (UN) Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.

Amnesty International is concerned that the intimidation and closures are occurring at a time when the country is involved in its first elections in 16 years and therefore at a time when the participation of human rights activists in civic affairs is critical.

International human rights law stipulates that no restrictions should be placed on the exercise of the right to freedom of association, other than those prescribed by law and strictly necessary in the interest of national security, public safety, public order, public health and morals or the protection of the rights and freedom of others. While Amnesty International recognises the government's right to restrict the operations of organizations in the circumstances mentioned above, the organization urges it to ensure that this is done only when strictly necessary and in accordance with international human rights law and standards.

The organization urges the Angolan authorities to respect, promote and protect the work of these human rights organizations and the human rights defenders and activists working in them. The authorities should ensure that human rights activists are free to carry out their activities, without interference. Amnesty International reminds the Angolan authorities of their responsibility to take appropriate steps to implement the United Nations (UN) Declaration on Human Rights Defenders in accordance with the Kigali Declaration adopted by the African Union (AU) Ministerial Conference on Human Rights in May 2003.

Amnesty International further reminds the Angolan government of its voluntary pledge, made in terms of its election to the UN Human Rights Council, to protect and promote human rights at the national level. The organization calls upon the Angolan government to fulfil its pledge by protecting the work of human rights defenders in the country and bringing an end to the intimidation, harassment and closures of human rights organizations.

Background
In June 2006 the government of Angola instituted a case in the Provincial Court of Cabinda, based on the Law of Associations of May 1991 (Lei das Assosiações de Maio de 1991), to ban Mpalabanda (Associação Cívica de Cabinda).The government alleged that Mpalabanda incited violence and hatred. It also accused Mpalabanda of carrying out political activities rather than being a civil society organization. On 20 July 2006 the Court decided to ban the organization. There was no mention in the judgement that Mpalabanda promoted violence and hatred. Nor were any of the cited witnesses called to give evidence to this effect. Mpalabanda was the only human rights organization working in the Province of Cabinda at the time.

The harassment and intimidation of human rights organizations continued into 2007, when the Director General of UTCAH announced in a meeting with national and international NGOs based in Angola that the government would soon cease the activities of NGOs without a social impact for the population or for the executive. He later accused four prominent human rights organizations - the Association for Justice, Peace and Democracy (AJPD); Mãos Livres; the Angolan branch of the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa, the Open Society Foundation; and the local housing rights organization, SOS-Habitat of alleging human rights violations of the citizens to justify their activities while actually carrying out actions contrary to the law. He also accused them of inciting people to react, even violently at times, against governmental institutions and authorities and threatened to ban them.
In April 2008 the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Angola revealed that it had been requested to close its representation in the country. The office was closed at the end of May 2008, three months before the first legislative elections in the country in 16 years.



Antonio Ventura
Executive-Director
AJPD – Associação Justiça, Paz e Democracia
ajpd@netangola.org
http://www.ajpdangola.org/english

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Go figure: Do the poor count?

2008-10-02

Adam W. Parsons

With the World Bank’s recent recalculations on the number of global poor going unnoticed within the majority of mainstream media channels, Adam W. Parsons laments the absence of external scrutiny of the Bretton Woods institutions. The author illustrates the extent to which the bank’s faith in the Millennium Development Goals remains misguided, and asks whether the bank’s figures can be taken as indicative of any real improvement in the plight of the poor.
An economic catastrophe occurred on August 26 2008 that was quickly forgotten across the media: an extra 430 million people were classified overnight as absolutely poor. The cause was no tsunami or natural disaster, but simply the revisions of World Bank statisticians who adjusted the international poverty line from $1.08 to $1.25 a day.

Contradicting the bank's celebrated decline in extreme poverty figures last year (which had fallen to less than a billion for the first time), the new measurements revealed a far less optimistic outlook: a total of 1.4 billion poor people in 2005, up from 986 million people in 2004. A margin of error, in other words, of 42 percent, defining a quarter of the developing world as living without sufficient means for human survival.

Despite this, the World Bank keenly stressed that poverty eradication continues to improve. It does not mean that the plight of the poor has worsened, we are told, only that the plight is now better understood. The lack of almost any critical news coverage implied that the rest of the world was inclined to agree. Does it really matter, after all, where the line is drawn in the sand, or how the number crunchers add up their figures? Is the question of poverty measurement not merely academic?

In fact, the revised figures are of crucial importance to not only the cause for global justice, but also our understanding of the world over the past quarter century of globalisation. The World Bank, as the near exclusive provider of global poverty figures, uses the statistics to defend its policies of deregulation, privatisation, market liberalisation, and increased economic growth through free trade as the overruling means to combating poverty. Despite a long history of controversy, the figures still hold an almost uncontested authority with governments, NGOs and the popular media who frequently cite the estimates as evidence that neoliberal policies and globalisation have reduced global poverty. This makes it doubly surprising that the bank's spin on the new figures have been so readily accepted and hardly questioned.

No matter how the statistics are tailored, the figures for 2005 at the $1.25 baseline paint a dismal picture of mass destitution: 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty is equivalent to roughly four times the entire population of the US, an inconceivable number to envisage. In Africa, the number of poor people has nearly doubled since figures began in 1981, with still half the population of sub-Saharan Africa living below the poverty line. In India, 200 million people in extreme poverty effectively fell through the cracks of the World Bank's headcount whilst the statisticians learned how to 'improve' their tallies. Revisions to China's figures were similarly dramatic, up to 207 million from a previous 130 million people in extreme poverty.

When considering that China did not follow neoliberal policies, it is doubtful that the bank can take any credit for the country's remarkable success in reducing poverty during the 1990s. As the bank states, China's success still accounts for nearly all the world's reduction in extreme poverty. If China is therefore removed from the equation, the most damning conclusion from the new figures becomes clear: the number of poor in the developing world has remained almost the same, at about 1.2 billion, over the period 1981–2005.

This fact alone places the bank's hailing of a dramatic percentage reduction in poverty over 25 years into a different light. At the very least, it calls into question their confidence in declaring that ‘there has been strong - if regionally uneven - progress toward reducing overall poverty.’ At most, it underlines the fact that globalisation has been largely ineffective at either reducing the burgeoning ranks of the world's poor, or including this vast swathe of the global population into the mainstream economy.

The Colombia University economist Sanjay Reddy, one of the bank's foremost critics on this topic, has stated his view that the individuals directly involved have approached the exercise in a sincere fashion, and are persons of the utmost integrity. That said, the bank has already undertaken two previous revisions of the base year for calculating purchasing power rates, each time wreaking havoc on its poverty estimates. When employing the aggregate headcount, previous development indicators revealed that global poverty increased between 1990 and 2001 in the number of $2 a day poor, from 2.65 billion to 2.74 billion.

The bank's assumption that the Millennium Development Goals on poverty and hunger will still be reached are now starkly contested. According to a separate study by the bank, an extra 100 million people could fall into extreme poverty due to soaring food and energy prices. This means that an extra half a billion people in total are now thought to be struggling for survival compared to previous estimates. On current trends, at least a billion people will still live below the $1.25 a day line in 2015, with a third of the world's poor living in Africa. Only China is currently on target to achieve the goals, reports the bank, while most other countries are not. As shown by other independent studies, this is an understatement: without urgent action the world could see hunger doubling instead of halving by 2015.

This cursory analysis of the bank's statistics is meant only to emphasise an obvious and, since the release of the widely un-criticised new data, a remarkably neglected point: that the World Bank's poverty figures are no longer indicative of any real improvement in the plight of the poor, even by their own measures. As the latest figures graphically illustrate, almost half the world - over three billion people - live on less than $2.50 a day. Altogether, the bank reports no change in the number of people living below $2 a day, at around 2.5 billion between 1981 and 2005. And it is unlikely, they warned, that the number of extremely poor will drop below one billion again before 2015. The distinction between the haves and have-nots could not get any clearer.

The World Bank's disregard of its basic deficiencies in analysing poverty is ultimately not surprising. After all, the bank makes no disguise of its uncompromising belief in economic growth through unfettered markets as the strongest antidote to poverty, ignoring all signs since the 1980s that wealth has failed to trickle down to the poorest of the poor. More surprising, however, is the lack of external scrutiny of the Bretton Woods institutions in the formulation and usage of global poverty figures, and the lack of criticism on what those figures reveal.


* Adam W. Parsons is the editor of Share the World's Resources. He can be reached at editor@stwr.org .

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

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Do we need more revolutions?

2008-10-02

Pius Kamau

Regarding Let us not find revolutionaries where there are none: Well written, well reasoned, and logical. There are insightful politicians, leaders - like Mandela and Nyerere - who appreciated the importance of the positions they held and their ability to actually change the human condition by harnessing those bonds that all humans have. Gandhi had that insight too.

Our politicians are jackals in the wilderness of existence, men and women whose one vision is of "ME." As Ngugi tells it so well, today's leaders use their tribesmen as cannon fodder; the ladder's steps they step on to reach higher ground.

In my mind I think of Muhamad Ali Jinah's personal political ambitions and often wonder if the Indian Muslim population was left in a better place with the partition of India? Wouldn't it have been better for him to have been more humble and work things out for his followers?

In the end, the results of what we see in Africa is an inexorable and irreversible degradation of the countries' potential -- a tearing apart of whatever fabric each nation may have. Until (if that can ever be envisaged) the poor realize they are but tools of the wealthy of whatever tribe. From time to time we have seen the elite reach down to help the poor -- Castro, Che Guevara, Lenin, Marx and others who put their lives on line for what was right and just.

Maybe what will save Africa is another revolution?

Jack Govender: A Che Guevara of our time

2008-10-03

Jack Govender, aka Sipho Khumalo, has made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. An internationalist in every sense, he laid down his life not for 'his people' in any narrow sense, but for his people in the broader sense that he took oppression and suffering anywhere as his own.
Jack Govender: A Che Guevara of our time

Jack Govender, aka Sipho Khumalo, has made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. An internationalist in every sense, he laid down his life not for 'his people' in any narrow sense, but for his people in the broader sense that he took oppression and suffering anywhere as his own.

Jack's commitment to liberation did not start with his role in founding SSN. He was a community and political activist in his hometown of Durban. He was a student activist in SANSCO and SASCO during his days at the University of Durban-Westville. Jack left the country during the early 1990's for military training with Umkhonto we Sizwe. This was not the ordinary path for someone coming from his background. Other people could have just focussed on their studies, stayed as a student activist, or started working – but Jack was not somebody ordinary. On returning from military training he was integrated as an MK into the SANDF. But soon he was looking for other avenues for making a contribution. Jack was also a trade unionist, working for POPCRU and spearheading their political education. He was active in the ANC, ANCYL, and SACP.

Meanwhile, South Africa had gained freedom from apartheid but just next door Swaziland was still under the yoke of royal oppression. Jack threw himself into the Swazi struggle for freedom, democracy, and socialism. He could have just settled for a government job, or got some tenders, enjoying the fruits of a free South Africa that he had himself struggled for. But he could not relax in that freedom while just a few hundred kilometres away people could not enjoy the same freedom.

At that time the Swaziland struggle was not fashionable in South Africa: there was no SSN, no marches or meetings. Jack's commitment to that struggle was in a pure spirit of selfless internationalism and he did not seek any limelight.

He is the first South African to lay down his life for the Swaziland struggle, but there is a long and proud history of Swazi participation in the South African struggle for freedom, even in the face of collaboration between the Swaziland and apartheid regimes. Swazi revolutionaries such as Keith MacFadden fought and died for South African freedom. This was not interference, but internationalism; and it is fitting that the spirit of internationalism continues today.

Jack did not define himself as Indian, or even just as a South African; rather as a human who felt other people's suffering as his own. He was really someone special. And he did take pleasure in life: he was free with people and enjoyed music, playing guitar, and dancing.

Jack was one of very few people that actually lived his life in the spirit of Che Guevara. And indeed like Che, he died suddenly in another country fighting for freedom. Jack is the embodiment of the internationalist spirit, something so rare in this century.

It is still difficult to believe that Jack is no more. He had a full life, but still had so much to live for. We can only be comforted by knowing that he had long ago made a commitment of being willing to die for his beliefs, took a course that did indeed put his own life at risk for a noble cause, and died fighting for freedom. Jack and his comrade MJ will be remembered in history as the first revolutionary martyrs of the Swaziland struggle.

By comrade Fiona SACP, ANC, SSN member

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Global: Worldwide reading in memory of Mahmoud Darwish

2008-10-03

Lovers of literature and human rights will gather across the world this Sunday, October 5th, for commemorative readings of the poems of Mahmoud Darwish. In Africa, readings will take place in Kenya, Sudan, Senegal, South Africa, Egypt and Zimbabwe.
Lovers of literature and human rights will gather across the world this Sunday, October 5th, for commemorative readings of the poems of Mahmoud Darwish. In Africa, readings will take place in Kenya, Sudan, Senegal, South Africa, Egypt and Zimbabwe.
One of the most eminent poets in the history of world literature, and a leading voice of the Palestinian people, Darwish died on 9 August, 2008. This worldwide day of commemoration, initiated by the Berlin Literature Festival, will honor his work and his lifetime commitment to promoting peaceful and just coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. More information, and a full listing of reading and activities around the world, can be found at:
http://www.literaturfestival.com/news1_3_2_1800.html

Darwish’s work has particular relevance to our struggles for justice in Africa. His poems have been in my mind frequently during the past 10 months, through the stolen elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, the crises of governance across the continent, the growing volume of protest against starvation and destitution inflicted by rising prices of food and fuel.
On police and state violence against civil society activists:
And they asked him:
Why do you sing?
And he answered, as they seized him:
I sing because I sing…
And they searched his chest
But could only find his heart
And they searched his heart
But could only find his people
And they searched his voice
But could only find his grief
And they searched his grief
But could only find his prison
And they searched his prison
But could only see themselves in chains

From Poem Of The Land,Mahmoud Darwish
(Written to commemorate five Palestinian girls killed by the Israelis, in connection with a demonstration on March 30, 1976, to protest Israeli seizures of Arab land).
On the flawed and compromised outcomes of “mediation agreements” in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and the betrayals of opposition parties when offered a piece of the cake:
If you truly love me, place my dream
in my hands and say to the Son of Mary,
“Lord, how could you have made us endure what you endured yourself?
Will there be enough justice left over
for us to be just ourselves tomorrow?”

Mahmoud Darwish, From: Night That Overflows My Body,
And on the ongoing refusal of colleagues in the movement to succumb to despair, despite every frustration:
How many seas should we cross in the desert?
How many tablets should we leave behind?
How many prophets should we kill at high noon?
How many nations should we resemble before we become a tribe?
This path - our path - is a tapestry of words. With it we mend the hem of the aba stretched between our solitude and the vagrant land sleeping in our saffron dusk. So let’s be an open hand, offering our time to the gods.

Mahmoud Darwish, The Hoopoe

Shailja Patel
Kenyan poet and activist, Shailja Patel, will lead a commemoration of Darwish at the Internazionale Festival, Ferrara, Italy, on October 5th The Kenya-PEN chapter will host a Darwish Memorial Reading in Nairobi on October 5th. Please contact Kenya-PEN president, Philo Ikonya, philoikonya@yahoo.com for details.

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The world celebrates Mahmoud Darwish

2008-10-02

Shailja Patel

Lovers of literature and human rights will gather across the world this Sunday, October 5th, for commemorative readings of the poems of Mahmoud Darwish. In Africa, readings will take place in Kenya, Sudan, Senegal, South Africa, Egypt and Zimbabwe.

One of the most eminent poets in the history of world literature, and a leading voice of the Palestinian people, Darwish died on 9 August, 2008. This worldwide day of commemoration, initiated by the Berlin Literature Festival, will honor his work and his lifetime commitment to promoting peaceful and just coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. More information, and a full listing of reading and activities around the world, can be found at:
http://www.literaturfestival.com/news1_3_2_1800.html
Darwish's work has particular relevance to our struggles for justice in Africa. His poems have been in my mind frequently during the past 10 months, through the stolen elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, the crises of governance across the continent, the growing volume of protest against starvation and destitution inflicted by rising prices of food and fuel.

On police and state violence against civil society activists:

And they asked him:
Why do you sing?
And he answered, as they seized him:
I sing because I sing…

And they searched his chest
But could only find his heart
And they searched his heart
But could only find his people
And they searched his voice
But could only find his grief
And they searched his grief
But could only find his prison
And they searched his prison
But could only see themselves in chains

From Poem Of The Land,Mahmoud Darwish
(Written to commemorate five Palestinian girls killed by the Israelis, in connection with a demonstration on March 30, 1976, to protest Israeli seizures of Arab land).

On the flawed and compromised outcomes of "mediation agreements" in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and the betrayals of opposition parties when offered a piece of the cake:

If you truly love me, place my dream
in my hands and say to the Son of Mary,
"Lord, how could you have made us endure what you endured yourself?
Will there be enough justice left over
for us to be just ourselves tomorrow?"

Mahmoud Darwish, From: Night That Overflows My Body,

And on the ongoing refusal of colleagues in the movement to succumb to despair, despite every frustration:

How many seas should we cross in the desert?
How many tablets should we leave behind?
How many prophets should we kill at high noon?
How many nations should we resemble before we become a tribe?
This path - our path - is a tapestry of words.
With it we mend the hem of the aba stretched between our solitude
and the vagrant land sleeping in our saffron dusk.
So let's be an open hand, offering our time to the gods.

Mahmoud Darwish, The Hoopoe

* Kenyan poet and activist, Shailja Patel, will lead a commemoration of Darwish at the Internazionale Festival, Ferrara, Italy, on October 5th

* The Kenya-PEN chapter will also host a Darwish Memorial Reading in Nairobi on October 5th. Please contact Kenya-PEN president, Philo Ikonya, philoikonya@yahoo.com for details.

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Call for papers: New thinking, new Nigerians

The new federal republic - A book project

2008-10-02

http://fedrepublic.blogspot.com/

Since it’s formation in 1914, Nigeria as a nation has like many others gone through a plethora of ‘ups’ and ‘downs’. As a country, it has been shaped by generational experiences on multiple tiers and maintains its status as perhaps Africa’s most complex nation. Speaking about the nation’s problems for many is the next topic in conversation right after asking about the weather or the price of garri in the market.

Global: Systemic approach to conflict transformation

Berghof handbook for conflict resolution

2008-09-10

http://tinyurl.com/5gh96c

Systemic Conflict Transformation, or SCT, attempts to combine best practice in conflict transformation with systemic models of social relations, drawing on methodologies from various other disciplines, such as family therapy, change management, organisational development and cybernetics. In our dialogue, the exposition of a systemic approach in the context of Sri Lanka is discussed by five international experts. They reflect, among other things, on additional tools and techniques, comparative experiences in Nepal and Kenya and the general added value and utility of systemic conflict transformation.

Pen Slum

2008-10-02

Bonface Ochieng Owuor

P
eople with the voice, is what they see,
Voices of the people, is what they don't heed,
They chained our doors, but forgot our thoughts,
Today am here, please try to adhere,
To the voices of the people, don't look at the people with the voice

E
xperiences that we go through, they say it can't be true,
Yet we live below a dollar, to them i