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Global: Get the World Bank out of climate!

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/action/52233

As the world prepares for the UN Climate Change Conference beginning Dec. 1 in Poznan, Poland, we must send a clear, loud message opposing any role for the World Bank in an international climate regime. Please add your organization's name to the sign-on statement below (in English and Spanish) to help deliver this most important message. The World Bank is already positioning itself to control climate financing. The deadline for sign-ons is Friday, December 5. Please send organizational endorsements to statements@foe.org
As the world prepares for the UN Climate Change Conference beginning Dec. 1 in Poznan, Poland, we must send a clear, loud message opposing any role for the World Bank in an international climate regime. Please add your organization's name to the sign-on statement below (in English and Spanish) to help deliver this most important message. The World Bank is already positioning itself to control climate financing.

The deadline for sign-ons is Friday, December 5. Please send organizational endorsements to statements@foe.org (While we appreciate the efforts of individuals, this sign-on statement is only open for endorsement by organizations.) Please also include the country in which your organization is based.

Our plan is to release the sign-on statement during the second week of the climate talks to maximize press coverage. We will then use the statement as a lobbying and rallying tool in the negotiations and beyond.

For more background about the World Bank and its current climate initiatives, please see "The World Bank and Climate Change" athttp://www.foe.org/Climate_Investment_Funds/WorldBank-ClimateOverview.pdf.

Please help us circulate this statement far and wide so we get the maximum number of organizations signed on.

In solidarity and gratitude,

Karen Orenstein, Friends of the Earth and Nicola Bullard, Focus on the Global South --- on behalf of Africa Jubilee South, Campagna per la Riforma Della Banca Mondiale, CEE Bankwatch Network, Daughters of Mumbi Global Resource Center, Fahamu - Networks for Social Justice, Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth International, Jubilee South - Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development., Oil Change International, Pacific Environment , Sustainable Energy and Economy Network

Zimbabwe: Towards a government of national impunity?

Sam Kebele

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/52201

cc. SokwaneleWith the rejection by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) (Tsvangirai) of the flawed Southern African Development Community (SADC) plan for a government of national unity, there are signs of further economic collapse, increased repression of civil society and opposition and increasing hunger and death for Zimbabweans. As Zimbabwe's crisis worsened, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and Graca Machel were banned from pursuing their humanitarian mission to Zimbabwe. They are members with Nelson Mandela of the Elders, a group of former leaders who try to resolve conflict. The cancellation of their visit came as a deadly cholera epidemic spread, amid reports of 20 prisoners dying daily of disease and malnutrition.

The revived ZANU-PF militarised government under the control of Mugabe and the Joint Operations Command (JOC) - which may well call itself a government of national unity (aka impunity) - is interested only in its own survival and has no solution (or even perhaps desire for one) to the problems facing ordinary Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe has been without a government for six months and things are falling apart. In the words of an academic and activist I interviewed during a recent visit we are seeing again 'the DNA of liberation movements allergic to giving up power to ‘civilian’ parties'.

On 14 November, an MDC communiqué at the end of a national council meeting criticised SADC, said it would peacefully campaign against any unilateral government appointed by Mugabe, and called for internationally-supervised new elections. It further alleged that since the signing of the power-sharing agreement on 12 September, Mugabe had pursued an "obstructionist approach" and an "entrenched power-retention agenda" including the "crafting of an assassination plot, codenamed Operation Ngatipedzenavo, intended to eliminate the MDC leadership", amid a wider campaign of violence and intimidation aimed at the party "and the people of Zimbabwe".

Thokozani Khupe, deputy leader of the MDC, said that although the MDC remained committed to dialogue, before joining a power-sharing government it wanted a constitutional amendment defining and implementing the terms of the power-sharing deal, especially defining the new post of prime minister, supposedly to be filled by MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Further talks this week in South Africa on a ZANU-PF sponsored draft amendment, are unlikely to provide a breakthrough given the latter was unilaterally-produced.

The power-sharing deal, brokered by SADC-appointed Thabo Mbeki (whom the MDC no longer wish to see as a ‘neutral arbitrator’), was meant to divide ministries fairly between ZANU-PF, Tsvangirai's MDC, and a breakaway faction of the MDC led by Arthur Mutambara. Despite losing the election of March 2008, Mugabe was to retain the presidency, Tsvangirai was to become prime minister until new elections in 2012. But no constitutional amendment was passed to create the post of premier, and the deal was quickly overcome by stalemate over posts and powers, including the composition of the new National Security Council. One can also note, as a church activist said, it was contrary to the popular will that voted for Tsvangirai as President and almost got him as the Prime Minister.

Whilst the illegal ‘president’ Mugabe has yet again outfoxed his opponents, it is at the cost of his ‘own’ people’s lives and livelihoods with a failed currency, hyper-inflation of an independently-estimated 2.7 quintillion % (18 zeroes), lack of access to basic services, including water and the spread of once-tamed killer diseases like cholera with 300 (under-) reported deaths already. Zimbabweans are now ‘hunter gathering in a casino economy’ where the elite can still make vast amounts of illegal money for personal use.

Although ordinary Zimbabweans voice disappointment over the collapse of the 'Global Political Agreement (GPA) in which SADC only appeared interested in accepting Mugabe’s continued rule, despite its rhetoric of increased pressure – many still say no deal is better than a flawed deal. The entire system was designed for ZANU-PF rule and all the key personnel such as permanent secretaries would have remained in place under the agreement.

Many Zimbabweans cannot believe that the region is more concerned with maintaining stability and averting supposed post-Mugabe chaos than following its own principles of democratisation and free and fair elections. SADC appears to fail to see this is a government determined to stay in power, no matter what cost to ‘its’ people and indeed to the region. Even Botswana and South Africa, which made noises about getting tough with ZANU-PF (as indeed did Kenya), fell in line with Zimbabwe’s natural allies the Angolans, Namibians and Congolese in the interests of ‘African leadership solidarity’, not that many actual leaders were at the summit. This comes amid reports that 3,000 Zimbabwean soldiers (with up to 7,000 more expected), along with Angolans have been sent again into the Democratic Republic of Congo, alongside President Kabila's army against the Rwanda-backed rebels of General Laurent Nkunda. Mugabe was quick to respond to Kabila's invitation, for the rich pickings including diamonds, gold and copper.

The recent interview with South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma alleging the crisis was the fault of the EU and US ‘sanctions’ rather than one of internal bad governance marked a nadir even from her low standards of unquestioning support for the ZANU PF regime. But the South African cabinet seems unsure of its response; it threatened on 21 November not to release $30 million in agricultural aid until a power-sharing government is formed, linking the cholera crisis to the stalled formation of a government of national unity. SADC is equally unsure as to its response. Even though Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Gabriel Shumba won a challenge in the SADC courts that Zimbabwe had an illegitimate ‘government’, SADC limply said it would deal with Mugabe’s dictatorship as a de facto government. In which case the region, according to activists, is complicit in allowing basically 200-300 people to hold their countrymen and women to ransom. It still remains possible that African heads of state could insist on March 29 being implemented as they did in Kenya, but the likelihood decreases as ZANU-PF reasserts its internal and external control of the situation.

Zimbabwean civil society and mass-based movements and outside supporters will now be re-thinking strategies and it will need to be medium term. The regime is well ahead of them in this. The mass pre-emptive arrests of activists including of health workers protesting against the collapse of the public health delivery system on 18 November suggests that planning for a failed power-sharing agreement, including a dirty tricks campaign, was part of the JOC strategy. The failure to release activists arrested from the end of October onwards suggests backup for the allegations that the MDC, along with the Botswana government, is attempting violent regime change.

The JOC's main focus will be on winning elections – again at any cost such as happened between March and June 2008 - knowing that the region will remain toothless and the international community will be preoccupied with the multiple crises. The youth militia (‘Green Bombers’) are already being mobilised under the control of the senior military as the shock troops for a ZANU-PF victory. As ZANU-PF has more or less destroyed the education system it now has available and pliable youth at its disposal. There are reports from international NGOs of the hijacking of their meetings by youth militia. Military chiefs are attending all party meetings, although the rank and file dislike of this plus their dissatisfaction over the lack of seeds and fertiliser of this may be highlighted at the ZANU-PF congress in December .

It appears less likely that the MDC was as prepared for SADC’s pro-Mugabe ultimatum, although in the past, whenever SADC has been pushed to do anything, it proves to prefer the devil it knows. Up to that point and indeed in refusing to commit political suicide a la Joshua Nkomo in 1987, the MDC handled things well on not signing. And they had good advisers in South African ANC-linked Mac Maharaj and Cyril Ramaphosa Their playing and timing was right in terms of staying in the process whilst ZANU-PF was merely playing for time, counting correctly on SADC to bottle the decision.

Where does the MDC go from here and what kind of alliances can it form? Many in civil society refuse to get engaged with them and they have not had strong relationships with the churches, although discussions may begin. Like ZANU-PF, MDC is holding its party congress shortly (in January), although whether by then it will still be an 'overground' party remains to be seen.

The question will be not only what are its strategies, but also where the battleground will be? ZANU-PF will be wanting to fight in the rural areas and streets where it has the monopoly over the use of violence. The state is also pursuing MDC by tying them up with legal cases, including reason charges against. MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti. Elements of civil society – such as the National Constitutional Assembly and Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) - will continue to use the streets for peaceful purposes. But the MDC would prefer to continue pressing for democratic reform in parliament which is not only their comfort zone, but also where they have a majority if the Mutambara faction votes with them. However, currently Parliament has no money to sit and there is certainly not a legitimate government to respond to. The MDC also has to work out how to regain access to the rural areas where rural people might now "love the MDC but how can they show that support?", as an activist asked. Additionally the party structures are not in good shape after years of ZANU-PF's strategy of physical, personal and ideological violence directed against the party with no rebuilding initiatives.

ZANU-PF's strategy will be to combine violence against MDC supporters with attempts to suborn or buy off MDC MPs and thereby regain parliamentary power. Although the economy is on the rocks, ZANU can, if it has to bring back money from bank accounts of plundered money, attempt to suborn certain MDC MPs – a process described as ‘recruit, corrupt, incorporate’. The elite is still plundering the economy of an estimated $1.2b per month to Malaysian, Namibian and perhaps Botswanan banks to be invested in stock and property.

ZANU-PF alleged at the SADC summit that there were MDC military training camps in Botswana. A Zimbabwean fact-finding team is supposedly being invited by Gaberone to check out the allegations. What appears more sinister are the rumours that the Chinese arms shipments that eventually arrived in Zimbabwe were never delivered to the armouries. The implication is that they would be planted to discredit the MDC, allowing ZANU-PF to declare a state of emergency. MDC structures would then be (and arguably is already) under threat of being ‘disappeared’. Already 13 activists have disappeared after being arrested by police, and they have not been presented in court despite a court order. This is a trademark ZANU-PF strategy from the 1980s that surfaces every time the elite feel under attack. ZANU-PF moderate factions may also be under threat of being eliminated/ swallowed.

In this situation the Mutambara faction appears also to have little room for manoeuvre – it was largely rejected by the electorate outside Matabeleland, has been flirting with ZANU-PF on accepting the deal. But if it does so and goes into government with ZANU-PF, it is unlikely to maintain either its MPs or popular support. ZANU-PF also has major faction fighting. Former leaders of the opposition PF ZAPU party ,forcibly incorporated into ZANU in 1987, plans to break away from ZANU-PF as they felt sidelined by the GPA – building on a history of the ruling party neglect of and violence towards Matabeleland.

At the present time there does appear to be a greater desire than before to hold demonstrations against the political and social situation that Zimbabweans find themselves in. There are also reports from rural areas that local populations are putting pressure on chiefs, with communities refusing to accept chiefs they know have been implicated in murder, rape and such crimes. Rumours abound in Zimbabwe that any resistance to a new ZANU-PF government being imposed could lead to a military coup. There are also mixed views on whether the MDC could go to ground and sit it out or whether their structures will be irrevocably damaged.

In this situation where are the pressure points for solidarity activists? There is talk of using the 2010 World Cup as a pressure point, to call for the withdrawal of EU cooperation with SADC states (demands made by the UK Zimbabwe Vigil), increased sanctions against the ZANU-PF elite whilst maintaining support for the vulnerable inside Zimbabwe. The MDC-T which appears to reject further tightening of sanctions has called for African Union and United Nations resolution of the crisis. However their record of procrastination and world recession, events in the DRC, Iraq and Afghanistan, this could take five years with and many Zimbabweans dead by then,

In the aftermath of Georgia, it is unlikely that any serious attempt at pressure on Zimbabwe would get through the UNSC. The West may ratchet up sanctions whilst maintaining humanitarian aid, but little other action appears likely. Mugabe is now past the point of being swayed by international or regional criticism. Responses like ‘food bombing’ Zimbabwe if access proves difficult, or invoking the UN ‘Responsibility to Protect’ procedures (when governments fail to protect their own populations) are very difficult to get started and even harder to implement.

Two particular indicators of ZANU-PF’s desperate need for forex to maintain their rule and patronage were the allegations of stealing money from the Global Fund. The latter desperate to fund needy people living with HIV and AIDS has sought ways of getting the money to them without it going through the Reserve Bank which regularly steals forex. The other example was that major goldmines, a source of government revenue, had to shut down when the government did not pay over US$ 30 million owed them for delivering gold. Zimbabwe gets 40% of its export earnings from gold, but production for 2009 appears already under threat at a time of high world gold and metal prices. The money went on providing vehicles for judges, ministers and tractors to bribe the rural electorate.

Amid the hyperinflation and the Zimbabwe dollar having been replaced effectively by the US dollar, the last amount of sustainable resilience is now. According to the UNDP it will take the economy 16 years of interrupted growth at 5% pa to get back to levels of 1990. Meanwhile Zimbabweans unable to get US dollars (which is the vast majority), queue forever for cash that is about equal to their bus ride to get to the bank. Imminent famine is a major possibility with people already dying outside the ‘hunger months’ of February to April. Government unconcern shown by the banning of the Elders Group is matched by allegations of UN agencies being similarly unconcerned. There are already calls for increased humanitarian aid with lack of food possibly being compounded by drought. But according to some reports aid is holed up in bonded warehouses on Zimbabwe's border to be released as part of ZANU-PF's electoral strategy. All indications are that the harvest will be very poor with reports already of deaths from hunger (as well as cholera). The regime is trying assert control over food distribution and trying to unload any food aid in chiefs’ homesteads and thereby evade MDC councils.

Suggestions that humanitarian agencies state that until the political situation is resolved and the forex money that is regularly raided by the Reserve Bank is returned, they will withhold aid would be very difficult. 'The rainy season is upon us and land should have been prepared but you have to know someone to access seeds and fertilisers' stated a church development worker. She added that Zimbabweans are not likely to be fooled by the eventual release of humanitarian aid – they know it comes from overseas. The rural population has now got rid of all assets and agencies are trying to help survival through basic asset protection. At the same time when both survival strategies and ethics have gone, there was a story of the local MP buying animals from his constituents at knockdown prices in return for maize.

The regime ritually blames sanctions for all its problems but the ZANU-PF politburo was also reportedly deeply divided over whether Mugabe should keep Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor, Gideon Gono in post, although reports on 26 November suggest that he has been re-appointed for a second five-year term, extending his time in the post to Nov. 30, 2013. Some blame him for the state of the economy whilst others see his uses as someone prepared to print money to maintain the regime’s patronage networks. A rumour is that when he learned that as part of the GPA Mugabe had reluctantly handed over the finance ministry to Tsvangirai, Gono went to the US Embassy, to offer to exchange details of the looting of the country by Mugabe via share transfers and foreign exchange deals for US$5 million and residence permits in a western country for himself, his wife and indeed his mistress.

The GPA impasse means the dire socio-economic conditions are bound to worsen. The cholera outbreak led Médecins Sans Frontières to state that a million people could be at risk. However, innovatively, the police banned MDC rallies due to the outbreaks. More seriously, the regime cannot deny however that the health system has collapsed and overwhelmed medical staff are on strike. Major hospitals have almost closed down due to staff exodus and unavailability of drugs. The shortage of life-saving drugs in state-run hospitals has led to patients' relatives being told to try to find them at private pharmacies in town.

So where are the focal points for resistance to this multiple crisis? Civil society is seemingly divided on its on its strategy towards MDC with some calling for a united front and moving to prop up MDC grassroots support. There is the paradox of the MDC and civil society as seemingly natural allies that do not help each other. There is the common perception that the NGOs are too urban, elitist, male-dominated and middle class with no knowledge of how to organise communities. There has also been a great loss of personnel in the sector with the civics being described to me as practically non-existent. After three months the spaces that briefly opened up are now closing.

In terms of the role of churches it would seem that eventually there has been a much stronger attempt to bring unity. An international faith-based NGO has attempted to bring the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance (ZCA) and the Protestant churches closer in a reconciliation initiative between ZCA, ZCC (Protestants) and EFZ (evangelicals). A communiqué from that meeting talked of the churches failing each other and hence the people. There is talk of the church involving itself in any truth and reconciliation process. A national conference is planned with an invitation to Archbishop Tutu on lessons of truth and reconciliation but also on the need for repentance and within church. This appears to open up opportunities even if there is vagueness on key issues and timeframes. There was also the desire to bring in the various Apostolic churches that in the past have provided support for ZANU-PF.

So how do international activists provide support but also ensure that in any kind of transition Zimbabweans themselves shape that agenda not just the North and the international financial institutions, and that there is no going back to the unequal system of ownership of resources, especially land, before 2000? There is need for a process that combines joint actions, greater coordination and activity between northern and southern-based actors on their respective states and institutions; learning and exchanges between European organisations and between Zimbabwean, Southern African and European civil society groups; development and adequate use of high quality, timely briefings on specific issues and influencing funding decisions and timings for Zimbabwe, and responding to developments in Southern Africa. Zimbabwe needs:

* Full and equal access to humanitarian assistance
* Commitment to significant Zimbabwean (diaspora as well as resident citizen) input into transitional and stabilisation programmes to overcome the dangers that a recovery process be too ‘stabilisation-oriented’ (without adequate social provisions), does not adequately deal with macro-economic issues such as debt clearance and be ‘appeasement-oriented’ (avoiding accountability and perpetrator responsibility);
* Restoration of the rule of law, including an independent judiciary;
* Commitment to the democratic process and respect for internationally accepted human rights standards, including a commitment to freedom of expression, freedom of print and broadcast media, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association;
* A commitment to timely elections held in accordance with international standards, and in the presence of international election observers.

It might need an international peacekeeping force to put these into place, but no-one is expecting this to happen. In its absence, work should build on the significant sustained and coordinated regional solidarity actions undertaken in southern Africa around the blockage of Chinese arms shipment and the SADC summits. Initiatives on Zimbabwe have been coordinated by Cosatu and other trade unions as well as civic movements and churches throughout the region and Africa. These regional developments provide a positive example for Africa-wide – as well as Northern – advocacy on democracy, human rights and social justice.

A South African activist pointedly said this needs to be combined with grassroots work far away from the focus on international / regional structures, legal frameworks, rule of law, election related issues etc. ‘Whilst important, these issues are so remote from the grind of daily reality and the emphasis, therefore must be placed on empowering poor people to cope / survive and god knows, even thrive, in a context where government services will not be resuscitated in the short to medium term future, and in so doing  we need to engender a culture that does not reinforce dependency and 'wait' for government service delivery but seeks to develop parallel service mechanisms to deal with health, education, food security issues.’

* Sam Kabele is a human rights activist

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

POSTSCRIPT:
Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said today it was determined to have former president Thabo Mbeki removed as facilitator before it would proceed with Zimbabwe's power-sharing negotiations. Tsvangirai, who accuses Mbeki of continuing bias against the MDC in the talks with Zanu PF, has written to President Kgalema Motlanthe asking him to remove Mbeki. He will travel to Dar es Salaam this weekend to seek Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete's support for the move. The long-simmering tensions between Mbeki and the MDC boiled over yesterday over an exchange of letters between them, as negotiations resumed in Gauteng. Tsvangirai's deputy Tendai Biti wrote to Mbeki on November 19, rejecting as a "nullity" the Southern African Development Community's (SADC's) demand that the MDC share the home affairs ministry with Zanu PF. Mbeki wrote back a strongly worded letter on November 22 to Tsvangirai in which he slammed the MDC for denigrating SADC and - according to the MDC - implied that the party was being influenced by the West. Mbeki wrote "It may be that … you consider our region and continent as being of little consequence to the future of Zimbabwe, believing that others further away, in western Europe and North America, are of greater importance." These remarks seem to have been the final straw for the MDC. Tsvangirai's spokesman George Sibotshiwe said today that the MDC would now formally withdraw from the negotiations until the issue of Mbeki's removal was resolved. However the MDC would continue to engage with the facilitation and other Zimbabwean parties but only in a "without-prejudice discussion."

The limits to policy

Richard Pithouse

2008-11-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52187

The rebellions in the ANC against Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have broken the hermetic seal that had been tightly wound around electoral politics by the dominance of the ANC since 1994. It is not yet clear which social forces will be able to manoeuvre most effectively on this new and, for the moment, more open terrain. It is possible that once a deal is brokered between the ambitions and principles of the unruly mix of corrupt crony capitalists, conservative patriarchs, liberals, social democrats and Stalinists contending for influence a new order will sink into place with the same weight as the old. But for the moment there is, despite the ongoing debasement of our political discourse by Zuma and some of his supporters, a new space in which there can be some discussion of alternatives.

Although this space remains constrained by all kinds of shared dogmas it is, clearly, important for previously suppressed voices to seize this moment, to use it as effectively as possible and to hold it open for as long as is possible. But it is also necessary to begin with a clear understanding of its constraints and in elite civil society one of the constraints has been the tendency to reduce this opportunity to discussions around questions of policy.

Some have come to debates on policy with considerable optimism arguing that despite the crude machismo that has characterised much of the Zuma campaign the Polokwane resolutions nevertheless lay out a progressive policy agenda. The clear break with market fundamentalism is certainly very welcome as are commitments to extend the child support grant, to steadily decommodify education and so on. But some of the resolutions, particular those that relate to shack settlements and immigrants are infused with an ominous language of control that is driven by a security rather than a rights based agenda. If you have fled catastrophes in the Congo or Zimbabwe and arrived here without papers, or if you live in a shack because that it the only route to personal autonomy or access to the opportunities of a city, you have good reason to fear the Polokwane resolutions.

But as much as the debates around the content of the Polokwane resolutions are important, it is also necessary to examine the broader set of political assumptions in which they are all, progressive and reactionary, embedded. This is dispiriting work. The overall vision of a developmental state under the control of a party in which branch members are disciplined and politically educated by the party elite remains as stolid, top down and bureaucratic as ever. There is no hint of the kind of contemporary political innovation associated with grassroots political movements in many parts of the world, as well the governments of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti or Evo Morales in Bolivia, that have opened political society to ordinary people as actors who can innovate rather than cadres that obey or spectators that watch.

There are other limits to a political discourse that limits the possibilities for progress to prospects for new and better policies. The most commonly made argument in this respect is that the South African state simply lacks the capacity to implement policy and that, therefore, new policies are unlikely to be realised in practice. Certainly in the past many policies have not been implemented. One example is the progressive Breaking New Ground housing policy that moves away from the individual subsidy system and supports collective funding for the in-situ upgrading of shack settlements. It is also true that the state has failed to adhere to many laws. Many municipalities consistently act towards shack dwellers, particularly with regard to evictions, in ways that are in strict legal terms criminal.

There’s no doubt that many government departments are crippled by a lack of capacity. But it is also clear that when the state has the political will to commit itself to effective action it is highly effective. The state is, for instance, extremely effective in collecting taxes, monitoring the growth in shack settlements in the major cities, gathering intelligence on grassroots political movements outside of party control and so on. This indicates that there is a significant extent to which the capacity problem is an expression of the deeper problem of political will.

Two of the more important limits to the political will of the state to implement its policies may be linked directly to the top down structure of the ANC and the general hostility that both ANC and the state have displayed towards popular innovation, at the level of practical action and ideas, outside of its tightly controlled structures.

The first of these limits is the way in which elite political discourse, often driven by elite interests, regularly trumps formal policy positions. A good example of this is the language of ‘eradicating slums’ which results in violent and often illegal state attacks on poor people and their exclusion from the cities. This is in direct contradiction to more pro-poor national policies but takes its legitimacy from the general anti-poor discourse of political elites. If ward committees and ANC branches did not function as a top down and often highly authoritarian system of political control in shack settlements and instead allowed the expression of ideas upwards there would be some prospects for a challenge to the elite slide into anti-poor discourses. As it is popular challenges to elite discourse from outside the party structures are simply dismissed as criminality or political conspiracy.

A second major limit to the political will of the state to implement its policies is the degree to which the state developmental agenda has been overwhelmingly captured by local party elites and subordinated to their personal interests. Housing is a particular crude example of this. At every turn the politics of patronage moves state developmental projects against the interests of the poor.

Given the capture of local developmental projects by local party elites it is not surprising that over the last few years so many of the often misnamed ‘service delivery protests’ have targeted ward councillors and their committees. It is equally unsurprising that many of the independent movements of the poor that have emerged from these protests have refused electoral politics altogether and instead sought to build their own power to the point where they can directly counter that of the party and negotiate with the state without the mediation of local party elites.

The debates on the prospects for new and better policies are to be welcomed and we should take them up with vigour. But we also need to be clear sighted about the limits to a conception of politics that focuses on policy without taking sufficient account of the other factors that shape the reality of how things really go down in practice.

* Richard Pithouse, an independent writer and researcher in Durban.
This article was originally published by The South African Civil Society Information Service.

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

Magic markets and voodoo economics

Annar Cassam

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52190

"In this world the follies of the rich pass for wise sayings." John Kenneth Galbraith in the The Culture of Contentment

The current financial disaster caused by the banking and housing sectors of the US has led to economic and social consequences which are spreading like cancer from America and Europe to other parts of the globe. In the ensuing panic, the sense of infallibility possessed by true believers in the "quiet theology of laisser-faire", to use Galbraith's expression in the book quoted above, has faded somewhat.

Great gurus such as Greenspan himself have expressed shock and distress at the way erstwhile monetary certitudes have so rapidly unravelled (more of him later). Even academics like Francis Fukayama, self-appointed guardian of cosmic clocks which tell him when human history ends, now offer brutally honest accounts of the reasons why things have fallen apart at the centre of the paradigm, the one and only available to earthlings.

In a severe article in Newsweek (13/10/2008) entitled, "The Fall of America Inc." Fukayma fumed thus:

"Between 2002 and 2007, while the world was enjoying an unprecedented period of growth, it was easy to ignore those European socialists and Latin American populists who denounced the US economic model as "cowboy capitalism." But now the engine of that growth, the American economy, has gone off the rails and threatens to drag the rest of the world down with it. Worse, the culprit is the American model itself: under the mantra of less government, Washington failed to adequately regulate the financial sector and allowed it to do tremendous harm to the rest of the society."

So what else is new, one is tempted to ask today, having observed the same Washington-made mantras produce the same harmful consequences in African countries in the 1980s.

This sense of deja vu is more acute than ever since the G20 Summit met in Washington on November 15 and agreed in principle to act in concert on a number of items; most of these will remain abstractions till the new Obama administration takes office-and the leadership-in January next year.

However, there is one subject which has already been seized upon for immediate action and this relates to the IMF's greatly strengthened position as the main lending agency. As result of the current financial crisis,the IMF is busy bailing out the long queue of developing countries that has already formed at his door, according to the Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

African and Third word countries generally will remember how they were treated by the arrogant gurus of the IMF and the World Bank 25 years ago during those heady days of reaganomics.

In those days, under the pretext of structural adjustment programmes, an ideological brew of monetarism, magical market forces, conditionalities and debt service were forced upon African countries seeking to borrow money from the World Bank and IMF. These programmes resulted in massive impoverishment for mainly rural populations all over the continent.

Massive cuts in education and health budgets and the removal of food and farming subsidies (puny compared to the amounts handed out then- and - now by the US State to the American agro-business sector) imposed as conditionalities led to "tremendous harm" in Africa. They also caused food riots, general strikes, civil strife and political instability.

A new phrase came into being in the early 1980s to describe this type of reaction to World Bank/IMF advice, "IMF riots" as citizens of Sudan,Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Nigeria took to the streets to protest against increased food prices and local currencies devalued overnight.

Another new expression also entered the development dictionary to denote the World Bank/IMF expert: "second-rate economists from first-rate universities." This phrase was invented by Joseph Stiglitz to describe his colleagues when he was Chief Economist at the World Bank and as such knew what he was talking about.

Endless expert missions were dispatched from Washington equipped with a checklist of dogmatic demands which never varied: instant currency de-valuation,increased producer prices, import liberalisation, privatisation, market deregulation, cuts in state spending in education and health and food subsidies and so on.

And the consequences everywhere of this pressure were always the same: children out of school,fragile health systems further weakened, workers out of work and the majority of the people living in the countryside more impoverished by the day.

Meanwhile, IMF riots everywhere they happened also produced the same reaction from the authorities: armed police and troops to control those demonstrating against increases in staple food prices.

Third World leaders who dared to question and disagree with these experts were punished, like Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica, "squeezed out like a wet rag" as the Guardian once put it or were treated as dimwits who "did not understand economics." President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, who argued consistently against IMF ideology and the injustice of debt service, was included in this club.

In October 1985, a few weeks before Nyerere retired from the presidency, the Guardian wrote on the subject of Tanzania's six-year battle with the IMF (18/10/1985):

"President Nyerere has said for years that if Tanzania were to implement a classic IMF programme it would mean putting the army on to the streets to control the anger of the population.....and the government and people have been squeezed progressively every year since 1980. Two successive devaluations, cuts in the state sector (18,000 civil servants sacked), a rise in producer prices and cuts in food subsidies have already been carried out gradually since 1981. But none of this has been enough to persuade countless IMF missions to Dar es Salaam to release the $200million stand-by credit already agreed by the IMF in August 1980. Most other donors have held back waiting for the IMF stamp of approval from Washington."

It should be pointed out here that during this same period,Tanzania's neighbour, Zaire, was being treated with the utmost generosity by the World Bank because of the special relationship that existed between President Mobutu and Washington.As Michaela Wrong explains in her excellent book on the subject "In the Footsteps of Mr.Kurtz", Mobutu could " borrow" as much as he wanted, with no conditionalities asked;where the money went is another story.

And this was not all; added to IMF obduracy and collateral ganging -up by the rest of the Western donors, there was the other sacrosanct demand.... of debt service. By the mid 1990s, African countries were net exporters of US dollars to the tune of 10 billion a year. (In Washington techno-speak, this massive outflow of funds from the poor to the rich was called "negative transfer", an interesting turn of phrase like "friendly fire.)

The situation became as absurd as it was tragic and by 1996, for example, a war-torn country like Mozambique was paying out 33% of its total export earnings to the West in debt service and spending just 3% on education and health.

How African countries were supposed to develop with this level of dis-investment in human resources, our experts could not explain initially. They pondered over this and eventually came up with another mantra: Good Governance and Democracy.

Today, in the year 2008, Washington's neo-liberal mantras have come home to roost, with dire results for ordinary folks yearning to be free.... and and gainfully employed and with health care and a roof over their families' heads. The magical market forces have evaporated, except in the case of those lucky few CEOs of the very same private banks which caused the crash in the first place.

Strangely enough, the hated state is bailing out these same institutions with taxpayers' money so that the fat-cats can still take home their fabulous salaries, bonuses, stock options,etc.

Confused?

As they say, not everyone can understand economics; and Reagan-omics even less so. So one is obliged to ask what exactly was Reaganomics and who really understands economics and finance.

It should be recalled that even in the1980s, at the height of the so-called Reagan revolution which cast in stone the principles of laissez-faire, self-regulating market forces,financial deregulation and monetarism, American society experienced several serious financial crises.

The most devastating of these was undoubtedly caused by the collapse of the savings and loans associations, popularly known as the S&L scandal. It was the Reagan administration's market magicians who set the stage for the S&Ls to do what they liked in the name of deregulation, thus facilitating:

"what was by far the most feckless and felonious disposition of what, essentially, were public funds in the nation's history. This scandal, which was allowed to develop in the 1980s, had emerged by the end of that decade as the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time (Galbraith, op. cit)."

The packaging and marketing of Ronald Reagan (by a succession of neo- liberal gurus) as a revolutionary economic thinker of genius who saved the West and the entire free world from the axis and ravages of socialistic welfare states must rank as one of the most successful sales campaigns in history.

Most people who knew him or had just a brief moment with him could confirm that his understanding of economics (and of the world) was limited to reading the script prepared for him by his staff. It is truly remarkable that a man who could not tell the Laffer curve from a loaf of bread should have immortalised his name in economic history via the term "Reaganism."

For example, Prof. Fukuyama in the article referred to above, typically claims that Reaganism was a fundamentally American idea which has "dominated global thinking since the 1980s" and which "reversed a century-long trend towards ever-larger government..." Furthermore, he adds,this engine of capitalism "laid the groundwork for nearly three decades of growth."

The fact that Fukuyama then goes on to explain that this same engine has gone off the rails precisely because of the "mantra of less government" seems irrelevant since "Reaganism (or, in its British form,Thatcherism) was right for its time."

Right for whom exactly?

The Reagan administration's first act was to cut taxes for the very rich; in 1981, marginal rates for this group were slashed from 70% to a nominal 50% and in 1986 further cuts brought the rates to 28%. These tax cuts were supposed automatically to stimulate growth and thus lead to more revenue for the state...hanks to magic market forces.

However, as was confirmed by Robert MacNamara, the former World Bank President, in his testimony to the Budget Committee of the US House of Representatives in July 1991, there was indeed an increase but equally so in the number of Americans living below the poverty line; an increase of 28% in the years 1978-1988. He also confirmed that, during the same period, nearly one out of every five children was born into poverty in the US, more than twice as high as in Canada and Germany.

Confused?

As they say, economics is not easy to comprehend, especially the faith- based kind. It is a mistake to treat the subject as an exact science,as Galbraith warned: "In economics, nothing is certain save the certainty that there will be firm prediction by those who do not know."

And this brings us back to Alan Greenspan, appointed by President Reagan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1987,and re-confirmed in the post by three succeeding Presidents, until retirement in 2006. Since the current crisis began, Greenspan has been openly criticised for his role as Chairman of the Fed in allowing the sub-prime bubble and other such anomalies to take hold because of his rigid position on deregulation.

In a touching and rare admission of ignorance (not of responsibility) before the House Committee on Oversight and Government in October, he expressed his "shock and disbelief" at discovering the extent of the sub-prime scandals and the resulting credit squeeze. Like the rest of us, he did not know or realise what the banks were up to, would you believe!

He should have talked to George Bush Sr. who , in a brilliant flash of insight (never since repeated) when he was Reagan's Vice-President, described Reaganomics in two words, "voodoo economics." This definition has rarely been used or even referred to since the 1980s but its exactitude and its brevity remain intact and perennial. And its pertinence to today's banking and financial crisis is uncanny.

In the flood of comments and analyses about the causes of the current crisis, there is one from a banker in Zurich which matches the inspired words uttered by Papa Bush in the 1980s. In an article in the Geneva daily Le Temps (31/10/2008) entitled "The Crisis: An Intellectual and Political Failure", the writer explains that the first culprits to be blamed for the current debacle are the influential economic thinkers and movers who hold sway over politicians in the US and Europe: "For the last 20 years, economic gurus, who are to science what witch-doctors are to medicine, have been banging on about so-called truths (laissez fairism and associated mantras) the empirical bases for which hardly exist."

Reagan has gone; voodoo economics is still with us.

Beware of second-rate witch-doctors chanting Washington-made mantras!


*Annar Cassam is Tanzanian, former Consultant at UNESCO/PEER Nairobi and former Director, UNESCO Office, Geneva.

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

The economics of global democracy

Adam W. Parsons

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52200

Adam Parsons tackles the issue of global inequalities characterized by a crisis of abundance in one part of the world while the other part continues to languish in poverty and want. He questions the irony of half the world starving and suffering from rising food costs while the other half is recording bumper harvests. The recent economic crisis saw western governments summon huge sums of money to bail out financial institutions, and yet there never seems to be the same magnanimity when it comes to addressing the plight of the poor in other parts of the world. He argues that the problem is more to do with equity than with scarcity
As the phrases 'freedom', 'civil rights' and 'democracy' take on epic proportions during the US elections, few commentators have reflected on what these words actually mean for the majority world. If we discuss human rights, no one can escape the disparity between those rights enjoyed in the rich countries, and the widespread lack of even the most basic rights across the Global South. There remains a gulf between those rights enjoyed in Northern Europe or the United States - such as the right to life, the right to food, or the right to an education – and the daily infringement of these enshrined rights for billions of men, women and children in the less developed countries.

With the global integration of markets and cultures over the past few decades, the concepts of human rights and democracy can no longer be considered apart from the economics of inequality. Of the Four Freedoms articulated by Roosevelt in 1941, Freedom from Want is still a dream for at least half of the world population. When the Universal Declaration marks its 60th Anniversary in December, there will therefore be little to celebrate. We live in a time defined by the most dissolute world records: there are more billionaires today than ever before, a number crossing into four figures for the first time – 1,125. There are more millionaires today than ever, passing 10 million for the first time last year and adding an extra zero to the tally – "10.1 million millionaires".

We also have the largest urban population in human history, with the number of slum-dwellers worldwide now breaking the one billion mark. At the same time, we had record harvests this summer in all of the emerging BRIC economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – as well as a record cereal crop in the United States, while the number of hungry people increased by 100 million to reach close to a billion people.

It is an age of the crudest paradoxes: unbelievable wealth amidst implausible penury; record levels of food amidst spiralling levels of hunger; and the paradox of rising economic growth alongside rising levels of poverty. What this indicates is that there is more than enough wealth to go around, there is enough food being produced to feed everyone sufficiently, and there are enough resources for everyone to enjoy at least a minimal standard of living. The problem in its simplest form is one of equity and distribution: we do not use the world's resources wisely, and we do not share the world's resources with those who need them most. The world crisis in its essence is so simple that even a child could both understand it and comprehend its absurdity.

This perverse bias in global priorities became palpably clear during the recent global financial crash. People everywhere began to ask: why is it that the governments of the world can summon several trillion dollars to bail out millionaire bankers, and yet no government can afford the money – just $30 billion dollars a year – that would be enough to bail out the world's hungry?

There is barely a week that now goes by without another high-level report being released about growing inequality, increasing destabilisation and insecurity, or dramatically rising poverty and hunger – and these problems are by no means confined to the poorest countries. To quote a few examples from just the last couple of weeks: the United States, the wealthiest country in the world which led the globalisation of markets over the past few decades, now has the largest gap between its wealthiest and poorest households out of all the 30 OECD countries after Mexico and Turkey.

According to another study, the lives of millions of working poor families in the US has gotten worse since 2002, with 350,000 more working families slipping into poverty, and 42 million working adults and their children rendered too poor to meet their basic needs of food and shelter. The economic freedom promised through the liberalisation of market forces has, in reality, resulted in a freedom for the very few and a contradiction of the core free-market promise – that increased wealth will be shared.

Not all of this is bad news. Just as citizens’ movements have long recognised the blindness, injustice and unsustainability of the current economic system, they have simultaneously held the vision of a better world in which a true form of democracy is secured universally alongside basic human rights. Just as the names for the prevailing market-led ideology are legion, the names for this better world are numerous too; it's being variously called economic democracy, living democracy, earth democracy, democratic mundialization, or simply alter-globalization – with all of its component off-shoots including water democracy, food democracy or food sovereignty. Common to all of the proposals is a vision far greater than merely the institutions and multiple parties of political democracy, but a world in which everyone has a say in their own future, in which the right to life's essentials are universally protected.

The necessary self-determination and self-expression in determining how one's life will be lived, which is the basis of true democracy or liberty, does not exist in any real sense anywhere in the world. Today, more and more people are being cut out of the decision-making process over life's basic essentials, while the corporate monopolisation of the world's resources continues to accelerate. The persistence of hunger and extreme poverty in a world of excess and plenty is all the evidence that a true form of democracy has yet to be realised.

One sudden sign of hope and change is the dramatic shift of intellectual opinion this year following the convergence of food, fuel and financial crises. Even a few months ago, the phrases 'nationalisation' or 'government intervention' would have been anathema to world leaders. Now, as the global financial system continues to fall apart, there is widespread talk amongst Presidents and Prime Ministers of enacting a new world order, a "new form of capitalism" or a "new global economic and financial architecture". Multilateral institutions like the IMF and WTO are standing accused, along with the G-7 nations, of having misgoverned the world economy. Some have likened the international banking crisis to an economic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union, with much talk of replacing the existing institutions with new forms of global governance - leading to the prospect of a 'Bretton Woods II' summit being held later this month.

The two most important questions that remain are nothing new for the burgeoning ranks of the world's disenfranchised poor. Firstly, will any changes made to the financial system continue to be in favour of the 20% of the world population who, since the 1960s, have consistently forged ahead of the majority world – the fortunate 20% in the richest countries who consume at least 86% of the world's goods. Or will the rich nations finally deliver some measure of socio-economic justice to the more than three billion people, almost half of the world, who continue to survive on less than $2.50 a day? Secondly, will intergovernmental policy remain in the hands of the major industrial powers and the international institutions they control - or will their rule-making, instead of prioritising a secure environment for open markets, finally make the necessary countervailing rules to protect human rights and human development?

A political and economic transformation of this scale is not going to happen by itself. The top 1% who control most of the world's resources are not going to give up their power and privileges without resistance. Organised political activism is responsible for the degree of democracy we have today – from universal adult suffrage and women's rights, to trade unions and civil liberties – but the calls are now ringing out for a new alliance of the global justice movement, a united voice that can connect together all the human rights activists, environmentalists, global justice campaigners, NGOs and concerned citizens worldwide.

This voice has already begun to emerge, as evidenced in the almost constant demonstrations taking place throughout the world, characterised most often by peaceful protest and an informal consensus against rife injustice. As one example, in mid-October the global call to action against poverty saw the "biggest mobilisation ever on a single issue", with 116 million people taking part in demonstrations around the world. It's one more sign of hope and change, an indication of the basin of goodwill and the unified consciousness that is already present in the world.

The intensity of this international phenomenon is still in its infancy, however, and unaware of its concerted power to affect policy changes at the international level. The most common name for this new force is simply world public opinion, dubbed a 'new superpower' in world affairs that cannot be directed by any imposed authority, that includes all ages and walks of life, and that is altogether beyond the 'people power' political protests of the past 20 years. It' is in this way that the concept of sharing has the potential to become a rallying call that can unite people under a single banner, to provide a truly democratic platform with a select petition of demands that can pressure governments and world leaders to completely reorder their priorities. Another name for it is 'democracy in action', and it is here that we all hold an urgent responsibility.

* Adam W. Parsons is the editor of Share The World's Resources. This article was adapted from a talk given at a seminar hosted by World Goodwill on the theme "Human Rights, Spiritual Responsibilities – A Crisis for Democracy?", held in London on the 1st November 2008.

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

The death of dogma

John Samuel

2008-11-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52188

“It is over”, a succinct way of informing the death of a dogma, the greed, driven neoliberal capitalism. On September 15, 2008, that is how one of stockbrokers in Wall Street described the fall of the Lehman Brothers. The fall of the Lehman was a visible signifier of the Tsunami that hit the base of a turbulent sea called the Wall street , the world of high pitched financial trade and investment. It was the story of a disaster foretold.

That morning a painter called Geoffrey Raynold landed up in Manhattan and unveiled a large canvass painting, The Annotated Fuld , showing Richard Fuld , the beaten Chairman and CEO of the Lehman Brothers with sunken eyes. The painter invited the Lehman employees and others to scrawl their message on the canvass , someone scribbled, “This sucks”. The next day the painting was sold for a 100,000 dollars.

The rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers is symbolic of the rise and fall of the neoliberal economic policy paradigm. When the financial market roared in glory , the speculators, traders and investment bankers played in the global Casino , like those ones in Atlanta city , as if there is no end to the good days. The rich laughed their way to bank everyday , dined, wined and partied , with perpetual cheers as the stock market index climbed to the sky. Sensex has become too sexy to sustain. And many got seduced to the red hot stock market. The percentage of Americans owing stock rose from 16% in the 1970s to more than 50% by 2005. Everyone wanted a piece of the cake.

It is true that the Lehman Brothers is a 158 year old brand. However, it is actually a 14 year old company that was spun off by American Express in 1994. In 1994, the Lehman Brothers only had a relatively small capital base. But the ambitious captains of Lehman were thirsty for profit and capital. To make more profits, they borrowed huge sums in relation to its real size. Its debt became 35 times more than its capital , an unsustainable ratio. But they were making profits and they jumped in to the lucrative real estate markets, with new financial instruments , derivatives , to make more quick money. Credit,rating agencies too played the game. The top credit rating agency Moody and Standard and Poor gave AAA , rating, the top one , to the those greedy nexus, playing the game all along. It was a clear conflict of interest when the same bankers paid Moody and S&P to give them a good credit rating to their respective banks. It was a lie, waiting to be exploded in the scandal of sub,prime lending , easy mortgage given away to anyone ready to buy real estate, unmindful of their economic capacity to repay the loans. These intermediaries were betting other people's money; if they gain, they make a huge bonus. If they lost it is someone else’s money that is lost. No wonder that Richard Flud made US$ 490 million as the CEO of the Lehman Brothers , making the best use of stock options. Those whiz kids , called investment bankers , went for risky deals and quickie profits , as they too could make their millions through the stock options. Many of them made their millions and moved on. And now the party is over. More than a trillion dollars worth stock market wealth vanished in a single day. They call it financial meltdown. That was the beginning of the end.

Dogmas are authoritarian doctrines. Neo,liberalism, emerged in the early 1980s, became a dogma over a period of ten years. The dogma was that “market knows the best”. It consisted of tax cuts for the rich, more indirect taxes, for the ordinary people, easy money with less interest rates and free market with forced liberalization of the economy, market and financial sectors across the world. Anyone who questioned the dogma got marginalized as heretics

By the late 1970s, the market got saturated in the US and Europe. They required new market for the movement of the finance capital as well as manufactured goods. Unless the market was expanded to the emerging economies and unless there was a free flow of capital, the Anglo,Saxon capitalism in the early 1980s would have faced a deep crisis. The state too was saturated and fat. That is how the neo,liberal agenda, along with neo,conservative politics of the Regan era, entered the scene.

Many of the developing and poor countries were in the debt trap, resulting from the oil price shock in the 1970s. So the USA and their allies used World Bank and IMF as strategic institutions to force open many of the debt driven countries to their markets and deregulate their economies. By the early 1990s, they called it ‘Washington Consensus”, a neat packaging of the neo,liberal dogma, pedaled across the world by the Word Bank and IMF. The charismatic face of Bill Clinton and the glib talks of Tony Blair painted the neo,liberal dogma with a “human face’.

Investment Bankers looked like sexy guys with lots of money. Globalization became a fashion statement for many countries. Those who challenged it were simply ignored and sidelined. The World Economic Forum became the cathedral of capitalism, an extension of the Wall Street. Political leaders and corporate executives went their for annual pilgrimage. The deadly dogma preached growth and growth, toasted for the new billionaires. Newspapers told the rags to riches stories of the new billionaires. Billons of poor were put under the carpet. Poverty and inequality did not make it to the front page. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Laxmi Mittals did make it, and they smiled at us from the TV Channels. The upward mobile, upper cast and urban class in the metros of India celebrated it with a saffron glow , India Shining. Governments competed to show how much they were committed to the neoliberal dogma. Any sceptics were dumped as the relics of the past or the leftover of the Left.

When neoliberal finance capitalism, initiated by the Anglo,American Axis of Regan,Thatcher combine, pushed us the new order of the day, their wholesale agents Word Bank and IMF pedalled neoliberal policies as the medicines for all ills in all countries. By the early nineties, the neoliberal globalization and deregulation became the dogmatic “mantra’ of the day. Politicians wanted to be in the good books of Uncle Sam and bureaucrats wanted to be in the good books of the Bretton Wood masters. When Soviet model too collapsed, the neoconservative intellectuals began to sell old wine in new bottles, “The End of History”, Clash of Civilization” and “There are no Alternatives”. There emerged a deep nexus between the Wall Street and US treasury. It is not a mere accident that Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, was the former Chief Executive of Goldman Sachs. Many of the top executives in the government and Word Bank came from the Wall Street. The money driven corporate Politics, the agents of investment banks in the corridors of power and their media minions created the myth of the growth engine, fuelled by unbridled finance capital.

Everyone in the corridors of power all over the world was sold to the idea of the inevitability of neoliberal capitalism. The rise of neoliberalism was indicated the politics of economic elites. During the last twenty five years, the politics in many country got corporatized, primarily driven by money and media; fund managers and agents of big corporations. The policy making too was subcontracted to the votaries of neoliberal dogma. Though many of them talked about “Freedom” they were actually in the business denying dignity and fudging freedom. Meanwhile Forbes Magazine kept celebrating the increasing number of billionaires, in the midst of a billion of poor who went to bed hungry every day.

Many warned that the wolf was on the way. But who got time in the midst of the party? George Soros, one of those original gurus in the financial capital market warned about “market fundamentalism”. Warren Buffet – an old hand at the Wall Street , called derivatives as the “Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction”. But everybody was busy partying; making the quick bucks, till the wolf was at the door.

In an ethical liberal democratic system, the state is expected to determine the boundaries of market and citizens are expected determine the boundaries of the state. But the dogma reiterated that “Market knows the best”. Thus the market began to determine the boundaries of the state and the state began to determine the boundaries of citizens. Then markets were captured by speculative finance capitalists and investment banks. Finance market got increasingly detached from real people, real wealth and real economy. The market was driving the governments. And now government is forced to bail out and nationalize the loses, while the rich few got away with their fat profit. Federal government in the US had to take the huge burden of two big mortgage companies and dumped more than 5 trillion of the debt of the companies to the lap of tax payers, almost doubling the amount that the US owes to its lenders. This is termed as the biggest transfer of debt in the history of money. Almost a couple of trillion dollar is pumped in to economic system in America and Europe to keep those sinking ships float. Ultimately it is the people who end up paying for the indulgent excess of the rich and powerful in the global casino of the so-called Free Market. Free market was never free and now the toxic burden is dumped on the people.

Bush presided over a brutal war and a deadly financial casino. He prostituted the term “democracy” and “freedom” by bombing people and countries, first in the name of the so,called Weapons of Mass Destruction and then in the name of “freedom", blowing up three trillion dollars on a bombing spree. The unbridled neo,liberal finance capitalism bulldozed ahead with greed, till it crashed. The boasts or bombs of Bush did not help to conceal the smell of the reeking dogma under the carpet. The American dream became a nightmare within few weeks.

The dogma is dead now under the debris of the famed investment banks. There is no more consensus in Washington. Karl Marx must be laughing in his grave in London.

* John Samuel is a social activist and the International Director of Actionaid.

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

Congo: One hundred years of colonialism, dictatorship and war

1908 - 2008

Kambale Musavuli and Maurice Carney

2008-11-25

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52189

Saturday, November 15, 2008 marked the 100-year anniversary of the removal of the Congo from King Leopold II of Belgium as his own personal property. Global outrage of the King’s brutal rule resulted in his losing the Congo treasure trove on November 15, 1908.

Leopold II accumulated spectacular wealth for himself and the Belgian state during his 23-year dominion (1885 – 1908) over the Congo. During this period an estimated 10 million Congolese lost their lives while Leopold systematically looted the Congo of its rubber and ivory riches. Congo was handed over to Belgium who ruled as a colonial power from 1908 to 1960. Congo finally got its independence on June 30, 1960 when Patrice Emery Lumumba, its first democratically elected prime minister took office. Unfortunately, the western powers, primarily the United States and Belgium could not allow a fiercely independent African to consolidate his power over such a geo-strategic prize as the Congo. He was removed from power in a western backed coup within weeks and assassinated on January 17, 1961. Belgium apologized for its role in Lumumba’s assassination in 2002 and the US still downplays its role in Lumumba’s assassination. The US replaced Lumumba with the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and backed him until he was overthrown in 1997. The overthrow of Mobutu unleashed an ongoing resource war that has caused deep strife and unbearable suffering for the Congolese people, particularly the women and the children. It is estimated that Congo has lost nearly six million people since the 1996 invasion by Rwanda and Uganda with support from the United States and other Western nations.

A century later, Congo is at another crossroads. In spite of the advances in technology and the shrinking of the world, it is curious that there is such silence around the suffering of the Congolese people due to the exploitation of powerful corporate and foreign forces beyond its people’s immediate control. Unlike the early 1900s, remarkably, today there are few if any voices the likes of Mark Twain who wrote King Leopold’s Soliloquy, Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness (PDF) (Often misread as Congo or Africa being dark but he was referring to the dark hearts of the exploiters of the Congo), and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame who wrote Crime in the Congo. The Congo Reform movement that drew from the work of African Americans such as William Sheppard and George Washington Williams and led by European figures such as Robert Casement and E.D. Morel gave birth to the modern international human rights movement.

One hundred years later we are again calling on the global community to be at the side of the Congolese. This time, there is one fundamental difference, the Congolese are agents in this narrative and the call this time is not a hand-over to a colonial power or neo-colonial institutions but rather to the people of the Congo.

The clarion call is for the combating of the forces (local elites and rebels, foreign governments, foreign corporations, and multi-lateral institutions) that have the Congolese people in a death trap. The charity prism of the humanitarian industry is not the answer. It only perpetuates dependency and dis-empowerment. Should Congo be truly liberated, the Darfurizaton (emptying of agency from the afflicted people) of the global movement in support of the Congo must be avoided at all cost. Congolese must be agents rather than objects in the pursuit of the control of their land and their lives. The sovereignty of the people and control and ownership of the riches of their land is the fundamental human right for which we must advocate. It is a call not only for the Congo but the entire African continent.

Become a part of the global movement to Break the Silence as the Congolese pursue true sovereignty and liberty.


*Kambale Musavuli is a Congolese activist while Maurice Carney is the Executive Director of the Friends of the Congo.

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

Corruption and poverty in Africa: A deconstruction

Moses Ochonu

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52202

Corruption has acquired the status of a continental emergency in Africa. But this is not another pontification on corruption. Rather, it is a polemical disavowal of a few popular stereotypes and fallacies on corruption in Africa. It is laced, for good measure, with a few contrarian perspectives on the phenomenon.

One of the most insightful attempts to explain the cultural basis of political corruption in Africa contends that patronage ties between regular Africans and the political elite place informal obligations and demands on the latter, obligations which are often fulfilled through corrupt enrichment. Corruption in this explanation has many participants besides the politician or bureaucrat who actually engages in the act. It is an explanation that understands corruption through the prism of mass complicity and cultural toleration.

This explanation captures some of the reality of corruption in Africa. The typical African politician does not only grapple with financial pressure from family but also from kin, clan, hometown, and ethnic constituents. Indeed, the network of people that makes corrupt acts possible and sometimes undetectable includes not just politicians and state bureaucrats but also family members, friends, ethically challenged financial and legal experts, and traditional institutions of restraint. In Africa, corruption is indeed a group act.

Because of the absence of state welfare institutions in much of Africa, political constituents expect politicians representing them to cater to their quotidian and small-scale infrastructural needs. It is generally understood and quietly tolerated that a politician has to rely on his informal access to public funds to satisfy these informal requests for patronage and largesse. Many Africans euphemistically call this “patronage politics.” They may tolerate and normalize it as African grassroots politics. To Western observers, it is corruption at its crudest.

One can argue that this is a product of the nexus of over-centralized power, access to resources, and ethnic competition (which are features of most African countries), but this hardly accounts for the multi-ethnic and socially diverse cast of actors in most corruption scandals in Africa. Or for the fact that in much of continent, corruption is often the reason why overly centrist, patrimonial, and illogical states endure and not vice versa. The tragedy of many African countries—Nigeria particularly stands out—is that corruption and patronage politics are the recurring baselines of political compromise and consensus among self-interested but bitterly divided political elites.

True as it may be, it is very easy to overtate the argument about how the nature of the states inherited from colonial times sustains corruption in Africa. Such an overstatement often elides more socially embedded, low-level, and less obvious platforms that support and legitimize corrupt acts—or at least make them seem normal. This pseudo-cultural normalization of corruption is one of the biggest obstacles in the way entrenching transparency in government bureaucracies in Africa.

Nothing encapsulates this reality more than the pervasive Nigerian fad of traditional chieftaincy institutions dolling out titles to citizens whose source of wealth is questionable at best. What does one make of African universities that routinely give out honorary degrees to patently corrupt donors? Or churches and mosques that project demonstrably corrupt members as models of piety, accomplishment, and Godly favour?

What these practices do is to invest and implicate many Africans indirectly in the phenomenon of corruption. They are subtle and invidious, but they work to co-opt many Africans, even without their self-conscious consent, into the cultural and religious contexts in which corrupt acts and corrupt persons find rehabilitation and validation.

The result is that many Africans, even while expressing outrage against corruption privately, are publicly indifferent to its manifestation, especially if they are situated in social networks that benefit from the patronage politics through which corruption thrives. As a result they may feel too culturally complicit to take a stand. This kind of complicity makes official policy against corruption difficult because it mitigates the public pressure necessary for official action against corruption.

But Africans also draw clear moral lines in their narrative on corruption. Their tolerance for patronage and its lubrication by state resources does not prevent them from condemning the abuse of this kind of politics by greedy politicians. Nor does it blind them to the political excess of treasury looting for purely personal enrichment. The distinction between patronage and brazen theft of state funds may not always be clear, and one may morph into the other, but Africans recognize the destructive impact of the latter, and the moral evil that it represents. They know enough to make a distinction between the politician who practices vulgar populism with state funds and the one who stuffs his local and foreign bank accounts with budgeted funds meant for capital investments. The two forms of political behaviour do not affect Africa’s economies to the same degree. This is not a pedantic distinction. It is crucial for separating hysteria from reality.

This complex reality has sometimes been caricatured as mass African complicity in corruption, a kind of racial indictment on Africans, who are allegedly genetically and culturally predisposed to corruption. The more elegant variant of this thinking contends that corruption may be endemic in Africa but that this is because what Westerners call corruption is a historical, ever-present culture of patron-client relationships that are now lubricated, quite understandably, by postcolonial state resources. Some people go so far as to insinuate that Africans do not see corruption as corruption but as a proud, if atavistic, return to an African culture of the big man and his responsibilities. Like all stereotypical renderings of Africa, this argument exaggerates an African social reality for dramatic effect. Indeed, the dramatization and extrapolation of cultural norms that may or may not foster corruption is one of the bedrocks of conventional Western understandings of Africa.

One cannot deny that there is some cultural continuity between the African past and present, but much of the argument about Africa being a natural cultural habitat for corruption is cultural relativism taken too far. Some of it borders dangerously on intellectualized racism. Africans are more cognizant of corruption and its devastating impacts than are other peoples precisely because corruption, in its postcolonial vulgarity, represents a perversion of familiar, largely harmless African practices of political patronage. It is precisely because this perversion is recent, and not historical, that Africans consistently express outrage, even if a largely impotent one, against corruption.

So pervasive is this narrative of mass complicity in corruption in Africa that many Africans themselves have appropriated it as a rhetorical device in their own discourses on corruption. There is a particularly Nigerian spin on this paradigm that must be discredited. It is very common to hear Nigerians argue that no Nigerian is free of the stigma or aura of corruption. It is argued that every Nigerian knows, is related to, or has benefited from someone who is corrupt. The argument is that it is impossible to exculpate oneself from the collective guilt of corruption when one functions in a corrupt system with gradations and varieties of corrupt practices.

But this narrative conflates a wide variety of corrupt practices, assigns them the same impact, and attributes to them the same moral outcomes. In analyzing the impact of corruption on Africa—which should be the focus of anti-corruption anxieties—the distinction between an African politician who fritters away $5 million of his country’s funds and a poorly paid policeman who collects a bribe of 50 cents from an erring motorist is a significant one. For it is not the low-level, quotidian acts of corruption—as bad as they are—that are responsible for the egregious impacts of corruption in Africa. It may be hard to organically disentangle those two forms of corruption but it would be analytically disingenuous to equate their impact on African people.

There is another problem with the rhetoric of vicarious corruption guilt. Humans are not unconscious automatons who must yield to the push and pull of the institutional and societal regimes in which they operate. They are able to manoeuvre in the crevices of even the most tainted of systems, and to project their ethical and moral convictions within the most impervious institutions of corruption. Most Africans are indeed people of strong moral convictions who would normally condemn corruption in unequivocal terms.

The mass guilt implied by this discourse of moral imprisonment to society’s vices ostensibly disqualifies every potential critic of corruption from speaking or acting against the scourge. The rhetoric of mass complicity has the capacity to disarm the African critic of corruption. It has the capacity to intimidate opponents of corrupt African institutions into a moral stupor. What is truly disturbing about it, however, is its reliance on the same rhetorical motif of a shared, ubiquitous, and generic culture of corruption in Africa. Lost in this kind of argument are the individual African’s free agency and his ethical foundations. Those who make these claims imply erroneously that Africans are helpless captives of their distorted and corrupted institutions.

The Africanization of corruption proceeds from this mindset, but it is especially troubling to see Africans participating in this localization of a universal phenomenon.

Roots of Misunderstanding

Many of the problematic assumptions about corruption in Africa stem from observations skewed in favour of the incidence, rather than the consequences and impacts of corruption. In a refreshing, if deeply problematic, departure from this way of thinking about corruption, one Nigerian cyber commentator once contended that we should perhaps make peace with the inevitability of some political corruption in Africa. Anti-corruption crusaders should instead worry about the use to which the proceeds of corruption is put, and about the destination of corruptly acquired funds. According to this smugly pragmatic position, all political corruptions are not created equal and do not affect Africans in the same way.

This prognosis is of course problematic, but it is partly right to refocus attention on corruption’s impact. Focusing on the incidence and frequency of corruption in Africa misses the point of caring about corruption in the first place: its unsavoury impact on peoples and societies. The Western obsession with corruption in Africa inspires many media headlines about the phenomenon. These headlines might tempt one to think that Africans are, by nature and nurture, more corrupt than other peoples. Many Westerners and some Africans actually believe this to be true, partly because every discussion of Africa’s economic and political predicaments devolves lazily into a lamentation about corruption. But what is the statistical and evidentiary basis of this belief in Africa’s pre-eminence in the dishonourable hierarchy of corruption? It is, for the most part, founded on the familiar Western quest for a different, exotic Africa governed by different ethical and moral impulses and concerns. The statistical truth is that, per capita, Africans are much less corrupt than Westerners.

The real problem of corruption in Africa is not “African corruption” per se; Africans are not more stealing from their government treasuries or corporate entities than other peoples. In terms of figures and volume, Africa’s corruption scandals pale in significance when compared to Western ones. After all, Africa did not produce Enron, WorldCom, and other corporate corruption scandals that destroyed investments and threatened financial markets. Also, the raw sum of Africa’s yearly capital loss to corruption does not come close to that of Western countries.

In the light of this, and contrary to what many in the West believe, the justifiable outrage against corruption in Africa cannot be founded on the prevalence of corruption on the continent, which is lower than in the Western World, but on the moral consequences of corruption, which are much greater in Africa than they are in the West. The emphasis should be on the impacts and not on the prevalence or volume of corruption in Africa. This emphasis is the most politically neutral, least stereotypical, and most powerful way to inspire the necessary social angst against corruption in Africa.

This point deserves some elaboration. In the West, the impact of government and corporate corruption is absorbed by the sheer size of Western economies. The shock of corruption is therefore hardly felt beyond the media frenzy that characterizes the prosecution of culprits and the lamentations of individuals who lose savings and investments to corporate scandals. Such corruption hardly ever translates to infrastructural problems for society as a whole, much less cause the breakdown of political institutions. Despite widespread incidents of corporate and public corruption in Western countries, public utilities like electricity, water, and telecommunications, and social infrastructures such as roads, hospitals, and schools are hardly ever disrupted.

In Africa, on the other hand, corruption kills, literally. The embezzlement, mismanagement, or misapplication of public funds often leads to a cessation of certain social services, or the non-completion of a road, school, or hospital project. The deterioration and scarcity of infrastructure and social services have worsened in direct proportion to the corruption problem. The loss of public funds to corruption translates inevitably to a lack of medicine in a rural hospital; a lack of access to education for millions of African children; a lack of potable drinking water and electricity for millions of Africans; and a lack of good transportation infrastructure. All these can and do lead to millions of preventable deaths yearly.

This greater moral consequence of corruption in Africa is not a product of “African corruption” being greater than “Western corruption.” No. Western societies function as well as they do, in spite of the prevalence, not because of the absence, of corruption. The devastating consequences of corruption in Africa occur because the small size of African economies magnifies the impacts of the theft of government funds. African economies are so small that, to use a popular expressive cliché, every corruption shows. The problem is not corruption or its prevalence per se; it is its morally reprehensible impact.

This perspective should mitigate some of the hysterical pontifications on “African corruption” by Westerners. Columbia University economist, Jeffery Sachs, is one Westerner who refuses to participate in this feel-good hysteria and shuns the advancement of corruption as an alibi for doing nothing about poverty in Africa. He rejects the growing Western consensus that unless corruption is eradicated from Africa, no development can occur and no anti-poverty intervention would work. His belief, which I share, is that corruption is largely a symptom of poverty in Africa, not its original cause. The continent’s poverty, he argues, stems, among other things, from the environmental misfortune of poor soil, resource-poverty, and uneven resource distribution. One does not have to believe that geography determines economic destiny (as does Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel) to recognize that these conditions produce poverty. And that corruption—or, more appropriately, its impact and social toleration—are the outgrowth of poverty. Conversely, corruption, contrary to popular belief, is not the fundamental causative agent of poverty in Africa, although it has served to perpetuate and worsen it.

If a country is already poor, corruption can become a death sentence for its citizens. That is the reality of most African countries. But if a country is not poor, corruption’s impact on its citizens’ standard of living will be insignificant. This has been the reality in the West.

There are two major forms of corruption in Africa—the official and the quotidian. Of these two, official corruption is the most consequential in terms of poverty and underdevelopment. Yet Western commentators routinely pretend that quotidian corruption is as harmful to Africa as official malfeasance, that the former begets the latter, and that this is illustrative of an African genetic inclination to corruption and disdain for accountability and the rule of law. This is reverse logic. The corruption of state officials perpetuates and exacerbates the poverty that nurtures quotidian citizen corruption—the corrupt practices of the African street—not the other way round. In other words, poverty is the mother of corruption. It is also, sadly, sometimes its devastating outcome.

Corruption is as integral to humanity as greed. It is in fact largely a by-product of greed. If it would be unrealistic to expect Africans to break with humanity by completely ridding their continent of greed, it would be equally escapist to envision the elimination of corruption in Africa as a precondition for meaningful interventions and policymaking in the fight against poverty on the continent. For even if one were to device a magical formula for eradicating corruption from Africa, in defiance of the human reality of greed, Africa would still relatively be poor. Such a feat would not obliterate the stubborn reality of Africa’s resource-poverty, the lingering legacies of historical injuries inflicted on its people and landscape, the ecological bad fortune of poor soils in a predominantly agricultural continent, and the economic and trade hegemonies that continue to crush Africans’ economic hopes.

The discourse of “African corruption,” long advanced as an alibi by visionless African leaders and cynically condescending Western commentators to foreclose developmental visions for the continent and to justify their inertia, incompetence, and aloofness, is thus largely a red herring. It continues to distract attention from the fundamental structural poverty of Africa and from the fundamental economic disadvantages into which history, geography, and subaltern experiences have interpellated the continent.

The most potent weapon against corruption—and poverty—may therefore be the creation of wealth through sensible economic policies and partnerships and the deliberate democratization and redistribution of such created wealth. If poverty and economic insecurity, especially in countries without welfare systems and social safety nets, fuel corruption, wealth creation, the provision of basic human comforts, and the ability to provide post-work financial security and welfare benefits should minimize the incentive for bureaucratic larceny and reduce the corruption problem to the status of a residual, tolerable, insignificant social irritant—the product of an isolated but natural human predilection for greed. This is the social status of corruption in the West.

Simplistic understandings of corruption in Africa is a recipe for inaction and must, for all practical policy reasons, give way to a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon.



* Moses Ochonu is a Nigerian assistant professor of history at Vanderbilt University
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

The farmers speak!

Live from the 5th Via Campesina Conference

Nico Bakker

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52191

After the ceremony commemorating the Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae, who in defiance and despair killed himself at the manifestations, which helped to derail the WTO negotiations in Cancun, we have dinner. I am sitting next to an American farmer discussing cattle and milk production with an Indian farmer.

The conversation unfolds as a question and answer game, where maximum surprise is the premium. "How many heads of cattle do you have" (Indian famer 5, US farmer 38, "but", he adds, "in the US we have industrial farms of 10,000 heads), or "what percentage of the retail price do you get", or "what fat percentage does your milk have?" The answer is followed by an effort to explain the differences. Despite the huge differences, starting with the way they speak English, they seem to learn a lot from each other and at the same time enjoy themselves enormously.

This is the 5th International Conference of La Via Campesina

Over 400 farmers gathered on the outskirts of Maputo in Mozambique to analyse how the present world situation, struck with a quadruple whammy of Food Crisis, Energy Crisis, Climate Crisis and Financial Crisis, is affecting their way of life.

While at the conference, the first thing which strikes, and which is essential for its credibility and success, are the efforts the movement makes to be coherent in its political, organisational and practical work.

So processes are in place to try to ensure maximum women's representation and overall participation. Another example is the effort made to feed the participants local food from the Mozambican farmers organisations (this unfortunately fell through at the last moment) in accordance with policies promoting local production and consumption. Sustainable farming is thus part of a process and not just something on its own.

Equally striking is, that this is a gathering dominated not by formally trained specialists and technicians with a token farmer at the fringe of the meeting. This is a meeting of real farmers, specialists in their own right, as they know quite well what they are talking about.

In this context I meet Alphonsine N'guba member of a producers organisation near Kinshasa. Her organisation has 40 members and is member of the Confederation Paysanne du Congo (COPACO- PRP). COPACO-PRP unites animal farmers, fisherfolk, horticulturist and fishraisers in 452 producer organisations. Alphonsine was just elected to the International Coordinating Comite of La Via Campesina representing the African Region. She is quite happy with the conference especially with the importance given to women, as she puts it: "you cannot talk about agriculture without talking about women."

When she is not in the conference or busy organising, she works three pieces of land, where she produces a wide range of products (amaranths, okra, sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, celery, aubergines, cucumbers, cassava, and maize etc).

Most of her produce is sold, but not after setting aside the food needed for her family. As she puts it "where we are, we have plenty to eat!"

She doesn't use chemical fertilisers anymore, as they found that this was destroying the soil and costing a lot of money, so now she only uses natural fertiliser. She has been observing that the weather seems to be hotter and rains seem to be coming later, but falling with greater intensity, causing evermore heavy flooding.

While she is struggling to "read" the new weather patterns in order to adapt her farming, she considers the situation as quite unfair as these changes, directly affecting her production, are caused by pollution she has nothing to do with. Her main problem however is not so much in production but in marketing, as Kinshasa is swamped with cheap imports driving down prices, while the farmers incur high cost, because of poor infrastructure and harassment by all kinds of people extorting "taxes."

Irène Amex from an organic cooperative in Geneva is new to Via Campesina. But what she noticed during the conference is that despite all the differences "the problems are the same everywhere." Her cooperative has 130 members who besides volunteering on the farm, pay Irène and her colleagues as well as the other production costs. The entry point for most members into organic farming is concern over health. However when working the land "we talk about practical things, how and why we do certain tasks, but from there often wander into ecology or agricultural policy."

The way the cooperative is set up is a very practical answer to the triple crisis and reflects the policies promoted by Via Campesina. "The way we produce, the members have a relation to their food and at the same time their food costs didn't increase that much (all the produced food is equally distributed among the 130 members). Our way of producing is also less capital intensive than conventional farming." At the same time the energy needed for food production and distribution is kept low "we don't use chemical inputs, which require a lot of energy for producing and members just live nearby, keeping fuel costs low." One of her particular interests is seed. Although the situation in Switzerland is not that bad, she observes the evermore bizarre regulation in the rest of Europe patently favouring big business and undermining mechanisms to maintain local varieties and diversity at farm level.

Sago Indra is an organic farmer and organiser in West Sumatra, Indonesia. "Well the first issue is to actually reclaim the land", he says. Although Sago himself has a 1 hectare paddy land and another hectare, where he grows a wide variety of vegetables, a lot of farmers don't have land. He gives half of the harvest to his friends who are helping him to work the land as he spends so much time in community organising. Ever larger swaths of land are ceded by the government to multinational companies, pushing farmers out of their communal lands and driving up the prices of land. With the hype of agrofuels, government policies are evermore accommodating big companies, e.g. recently a 200.000 ha lease was given to a palmoil plantation, while the provincial government extended the lease periods from 30 years to 95 years.

"We do feel the impact of the crises, for example kerosene (used in candles) is much more expensive now. Still, we organic farmers are better off than conventional farmers, who are becoming quite desperate. First we produce food for the family, keeping our costs of food low. Then we don't use agrochemicals, which prices have hiked by 50 – 150% last year and we use local seeds, so we don't depend on buying seeds from the transnationals." However the changing weather pattern is a problem making it difficult to predict the rains: "If we have to rely on irrigation our production costs will go further up".

Alphonsine, Irène and Sago all stress the importance of the conference, not only on a political level, but also in learning about each other's experiences which might then be tried and adapted to their own individual situation. According to Sago, it is clear that Via Campesina has become stronger over the years, both in its member organisations and its structure. Alphonsine stresses the need to analyse proposals coming their way, and not to loose one's independence. Once she was wooed to produce Aloe Vera for some company, but, after careful reflection, found that she would only be loosing out if she were to give up her way of farming for a plantation. For these and other reflections the conference served well, be it over dinner or during the many meetings.

Via Campesinawas founded in 1993 in Mons, Belgium and at the moment has about 150 members in 75 countries. The central objective of Via Campesina is to develop solidarity and unity among small farmer organizations in order to promote gender parity and social justice in fair economic relations; the preservation of all natural resources (e.g. land water seeds) and sustainable agricultural production based on small and medium-sized producers.

In this context Via Campesina introduced the concept of Food Sovereignty, meaning the right of farmers, communities and national governments to determine how and what they produce to feed themselves and their communities and the right to put in place adequate policies to this end, without necessarily succumbing to short term profit maximisation and commoditisation which are the mainstay of neo-liberal policies.

Thus it is crucial that the neo-liberal project of the last 20 or so years and main culprit of the four coinciding global crises - Energy, Climate, Food and Finance - is fought. Even though described as too radical and pure utopia, the policies proposed by Via Campesina prove to be not only visionary, but quite necessary in a world struck with food, energy, climate and financial crises. Even Bill Clinton now admits: "We all blew it, including me," by treating food crops "like color TVs" instead of as a vital commodity for the world's poor."


*Nico Bakker is affiliated with Oxfam Solidarity, Belgium.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

A new day in America: Lessons for Africa

Ross Herbert

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52192

For the first time in many years, a political event brought tears to my eyes as Barack Obama was elected at the 44th president of the United States of America.

The news shows and radio call-in programmes in America and South Africa were full of elated conversation about the symbolism of the US electing its first black president, of the fulfilment of Martin Luther King's famous dream that America would one day live up to the full meaning of its creed.

My eyes grew misty from the realisation that it is possible to overcome the most intractable divides. That white Americans could vote in huge numbers for their first black president affirms Obama's refrain on the audacity of hope. As an American living in South Africa for 15 years, this election reminds me of my home country's ability to reinvent itself and adapt to adversity. But it also raises important questions and comparisons with democratic practice in Africa, which ought to particularly concentrate minds as South Africa itself heads into an important election next year.

Much has been said about the dignity with which John McCain conceded defeat and said the nature of the Obama campaign earned his respect and the equally magnanimous way Obama spoke after his victory. Both men deserve credit for such graciousness, but they are following a vital national tradition. It has been a hallmark of US elections that the defeated candidate accepts the verdict of the public, praises his opponent and pledges his full support to the new national leader. This practice has been sadly lacking in African politics, where losers invariably accuse the winner of cheating, or incumbents rush to inaugurate themselves when reelected, leaving no time for possible legal challenges (as in Malawi or Zambia recently). In South Africa, the grace with which the 1994 election was handled has given way to an acrimonious and vengeful tone that is spreading and sounding ever closer to the tone of politics elsewhere on the continent.

Obama set a great example because he had the wisdom to know that anger and vengefulness begets the same in one's opponents. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela understood this, as did many of his generation. But Thabo Mbeki, it seems, did not. As has been often said, the present vindictiveness gripping South African politics was his creation. His opponents, instead of rising above his level, seem to need to get the boot in, which has brought about round after round of tit for tat. Once such a vicious cycle takes hold of politics, it can be very hard to ever return to civility and the pursuit of common ground. Politics, according to the Julius Malema school (current ANC Youth League head), is about demonstrating ever more dramatic forms of militancy, about fighting and conflict and elimination of enemies.

But fighting and democracy don't mix well. Hillary Clinton believed that this kind of ideological class warfare language was the way to win. Fortunately, Obama believed that although harsh rhetoric may appeal to a significant group, it is not what the US as a whole wanted or needed. He seemed to recognise that civility is itself an incredibly valuable thing. It is too often taken for granted or derided as unmanly or a sign of weakness. In so doing, politicians send a signal that they don't value and embrace all of their countrymen and women, only those who acquiesce to the ruling clique. In contrast a commitment to civility is a demonstration that we all need and respect each other and care that the other is aggrieved by our actions.

Too many African democracies have unravelled because leaders simplistically think that democracy means that the winning majority gets to do whatever it wants. Rather, democracy must be a combination of majority leadership and rigorous protection of those with minority views, different religions or varied ethnic backgrounds. Minority protections are also vital to service delivery and progress. The ‘we won so we can do what we want' instinct is the same one that ignores public protest, incessantly blames the media and dismisses citizens appealing to government for redress. A system that truly respects minority views starts with government that listens and responds positively to complaint from any quarter. That has been increasingly lacking in South Africa these past years and it is feeding uncivil and vengeful currents.

Maintaining civility in parliament, at the postal counter, in the press and in every encounter with others is part of preserving public trust, which is vital to economic and social progress and peace. Parliaments and courts maintain elaborate rules of decorum because the early pioneers of democracy recognised that without conscious efforts to maintain civility, tempers can easily flare and conflicts can spiral out of control.

Obama also draws attention to what happens in the absence of civility. One hundred years after a civil war was fought to end slavery, discrimination was still alive and well in the United States. Even though the civil rights movement finally brought matters to a head and a variety of civil rights laws and affirmative action programmes were put in place from the mid 1960s, feelings of bitterness, suspicion and resentment continued among blacks and whites. As Michele Obama put it, she never until this election felt truly proud of her country until now. Although she was criticised for it, it ought to be a wake-up call when a nation has millions of citizens feeling marginalised, excluded and disrespected.

In many nations, those who seek to heal racial wounds have turned to a predictable set of tools using various forms of affirmative action. But putting in place such programmes, alone, has not alleviated the lingering sense of grievance that surrounds minorities in the US, France, the UK, and many other nations. African states have taken elaborate steps to forge governments composed of all ethnic groups. Some, like Nigeria, even wrote this into its constitution. But programmes alone often fail to take away bitter feelings, which can be propagated from one generation to the next for decades.

Some critics of affirmative action argue that political and racial minorities should stop complaining and just get on with life. But they miss the point. The danger is that grievance lives on in the collective memory and is always there to be exploited by the right demagogue. South African leaders should understand that the bitterness felt by many toward Thabo Mbeki's rule is real and needs to be dealt with. But the answer is not to do it by fostering ever more clever plans to vanquish and humiliate one's opponents. Clearly, the Mbeki era highlighted the need for some rules of order to restrain and civilise the exercise of power. Now more than ever, South Africa needs to have a conversation about what went wrong systemically and how a better system might be devised.

That should include the discussion of direct election of parliament, premiers, mayors and the president. It also should include transparency in political party finance, the fair use of the electronic media to foster intelligent, civil policy-oriented political debate. It should include candid discussion of how well-meaning Black Economic Empowerment and affirmative action policies have often been hijacked in ways that turn politics into a greedy struggle for access to the quick riches to be had from controlling government. The ruling party has spent 14 years denying that there even is such a concept as conflict of interest. That desperately needs to change.

If civil rights, affirmative action and other laws don't end the cycles of grievance in society, what can? It is crucial for Africa to recognise that no formal programme or law can substitute for a change of heart, for demonstrations of decency and inclusion. These things can only be accomplished on the political stage by leaders wise enough to see the need for rebuilding trust and civility through both symbolic and substantive actions.

Affirmative action without scrupulous attention to implementation and conflict of interest can be a recipe for corruption as politically connected elites always have better access to information and manipulate quotas and regulations to divert the good intentions of affirmative action. Those who sponsored affirmative action laws inevitably deny administrative problems and conflict of interest among elites. Problems fester under the denial and new forms of grievance are spawned. Africa has tried myriad schemes to supposedly ensure that power and benefits are shared out to all groups, but all have eventually failed, leaving much cynicism behind. The only long-term stable solutions are based on two things that must be combined: heavy investments in building opportunity - through education and provision of public services - and heavy emphasis on merit based hiring, which must sharply limit hiring opportunities based on political connections.

Obama won because he steadfastly refused to run a campaign angrily demanding more for his group. He argued instead for more and better government for all. I firmly believe that Hillary Clinton would have lost if she had been the Democratic candidate because she appeared unable to move beyond the language of conflict and partisan division. I hope that all of those who hope to lead South Africa consider those lessons and follow in Obama's footsteps.


*Ross Herbert is a governance research fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs.

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

Regrets

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/52203

Of many things, I wish my parents had lived long enough to see Barack Obama elected as the 44th President of the United States. I think they would have appreciated it far more than I ever could.

My parents were Depression-era kids, African-Americans raised in that East Bay racial netherworld that actively practiced anti-Black racism, but then unashamedly spent the following years wrapping itself in the mantle of progressivism and pretending that it never did. My mother's father, Thomas Reid, was a skilled carpenter from Georgia who could never get a job as a skilled carpenter in the Bay Area, and so he ended his life supporting his family by mopping floors at Berkeley's Wonder Bread bakery. My father's father, Ellis Allen, a Louisiana man of many talents, could only find work in Oakland as a waiter on the Pullman trains, a subservient position barely a step up from the old Black man-servants of slavery times, where the "yessir" and tip of the cap were mandatory job skills. Grandmothers on both my mother's and father's sides were still alive late in my parents' childhood, women who had been born into and lived their earliest years in plantation slavery in Virginia and Louisiana, respectively.

In the East Bay world in which my parents grew up, the swimming pools and beaches were segregated, and African-Americans had to picket and boycott local stores and other businesses in order to get jobs at places where they shopped. Most of the East Bay hills was off limits for African-American residents, as were large stretches of the East Oakland flatlands. Black workers were only allowed to work in the World War II Richmond shipyards under the covenant that Henry Kaiser-the industrialist who brought them up from the South by the trainload-agreed to demolish the houses and neighborhoods he had built for them as soon as the war was over.

Both my parents found outlets in competitive sports-which, during their growing up years, was deeply segregated beyond the high school level-and like many African-Americans of their era, closely followed the national progress of African-Americans by tracking the progress in that arena.

But even in that seemingly innocuous area-where prestige but no power was the reward, African-Americans had to be careful under certain circumstances to mute their exuberance.

My cousin, Geoffrey Pete, often illustrates this point with a story about an unnamed Black waiter and the 1938 Joe Louis-Max Schmeling heavyweight boxing title fight.

Louis, affectionately known as the "Brown Bomber", was the first African-American to win the heavyweight crown since it was stripped from Jack Johnson for daring to have a white girlfriend. But in 1936, Louis lost the title to the German Max Schmeling, no Nazi himself, but used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to advance their theory of Aryan supremacy over the darker races. When Louis and Schmeling met for a rematch in New York in 1938, before the horrors of World War II and the revelations of the Holocaust had turned American opinion against the Nazis, support for the two fighters in America was often divided along racial lines.

The website Legends And Lore describes at http://www.ibhof.com/ibhfhvy5.htm what actually happened in the second Louis-Schmeling fight:

"At the opening bell, Louis forced Schmeling to the ropes. Suddenly a Louis right lifted Schmeling's right foot in the air and the German grabbed the top rope to steady himself. Schmeling extended only his left arm for protection. Louis then unloaded a barrage of punches, many landing against Schmeling's head. Schmeling then turned away from the champion and a body shot seemed to leave him paralyzed. Schmeling later said it was an illegal kidney punch and that he never fully recovered from the blow. With Schmeling still pinned along the ropes, a Louis right buckled his knees and referee Arthur Donovan intervened. After a brief count, he allowed the action to continue. Schmeling wobbled toward Louis and was met with a right hand that sent him crashing to the canvas. Schmeling gamely reached his feet but another Louis combination sent him down again. The Schmeling corner then threw a towel into the ring, signifying their surrender. Donovan, who had reached the count of five, waved the bout off after just 2 minutes and four seconds of action. Schmeling threw just two punches in the bout."

The course of the short fight was followed on radios around the nation, one of them in the basement of a San Francisco hotel, where the Black staff huddled, and listened, and then roared out in celebration at the result. As my cousin, Geoffrey, tells the story, one of the waiters left the gathering grinning with pride, only to meet a white patron in the empty street just outside the hotel. The white man had evidently been somewhere out on business, and had not been able to listen to the fight.

"How's it going with Schmeling and Louis?" the white man asked the waiter.

The waiter quickly sized up the situation, replacing his widespread grin with a look of serious concern. "I ain't know, boss," he said, rubbing his brow. "Louis a good man, but look like Mr. Schmeling taking it to him."

We have come a long way, haven't we, in these intervening 70 years, to a moment when African-Americans could openly dance up and down Broadway in downtown Oakland, celebrating the election of the first African-American president in United States history.

My parents never broke the habit of following African-American progress through the medium of sports. My mother was never a golf fan, but in her last years she adopted Tiger Woods as a fourth grandson, never calling him anything but "Tiger," and during golf tournaments, when I came home from work in the evenings, she would greet me, inevitably, with a smile and a "did you see what Tiger did today?"

My father's measure was football, and the march of African-Americans into the quarterback ranks. As remarkable as it must seem for those who have come of age recently, Black athletes were long barred from the football quarterback position on the grounds that they either lacked the intelligence to make the many and fast-moving decisions that the position required, or the courage to stand and make the proper play with defensive linemen bearing down on them. Blacks who played successfully as quarterbacks on high school or Black college teams were inevitably moved over to wide receiver, running back, or defensive back when and if they entered the pro ranks. When that barrier was finally, and slowly, broken in the white colleges and the pros, my father maintained no allegiance to any particular team, but rooted for whatever team on television had the Black quarterback. It is amusing to think how he would have managed things today, when not only is a Black quarterback v. Black quarterback game common, but a Black coach v. Black coach as well. Like a kid at Thanksgiving dinner, I think he would have mourned the fact of too much food, and too little plate.

If my mother had lived to see 2008, she would have adopted Barack Obama immediately as she had Tiger Woods, calling him "Barack" as if she had known him all her life, following the course of the election on the cable news stations by day, and then listening to the radio talk show chatter over it late into the night. She would have cooed and fussed over Michelle and the girls, and fumed when either they or her "Barack" came under attack. She would have tolerated John McCain, though blaming him for unleashing the dogs of racism, and she would have hated Sarah Palin, greeting her with glares and choice words every time she came onscreen like the audiences greeted the old silent movie villains. And she would have squealed and screamed and gotten up and danced on the night Barack Obama won, as we did on the night that Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston, or when the Williams sisters won Wimbeldon.

My father would have come along more slowly.

My father was the most thoughtful person I ever knew, a man who kept his own counsel, did his own research, and made up his own mind before ever voicing an opinion, and without being swayed by what the public was thinking. In addition, my father had no illusions about Black politicians, even pioneering Black politicians, knowing them as persons first, rather than legends. Long before Lionel Wilson became a state judge and then Oakland's first African-American mayor, my father knew him on the Oakland basketball courts. ("He was always the captain of the team, always was the point guard, always took the last shot," my father would say of Mr. Wilson. "You know why?" He would give a knowing smile. "Because he was always the one who brought the basketball.")

More than anything else, it would have been the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair that would have stayed my father's enthusiasm about Barack Obama, but not in the way it affected many white Americans. My father-who faithfully, without fail, read the newspaper over coffee every morning-would have found a way to listen to Mr. Wright's sermons-the whole sermons, not just the salacious snippets-and there would have found resonance in his own experiences and views on America. My father would have believed-rightfully so, I think-that Barack Obama and Mr. Wright were far closer than was later asserted, probably mentor and pupil, and that if Mr. Obama did not hear the most radical of Mr. Wright's sermons first-hands as he later claimed, he almost certainly heard those views forcefully argued by the reverend over Sunday suppers. While it is probably true that Mr. Obama did not agree with the most adamant of Mr. Wright's pro-Black and criticize-America sentiments, and would have argued with the reverend just as forcefully in rebuttal, he would have learned much from those exchanges that was not in his background, and would have incorporated many of those thought-processes in his analyses of America and the world. While my father may have seen Mr. Obama's disavowal of Mr. Wright's views as politically necessary to win the presidency, he nonetheless would have seen that disavowal as disingenuous and something of a betrayal, souring him even more on the political process, if not the man himself.

But in the end, I believe, my father would have come around, and seen in the Obama victory a long, crossover step in the long march of African-American history.

Once, when my father and I were driving through West Oakland, we saw an elderly Black woman walking along the street and my father, unaccountably, said, "I wonder what she's thinking." When I asked him what he meant, he said, "The things she's seen in her life. The tragedies. The sorrows. She's seen things we can never imagine. I wonder what she thinks about them, now."

Perhaps he was thinking of his own grandmother, at the time.

I think that about my parents. I walked along Broadway in downtown Oakland on the night Barack Obama was elected, watched the celebrating crowds, and wondered what my parents would have thought about all that had happened and was happening. I wish that they were here to see it, and to let me know. Of these golden days, my chief regret is that they are not.

* J. Douglas Allen-Taylor is a journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. this article first appeared in the UnderCurrents column of the Berkeley Daily Planet newspaper on November 13, 2008

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

Noisy western diplomats should learn to shut up sometimes

Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/52204

In this week’s postcard Tajudeen takes issue with what he calls ‘noisy western diplomats’ and their tendency to speak out injudiciously against the misdeeds of African governments. In the same vein, he deplores African envoys for their silence in the face of misrule and injustice on the part of host governments. He calls on African diplomats to stand true to the shared values on human rights, protection of the weak and vulnerable respect for the dignity of Africans, and not to abdicate this role to western diplomats
Wally Serote, South African writer, once wrote, during the struggles against apartheid, that ‘to be Black and relatively conscious, is to be angry all the time’. It was true then and even truer now.

Any conscious African, whether at home or in the Diaspora, is a walking time bomb of anger - angry at the general situation of Africa and Africans. Even if your own condition is fantastic, you cannot in all conscience look at Africa and be happy.

We can do much better than we are doing at the moment at all levels, personally, socially, politically and culturally. There are enough resources on this continent for all of us to be outraged at the mass poverty that the majority of our people are forced to endure. You cannot open a newspaper, listen to radio or watch television in any African country, or the few reports on Africa you see outside of the continent, without being angry and feeling like hitting your TV or tearing the newspapers.

Is it the face of poverty, HIV/Aids, war and conflicts that look invariable in Africa that you want to quarrel about or the repeated presentation of Africa as a hopeless and helpless continent? However, this is not what I want to address this week. I have been living in Kenya (or paying rent at least) for about three years now. They have been very interesting times culminating in the tragic violence that followed the rigged elections of last year.

One of the positive things that have come out of that tragedy is that it placed rigging in sharp focus. Kenyan voters are now the envy of many disenfranchised voters across the continent for making it extremely expensive in human and material terms to rig their vote or steal their mandate.

Imagine, if the vote of every Nigerian counted, would they have the kind of government they have both at local, state and federal levels today. How different it would be in Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso or Cameroon if indeed the votes of citizens mattered?

But why am I my angry this week? I have been angered for a long time by the level of public debate about various challenges that Kenya faces; politicians who see things only in partisan and tribal times. When there are calls for justice from politicians, it is because they believe the law will only catch their opponents. If they call for reconciliation, sensitivity or amnesty it is not because they believe in it, but because they see themselves as the beneficiaries.

But it is not about the hypocrisy of the politicians and the voters who knowingly elected them that I am concerned. It is about the different conflict vultures, experts, and self-appointed friends claiming that they want to help Kenyans. You can hardly read newspapers in Kenya today without reading about one Western ambassador or the other giving instructions to Kenyan leaders to implement the Waki report or do this or that, threatening one form of sanctions or the other.

It is amazing how these ‘diplomats’ take the liberty to give orders and instructions to our leaders with impunity. I have not heard any African ambassador making any statements. Are they less of diplomats than their western counterparts? Or do the EU ambassadors and the US ambassadors care more about Kenyans than their fellow Africans?

Would the reaction of the Kenyan government have been the same if African ambassadors were shooting their mouths off the way Western ambassadors do on every conceivable issue?

Would the media have given a statement from the ambassador of Cameroon, Ivory Coast or Uganda the same publicity? There are a number of factors at play here. Many of our own diplomats have a very narrow definition of their mission and mandate.

Many of them think and behave as though they are only sent on mission to the government of the day rather than the people of that country. Some of them fear that the criticism they may make of their host governments is equally true or worse for their own.

While I will not advocate that our ambassadors behave like latter colonial governors, it is unacceptable that they keep silent under the guise of being ‘diplomats.’ All African countries belong to the AU and numerous regional and sub-regional institutions with shared values about peoples/human rights, protection of the weak and vulnerable respect for the dignity of Africans.

We should use this as a moral and political entry point to show solidarity with other Africans as and when required. The loud Western diplomats also come from countries that may not necessarily practise what they preach; therefore contradictions should never silence our voices. It is not always about what government we represent, but what values we stand for. It is about our pride and sovereignty over our affairs.

As for loud and noisy western ambassadors, they should learn to shut up sometimes. Their noise just distorts the local situation without offering a sensible way out. Africans can fight their own battles without the help of headmasters from Europe or America.

* Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is general secretary of the Global Pan-African Movement, based in Kampala, Uganda, and is also director of Justice Africa, based in London, UK.

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

Blame the West, Blame Africa!

Mfalme

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52199

In response to Footprints and paradoxes of Canadian mining in the DRC, I just can't believe how this things happen in modern world. That Western worlds preach democracy, human rights but do atrocities to other people is hypocrisy. Anyways i also blame those Africans that don't see the interest of their country, region, and people.

How can company own 75% of anything without challenge from anyone? That is is really sad.

France is beyond redemption

Owen Sichone

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52198

In response to Rwanda vs. France: Who is trying whom?, France can never redeem itself in Africa so dont mind them. The onus is on Kagame and Museveni to show that they have outgrown gunslinging and can make genuine peace.

The 1994 Rwanda genocide was not the first nor sadly was it the last. We know the Franco-Belgian legacy in Central Africa but it is our own gun men (people for who political power can only grow from the barrel of the gun) that are killing us now. Is Africa ready to put militarist murderers on trial or must we just forgive and forget as usual?

Mr Mo Ibrahim wants more!

Bata

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52194

In agreement with The Mo Ibrahim Prize: Robbing Peter to pay Paul, it seems to me if Mr. Mo really wanted to help Africa afford good governance, he'd have invested in education for there are so many needy and intelligent students that do not afford to go to college for they lack funds.

I think he's just paying his way so that he will end up lobbying for future deals in the areas that his corporation or family plans to invest. This prize has nothing to do with good governance but a strategic need to create some unshakable alliances and power circles.

Protest Canada in Africa!

Focas Conga

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52197

I was forwarded an article, When silence is golden and I decided to visit your site. Eventually, I don't regret, but I feel ashamed to be African, and unable to defend our continent.

I think we might need to setup sit ins and demonstrations in all Canadian embassies around Africa and Europe, even America, as to highlight strongly these world injustices. Canadian companies in Ghana, DRC, Tanzania, etc... are all doing the same....

I think we need some actions here.

We deserve what we get!

Olusola Muhammad

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52195

Thank you for your incisive and illuminating article on Canadian companies in DRC- Footprints and paradoxes of Canadian mining in the DRC.

With the recent news explosion of women and children becoming refugees in DRC in the Eastern region of DRC, I had to ask myself why is the BBC and other media making such a noise about the issue. The British Government then started speaking about possibly sending its troops into the country to help restore law and order.

Now I read your article on the subject about Canadian Mining companies and you have confirmed my views that the problem of DRC and Africa in general is not about exploitation by imperialists and mining companies, our problem is a problem with ourselves and lack of testicular fortitude.

When will we become men and women and stand up in the world and truly take care of ourselves without recourse to external persons, bodies and companies to do for us, that which we have the means and ability to do for ourselves.

Unless we acquire the know-how and begin to apply knowledge to develop our own natural and human resources and then sever the umbilical cord with the West and the East we will remain as slaves to others thereby reaping the destruction of our countries as clearly explained in your article.

We let in these mining companies. Have we no sense? Have we not learnt that the imperialist in Britain is the same as the one in Canada, Australia, Europe and America? When have they ever sought to do us any good without the motivation of getting as much as they can without recourse to morals or any mores?

In truth, we actually deserve what we get in Africa, for going to bed with our ‘open enemies’ whose sole desire is to eliminate us from the Continent of Africa and have her as a play ground. So your article on the modus operandi of Canadian companies is confirmation of what’s been done to Africa since the late 14th Century when the first colonizers began their expeditions into Africa and began setting up ‘Trading Posts’ to exploit and decimate Africa. The difference today is that then, they came in with force and a bible in the other hand, but today we let them in with economic liberalisation policies, political handshakes, Foreign Capital Investments, AID (s) and unpaid IMF, World Bank loans that result in strategic assets being sold off.

What is Africa to do?

John Otim

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52196

When I listen to Nigerians talk, the story is the same. Ugandans tell the same story. Ghanaians likewise. What shall africa do? I guess if wambui were she in her native Kenya, not Canada, she would prefer not to write like this: Barack Obama and the graveyard of hope. My school friends are reluctant to as much as evaluate their school experience. Somebody will hear them you see. Worse could happen you know. What shall Africa do?

South Africa: Behind the Rainbow

2008-11-28

http://www.bigworld.co.za/rainbow/

Behind the Rainbow explores the transition of the ANC from a liberation organization into South Africa's ruling party, through the evolution of the relationship between two of its most prominent cadres, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Exiled under Apartheid they were brothers in arms, under Mandela they loyally labored to build a non-racial state, now they are bitter rivals. Their duel threatens to tear apart the ANC and the country, as the poor desperately seek hope in change and the elite fight for the spoils of victory.

A solution in Zimbabwe is inevitable

An interview with Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza

Conversations with Writers

2008-11-26

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/52193

A Journalist and storyteller, Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza is one of the most exciting emerging voices in Zimbabwean literature. His short stories have appeared in anthologies such as A Roof to Repair (College Press, 2000), Writing Still (Weaver Press, 2003), Writing Now (Weaver Press, 2005) and Creatures Great and Small (Mambo Press, 2006). A number of the short stories have also been published in national newspapers and magazines that include The Sunday Mail, the Sunday Mirror and Moto.

In a recent interview with Conversations with Writers, Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza spoke about his work, Zimbabwe and much more.
Conversations with Writers: Do you think newspapers and magazines in Zimbabwe are giving enough space to creative writers?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: The Sunday Mail no longer has space for creative writing. The Sunday Mirror had it because of my own initiative. Many magazines have become defunct in Zimbabwe, so it is no longer a question of magazines giving space to creative writers, but that creative writers no longer have media through which to express themselves.

Conversations with Writers: How would you describe the current situation in Zimbabwe? What do you think caused it? Is there a solution?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: Political and economic stagnation. Political arrogance, national self-disbelief, sanctions... As a nation, we failed to consolidate the gains of independence, to create a solid foundation on which we could go forward as a nation. Instead, we became mimic men.

A solution is inevitable, but it is difficult to see how soon. There is lack of unity of purpose, a failure by people from different walks of life to come together for the good of Zimbabwe. You see, politicians come and go, as do parties, but Zimbabwe remains. This country that lies between the Zambezi and Limpopo is a special place; so special that it is the only one South of the Sahara that has anything as spectacular as Great Zimbabwe. There is the Great Dyke. Now diamonds are being discovered in Marange. The potential is massive. Look at the Zimbabweans who go abroad and do well -- they are in key positions. We are currently beggars on a beach of gold -- but six years after everyone had written us off, we are still here and that fascinates me as a writer. Some think Zimbabweans are docile people. I think they are simply resilient. Historically, the white settlers were taken by surprise when the 1896/7 uprisings came. They had thought the people docile, too.

Conversations with Writers: What are your main concerns as a writer?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: Spiritual regeneration, the triumph of the underdog, humanity's resilience, justice, freedom... Conformism has always riled me. Going through life, I noticed that those people who are usually overlooked, cast out, mocked etc., have their own stories to tell, stories that more often than not add value to human experience. I am a sucker for stories about overcoming adversity, triumph against all odds, succeeding when everyone has written off success... My father had to resort to the old custom of kutema hugariri -- you know, where a husband to be had to go and live with his in-laws and offer his labour, ploughing, building, etc. as a way of paying lobola -- then became a truck driver, until one day he was able to set up his own store at Nyangavi Township in Guruve -- he sent his brothers to school, raised six children...

I am concerned with questions of identity. For a long time I wandered through the mazes of our own Zimbabwean condition -- western education, acculturation -- looking for a centre. I even dabbled in Eastern philosophy, always felt on the outside of mainstream society. Then I started delving into our own religion, history and mythology. One of my short stories is called "The Lost Songs" which is about a singer who repudiates his past, his rural family and gets lost in the seedy life of the city, pop music... Then one day he forgets all the lyrics to his songs... Things begin to fall apart around him, his so-called friends abandon him... Then he makes the journey back home, to his mother where he reconnects with his family history and he discovers an ancient mbira which was passed down from generation to generation in his family and through mbira music he finds his place in the scheme of things.

In Zimbabwe right now, many claim to be Christians, but n'angas (traditional healers) are doing roaring business. There are stories of about people using the arcane in order to become rich, to gain political power -- there is the belief in the avenging spirit, ngozi... How can one take all these concepts so that they become leit motifs in one's writing? How does one deliberately borrow from symbols of drought, rain, hunger etc. that have been used by Charles Mungoshi, Dambudzo Marechera and others, and talk about current conditions? Can one take folklore figures, transpose them to contemporary society and write a children's story that will appeal to a techno-generation kid? I grapple with all these questions because our culture and history are rich and the struggle is to make use of it all to come up with universal stories which are, however, rooted in the particular.

Conversations with Writers: What would you say are the biggest challenges that you face? And how do you deal with them?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: Getting published. Having a PC or laptop of my own -- priced out of reach down here.

Irene Staunton and Weaver Press have been highly exceptional in promoting emerging Zimbabwean writers. Her two anthologies, Writing Still and Writing Now have done a lot to create that excitement but I have been around for quite a long time. Back in 2000, when I tried to get a manuscript published, I was told that publishing houses had put publishing fiction on hold for about four years since the economic conditions were bad. Well, they are worse now and school textbooks have a ready market. Zimbabweans would rather buy DVDs, bread and butter, than books.

When I was an undergraduate student, I had a second, probably fourth-hand typewriter, that I had bought from a used goods shop in Harare. I always wrote my work long hand before typing it out. That process became a process of revising, editing and re-conceptualisation. I was a high school teacher from 1994 to 2001. When the school where I taught introduced computers, I took advantage of that and began to type my stories at school, whenever I got the opportunity, saving them on disks. When I worked as a copy writer in an advertising agency, I took advantage of that, too.

Same now... when you are not at work, you can't really sit down and do your final drafts, and when you are at work, you do not always have the time. Something suffers in the process. You might write long hand, make notes, and so on but there are times when in the middle of the night, or just before dawn, an idea crystallises... but you have to wait until you get to work.

Conversations with Writers: How have your own personal experiences influenced the direction of your writing?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: At one stage writing saved my life. I wrote in order to stay sane, to make sense of who I was, to assert myself. When I was doing my A' levels, I wrote almost every day. I kept a journal where I poured out all my fears, anxieties, hopes and dreams. I always felt the odd one out. I was reserved and saw the world differently. I began to write fiction as a way of self-assertion. It helped tame my personal demons. It helped me face the Furies that were tormenting me.

The same, too, when I was an undergraduate student. In my second year back in 1992, I went through another crisis period. This had more to do with Literature and Socialism, a course I was doing then. I began to question the value of literature and poetry in a world full of wars, hunger and things like that... One day I recited a poem in First Street as part of a Marechera commemoration. One old man was more fascinated by my dreadlocks than my art. It all felt futile. I toyed with the idea of dropping out of university and joining the armed wing of the ANC and help my Azanian brethren fight for liberation.

Conversations with Writers: How did you resolve this conflict?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: I sat with an occidental student friend from the States who genuinely loved my writing and told her about my dilemma. She told me that art, literature was important. She had come to Africa thanks to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. After that talk, I went back to writing relentlessly and was saved once again.

Over the years, I lost two brothers and a sister and I became self- destructive. Dealing with the pain of loss, coming to terms with it all, was only possible through my art.

Conversations with Writers: In the writing that you are doing, who would you say has influenced you the most?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: One can only speak of specific influences at a given time. For example, there was a period of pulp fiction addiction, when Stephen King, Robert Ludlum and similar writers ruled the roost. Thomas Hardy, Shelley and Wordsworth at A-level. College years, Marechera, Jack Kerouac and others… but I have always tended to read, read and read and certain elements of style or vision would create a lasting impression and in the journey to find a personal voice, I tended to interlope, borrowing, grafting and so on.

Conversations with Writers: Do you write everyday?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: I am an undisciplined writer. I sometimes wait for inspiration to write. Yet, an idea can gestate inside my head for a long time and when I eventually sit down, the story, poem or essay is completely formed. I think right now I am suffering from a writer's block, actually -- I haven't written original fiction in a long while. I am not even coming up with ideas and concepts. I know I am going through a phase, where I am trying to come to terms with my current profession and personal life. I want to write a novel, a television script and a play.

It's important that I get involved in a creative project, because that is what I do and what I am -- I write. I am a writer.

One of your short stories is about the conflict between religion and rationality. How did the story come about?

"Faith" is about a man called Faith who is seen by some as a lunatic, and a prophet by others. The story is set just before the turn of the millennium, with Faith preaching that the end of the world is nigh. It is told from the perspective of a sceptical teacher, whose wife and child become converts. It took me between three to six months to write the story and it was going to appear in an anthology which we were expecting to come out around August, which has writings from across Africa. Things, however, seem to have stalled.

Conversations with Writers: Which aspects of the work that you put into the story did you find most difficult?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: The quasi-religious aspects, making them read and feel real, without being contrived. I wanted the reader to able to immerse himself or herself in the story and enjoy it, without batting an eyelid.

I have become fascinated by our folklore, myths, history and spirituality -- the challenge has been how incorporate this into my fiction and enrich it.

Conversations with Writers: What do you think is the source of this fascination? How much space do you think folklore, myths and spirituality take in your own life and in contemporary life in Zimbabwe?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: They have become the prism through which I view, process life. They help me shape my identity, offer me dimensions that hitherto had been hidden to me. They offer me a refreshing look at the world, a wealth that many have ceased to be recognised and yet can be very useful. People are always looking for crutches in order to survive, and I am fascinated by how these work or fail to work, and what people do or fail to do as a result of the beliefs and values they resort to or discard. Look at what the Latin American writers like Isabel Allende in The House of Spirits have accomplished. Magic realism can be a tool that might help us inject a fresh feel and voice to Zimbabwean literature.

Conversations with Writers: What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: Being still alive today and being able to respond to these questions.

Conversations with Writers: Why is this?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: Sometimes, the worst possible threats to ourselves come from us. Losing the will to live, not caring how one lives or dies. Perhaps there is a romantic notion of the artist underlying it all... fuelled by the desire to die young. One bad thing about dying young is that it comes too early...There is nothing romantic about death, while life itself is full of so many possibilities. My first brother to die died in 1998, while the second died in 2000. My young sister died in 2002. My sister's death was the most difficult of all to deal with. We were very close.

Conversations with Writers: How did you deal with the pain and the loss?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: One night, after a long hard day of vodka-fuelled boozing, I hit someone with a beer bottle in a nightclub. There was so much blood everywhere. I was mobbed and beaten up by his friends and thieves and nearly died. I was taken to the local police station and locked up in a cell with hardcore criminals, people from the underside of our society. These were habitual criminals, and I listened to their stories, each one had a different story to tell and no one, according to them, was really guilty. Through it all, a question kept nagging me: Is this as good as it gets?

I realised that I deserved more and that the potential I had could not end up in such a place -- there was no glory in that, in dying early.

In 2003, my then partner gave birth to a pre-term boy. She was seven months pregnant when he decided to come into the world. There were scary moments when he was confined to the intensive care unit. Then he developed jaundice, and the doctors were on strike, so you had medical students experimenting with treatments. The most amazing thing about it all was how this kid fought. He didn't want to die, he refused to die. It was truly amazing that a pre-term child, barely weeks old could show such a tremendous will to live. It was a trying period for me but through his struggle and triumph, I began to appreciate the value of my own life, and because he lived, I learnt to appreciate what it meant to live for someone other than yourself.

Conversations with Writers: You have also talked about finding a centre. Where would you say your centre lies?

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: My centre revolves around knowing who I am, what I want out of life and going through life informed by a core set of values that enable me to value life, the gifts that we come with into this world and what we ought to do with them. Before me, there have been others of my line, who have made their contributions, even though they remain unknown and unsung, and I am part of that contribution.

My grandfather was a great hunter, drummer, mbira player and dancer, and the arts course through my blood. Skidrow was boozing and not caring what tomorrow brought, getting off, was taking charge of my life, creating a sense of purpose and focus ... Whatever it is I do, I believe I should do it with passion and to the best of my ability, so that I leave a mark.


* This interview appears courtesy of Conversations with Writers. If you are a writer interested in participating, please contact Ambrose Musiyiwa at this email: amusiyiwa@googlemail.com.

* Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza's short stories have appeared in anthologies such as A Roof to Repair (College Press, 2000), Writing Still (Weaver Press, 2003), Writing Now (Weaver Press, 2005) and Creatures Great and Small (Mambo Press, 2006).

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

Review of the African Blogosphere – November 27, 2008

Dibussi Tande

2008-11-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/52205

In the cover story of this month’s issue of the Palapala magazine, Nigerian writer, Tolu Ogunlesi explores Africa’s traditional relationship with food:

“You must have heard the statistics that Bob Geldof and his ilk like to bandy about (in very concerned voices), concerning the number of Africans who go to bed on empty stomachs; figures that tempt us to come to the conclusion that hunger is an African thing.

My take on this is that it is unfair to leave the argument at that point. We need to go a step further and boldly assert that, while hunger may be arguably be an African, so also is the capacity to fight it in a manner touched by wonder and skill, the capacity to create delightsome cuisine out of the humdrum of nature’s edibles…

The concept of ‘fast-food’ is alien to African culture; an insult to the sublime sacredness of the stomach. If it’s fast then it’s not food. Like someone said, the African mind could never have invented the sandwich. ‘What is worth cooking is worth cooking unhurried’ would perhaps be found hanging invisibly atop every cooking place in this part of the world.”

The Way I See It argues that there is no ideological or policy difference between the different Liberian political parties:

“Right now, we cannot distinguish our political parties based on any ideological differences… What is CDC’s stand on dual citizenship or the tax system, having a new national flag, creating wealth or caring for the elderly? Do people consider these positions before joining a political party or is such a decision based on whoever the standard bearer is?... Anytime I look back, I can’t pinpoint any major difference between, for example, LPP and UPP besides the different human faces of Tipoteh/Saywer and Baccus representing those parties. I cannot put a finger on what the NPP believes as opposed to the beliefs of LAP, NDPL or COTOL. All that is identifiable are the images of NPP = Taylor or NDPL = Doe/Krahn people. And that’s it?

In Liberia, we clearly see political parties that are tied around individuals, either their founders or presidential candidates. Instead of having political parties producing candidates, we have presidential hopefuls producing political parties. As a result of this back to front arrangement, we have individuals coming to power (and not teams) who spend the rest of their terms recruiting and figuring out who they can work with.

Ethiopian Recycler comments on world reaction to the recent spate of pirate attacks off the Somali coast:

“Mention Somalia and news reporters more than likely repeat a chorus of phrases: ‘war torn’, ‘stateless’, ‘warlords’ and so on. Now their lazy man's guide has one more word: pirates…

What is interesting is that the same nations with history of piracy are now the ones making sanctimonious comments. The same nations who plundered the environment in pursuit of development are the ones laying down rules for others.

In saying this, we are not condoning Somali pirates or China's and India's reckless use of natural resources. What we are saying is that there are fundamental issues that must be addressed before any reasonable assessment is made. And that includes identifying roles nations could play in resolving recurring problems.”

Mabi Fominyen takes a hard look at the plight of the African woman who is subjected to numerous forms of abuse:

“She is sometimes beaten in class by her male classmate, threatened at home by her brothers, sexually harassed in her office by her male colleagues, raped in her community by a man, coerced into sex by another man , molested by her husband or male partner, abused by a family member, assaulted by a neighbour, a stranger…! Yet she deserves a better world…

In spite of efforts to curb violence and abuse, statistics still paint a horrifying picture of what women go through in different communities. Violence has not been abated. Some gender specialists and activists have opined that violence against women has become as much a pandemic as HIV/AIDS or malaria…

In addition to raising awareness the issues surrounding violence and abuse, there's certainly the need for a change in perception and attitudes. The need to move from mere rhetoric to concrete actions such that perpetrators of acts of abuse get adequately exposed and punished, while victims report to the right quarters and survivors speak out in a bid to check such abuses. Of course governments and other individuals would have to give it more attention than is the case in most countries today.”

Epiphanies reviews a recent TV advert for the Water for Africa campaign, launched by Oasis Water, which is featured on the blog:

“Every humanitarian campaign needs advertising. Otherwise how will people know they need to drink more water in order to quench the thirst of people in Africa? How will people know that they can magically fill someone else's glass by filling their own?

Oasis Water has chosen to let people know through this cute little animation, featuring Lila and Sara.
Sara is a European-looking, presumably Arab girl, with a flowering garden and a fridge. She drinks bottled water out of a glass. Lila is an African girl in vaguely Native American getup, playing in a patch of dirt by a well. She drinks water magically provided by the benevolent Oasis consumer and she drinks it from a jar while the nasal-voiced woman encourages consumers to "drink water, provide water."

I think humanitarian adverts make me cynical.”

Scribbles from the Den reposts a Forbes magazine article on the Ushahidi engine which is used to collect information from the public for use in crisis response:

“Ushahidi is the latest effort to ‘crowd-source’ newsgathering on unfolding crises in remote areas via e-mail and mobile phones. The idea is to get immediate attention and relief to strife zones, and fill the gap left by news organizations that have slashed their foreign bureaus...

Ushahidi, Swahili for ‘testimony,’ has simplified the technology so that anyone can use it, and it's designed to take input from hundreds of people by cell phone or e-mail. It uses free software called FrontlineSMS that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a text-broadcasting hub. As an SMS is sent from a hot zone, the message synchs with the Ushahidi software and shows up in a Web administrator's in-box. The Web admin can decide to send a text message back to the sender to verify the information, send out a blast alert to large numbers of people or post the information onto a Web page with location information from Google Maps (or do all three). FrontlineSMS provides phone numbers in areas where the larger SMS gateways don't operate. Okolloh hopes Ushahidi can be used to send reminder alerts to people on antiretroviral medication or warnings in regions that are at high risk for natural disasters. Some of these ideas are currently being tried in Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad and Ethiopia, among others.”

Africa: The impacts of climate change in Africa

2008-11-28

http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/rmr/?q=en/node/25959

Climate change is a global phenomenon that affects different populations around the world in different ways. In South Africa, for example, there are situations caused by global warming, as in the rest of the African continent. Siziwe Khanyile, member of environmental organization GroundWork, Friends of the Earth South Africa, talked about this.

China and the world crisis

Stephen Marks

2008-11-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/52206

China and the world crisis

Economic guru Jeffrey Sachs added his voice to the growing consensus that the recent G20 meeting marked the end of the era of unchallenged US predominance.
‘The US is not the only economy in this equation’ he stressed. ‘We need a global vision of sustainable recovery that includes leadership from China, India, Europe, Latin America, and, yes, even Africa, long marginalised from the world economy, but very much part of it now.

But the World Bank in a new report says the crisis will slow China’s economy.
The country’s growth rate will fall to 7.5 per cent next year – its slowest for nearly two decades. In its quarterly report on the Chinese economy, the bank reduced its forecast from the 9.2 per cent growth it had been predicting only three months ago. China should do more to rebalance its economy from investment, exports and industry to consumption and services as it rolls out a $586 billion stimulus package, the report said.

“Additional measures are necessary to make headway with rebalancing the pattern of growth,” Steps should include extra spending on health, education and social welfare and raising energy and resource prices, it said.

China’s provincial bosses were reported to be drawing up long wish-lists of roads and other infrastructure projects since central government announced its $585bn stimulus package earlier this month. But there were fears that the package might turn out to include less new spending than originally thought.

According to an analysis in Newsweek, ‘Economists estimate that only a quarter of the $590 billion is new money as opposed to previously announced spending, future tax cuts and unfunded mandates passed down to local governments. There's reason to expect that much of the promised social spending—and the consumer empowerment it represents—may not materialize.

Meanwhile industrial activity in China has slowed so quickly that demand for cobalt has ground to a halt, according to one of the biggest cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s largest source of the metal.

Over a third of China's land is being scoured by erosion that is putting its crops and water supplies at risk, according to a three-year nationwide survey.



The rush for food

There were reports that a South Korean firm had agreed a deal with Madagascar’s government to cultivate an area of the island half the size of Belgium to grow maize and palm oil and pay nothing for the deal.

According to the manager in charge a consortium with a Korean animal feed company and Chinese firms would run the project which would use local labour and some expertise from South Africa.

But later both the Madagascar government and Daewoo, the Korean company were
backtracking.

Brazil, which is already the world’s largest exporter of poultry and second-biggest supplier of soybeans, is asking China, the largest market for its agricultural products, to [url=.http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=abxXkpHbC3.c&refer=latin_america#/]invest in its ports and roads[/url].

Japan and Saudi Arabia as well as China are among the countries bidding for Brazil’s agriicultural land, which has sent prices soaring.

But as Indian commentator Devinder Sharma warned, ‘Outsourcing food production will leave behind a trail of hunger and food scarcity for the native populations.

piracy

The Suez Canal faces the threat of a dramatic decline in traffic as shipping companies shift to other sea routes to avoid Somali pirates. As the Financial Times pointed out,
‘The Suez Canal is Egypt’s third source of foreign currency revenues after tourism and remittances and earned Egypt a record $5.2bn last year. Even before the piracy threat, the Canal was facing a decline in traffic amid a slowdown in international trade’.

In fact the world’s shipping industry has been facing a slow-motion crisis for months, even without the added impact of piracy.

The successful sinking by the Indian navy of a pirate mother-ship in the Gulf of Aden focused attention on the growing role of India’s naval striking force.

And the hijacking of Chinese ships raised the question of how long China can avoid following India’s example.

China arrives in Latin America

China’s President Hu Jintao completed a succesful trip of Latin America, confirming China’s growing influence in what has traditionally been the USA’s backyard.

In a address to Peru’s Congress the Chinese leader promoted his country’s economic role in helping Latin America through the current turmoil.

US scholar David Shambaugh of Washington University analysed China’s developing strategy in Latin America, which looks increasingly like a rerun of China’s rise in Africa.

China in africa

Trade between Zimbabwe and China
could exceed US$500 million this year from US$275 million in 2006 despite a worsening economic crisis in the country, according to a senior Chinese embassy official..

As South Africa’s Trade and Industry Department prepared to hold talks on the possibility of extending quotas on Chinese clothing and textile imports, the country’s clothing retailers were complaining of being excluded.

Botswana has signed a power deal with China to construct a 600 megawatts power station with four 150 MW units.

Nigeria is seeking a $500m loan from China’s Eximbank to build new satellites.


A delegation from South Africa’s structural steel construction industry went on a two-week fact-finding mission to investigate the facilities and capabilities of their Chinese opposite numbers. They reached agreement on a series of workshops to develop joint design codes

MTN, the South Africa-based mobile telecomms company, has sent a team of engineers to China to assess
cellphone handsets that can retail for about $10, which it believes is crucial if cellular services are to spread throughout Africa.

...and India too

Meanwhile India was also moving to expand its African presence. The Asian country is already Nigeria’s second-biggest employer according to its Deputy-High Commissioner, speaking at a press conference in Abuja to promote next January’s India-Africa trade summit.

Egypt is to set up a special industrial zone for Indian companies.

But Kenya’s Prime Minister has asked India to import more Kenyan goods to offset his country’s current trading imbalance with its sixth-largest trading partner.

∗ Stephen Marks is a research associate with Fahamu’s China in Africa programme.

Botswana says Mugabe can be brought down by closing borders

2008-11-28

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news261108/bots261108.htm

One of Robert Mugabe’s fiercest critics, the Botswana Foreign Minister, on Wednesday launched a stinging attack on the ZANU PF leader, suggesting that the Southern African region should close its borders in an attempt to bring him down. As pressure mounted on Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai to agree to form a unity government to avert the humanitarian catastrophe, Phandu Skelemani told the BBC that SADC nations have failed to move Mugabe with mediation and they should now impose sanctions.

Humanitarian situation likely to worsen - UN

2008-11-28

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29093

A senior United Nations relief official has urged donors to generously support the $550 million appeal launched earlier this week to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe, which she warned will get much worse without “massive” international assistance. The Southern African nation is mired in a crisis brought about by a confluence of factors, including three years of failed harvests, bad governance and hyperinflation, among others.

Mbeki's letter angers Tsvangirai

2008-11-28

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5013&cat=2

Former South African President, Thabo Mbeki, wrote a letter to Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change party that may slow talks to end the country's political impasse, Business Day said, citing the letter. Mbeki, tasked by Southern African Development Community with mediating in Zimbabwe's dispute, told the MDC in the letter that it shouldn't' express contempt for the decisions of neighboring countries, the Johannesburg-based newspaper said. He added that the MDC is more influenced in its policies by the west.

MDC director for security abducted

2008-11-28

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news271108/abductions271108.htm

Retribution against political opponents is continuing in spite of the on going negotiations to form a power sharing government between ZANU PF and the two MDC parties. The Tsvangirai MDC claim two more activists were abducted from their homes on Tuesday night, while the 14 activists and a two year old baby are still missing.

Parties agree on power-sharing bill: MDC

2008-11-28

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnJOE4AR0BW.html

Zimbabwe's political rivals have agreed on a draft constitutional amendment to allow them to form a power-sharing government, but obstacles remain, the opposition said on Friday. On-off talks between President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC have made little progress since they reached a deal in September seen as the best hope of pulling Zimbabwe back from economic collapse.

Africa: Poorest African nations countries more child-friendly

2008-11-28

http://www.awcfs.org/content/view/534/1/

Some of the poorest countries in Africa have put in place appropriate laws and policies to protect child rights than wealthier countries. The countries have allocated their limited resources to the provision of basic needs for their children and the funding arrangement has helped greatly in protecting the children against exploitation and harmful traditional practices.

DRC: More help needed for women and girls in North Kivu

2008-11-28

http://www.theirc.org/news/congo-more-help-needed1121.html

Women and girls in eastern Congo's North Kivu province are once again suffering increasing levels of sexual violence amid renewed conflict, instability and widespread displacement of civilians. An International Rescue Committee team conducted a three-day assessment of conditions in Kibati Camp, north of Goma, where roughly 55,000 people have settled. The team found that women and girls are being raped both in and around the camp.

Global: International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

2008-11-27

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/news/vawd.html

On 19 October 1999, at the 17th meeting of the Third Committee during the 54th session of the General Assembly, the representative of the Dominican Republic on behalf of itself and 74 Member States introduced a draft resolution (document A/C.3/54/L.14) calling for the designation of 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Kenya: Farmers reap profits sown by joined hands

2008-11-28

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3830/context/cover/

Efforts to improve agriculture in Kenya often miss the mark by targeting men instead of women. One woman spent 20 years organizing female farmers to share investments and training. Now men are joining too, and the women's work is paying off.

Zimbabwe: Rape survivors assiociation launched

2008-11-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/52213

The violence that characterized the presidential run off elections left a trail of disaster in Zimbabwe. The state sponsored post election violence from May 15 to 29 July 2008 left hundreds of women and girls traumatized because of rape which was used and continue to be used as a weapon of war. Many women not only lost their homes they had worked so hard for the past two decades to own but also hands, fingers, legs and their genital organs.Betty Makoni, Founder & Director of the Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe, recently launched the Zimbabwe Rape Survivors Association (ZRPS)
The violence that characterized the presidential run off elections left a trail of disaster in Zimbabwe. The state sponsored post election violence from May 15 to 29 July 2008 left hundreds of women and girls traumatized because of rape which was used and continue to be used as a weapon of war. Many women not only lost their homes they had worked so hard for the past two decades to own but also hands, fingers, legs and their genital organs. Right now there seems to be somewhat every sign of political leadership transition in Zimbabwe and the women are angry and disappointed that there is no pointer that there would be transitional justice for the rape survivors and moreover many of them are still terrified ,displaced and are constantly mocked by their perpetrators and many men left their wives as a result of the public shame brought by the rape. It is feared more than 2000 women and girls in Zimbabwe were raped and due to intimidation and fear have not come out. The Zimbabwe Rape Survivors Association is a loose network of women who survived rape perpetrated by the youth militia under the command of Zanu PF and they will not this time let this case slip off like those before this one. Already the women have partnered with AIDS Free World for collection and preservation of evidence and on 11 September 2008 the idea to come up with the Zimbabwe Women Rape Survivors Association was conceived in Gaborone in Botswana with a vision to create a new culture of transforming rape victims into fearless leaders so that many more women who have not opened do so and have their evidence preserved and survival strategies and security put in place now that the political situation has not stabilized and nowhere in the political deal is stated that there will be justice for victims

Although much is said, written and supported for well known urbanized networks and so called experts and human rights defenders, the facts lie bare but hidden that the real activists and women who fought in the trenches in Zimbabwe are grassroots women whose stories remain undocumented and like the years before them the stories die a natural death. Little has been said about informal groups of women who fight head on with oppressive systems in the remote parts of Zimbabwe and who have done so since 2000 but AIDS Free World and Girl Child Network partnered to collect evidence on rape as a weapon of war from a sample of typical 9 rape victims ranging from age 12 to 60 from Zimbabwe which resembled sophisticated torture and rape of such degree and magnitude that left the two organizations strongly convinced the women are very strong and resilient.

What came out straight was the fact that the women were and are still traumatized, insecure, homeless and have become laughing stocks in their communities and even though these were women at battlefields and endured such traumatic experiences history books will exclude them. The Zimbabwean Women Rape Survivors movement was conceived in Gaborone, Botswana after women gave testimonies to a group of to AIDS Free World and Lawyers from Canada and had their evidence documented and preserved, however being aware at the fact that the road to justice is long and winding, they strongly feel that speaking out on their cases is therapeutic but having to f=go home and face the perpetrators needs all women to be united, come up with security measures as well as rehabilitating themselves into families and ensuring that they create the critical social economic and political systems to help them claim their spaces. The women who were raped although illiterate, poor and marginalized and not on mainstream development person show that they are the unsung heroines, Memory Sithole is their leader, young and passionate and just looking at her no-one would believe that she is the one who gave them shelter, counseled them made sure genital wounds are treated and heal. She wiped off tears and walked the path to Gaborone struggling at the boarder to have their evidence preserved. Memory was greatly inspired by Betty Makoni to start a unique network of women rape survivors that would be the voice for the voiceless women and girls who cannot break the silence and get justice. The women were also inspired to form sister to sister counseling groups and worked out a secret network that offers emergency temporary shelter and also to know all the safe places they can turn to in Botswana andZimbabwe should the backlash remain as bad as it is

It is against such inspirational activism that is less documented during conflict that Zimbabwean Rape survivors wishes to announce its formal existence on 11 September 2008 .This is announced against the background that no such initiative exists in Zimbabwe and the region and if anything the women will unite on this issue to name and shame perpetrators who one day must face justice and signal to the whole world that victims do not die so but they have power to unleash their potential and take charge of themselves

Why the Zimbabwe Rape Survivors Association
To rebuild confidence in the women, enabling them to fully rehabilitate themselves in society and enjoy their democratic rights. The association, which works closely with AIDS Free World, also seeks to break the silence around rape as a weapon of war , by the marginalized Zimbabwean women who are suffering in agony, enabling them to stand up and speak out for the World to not only understand the Zimbabwean Situation but to do something about it.

Vision
The association envisions a country where women freely enjoy their democratic rights rather than being used as sex weapons in perpetrating violence any time an election is held in Zimbabwe thereby upholding women’s dignity in a society.

Mission
Our mission is to maximize the protection, trauma counseling and access to justice and services women post election violence rape survivors’ rights particularly in rural and marginalized areas of Zimbabwe .

The Situation for women rape survivors
Zimbabwean women have been at pains and looking for a platform and forum to break silence on politically motivated sexual violence. During the war of liberation they were used as sex objects whose importance were to serve Zimbabwean soldiers at any time they would have been commanded to do so.

Sexual Violence in Zimbabwe dates back to the liberation war before 1980 where militia bases existed where horrible stories of sexual violence are being told in women’s circles even to date with many women who were gang raped then not able to tell their children who impregnated them. No one case has been exposed and brought to book.

During the Gukurahundi which was again state sponsored violence directed towards the minority Ndebele people and to date hundreds of women tell stories of having been used as sex objects . Like in 2008 and all the years before women and girls were gang raped in the process, some having to endure the burden of raising families alone as their husbands were murdered by the ruthless regime. The regime at that time was thwarted women’s rights who did not have the same links like today and they failed to stand up and break the silence. Again people were killed, raped and their homes.

In March 2008 the elections were violent free and so they participated but little did the women know by exercising their constitutional and democratic rights they were exposing themselves to a ruthless and oppressive government that had organized systematic murder, rape and torture in order to wipe away the suspected opposition members .Raping women would result in them weakened and living in fear of being infected by HIV and AIDS as well as traumatized. Torture Bases were created in rural areas where youth militias and war veterans were deployed to further do whatever necessary to wipe away any opposition elements from children to women and this was against an argument that a child of a snake is a snake and a male snake is no different from a female snake and that is why women were raped in the event that youth militia found no man or boy they were looking for. Girls as young as 10 were abducted by the militias to these torture bases where they were forced to attend night vigils singing and dancing all right through after which they were raped and physical assaulted to cow them into submission. One young girl aged 19 from Buhera in Manicaland was abducted taken to a torture base where she stayed for 5 days being gang raped but had nowhere to report .

Zimbabwean women have been at pains and looking for a platform and forum to break silence on politically motivated sexual violence. During the war of liberation they were used as sex objects whose importance were to serve Zimbabwean soldiers at any time they would have been commanded to do so.

Sexual Violence in Zimbabwe dates back to the liberation war before 1980 where militia bases existed where horrible stories of sexual violence are being told in women`s circles even to date with many women who were gang raped then not able to tell their children who impregnated them. No one case has been exposed and brought to book.

During the Gukurahundi which was again state sponsored violence directed towards the minority Ndebele people and to date hundreds of women tell stories of having been used as sex objects . Like in 2008 and all the years before women and girls were gang raped in the process, some having to endure the burden of raising families alone as their husbands were murdered by the ruthless regime. The regime at that time was thwarted women’s rights who did not have the same links like today and they failed to stand up and break the silence. Again people were killed, raped and their homes.

In March 2008 little did the women know by exercising their constitutional and democratic rights they were exposing themselves to a ruthless and oppressive government that had organized systematic murder, rape and torture in order to wipe away the suspected opposition members .Raping women would result in them weakened and living in fear of being infected by HIV and AIDS as well as traumatized. Torture Bases were created in rural areas where youth militias and war veterans were deployed to further do whatever necessary to wipe away any opposition elements from children to women and this was against an argument that a child of a snake is a snake and a male snake is no different from a female snake and that is why women were raped in the event that youth militia found no man or boy they were looking for. Girls as young as 10 were abducted by the militias to these torture bases where they were forced to attend night vigils singing and dancing all right through after which they were raped and physical assaulted to cow them into submission. One young girl aged 19 from Buhera in Manicaland was abducted taken to a torture base where she stayed for 5 days being gang raped but had nowhere to report .

The run-up to the historical June 27 Presidential runoff was then characterized by human rights violation and ZANU PF used any oppressive system they thought was necessary to instill fear in the people in the people of Zimbabwean Torture Bases were created in rural areas were militias and war veterans were deployed to further violate the constitutional enshrined human rights. Girls as young as 10 were abducted by the militias to these torture bases where they were forced to attend night vigils signing and dancing all right through after which they faced several physical and sexual abused. One young woman from Buhera in Manicaland was abducted to a tortured base where she stayed for 5 days being gang raped but had nowhere to report to as the police officer’s had lost their efficiency in service delivery. They had become partisan to an extend that thousands of women suffered silently.

Now the women are desperate as in their undergarments they have pain and issues sexual cannot be easily brought to the fore .They have lost virtually everything from marriages to material possessions to self esteem and confidence. The pain the endure will last for years to come and unless and until they stand up for themselves no one else will because even the best doctors and activists are so terrified by the youth militia that they would never want to be known for any reason that they assisted the women because the retribution would catastrophic. So what makes the situation of the women worse is the fact that those trying to help them play hide and sick which in any way traumatizes the women more

After they gave evidence to AIDS FREE WORLD and the lawyers the women feel more convinced than ever that they have only them selves to turn to and hence the apparent need to come up with this initiative that stands to be a solidarity for each other as well as an advocacy platform for justice. There are many organizations that want to bringZimbabwe government to book and this group of women want to be one of them

Urgent needs of the women

During the brief stay in Botswana the women felt that they need the following

1.Justice –that the perpetrators of rape be brought to book. They felt relieved and rejuvenated after giving evidence to AIDS FREE WORLD
2.Security-for one man who came with his wife ,he felt the intimidation and mocking that they raped his wife has resulted in more trauma. The fact that the youth militia still haunt the women and threaten them needs temporary relocation to be done.
3.Transit cum safe house-There is need for temporary shelter where the women can heal as was the case in Botswana .For women who still feel extreme fear there is a shelter for them in Botswana to heal and start again .There has been such a space since the violence started .The women must be assisted to be the leaders they were
4. Counseling and training in trauma-given the fact that the women have been so strong one gets a feeling that if good counseling and rape trauma trainers come aboard they will leave them with skills and knowledge to better help themselves. The women also feel they can be trained to help other women and girls preserve evidence
5.Provision of basic needs like blankets, water, food and medication is key but in the long run there is need to find out what self help projects can do to help themselves. There are some women who want to purse education and they must be assisted to do so
6.Medical follow up on HIV and AIDS and other reproductive related illnesses is key

Egypt: AHRLA finally authorised to be officially re-registered

2008-11-27

http://www.euromedrights.net/pages/511/news/focus/62462

The Observatory for the Protection ofHuman Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) welcome the decision by the Egyptian judiciary to allow the Association of Human Rights and Legal Aid (AHRLA) to continue its activities in Egypt.

Kenya: Key recommendations for reducing levels of inequality and violence

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/52279

At the conclusion of its 41st session in Geneva, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has issued a comprehensive set of recommendations to the Government of Kenya with a view to promoting the enjoyment of these rights among the Kenyan population. Many of these recommendations are also crucial for reducing levels of violence in Kenya and for healing the wounds left after the post-election unrest that swept the country in early 2008.
The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issues key recommendations for reducing levels of inequality and violence in Kenya

Geneva, 26 November 2008

At the conclusion of its 41st session in Geneva, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has issued a comprehensive set of recommendations to the Government of Kenya with a view to promoting the enjoyment of these rights among the Kenyan population. Many of these recommendations are also crucial for reducing levels of violence in Kenya and for healing the wounds left after the post-election unrest that swept the country in early 2008.

In order to support the Committee’s work, the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), together with the Centre for Minority Rights Development (Cemiride) and the Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ-Kenya), submitted an alternative report to the Committee focusing on the link between the violation of economic, social and cultural rights and the incidence of violence, including torture, in Kenya. This report was produced following a preparatory mission during which staff from these organisations met with minority and indigenous communities in the Rift Valley and residents of informal settlements in Nairobi in order to document their concerns and bring them before the Committee.

OMCT, Cemiride and ICJ-Kenya warmly welcome the concluding observations and recommendations of the Committee, which reflect many of the concerns expressed and measures proposed in their alternative report. In particular, the Committee notes that, “disparities in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, including access to land, have led to inter-ethnic tensions and post-election violence during which as least 1,500 persons were killed in early 2008”, and issues a comprehensive recommendation that brings together a number of measures crucial for resolving land-based conflict in Kenya. Specifically, the Committee calls upon the State party to: address disparities in the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, including in access to land, which particularly affect poor people in urban areas and minority and indigenous communities in rural areas, e.g. by adopting the Draft National Land Policy, establishing land inspectorates to monitor discriminatory allocation of land, and implementing the recommendations of the Ndung’u Commission of Inquiry into Illegal/Irregular Allocation of Public Land. It also recommends that the State party establish a tribunal on post-election violence to bring perpetrators to justice, as well as a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission to address broader historical injustices, and that it foster dialogue and promote comprehensive reconciliation among its different ethnic groups.


Another key issue raised by OMCT, Cemiride and ICJ-Kenya, and in turn highlighted by the Committee, is that of the, “corruption and patronage [that] still adversely affect the realization of economic, social and cultural rights”. The alternative report by OMCT and its partners underlines that corruption in Kenya- which exists on all levels, from the country’s political elite to local police and officials - goes hand in hand with inequality and violence. In its recommendations, the Committee calls on the State party to:
Intensify its efforts to prosecute cases of corruption […] train the police and other law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges on the strict application of anti-corruption laws, conduct awareness-raising campaigns, and ensure the transparency of the conduct of public authorities, in law and in practice.”

The Committee also developed a number of recommendations regarding the new Constitution of Kenya, all of which are fundamental for reducing levels of violence. These range from the general recommendation to incorporate economic, social and cultural rights into the new constitutional draft, to a number of more specific recommendations, including that the new Constitution guarantee equal rights of women to matrimonial property during marriage and at its dissolution – an important measure to reduce women’s vulnerability to violence, particularly domestic violence. The Committee in addition recommends that the new Constitution include a provision to ensure that evictions are only used as a last resort and that the Government adopt legislation or guidelines, “strictly defining the circumstances under which evictions must take place”.

Other issues raised by OMCT, Cemiride and ICJ-Kenya and reflected in the recommendations of the Committee include harmful traditional practices, trafficking in women and children, child labour - in particular child sexual exploitation - the challenges facing children affected by HIV/AIDS, and lack of legislation specifically criminalizing domestic violence, including spousal rape. The Committee also expressed its concern regarding access to the minimum essential food and water in both rural and urban areas – issues that lie at the heart of much inter-community conflict in Kenya.

OMCT and its partners urge Kenyan civil society to grasp the important opportunity represented by the Committee’s recommendations. They call on NGOs to advocate vigorously with the Government of Kenya to ensure that it disseminates these recommendations widely – in English, Kiswahili and other appropriate languages – and, above all, to make certain that it acts on these recommendations. Doing so will not only promote the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights in Kenya, but also ensure that violence and conflict are less present in the daily lives of Kenyans, including the poorest and most vulnerable.

The report prepared by OMCT, Cemiride and ICJ-Kenya is entitled, “The Lie of the Land. Addressing the Economic, Social and Cultural Root Causes of Torture and Other Forms of Violence in Kenya”. It can be downloaded at:
http://www.omct.org/pdf/ESCR/2008/CESCR_kenya_OMCT_alt_report.pdf

The Concluding Observations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights following the initial report of Kenya (advanced unedited version) are available at:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/docs/E.C.12.KEN.CO.1_EN.pdf

Nigeria: Chevron "still paying military to kill unarmed protesters"

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/5skxhy

While Chevron is defending themselves in US court for aiding and abetting the Nigerian military to shoot and kill unarmed protesters in Nigeria in May of 1998 they continue to do the same thing as recently as last week according to the Vanguard a large Nigerian Newspaper. The following excerpt is from Friday November 21, 2008: “In Warri, a woman and a young boy were shot, yesterday, by men of the Joint Task Force on the Niger Delta at Escravos in Delta State following a peaceful protest by Ugborodo youths against the Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL) over job slots and contracts.

Nigeria: Time to speak out on abuse of the elderly

2008-11-28

http://www.eldis.org/go/country-profiles&id=40874&type=Document

There is a ‘secret-cult’ silence on the issue of abuse of the elderly in Nigeria, argues the author of this paper. The victims of abuse and others are reluctant to talk about it, and there is constant denial by victims and abusers. Acts of abuse are usually regarded as normal behaviour within society. What can ordinary Nigerians, the government, families and communities do to assist the abused and abusers in prevention and intervention strategies that will benefit the elderly in Nigeria?

Nigeria: US Jury begins deliberations in Chevron suit

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/5lshze

After spirited closing arguments yesterday by both attorneys for the plaintiffs and the defendants in the case of Bowoto v Chevron being tried in San Francisco, the 9-member jury for the Northern California District Court began deliberations late in the day. As of Wednesday afternoon at 1pm (when court closed for the holiday weekend) a verdict is still to be determined.

Senegal: Albinos face perilous social rejection

2008-11-28

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81588

While albinos in West Africa are not facing the violent attacks seen in recent weeks in other parts of the continent, people with albinism in countries like Senegal face grave and even life-threatening discrimination. In Senegal a lack of adequate health care, difficulties accessing education and employment, and social marginalisation mean many albinos are dying unnecessarily or are living in destituti

Southern Africa: Sex workers face increasing barriers to rights, health care

2008-11-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/52210

Sex workers in Southern Africa are subjected to widespread human rights abuses, according to a report released today by the Open Society Institute. Rights Not Rescue: A Report on Female, Trans, and Male Sex Workers’ Human Rights in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa documents the experiences of sex workers and their efforts to protect their rights despite overwhelming challenges.
Sex workers in Southern Africa are subjected to widespread human rights abuses, according to a report released today by the Open Society Institute. Rights Not Rescue: A Report on Female, Trans, and Male Sex Workers’ Human Rights in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa documents the experiences of sex workers and their efforts to protect their rights despite overwhelming challenges.

“Sex workers are facing a health and human rights crisis in Southern Africa, yet very little is being done to protect their rights,” said Anna-Louise Crago, co-author of the report.

The report finds that the criminalization of sex work in each of these countries leaves sex workers particularly vulnerable to sexual and physical abuse from law enforcement officials. In all three countries, sex workers say they experience routine violence from police, including rape, physical assault, and having their genitals sprayed with pepper-spray. In Botswana and South Africa, migrant sex workers from Zimbabwe are often subjected to more severe violence from police and border guards.

“The police take our money and rape us without condoms. We are scared to report the rape because we are sex workers, so we are illegal,” said Priscilla, a sex worker in Rustenberg, South Africa.

The widespread abuse, lack of legal protections, and poor working conditions have compromised the ability of sex workers to access HIV prevention and treatment services. Discrimination from health care providers and fear of abuse often prevent sex workers—particularly transgender and migrant sex workers—from seeking care or antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to treat HIV.

“They don’t treat us like humans at the hospital,” said Rashida, a sex worker from Kasane, Botswana. “Some HIV-positive women choose to die without ARVs rather than go to the hospital.”

In other parts of the world, HIV/AIDS programs that respect the rights of sex workers have proven to be the most successful in reducing HIV rates among sex workers. However, conservative political and religious campaigns, as well as restrictions on foreign aid such as the United States’ “anti-prostitution pledge,” have severely hampered many evidence-based HIV efforts. In Southern Africa, a large proportion of funding directed at sex workers is spent on initiatives aimed at “rehabilitating” them out of sex work.

“So-called rehabilitation projects have not been proven to reduce the spread of HIV, nor have they reduced the number of people engaged in sex work,” said Jayne Arnott, the report’s co-author. “Instead, these types of initiatives further stigmatize sex workers and divert funding from HIV programs that are based on scientific evidence and that respect human rights.”

Despite criminal sanctions and a lack of funding, the report found that sex workers across the region are organizing to protect their rights. In particular, sex workers are calling for law reform and programs to reduce violence and discrimination and create safe working environments that support their ability to enforce condom use.

The report makes some strong recommendations to governments and policymakers such as decriminalization of sex work and increased investment in evidence and rights based health initiatives for sex workers. It also calls on activists and groups working on advancing the rights of sex workers to ensure the meaningful involvement and leadership of sex workers in defining priorities and strategies for (i) achieving recognition of sex work as work, and (ii) ensuring that there is enforcement of sex workers’ human rights and labour rights such as access to fair and safe working conditions.

“All we want is for people to see us as human beings with human rights,” said Caroline, a member of Sisonke, the national network of sex workers in South Africa.

Sudan: Fears for held activist

2008-11-28

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7752392.stm

Human rights groups have expressed fears for the safety of a Sudanese activist in detention in Khartoum. Osman Hummaida was taken into custody along with two other activists and freed after eight hours of questioning. But they were brought in twice more. After the third session on Wednesday, Mr Hummaida, who also has UK nationality, was not released.

Africa: Displaced children in CAR

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/66uz29

Internally displaced children in the Central African Republic face severe protection problems from ongoing insecurity and violence. They have witnessed extreme levels of violence such as the killing of family members when their villages were attacked by road bandits known as Zaraguina or coupeurs de route. Their basic needs remain largely unmet, and many displaced children have also suffered from economic exploitation, ethnic discrimination and recruitment into armed groups.

Global: New website to assist refugees locate lost relatives and friends

2008-11-28

http://www.refunite.org/

Refugees United is a non-profit organization helping refugees anonymously relocate family and friends. All refugees, regardless of legal status - are welcome to use the search engine at www.refunite.org
It is possible to make a profile and/or search anonymously. No sensitive personal data is required. Register with a nickname or anything only family would recognize. Refugees United is an independent, non-political, non-religious NGO. No third party is involved. No official papers need to be filled in. The search engine is easy to use - translated into 15 languages, and still growing. It is free of charge. It is possible to make contact through a message system that is not traceable

Kenya: Thousands flee Somalia border

2008-11-28

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81698

Thousands of people are fleeing parts of the northeastern region of Mandera and neighbouring Somali border areas after Kenya beefed up its security presence to counter possible threats from Somali armed groups. "At least 1,500 families [9,000 people] have left Elwak [an area in Mandera] and its environs," Titus Mung’ou, Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) public relations officer, told IRIN.

Mauritania: Boost for the reintegration of returnees

2008-11-28

http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/492d41584.html

Mauritanian refugees considering whether to return home with UNHCR help received positive news at the weekend when the Mauritanian authorities gave birth certificates to two returnee children, paving the way for them to receive national ID papers. The documents were handed to the young boy and girl during an official ceremony on Sunday in the border town of Rosso.

North Africa: Israeli expulsions to Egypt: 139 missing refugees-and counting

2008-11-27

http://tinyurl.com/6hfzap

The UN’s refugee agency has confirmed that ninety one African refugees expelled by the Israeli army to Egypt as part of Israel’s controversial “hot return” policy have gone missing. A spokeswoman in Cairo for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees said that Egypt has not responded to requests for information about the 91, who were returned shortly after crossing illegally from Sinai into Israel, in at least some cases without any chance to present asylum requests.“We don’t have access to this group, we do not where they are,” the UNHCR spokeswoman said

North Africa: Risks to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt and Israel

2008-11-27

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/MUMA-7LC397?OpenDocument

In this 90-page report, Human Rights Watch called on Egypt to halt the use of lethal force against border crossers and all deportations of persons to countries where they risk persecution or ill-treatment. Israel should halt forced returns of migrants to Egypt, where they face military court trials and possible unlawful deportation to their countries of origin. Both countries should respect the rights of persons seeking asylum.

Kenya: Philip Waki’s ticking bombshell

2008-11-28

http://inside.org.au/philip-wakis-ticking-bombshell/

Justice Philip Waki, a veteran appeal court judge, headed a team tasked with analysing the violence that followed Kenya’s dubious presidential election on 27 December last year. More than 1300 people were killed and at least 300,000 forced from their homes after President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner. Waki’s mandate derived directly from the peace accord brokered by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, which saw Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga agree to share power.

South Africa: Fight prepaid water meters in practice

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/52223

The Johannesburg High Court ruling on 30th April 2008 declaring prepaid water meters to be illegal and unconstitutional was welcomed by many organisations including the Gauteng Province of the ANC, even though they are champions of the installation of those meters. It is thus entirely predictable that the Independent Democrats has been reported in the media several times over the last few weeks as calling on the Johannesburg City Council to listen to the voices of the people and stop the installation of prepaid water meters.
Johannesburg (17th November 2008): The Johannesburg High Court ruling on 30th April 2008 declaring prepaid water meters to be illegal and unconstitutional was welcomed by many organisations including the Gauteng Province of the ANC, even though they are champions of the installation of those meters..

It is thus entirely predictable that the Independent Democrats has been reported in the media several times over the last few weeks as calling on the Johannesburg City Council to listen to the voices of the people and stop the installation of prepaid water meters. As far we recall, the ID has always being on the other side of the fence since the introduction of prepaid water meters as a pilot project in 2003. We have never seen the ID, nor the ANC (and certainly not the DA, IFP etc.) practically struggling with our communities against the pre-paid meters over these last many years.

It is only now that with the High Court ruling and the national elections approaching that political parties like the ANC and ID et al. come out and opportunistically claim to be "on the side of the people".

CAWP challenges the ANC, ID and other political parties claiming to be supporting the struggles of poor communities against pre-paid water meters, to actually join those struggles as and where they happen. Talk, especially for the purposes of electioneering, is cheap!

For more information/comments please contact the CAWP organiser- Patrick "Patra Sindane @ 073 052 7005

South Africa: March to protest evictions

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/52235

At least ten thousand people are expected to march on KwaZulu-Natal Premier S'bu Ndebele tomorrow morning. A memorandum will be handed to the Premier warning him to immediately retract his plans to evict 10 000 families from eMacambini and to cease his collaboration with new forms of colonialism. The march has been organised by the eMacambini Anti-Removal Committee which has been formed by the eMacambini Development Committee which has been democratically elected by the community. The eMacambini Anti-Removal Committee is rejecting all forms of party politics.
At least ten thousand people are expected to march on KwaZulu-Natal Premier S'bu Ndebele tomorrow morning. A memorandum will be handed to the Premier warning him to immediately retract his plans to evict 10 000 families from eMacambini and to cease his collaboration with new forms of colonialism.

The march has been organised by the eMacambini Anti-Removal Committee which has been formed by the eMacambini Development Committee which has been democratically elected by the community. The eMacambini Anti-Removal Committee is rejecting all forms of party politics.

eMacambini stretches over 19 000 hectares of coastal land. It is a very beautiful place. The soil is rich and the land is fertile. Our ancestors have lived here for generations and they have always defended this land against every threat. Their graves are on this land.

S'bu Ndebele has promised 16 500 hectares to Ruwaad Holdings from Dubai so that they can build a playground for the rich of the world including the AmaZulu World Themepark, a shopping mall eight times the size of the Gateway mall hotels, a game reserve, six golf courses, residential areas, sports fields and a R200 million 100m high statue of Shaka Zulu at the Thukela river mouth. They will take the beach from the Thukela River past the Amatikulu river until Dodokweni.

The plans hatched by Ndebele and Ruwaad will result in the forced removal of 10 000 families from their land. Those that qualify for housing subsidies will be resettled in tiny RDP houses in a 500 hectare township near Mandeni. Even if you have a big house now you will be forced into a tiny RDP house. Those that do not qualify for housing subsidies will be left homeless and they will have to fend for themselves. More than 300 churches as well as 29 schools and 3 clinics will also be lost. The government statistics say that there is 40% unemployment here in eMacambini. What they don't understand is that 25% of the people here are not willing to go to work and want to be the bosses of themselves – they are living through the land and through the ocean.

Here we are growing sugar cane, vegetables and fruit. Here we are raising cattles, sheep and goats. Here some of us survive on fishing.

Here some of the land is owned by private individuals but there is a lot of communal life too. The sea, the rivers and the valleys are all held in common. The water in the rivers, the wood in the forests, the fish in the sea, the sand on the river banks, the medicinal plants and the pastures are all free for everyone.

There will be no compensation for what we will lose. There will just be a swop of land – a 500 hectare township for 16 500 hectares of beautiful and free land with rivers, valleys, pastures and beaches. In the townships there will be nothing for free. We will have to pay rates there.

People are feeling like they are being forced to give up on their heritage. They do not want to leave the land of their ancestors. They do not want to leave the graves of their ancestors.

What was called 'forced removal under apartheid' is now called 'relocation'. We are told that we 'do not understand development' and that we 'need a workshop in order to understand development'. We understand this kind of development very well. It is new words for old forms of oppression. Relocations are forced removals. This is a new kind of colonialism. We will not be workshopped into accepting the loss of our land and our heritage. We will not be workshopped into accepting our own oppression.

It is not that we are against all development. If development can be negotiated with the community and plans can be made that will benefit everyone in the community then we will support that development. There are some vacant lands here and we are prepared to negotiate about how that land can be developed. We have been discussing plans for the development of the vacant lands.

S'bu Ndebele is suing the eMacambini Inkosi for R2.5 million and he is suing the SABC for R2.5 million because he claims that we was defamed when the Inkosi told the truth on SABC. He must know that he is suing the whole community. This is just a way to try and intimidate us so that we will be silent about this forced removal and the theft of our land. We will not be intimidated and we will not be silent. We are angry. We are red. We will show our anger. We hope that the SABC and other media will also refuse to be intimidated.

This is supposed to be the time in which land is returned to those from whom it was taken under colonialism and apartheid. This is supposed to be the time of redistribution. We never thought that this would be the time of a new colonialism – a time when our land would be taken to us and given to Ruwaad Holdings so that rich people in Dubai can get richer by turning our land and our heritage into a playground for the rich of the world. We know that Dubai is based on a ruthless apartheid between the rich and the poor. Apartheid was defeated in this country. We will not allow the people from Dubai to bring a new apartheid here and we will not allow S'bu Ndebele to sell us to this new colonialism.

We have a right to a good place to live. We have a right to our place.

The first phase of AmaZulu World is supposed to begin in December this year. The last phase is supposed to conclude twenty five years later. People are living in fear and uncertainty about their future. Children wake up scared in the night. Old gogos are having high blood pressure.

Our ancestors fought for this land. We will fight for it. If necessary we are prepared to die for it.

Angola: President says new constitution a priority

2008-11-28

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnJOE4AR0H7.html

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos called on Friday for a new constitution to allow the first presidential poll in almost two decades, a vote he is widely expected to win. Dos Santos, who has ruled the oil-producing African country for 29 years, said the new constitution would make clear whether the president would be elected directly by Angolans or by parliament.

DRC: President brutally repressed opposition

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/6fdo6r

Congolese state security forces have killed an estimated 500 people and detained about 1,000 more, many of whom have been tortured, in the two years since elections that were meant to bring democracy, Human Rights Watch said in a report. The brutal repression against perceived opponents began during the 2006 elections that carried President Joseph Kabila to power, and has continued to the present.

Guinea-Bissau: Coup attempt condemned

2008-11-28

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29078

The Security Council has strongly condemned the attempted coup d’état in Guinea-Bissau over the weekend and urged all political groups in the fragile and impoverished West African country to resolve their disputes peacefully. Dissident elements of the military launched an armed attack on the residence of President João Bernardo Vieira in the capital, Bissau, early on Sunday morning, using machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. But they were unsuccessful and Mr. Vieira survived the attack.

Kenya: Cabinet agrees on poll violence court

2008-11-28

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7753241.stm

Kenya's cabinet has agreed to implement a controversial report into January's post-poll violence, which recommends prosecuting all those responsible. The meeting to approve the report had been delayed several times. But a statement from the president's office said there was consensus to carry through the recommendations.

Kenya: Leaders in Waki list to lose cabinet posts

2008-11-28

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/495836/-/tm5269/-/index.html

Politicians named in the Waki list will have to quit their Cabinet posts and those found guilty of election violence offences barred from ever running for public office if proposals tabled before the Cabinet are approved. Sources who have seen the proposals prepared by a team headed by Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Martha Karua, on Thursday said this was the only way to end impunity and stop politicians from using their communities to cause violence every election year.

Kenya: MPs succumb to tax payment

2008-11-28

http://www.africanews.com/site/list_messages/21832

Two more Members of Parliament of Kenya have succumbed to pay tax barely four days after another MP voluntarily offered to have his salary and allowances taxed. They are Jeremiah Kioni of Ndaragwa and Francis Nyamu of Tetu constituencies. The MPs earlier this month objected moves to tax them.

Mozambique: Dhlakama blames loss on 1000s of voters brought from outside

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/52228

“A massive presence” of people from outside all 43 municipalities who were brought in by the lorry-load in order to vote for Frelimo explains Renamo’s defeat, Renamo president Afonso Dhlakama told a press conference early Monday afternoon. This “flood” of outsiders was allowed to vote because all the people who were hired as polling station staff were members or sympathisers of Frelimo, he added.
“A massive presence” of people from outside all 43 municipalities who were brought in by the lorry-load in order to vote for Frelimo explains Renamo’s defeat, Renamo president Afonso Dhlakama told a press conference early Monday afternoon. This “flood” of outsiders was allowed to vote because all the people who were hired as polling station staff were members or sympathisers of Frelimo, he added. In response to media questions, he stressed he is not reconsidering his position because this was a victory “fabricated” by Frelimo, and not a real defeat of Renamo.

Meanwhile, the Renamo candidate for mayor of Montepuez, Tomé Fernando, toldNotícias (22 November) that the election clearly was not fair because the result did not reflect the will of the people, because he did not win.

In his press conference, Dhlakama gave no details, except to claim this happened everywhere. But in support of the claim, Renamo did circulate an alleged document from the Frelimo central election office giving orientations to party cells. The document says that the main task of party cells is to ensure that all party members vote, and encourage others to vote for Frelimo. The document goes to great lengths to stress that Frelimo members must obey the law and not campaign openly on 17 and 18 November. On polling day, in encouraging people to vote for Frelimo, party members must always stay more than 300 metres from the polling stations, as required by law. Thus Renamo distributed a clear and sensible document, which is probably real, and in no way supports Renamo claims of planned massive fraud.

Mozambique: Many votes left off registers

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/52229

It appears that the computer-produced register books (cadernos de recenseamento) were not completely accurate, and in many places voters names were left off. Most polling stations also had copies of the hand-written register made at the time of registration, and often people appeared in that register, and thus were able to vote. The Renamo candidate for mayor of Montepuez, Tomé Fernando, for example, was not in the computer-printed register but could vote because he was in the manual register.
It appears that the computer-produced register books (cadernos de recenseamento) were not completely accurate, and in many places voters names were left off. Most polling stations also had copies of the hand-written register made at the time of registration, and often people appeared in that register, and thus were able to vote. The Renamo candidate for mayor of Montepuez, Tomé Fernando, for example, was not in the computer-printed register but could vote because he was in the manual register.

But our correspondent in Nampula city reports that there, many polling stations only had the computer-printed book, and not the hand-written one. Dozens of voters with valid registration cards could not vote.

The issue was confused by a pair of contradictory decisions by the National Elections Commission (CNE). On 12 November in Deliberação 125, the CNE ruled that anyone who appeared at a polling station with a voter’s card but was not in the register book should still be allowed to vote, with their name and card number written in at the end of the register. But this decision was actually very badly written – it was probably intended that people should only be able to vote in the polling station for which the card was issue (the voters card contains the register number which is also the polling station number). But in fact it did not contain that restriction, and could be seen to allow voting anywhere. Thus on 18 November, the day before polling day, the CNE in Deliberação 129 revoked that part of Deliberação 125.

In his press statement, Dhlakama used Deliberação 125 to say this was the way outsiders had been allowed to vote. This should be checkable, since it would involve thousands of names written into register books. But according to our correspondent, the problem was the opposite – many people with voters cards could not vote.

Namibia: Open letter to President Pohamba

Phil Ya Nangoloh

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/52225

Comrade President, it is with a heavy heart and great deal of hesitation that I have to direct this open letter to you, as our Head of State, following what occurred at Outapi on Saturday. I deliberately decided to make this an open letter, because I would like other citizens of this great country of ours to also read it and in order for them to take note of what I have said and, further, in order for them to be witnesses thereto.
OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT POHAMBA
November 24 2008

Comrade President, it is with a heavy heart and great deal of hesitation that I have to direct this open letter to you, as our Head of State, following what occurred at Outapi on Saturday. I deliberately decided to make this an open letter, because I would like other citizens of this great country of ours to also read it and in order for them to take note of what I have said and, further, in order for them to be witnesses thereto. I hope and pray that soon no one would ever say "but Phil ya Nangoloh once warned our President about this" and further that "the President himself cannot say that he has never been warned about this".

Mr. President, like Swapo Party Founder Tate Herman ya Toivo and all other well-intentioned Namibians, I am deeply disturbed by the escalating political intolerance in this country since the middle of last year, manifesting itself through inter alia the spiraling political violence and hate expression as well as lawlessness. These things have the ominous potential of plunging this nation into ethnic violence and chaos a la Kenya and or the political violence spearheaded by ZANU-PF in neighboring Zimbabwe.

There is general consensus in this country that Swapo Party members and supporters are the ones who are spearheading these acts of violence and lawlessness. Unless drastic corrective measures are instituted, there is very little, if any, hope to believe the upcoming elections scheduled for 2009 will ever be free and or fair.

Comrade President, my deepest fear lies in the possibility that the present levels of ethno-political violence and lawlessness might result in an ethnic conflict with attendant commission of crimes against humanity as had happened elsewhere under similar conditions.

Mr. President, let me stress here that I have deep respect for you personally as I have come to know you personally following and since our first face to face meeting some time in 1992 in your offices as Home Affairs Minister. This became possible when you invited me and my human rights colleagues to exchange views about human rights violations by the special constables as well as about the land issue which were burning issues at the time.

Comrade President, my deepest concern is that when you took office on March 21 2005 as the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of Namibian security forces, you impressed me and thousands of other Namibians when you assured the nation that you are the President of all Namibians, regardless of their political affiliation. And, furthermore, that shortly before you became our Head of State, you have taken an oath in terms of Article 30 of the Constitution and under the penalty of perjury and impeachment to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution as the Supreme Law of our Republic. Moreover, in terms of Article 32 of the Constitution, you are vested with enormous executive powers, functions and duties, subject to the Constitution, to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution and in so doing to perform all acts necessary, expedient and reasonable to uphold, protect and defend all the basic human rights and fundamental freedoms of everyone in Namibia as contemplated in Article 5 of the Constitution. In my sincere opinion this is where you are failing this nation!

In other words, Mr. President, in terms of the Constitution you not only have right to be and remain the Head of State of our Republic, but at the same time you are also duty-bound to decisively act like one. As both the Head of State and President of the Swapo Party you are, in the final analysis, responsible ratione materiae for what your Swapo Party subordinates are doing in violation of the constitutional principles and the laws of this country as well as for the omissions or commissions of some Police officers, such as Deputy Commissioner Simeon Shidinge of the Omusati region, have reportedly done at the weekend at Outapi.

Comrade President, I dare also say that I have great sympathy for you vis-à-vis the heavy and often disrespectful criticism you are reportedly receiving from some of your colleagues in the Swapo Party and, as has been reported widely in the media, that there are even strong feelings in certain Swapo Party circles to have you removed as Namibian President. I am, however, quick to add that I see no problems and have no qualms with those who want to unseat you: provided they do so in a democratic fashion as laid down in the Constitution and laws of our Republic.

But the abovementioned criticisms are not enough excuse and should never be an excuse for you not acting decisively against the violence and lawlessness before it is too late. This is necessary even if these things are being committed by your Swapo Party subordinates. Please demonstrate to this nation that you are indeed both the de jure and de facto President of this country and act decisively to ensure that the Constitution and the laws of this country are respected by all our citizens, regardless of their political affiliation.

As a responsible citizen under our constitutional democracy, this was my advice to you, Mr. President. Thank you.

Citizen Phil ya Nangoloh

Windhoek
Cell: +264 811 299 886

Nigeria: New ministers nominated

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/587srs

Umaru Yar Adua, the Nigerian president, has announced a list of ministerial nominees including a former Opec chief, almost three weeks after sacking half the cabinet. Yar Adua on Tuesday sent the list of 13 nominees to the senate for approval, in order to complete the cabinet reshuffle.

Somalia: Parliament to be doubled

2008-11-28

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7751090.stm

Rival Somali politicians have agreed to double the size of the parliament to bring in opposition representatives. The agreement at talks in neighbouring Djibouti is part of a UN-sponsored reconciliation process aimed at ending nearly two decades of conflict. Two hundred new seats in parliament will be allocated to an opposition alliance, and 75 will be reserved for civil society groups.

Africa: Fighting graft in Africa. Or not.

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/6m9f7c

A little while back, we asked who is and isn’t fighting corruption effectively in Africa. This week, a number of examples bring us back to the subject. In Tanzania, two former ministers have been charged with flouting procurement rules over the award of a tender for auditing gold mining back in 2002.

South Africa: Zuma graft dismissal challenged

2008-11-28

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7754116.stm

South African state lawyers have appealed against the dismissal of corruption charges against African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma. The charges were rejected on a technicality in September, sparking a political row, which led to President Thabo Mbeki leaving office. The judge accused the state prosecutors of interfering in the case for political reasons.

South Africa: Corruption and the colour of one's skin

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/6le5g9

Somebody coming from Mars would be forgiven for thinking that the era of black rule is rife with corruption and nepotism, writes Saliem Fakier.The white world would have been thought of as being better if one is to believe that its history was always populated with saints. History though. is infrequently remembered for what it is, seldom uncovered for all of its diversity and always selectively appropriated. Short memory, too, is the enemy of history -- and there is lots of it going around.

Africa: Nigeria, Angola to be highest-earning oil producers by 2030

2008-11-28

http://www.nigeriannewsservice.com/news/118/ARTICLE/3075/2008-11-26.html

Nigeria and Angola will be the highest earning oil-producing countries in a pack of 10 within the sub-saharan African region between 2006 and 2030, says the International Energy Agency (IEA). In a report entitled “World Energy Outlook 2008”, presented at the Center for Strategic Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. by the organisation's Chief Economist, Dr Faith Birol, Nigeria and Angola will account for 86 per cent of the $4.1 trillion cumulative revenues of all 10 countries over 2006-2030.

Africa: Zambia leans on Nigeria for assistance

2008-11-28

http://www.africanews.com/site/list_messages/21878

Zambian President, Rupiah Banda, has requested Nigeria's assistance to tackle the effect of the global financial crisis on his country. He said the global crisis has hit Zambia's economy to the extent that the price of its main commodity which is copper had come down to $3,300 from $8000 per tonne.

Global: Agrofuels as an obstacle to food and energy sovereignty

2008-11-28

http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/?q=node/view/496

Representing organisations and social movements from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay, Thailand, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and the United States, who have come together in São Paulo from 17 to 19 November 2008. We fundamentally disagree with the strategy to promote agrofuels: in our opinion, agrofuels are not driving development, nor are they sustainable. This strategy represents an obstacle to the necessary structural changes in our system of production and consumption, in agriculture and in the energy matrix, changes that pose real solutions to the challenges of climate change.

South Africa: Addressing mass poverty and unemployment

2008-11-28

http://www.eldis.org/go/country-profiles&id=41051&type=Document

A basic income grant (BIG) is a universal transfer to all those with the right to be in a country (citizens by birth, by naturalisation, or persons with rights of permanent residence). The purpose of this article is to reflect not so much on the basic income grant (BIG) itself, but rather on the reasons why it is unlikely that any other policy can address the problem of mass unemployment and associated poverty in South Africa.

Global: Get ready for World Aids Day 2008

2008-11-27

http://tinyurl.com/57hxm8

1 December 2008 marks the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day. Since 1988, efforts made to respond to the epidemic have produced positive results, however, the latest UNAIDS report on the global AIDS epidemic indicates that the epidemic is not yet over in any part of the world. Together with its partners, the World AIDS Campaign set this year’s theme for World AIDS Day as “Lead – Empower – Deliver”, building on last year’s theme of “Take the Lead”.

Global: World Aids Day - UNFPA director's message

2008-11-28

http://www.unfpa.org/news/news.cfm?ID=1231

As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, we pay tribute to the leaders in communities and nations who have promoted greater awareness and action to address the AIDS pandemic. If there is one lesson learned over the years, it is that success in responding to the HIV epidemic requires sustained leadership, community engagement and the involvement of people living with HIV.

Morocco: Study finds prostitutes lacking AIDS awareness

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/5p39tw

A groundbreaking study published in mid-November by the Morocco section of the Pan-African Organisation for the Fight Against AIDS (OPALS) focused on an activity that is a major source of sexually transmitted diseases – prostitution. "Prostitution is closely linked with the economic, social and mental situation of those who are involved in it," the November 13th report said.

Nigeria: Government tests drug after deaths

2008-11-28

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7754027.stm

All paracetamol-based drugs prescribed in Nigeria are being tested after the deaths of 29 children, who had taken contaminated medicine, officials say. The children died after drinking a baby teething mixture contaminated with diethylene glycol, a toxic substance normally used in engine coolant.

South Africa: Oppositon to ARV cost 330,000 lives - study

2008-11-28

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/97BFC49D-E43C-4028-8E4D-CACF15F82956.asp

The refusal of the Mbeki government to roll-out antiretroviral therapy and treatment to prevent mother-to child transmission in South Africa resulted in 330,000 needlessly premature HIV-related deaths and 35,000 avoidable case of mother-to-child HIV transmission according to estimates published in the December 1st edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Zimbabwe: At least 3000 feared dead in cholera epidemic

2008-11-28

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news261108/cholera261108.htm

Over 3000 people are feared to have died so far from a severe cholera epidemic plaguing the country. With Mugabe’s regime keeping a tight lid on the number of people who have succumbed to the illness, the actual number could be much higher. Our Harare correspondent Simon Muchemwa told Newsreel the figure of 3000 dead could most likely be for Harare alone. He said most people did not bother to register the deaths of their relatives and this provided an added challenge to accurate record keeping.

Zimbabwe: Cholera outbreak "under control"

2008-11-28

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5012

Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak is "under control," the deputy health minister said Wednesday, rejecting calls to declare a state of emergency after the disease claimed more than 360 lives."The situation is under under control. There is no need to declare it," Edwin Muguti told AFP, and blamed the situation on sanctions imposed by Western nations on President Robert Mugabe's regime.

Burundi: Government seeks to criminalize gay marriage

2008-11-28

http://www.afrol.com/articles/31835

The influential European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, is reported to have been "shocked" by the rushed move of the Burundian parliament to criminalize same-sex relations. Michael Cashman, an MEP representing Britain, was surprised by the sudden decision in Burundi, immediately raising the issue with EU Commissioner Michel, asking him to bring the matter up with the government of Burundi.

Africa: Urgent call for laws on trafficking

Mercedes Sayagues

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52309

Delegates meeting at Sixth African Development Forum which closed last Friday have called for urgent and standardised laws to address human trafficking - the newest form of gender violence that, according to UNICEF, afflicts more than four-fifth of African countries.
Delegates meeting at Sixth African Development Forum which closed last Friday have called for urgent and standardised laws to address human trafficking - the newest form of gender violence that, according to UNICEF, afflicts more than four-fifth of African countries.

Because of the newness and complexity of the issue, most countries lack specific, efficient and modern laws to deal with human trafficking. Blazing the trail, leaders of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) signed a Protocol on Gender and Development in August that requires its 15 member states to have anti-trafficking laws by 2015.

According to the United Nations (UN), human trafficking is the transportation of persons, by coercion or abuse of power, for the purpose of exploitation, ranging from forced prostitution or labour, and, crucially, the “removal of organs.”

A 2006 study by the United States State Department estimated that up to 800,000 people are trafficked in the world each year. This number does not include trafficking within a country's borders. This staggering number of people – about 80% of them women and children – end in forced prostitution; forced labour in farms, factories, and sweatshops; domestic servitude; soldiering; in commercial or illegal adoption or as sellers in the organ trade.

One problem that hampers the fight against human trafficking is its often imprecise contours. Trafficking lies in a grey area; it encompasses many issues and, being a fairly new concept, laws against it lag behind reality.

“There is a lack of data, a lack of legislation, few statistics, little reporting, and many people confuse it with kidnapping,” says Karen Stefiszyn, programme manager of the Gender Unit at the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria, in South Africa.

“It is not sex work, it is not economic migration, it is not smuggling foreigners into a country, although trafficking can contain those elements,” explains Stefiszyn.

Not all sex workers are coerced into prostitution. Many people willingly pay money to gangs to be smuggled into richer countries. This is not trafficking. But the public, the police and the legislators often confuse the issues. It is easier to pass laws against illegal economic migrants and sex work than to tackle the complexities of human trafficking.

Botswana, for example, has laws that penalise kidnapping. But people who are trafficked into Botswana and are caught may say they agreed to be brought into the country. “Then that would not be against the law,” says Ronald Ridge, a Member of Parliament and chair of the Parliamentary Committee on population and development.

In southern Africa, the AIDS epidemic both feeds the traffic (luring poor or orphaned children) and the sex trade (leading to more HIV infection) in a vicious circle, says Stefiszyn.

In West and Central Africa, trafficking of women is growing for exploitation primarily in domestic services and the sex industry, remarks Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking. While civil conflict in West and Central Africa results in the abduction of boys and girls by rebels, to serve as porters, soldiers and sex slaves.

A new and frightening form of human trafficking emerging in West Africa concerns female genital mutilation. Nearly all West African countries have passed laws banning female genital mutilation. There is some progress in eliminating the practice but one effect of the laws is to drive it underground and across borders.

Wherever a country is lax in implementing the laws, like Niger, or has no law against it, like Mali, or is in conflict and effectively lawless, like Cote d’Ivoire, communities living near the border take their girls there to be excised.

A study published last month by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) looks at cross-border excision between Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries. Sometimes the family travels with the child; sometimes the circumcision practitioner travels to a village across the border. The ceremony is no longer announced in the market and people deny it happens – but it does.

“Communities couldn’t care less about the geographical barriers represented by borders,” says the study. The ethnic links across borders, lax police controls, the still strong social acceptance of excision and resistance to change, weave a network of alliances and secrecy.

Between July and November, the peak agricultural season, amidst the flow of Burkinabe youth going by donkey, ox-cart, bicycle and bus to work in the Malian cotton fields, the girls go for their excision, unnoticed. Cross-border excision also involves flying from France to Mali to escape French sanctions against genital mutilation, or from Portugal to Guinea Bissau in search of a famous exciser.

Asked whether this constitutes trafficking, Florence Butegwa, UNIFEM representative to the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union noted, “This has never been tested legally but advocates should be encouraged to look at it.”

”This interpretation could be a very good advocacy tool,” adds Zineb Touimi Benjelloun, UNIFEM regional director of programmes in North Africa.

* Mercedes Sayagues is freelance journalist. This article is being distributed by the GL Opinion and Commentary Service as part of a joint initiative by GL and the Economic Commission on Africa to publicise key issues arising from the sixth African Development Forum that focused on women’s empowerment and ending violence against women.

Chased away for being disabled

Etty Khoza

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52311

I was born 3 of July 1955 at Katlehong and grew up with polio after being diagnosed when l was eight months old. I stayed at the Germiston Hospital, Baragwaneth, and later ended up in Natal-Spruit Hospital where they kept disabled people. In 1993, l received an RDP house. It was nice because l was working and l could do whatever l wanted. My house was very beautiful.

Financing media for gender equality

Tiffany Tracey

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52310

This 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is even more relevant this year to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) than ever. While gender violence continues to be an unrelenting problem in the region, the August 2008 signing of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development arms gender activists with a powerful tool to lobby and hold governments accountable to extending 16 Days to year-long action to fight gender violence.
This 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is even more relevant this year to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) than ever. While gender violence continues to be an unrelenting problem in the region, the August 2008 signing of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development arms gender activists with a powerful tool to lobby and hold governments accountable to extending 16 Days to year-long action to fight gender violence.

However, it is often forgotten that the needed education, campaigns, and capacity building – or any kind of intervention - to achieve gender equality as outlined by the Protocol require financial backing. Recognising the key links between financing and real action, a diverse group of participants from all across Southern Africa, as well as North America, met in cyber space to discuss financing women’s media work.

Women’s media within the struggle for women’s human rights is a powerful and evocative means of bringing out in the open the hardship, brutality and struggle that women experience in their everyday lives. Recognising that media is a powerful shaper of societal norms, the SADC protocol outlines specific commitments to working towards women-centred media. This includes gender balance and gender mainstreaming within media organisations, a fair and sensitive representation of women in media content, as well as women’s right to access information.

The Cyber Dialogue was an initiative of the Gender and Media Southern Africa Network (GEMSA), the Gender and Media Diversity Centre, Gender Links and UNIFEM, designed to use new technologies as a way to bring together activists across borders. Many chat-participants expressed the view that media needs to be owned by women in order to be called “women’s media.”

Ownership of media is important because owners are able to define the kind of media produced. Colleen Lowe Morna, Executive Director of Gender Links, noted that, “research shows us that where women own control and manage media women's voices and issues are more likely to be heard.”

The ownership of media by women would also promote a gender fair environment, in which women can access the same opportunities that their male counterparts can. Lowe Morna observed that, “whether or not women promote women's causes, they have a right to share equally in the production and dissemination of information.”

Zambian journalist Perpetual Sichikwenkwe also drew attention to the significance of women-centred content. “Women's media can either be a media controlled by women, that which has women in decision-making positions or it is pursuing a women's agenda.”

An online participant identifying herself as Aima, echoed the focus on content, suggesting that “women's media should be one that reports on women in a way that is positive, progressive and does not reinforce stereotypes.”

Given the competing demands on government and international funding, media is a programme area that can be pushed aside, despite the key role that information and media playing in both informing populations and creating the political, economic, and social environments we live in.

Funding is needed to implement the kind of media described by the participants. Lowe Morna notes that “men did not get where they are in the media on their own steam. They have been bank rolled there. Women need the same leg up.”

The lively debate by cyber participants pointed to diverse possibilities for change. They suggested that national governments’ commitment to all citizens, regardless of gender, should include media that is responsive to both men and women. A starting place is their own state-run media institutions, where they have the opportunity to make marginalised voices, especially those of women, heard.

Cyber chatters also stated that governments and international bodies often forget policies and commitments almost as soon as they are signed. However, obligations such as the Millennium Development Goals and the SADC Protocol can be valuable tools to lobby governments to fund gender equality.

There is a need to lobby funders, especially within the SADC region, to include gender fairness as a funding criterion. Funds such as the Southern African Media Development Fund could pave the way for gender fair media, if they were to highlight women’s media in their funding strategies.

Some chatters pointed out that perhaps one reason that women’s media has been largely ignored is the lack of clear research and data available to justify its importance. Perhaps research is needed to better understand women audiences. If different preferences can be demonstrated in this population, more funding might become available.

As Saeanna Chingamuka suggested, “women’s media can never fight for gender equality because it does not exist. We should be discussing how to establish it.” If we believe that media has an important role to play in society, this points to an urgent need to prioritise women’s media development.

Such examples may provide possible ways forward for supporting the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, women’s issues and women-centred media. In so far as knowledge is power, the ability to find and use information effectively is central to women's rights and empowerment.

Along with providing food for thought on funding women’s media, another clear signal from the debate is the far-reaching possibilities that access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) offers for women, and the gender debate. Across Africa women and girls have significantly less access to ICTS. Funding for ICT and media training for women and girls would truly put the power of the information age in their hands.

* Tiffany Tracey is a Researcher with the Gender and Media Diversity Centre. This article is part of a series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service as part of a Financing for Gender Equality Campaign.

Global: Campaigning for the elimination of gender violence

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52230

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, OMCT joins its network members and partners to call for therecognition that human rights cannot be universal without the protection of women from gender-based violence and discrimination.
From 25 November to 10 December human rights groups worldwide will be celebrating the “16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence” Campaign, which is dedicated this year to the 60thanniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the reassertion of the universality of the human rights of women. In the framework of this Campaign, OMCT field partners will carry out various activities to call attention to the magnitude, forms and consequences of gender-based violence and to demand states’ compliance with their commitments undertaken upon the adoption in 1993 of the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women.

In India and Georgia, OMCT partners will highlight the consequences of militarization and conflict on women and demand accountability for gender-based violence perpetrated in this context. Other themes addressed include trafficking in women (West Bengal, India), women human rights defenders (Nepal) and women living with HIV/AIDS (Democratic Republic of Congo and Nepal). Capacity-building activities will be carried out in Bangladesh and Nepal in order to strengthen human rights activists’ capacity to document and report violence against women. In Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, partner NGOs will reach out to local communities in order to foster understanding and awareness of the right of women to a life free of violence.

Local and global activism plays a key role in the recognition that gender-based violence is the worst form of discrimination against women, and one that requires multiple and sustained positive measures by local and national authorities. Sixty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 16 Days Campaign aims to finally bring human rights home to every woman.

Honouring my mother and sister

Pascal Akimana

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52308

I was born 27 years ago in a little village called Gatumba, 15 km from Bujumbura in Burundi. I am a product of a teenage mother forced to marry the man who impregnated her and later had three more children with him. I grew up in a very violent home. Gender based and sexual violence was daily bread in my life. My father assaulted my mother every day in front of the entire family and no one said anything. Sometimes he would force my mother to have sex in front of me. This puzzled me because it didn’t seem normal, nor did my mother like it.
I was born 27 years ago in a little village called Gatumba, 15 km from Bujumbura in Burundi. I am a product of a teenage mother forced to marry the man who impregnated her and later had three more children with him. I grew up in a very violent home. Gender based and sexual violence was daily bread in my life. My father assaulted my mother every day in front of the entire family and no one said anything. Sometimes he would force my mother to have sex in front of me. This puzzled me because it didn’t seem normal, nor did my mother like it.

As a child, I asked myself why my father fought with my mother every day, but could not see the answer. I found out after that the main cause of the fights was my father cheating on my mother. Later, I realised that women in the entire village experienced gender based and sexual violence. To my father, beating and assaulting my lively mother was his way of proving his manhood.

He used to say that he is the man, and all things must be directed to him to have the final say. He used to beat my mother almost to death. When she talked to her family and elder women, they said that is how you build the house! You must stay; he will change.

Sometimes she would wake up with a swollen face and fear telling the truth, so she said that she fell at night because it was dark. However, it was always because of the beatings. He would kick her against the wall or beat her with sharp objects. He would insult her in front of us, telling her that she’s less than a woman, she’s nothing, stupid, ugly, she doesn’t know how to cook, etc.

When he started beating my mother he would turn to my sisters, and me, beating us, chasing us away, saying that we were ugly like my mother, we were stupid, we were nothing. I grew up with a lot of anger and hurt towards my father and until today, I am still finding ways of dealing with it and forgiving him.

In the end, my father finally chased my mother away naked. I remember that night: he took all my mother’s clothes and he burnt them, saying that he’s the one who bought them. According to Burundian culture, if a women separates from her husband she must not take the children with her, so she was forced to leave me and my sisters behind.

Two hours after my mother left that night, my father brought another woman, who then

became my stepmother. Some people have the good fortune to have a good and kind stepmother, but it was not the case with me. This stepmother came with full information about my mother and father; she started harassing and abusing me a lot.

Many times, she would report me to my father and when he came, I would be punished and tortured – disciplined, as he used to call it. However, my father disciplined me in a manner as if he was disciplining a criminal and not his own child. This continued for a long time. I remember, my father learned that I had gone to visit my mother. He beat me as if I had committed a crime or unforgivable sin.

He did this to cut the ties between my mother and us.

Not long after, the community started dividing themselves in two, some calling themselves Tutsis others Hutus, and killing one another. In 1993, the democratically elected Burundian president was killed, and the whole country was in havoc, with many people fleeing to different countries. I left Burundi at the age of 12. My father and my stepmother with two other kids took a different direction, so my sister and I joined a crowd of people running to DRC.

Just as we entered DRC, Congolese soldiers stopped us, raping my sister in front me. I was screaming and shouting but could not find or get any help; instead they beat me seriously. Once they finished, they left and UNHCR officials took my sister to hospital.

Because I have experienced all this violence - abuse in my family, community and the whole country - I decided to advocate for women’s rights, because whenever I hear or see an abused woman, I see and remember my mother and what we went through.

Before I started this work, I was a dangerous young boy, maybe because of the violence I grew up with. I used to be very angry. Many times, I would fight and this led me to join a bad group of people who abused women and girls. Later I realised I did not want this, because whenever I reflected on my mother’s situation, I could see that what my father did to her is what I was doing to girls. I became conscious and started to think how I could change, though it was very difficult.

I still find it difficult to date girls. Many girls expect me to be violent or behave in a violent manner, and when I behave the way I want, they push me back in the gender box. Some drop me, saying that I’m a confused young man, or that maybe I was supposed to be a gay so I don’t know what I want.

My father and I still have many disagreements. When I try to raise these issues he denies them, but I have taken the decision to confront him with the whole truth and remind him of all the bad things he has done to me.

I am writing this down, as it is a healing method for me. More importantly, I want to share my story with others, especially those who are working with displaced people: refugees or women and children who are in abusive relationships. This story of mine can be an eye opener to other people and help them to take necessary measures.

Men can change and men are actually changing. Personally, I have changed and I know

those who have changed. The shocked expression I see and stories I hear from men when I conduct training shows that they don’t know about women’s violence, and later they recognise that their own sisters, mothers, daughters are going through abuse and violence.

When you involve men in solutions to sexual and gender based violence, men will use their power in a positive way by working together with women. I have seen women go back home excited after participating in training, sharing the information that they gained, and the violence started. When we train men, those men leave with a pledge of changing themselves and a promise to communicate better with their partners. If we engage more men, together of course with women, we shall get solutions. I have dedicated my life to this work based on my principle of honouring my mother’s experience, my sister’s and myself, and as a man I will use my voice to bring change.

* Pascal Akimina is a Senior Transformation Agent with EngenderHealth. This story is part of the I Stories series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism on Gender Violence

Information through media is power

Karen Williams

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52307

In many ways, the media has been an effective way to reach and get information to women who are experiencing gender-based violence (GBV) and any other form of gender inequality. Moreover, the 16 Days of Activism against GBV underlines the importance of reaching women with these information campaigns. However, in many parts of Africa, there is a more complex aspect to having access to information. This includes the difficulties many women experience in gaining access to the means of information itself – be that a radio or television set, newspapers or magazines.
In many ways, the media has been an effective way to reach and get information to women who are experiencing gender-based violence (GBV) and any other form of gender inequality. Moreover, the 16 Days of Activism against GBV underlines the importance of reaching women with these information campaigns.

However, in many parts of Africa, there is a more complex aspect to having access to information. This includes the difficulties many women experience in gaining access to the means of information itself – be that a radio or television set, newspapers or magazines.

The media is one of the few places where violence against women can be spoken about publicly, thereby giving the larger society the chance to own the problem, rather than isolating the women who are its victims. While most GBV happens within the home or perpetrated by men known to women, in conflict-affected areas of the continent, sexual violence and abuse is widespread, generally known about and often perpetrated in public.

Yet, the public perpetration of the crime does not mean that there is community acknowledgement of what has happened within their midst (unlike, say, the kidnapping of children and men or incidences of looting). Nor is there much impetus to offer community support and deal with it as a collective with a common interest. The isolation and shame that this silence brings about for its female survivors is a constant aspect of all contexts of GBV – and when women have visibly (or publicly) been targeted the silence and ostracism is often greater.

Research across the world consistently shows how important media coverage of GBV is for abused women. It is an invaluable way to break out of their isolation, and around the world battered women have spoken of how they have been given hope to act by hearing the story of another survivor of domestic violence.

Similarly, rape and incest survivors have consistently reported getting information on contacting medical and psycho-social support through articles that they’ve read. In addition, these articles are valuable in letting women know that they are not alone and that the emotions they are experiencing are common to abused women.

However, in many destitute parts of Africa, before abused women can access to specific programmes on GBV, they first have to be able to switch on the radio or television set, or read the paper. Very often, the husband controls access to the television, radio or newspaper – including being the authority figure to defer to on the choice of programme or whether media enters the home at all. Similarly, if a woman or girl is suffering abuse at home (and most often this takes place at the hands of somebody she knows and who lives in the house), it puts her in further danger of violence if she is found listening or reading about GBV.

Privacy is an important aspect of targeting of GBV programmes – since being found listening or reading about the issues almost automatically denotes that you’re experiencing GBV. The stigma and shame abused women feel – in that they have to hide and explain away to others what is happening to them – lies at the heart of targeting audiences for GBV programmes.

This is not to discount or discredit the ways that women have benefited from programmes on violence against women. Radio continues to be one of the most accessible forms of media on the continent and is invaluable across Africa. Not only does radio provide news and information, but good talk shows have the potential to be the forum at which community and civic concerns are raised and debated. (Unfortunately, many local stations are top-heavy with music and DJs who want to sound like bad American copies of themselves.)

In the almost near-absence of health and social support services across much of the continent, information in the media can – in very limited ways – give information on basic services. Imagine a woman in one of displaced camps for Darfuris. How does she begin to deal with the experience of mass rape and displacement? How would she get information on accessing abortion services and post-exposure prophylaxis – except through a radio? How will she know where to access medical and psychological help if she’s fled her home?

Producing cheaper technology – like wind-up radios and solar-powered radio sets - do not deal with the complexity of giving women access to the means of information. If women are experiencing domestic violence, for example, it does not get around the levels of control and constant threats in their lives.

In many areas, there have been innovative ways to deal with this – including giving women’s associations a radio where they can listen to programmes and give feedback to programme makers. There have also been examples of radio stations going into displaced camps in northern Uganda, playing programmes to the communities and facilitating discussions on a topical issue. Similarly, teaching women to make effective media about their own lives will go a long way to giving them a platform.

At the same time, having access to the means of information will have a direct result in women being able to exercise their voice and their votes in public participation. War-affected women, for example, can have access to information on post-war policies that directly shape their lives. It’s only when campaigners take into account the lack of access to the means of information for African women, that they will effectively be able to start a conversation with the continent’s abused and war-affected women.

* Karen Williams is a journalist who works in Africa and Asia. This article is part of a series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism

Kenya: Tales of women being raped by security men

2008-11-28

http://www.awcfs.org/content/view/535/1/

One after the other the women sat infront of the audience and TV cameras and told of their ordeal. Each story was as heart wrenching as the previous. The women told terrifying tales of how men in uniform broke into their homes, beat them and violated them.

Sixteen Days of No Violence - time to take stock

Loveness Jambaya Nyakujarah

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52306

During this year’s Sixteen Days of No Violence Against Women and Children, Southern Africa has quite a bit to celebrate, though with some caution, as there is still much work to do to address the high levels of gender violence in the region. Though we all dream of a day when we have 365 days of no violence, Sixteen Days is an opportunity to see how far we have come, and what we need to do next.
During this year’s Sixteen Days of No Violence Against Women and Children, Southern Africa has quite a bit to celebrate, though with some caution, as there is still much work to do to address the high levels of gender violence in the region. Though we all dream of a day when we have 365 days of no violence, Sixteen Days is an opportunity to see how far we have come, and what we need to do next.

The reason for celebration is that this year’s campaign comes just over three months after regional Heads of State signed the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development, which included six (out of a total twenty-three) targets specifically addressing gender based violence. One of the commitments is to half current levels of gender-based violence by 2015.

When it comes to making sure this is not just a paper promise, many questions arise about how we will gauge progress to ensure leaders meet these targets. Do we even know what the current levels of gender violence are? What are the indicators and baseline data to measure progress, and how do we standardise these to make information comparable across countries in the region?

The Protocol requires that states, by 2015, review and reform criminal laws and procedures applicable to cases of sexual offences and gender based violence. This includes eliminating gender bias and ensuring justice and fairness to survivors in a manner that ensures dignity, protection and respect.

There are a number of positive moves by countries in the right direction, yet there is still far to go. For example, Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa and Zimbabwe (or about half the SADC countries) have domestic violence laws. Yet, only five countries (Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) have sexual offences legislation in place. At least eight countries do not recognise marital rape as an offence.

Only Mozambique has passed specific legislation on human trafficking, while other countries are either drafting or have included trafficking as part of other legislation. There is particular need to quicken the process to pass relevant legislation in South Africa. With World Cup 2010 drawing closer, there are fears that South Africa, as the host country, could experience increased rates of trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation.

Statistics are an important part of measuring the impact of legislation. According to the South Africa Police Service (SAPS), rape statistics decreased by 7.9% when comparing the 2006/7 to 2007/8 financial years. However, pressure is mounting for SAPS to also publicise domestic violence statistics when they release annual crime statistics.

The roll out of South Africa’s Thuthuzela is a model for the region for one-stop centres for survivors of sexual violence, where all services - health, police, courts, counselling and shelter - are under one roof. The government plans to roll out 80 Thuthuzela centres by 2010. At the same time, other countries, such Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe have developed specialised “Victim Support Units.”

Even with government affirmative programmes in place, cultural, social and economic practices that entrench patriarchal systems still make women more vulnerable to gender based violence. Economic disparities mean that women may stay in abusive relationships for economic reasons.

Many SADC countries are putting in place strategies to extend the Sixteen Days campaign to a multi-sector 365 Days of Action. The yearlong campaign makes every day is an opportunity to act against abuse, recasting the 16 Days campaign as time of heightened awareness and time to take stock of progress.

During this year’s Sixteen Days, many activities are lined up around the region, including the need to reflect on emerging issues such as the gender implications of xenophobia, violence within public transport, and gender violence within elections and governance.

In South Africa, Gender Links is working with Ekurhuleni Metro to produce an audio CD for distribution to taxi drivers to promote an end to gender violence. Take Back the Night, an annual event inspired by the global campaign started in Latin America, is an opportunity for organisations, local government, and individuals to take to the streets to stand again violence. Women and men march during the evening to reclaim spaces usually deemed unsafe, in a bid to make the point that everyone should feel safe to move at any time of day or night without fear.

Information technologies (IT) will be an important feature of this year’s campaign as part of efforts to “Make IT work for gender justice” and break down geographical boundaries through linking SADC countries in cyber space. Gender Links is working with Gender and Media Southern Africa and its country chapters, Ekurhuleni Metro and Government Communication Information System (GCIS) in South Africa, and other partners to host cyber dialogues. These are real time online chats will focus on such themes as human trafficking, speaking out by survivors, xenophobia, gender violence and elections, and Human Rights Day, to mention a few.

The launching of a 365-Day no violence calendar aims to highlight the need to stretch 16 Days to 365 days of Action. Another important launch is the “I” Stories publication, a collection of first hand accounts of survivors of gender violence. This year “I” Stories books are launching in South Africa, Namibia, Swaziland, and Mauritius.

As these activities take place, there is a need for reflection. Civil society and government need to coordinate better, strengthen partnerships, and integrate the key Protocol targets into national action plans if progress is going to be accelerated. There is also a need for strong monitoring and evaluation and a clear strategy to deal with emerging issues.

Another key challenge how to move from a reactive approach to a more proactive approach – that is, primary prevention of gender based violence. While legislation to prosecute perpetrators and services to survivors are vital, preventing violence in the first place is the obvious ideal.

For that, we must have an integrated approach that includes changing social attitudes. In a world where one in two women is likely to be raped in their lifetime, and one in three women experience violence at the hands of their intimate partners, this is urgent.

* Loveness Jambaya Nyakujarah is the Gender Justice Manager and Assistant Director at Gender Links. This article is part of a series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism.

South Africa: Sixteen Days: Government urged to “put is money where its mouth is”

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52227

NGOs have urged the government to “put its money where its mouth is” in the fight against gender violence at the start of the 2008 Sixteen Days of Activism campaign. In a stock taking exercise held at Constitution Hill ahead of 25 November - International Day of No Violence Against Women – government representatives listed several initiatives that are being taken to curb the scourge of violence against women and children that remain among the highest in the world.
Sixteen Days: Government urged to “put is money where its mouth is”

Johannesburg 25 November

NGOs have urged the government to “put its money where its mouth is” in the fight against gender violence at the start of the 2008 Sixteen Days of Activism campaign.

In a stock taking exercise held at Constitution Hill ahead of 25 November - International Day of No Violence Against Women – government representatives listed several initiatives that are being taken to curb the scourge of violence against women and children that remain among the highest in the world.

Minister in the Presidency responsible for gender Manto Tshabalala-Msimang announced that at the just-ended African Development Forum in Addis Ababa South Africa was held up as a shinning example for its adoption of a multi sector 365 Day National Action Plan (NAP) to end gender violence. UNIFEM used the occasion to launch an Africa-wide 365 day campaign.

Almost two years since the adoption of the NAP in March 2007, government plans to set up a fully staffed 365 Day Secretariat from 1 January 2009. But this is funded by the Danish government, which is also supporting roll out of the Thutuzela Centres or “one stop shops” for victims of gender violence. There are currently ten such centres in six provinces, but they only service about 10 percent of the need.

The plan is to scale up the number of the centres, that has proved effective both in providing comprehensive treatment and care, as well as securing convictions in an area where general conviction rates are only about 7 percent.

Seven more Thutuzela Centres are to be established next year; another 12 in 2010 and 26 more in 2011 with additional support from USAID, according to the head of the gender unit in the Ministry of Health, Esther Maluleke. She added that health officials are being trained in responding to cases of sexual offences and a manual for making the health system more responsive to this painful area of need will soon be launched.

Several NGOs attending the Taking Stock session convened by Gender Links (GL) questioned why so many of the responses to gender violence are either contingent on donor funding or not funded at all.

According to a spokesperson for Life Line, while the HIV help line is full funded by the Ministry of Health and receives 4000 calls a day, the gender violence help line gets no government funding; is not staffed after hours or at weekends and averages 300 calls a day.

Participants, who included representatives of Gender Links, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), the South African Police Service, Child Line, Life Line, Engender Health, the Media Monitoring Project and the Inter Departmental Committee in Government responsible for managing gender violence noted that while there have been some positive developments over the last year, gender violence has not abated significantly and it is taking several new forms.

According to the Director of Information Management Services of the South African Police Services Chris de Cock, figures from April to December 2007 showed a 7 percent decrease in the rate of reported cases of sexual assault; a pattern similar to previous years and a trend noted in other instances of “contact crime” like murder and assault. He said he hoped that this is indicative that South Africa is gradually moving towards a “normal” level of such crimes, from its current “abnormal status” in global terms.

But he cautioned that the next report which will cover the period since the Sexual Offences Act 2008 became effective in December 2007 is likely to reflect an increase in reported cases of sexual offences since the Act broadens the definition of rape to include male rape and all forms (not just penal) penetration. He added that, following pressure from civil society organizations, the next report will, for the first time, include statistics on domestic violence. Previously these figures have been hidden in such categories as “criminal injuria” and “assault with intent to do bodily harm.”

New forms of gender violence discussed at the forum include trafficking; the violence experienced at taxi ranks; gender violence linked to xenophobia and that which could erupt in the run up to the March 2009 elections that are already proving to be the most acrimonious since the advent of democracy in 1994.

The One in Nine Campaign estimates that only one-ninth of gender violence cases are ever reported. An important new initiative, involving the Medical Research Council, IDMT, SAPS, GL, and the CSVR seeks to pilot a set of indicators for establishing base line data on gender violence and monitoring progress in ending violence, using the City of Johannesburg as a pilot. This will involve supplementing administrative data from the police and courts with prevalence and attitude surveys that establish the real extent of the problem; its effects and the extent of under- reporting.

This year’s Sixteen Day campaign takes place against the backdrop of the adoption in August 2008 of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development that sets a target of halving gender violence by 2010. NGOs are calling on governments to fund multi sector 365 Day campaigns towards achieving this target as well as baseline studies for establishing the extent and effects of GBV so that progress can be effectively monitored.

For more information, contact
Loveness Jambaya, Gender Justice Manager on 084 365 6930
Or GL Executive Director Colleen Lowe Morna on 082 651 6995

Swaziland: Escalating violence against women

2008-11-28

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=44883

Still wearing a campaign t-shirt with the slogan "FED UP: with violence against women", Dlamini-Shongwe, the public relations officer for the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA) is fresh from the Nov. 25 launch of the16 days activism against gender-based violence at Jubilee Park in Manzini.

South Africa: Foreigners (still) beware

2008-11-28

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81618

As Aunesi Omari and her children cowered in her room in Philippi, a low-income section of the South African city of Cape Town, in Western Cape Province, she heard the armed men outside shout: "We're going to kill you because you don't want to listen." Omari's crime was that she had returned to her home after being run out of the community in May, along with thousands of other foreigners. The men outside made their point by firing two shots into the house she had lived in for five years.

Africa: Africans to stick together in climate change talks

2008-11-27

http://tinyurl.com/6cc52m

African countries have agreed to negotiate as a bloc in talks on a new global warming treaty, a move meant to give the continent highly threatened by climate change a greater say in the future pact. In a first, delegates from Africa's 53 nations signed an "Algiers Declaration" that seeks to ensure that the continent's voice is heard when the replacement to the Kyoto Protocol is discussed.

Global: UK pollution will lead to 10 million climate refugees worldwide

2008-11-28

http://www.wdm.org.uk/news/10millionclimaterefugees28112008.htm

10 million people could be forced to leave their homes due to the UK's contribution to climate change according to a new report released today by the anti-poverty group, the World Development Movement. The report also reveals that 30,000 new climate refugees could be created if Kingsnorth coal power station goes ahead.

Swaziland: The crescent of drought

2008-11-28

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81583

November, often the rainiest month of the year, has left most of Swaziland awash with flash floods: but in the eastern Lowveld, no rain has fallen, and the fear is of yet another drought year in which food aid will be needed. "Are we cursed, the people living here? Not a drop has fallen, not one drop," said Amos Zwane, a smallholder farmer near Lavumisa in the Shiselweni region in the south. The area is nearing its second decade of poor rainfall.

Botswana: Bushmen appeal to Pope

2008-11-28

http://www.survival-international.org/news/3965

The Kalahari Bushmen have appealed to the Pope to support them in their struggle to return to their land, as the Vatican established diplomatic relations with Botswana earlier this month. A Bushman spokesman said, ‘We beg the Pope to help, to pray for us so that the government changes its attitude towards us and respects our rights as indigenous peoples of this land.’

DRC: The IFJ condemns killing of Congolese journalist

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/5c5ze5

The IFJ has condemned the killing of a journalist working for Radio Okapi who was shot dead in the town of Bukavu, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the radio's website, Didace Namujimbo was shot in the head by unknown assailants on Friday night near his home. "We condemn strongly the murder of our colleague Didace which shows yet again the alarming lack of protection for journalists in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo," said Gabriel Baglo, director of the IFJ Africa office. "In the last three years, six journalists have lost their lives in targeted attacks."

South Africa: Malawi media sustainability index 2006-2007

2008-11-28

http://www.eldis.org/go/country-profiles&id=40972&type=Document

Forming part of a larger document looking at the development of sustainable media in Africa, this chapter focuses on progress in Malawi. Quantitative baseline scores were obtained and in-depth qualitative studies from a local perspective prepared to explain the numbers.

Sudan: Protesting journalists arrested

2008-11-28

http://tinyurl.com/5phnna

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the arrest and detention of about 70 journalists on Monday, as they were demonstrating against the censorship practice and tactics employed by the Sudanese government. "We consider the arrest of the journalists on Monday by the Sudanese authorities as an act of intimidation aimed at preventing the media from reporting the truth in Sudan" said Gabriel Baglo, Director of the IFJ Africa office.

DRC: New fighting sends civilians fleeing

2008-11-28

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29077

Rebels in the strife-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) launched new military attacks today under the cover of a so-called police and pacification operation, breaking the ceasefire and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis, the United Nations mission has reported.

Somalia: A new war on piracy?

2008-11-28

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,592647,00.html

The uproar over pirates off the Gulf of Aden has led the German government to contribute a naval frigate to an EU mission along the Somali coast. More soldiers may be on the way. In the meantime German helicopters have defended a pair of merchant ships from pirate speedboats.

Somalia: Ethiopia to pull troops out of this year

2008-11-28

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnJOE4AR073.html

Ethiopia said on Friday it would withdraw its troops from Somalia by the end of this year, piling pressure on Somalia's feuding government and African nations that had promised to send peacekeepers. Addis Ababa has sent thousands of soldiers to support Somalia's Western-backed interim administration, whose divisions have hindered its battle against Islamist militants waging an Iraq-style insurgency.

Uganda: Rebel leader to sign peace deal

2008-11-28

http://www.africanews.com/site/list_messages/21868

The leader of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army Joseph Kony is expected to sign the peace deal on Saturday after several months of unfulfilled promises. He was earlier expected to sign the peace agreement in April this year but failed because he was unsure of the status of his arrest warrant from the ICC.

Africa: 18th African Human Rights Moot Court Competition

2008-11-27

http://www.chr.up.ac.za/moot/en/

The 18th African Human Rights Moot Court Competition will be held at the University of Lagos, Nigeria from 10 to 15 August 2009. Students, academics and judges from all over Africa are invited to participate. All law faculties in Africa are invited to send one faculty representative who works in the field of human rights (dean or another lecturer) who will serve as a judge in the preliminary rounds, and two undergraduate students (preferably one man and one woman) who will constitute the team that represents its university at the Moot Court.

Africa: Development and human rights course

2008-11-27

http://www.ggp.up.ac.za/development_human_rights/index.html#programme

The Development and Human Rights course will be held from 1 - 5 December 2008. The intricate relationship shared between two traditionally opposing concepts, development and human rights is explored in this course.

Global: Asia Pacific consultation on refugee rights

2008-11-28

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/52222

The Asia Pacific Consultation on Refugee Rights was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 19-22 November. It was attended by some 70 civil society organizations from 13 countries within the region, all of which host African refugees. These refugees face particular challenges because of their small numbers, diversity in background and distinctive appearance vis-a-vis local populations.
The Asia Pacific Consultation on Refugee Rights was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 19-22 November. It was attended by some 70 civil society organizations from 13 countries within the region, all of which host African refugees. These refugees face particular challenges because of their small numbers, diversity in background and distinctive appearance vis-a-vis local populations.

This was the first time that NGOs had ever met to discuss the situation of refugees in the region and the challenges they face in doing advocacy. Mmost countries in this region are not signatories to the 1951 Convention on refugees. Thus, refugees are often treated as illegal immigrants as if they had no rights to reside, work, or access health and educational services. Attendees at the conference agreed to form the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN), committed to advancing the rights of refugees. They also formed working groups to collaborate on strengthening the provision of legal aid to refugees; to campaign against the detention of refugees, in particular children; to advocate for refugees' right to health, as well as the protection women and children at risk. Participants were in agreement that a major stumbling block to the protection of refugees was the failure of states to ratify the Convention and its 1967 Protocol. For further information and proceedings of the conference, see http://sites.google.com/site/apcrr2008/Home The next regional conference will be held in Thailand at the end of 2009.

Kenya: 2nd World Congress on Agroforestry

2008-11-21

http://www.worldagroforestry.org/wca2009/

The 2nd World Congress on Agroforestry will assess opportunities to leverage scientific agroforestry in promoting sustainable land use worldwide. The Congress will serve as a forum for agroforestry researchers, educators, practitioners and policy makers from around the world. We encourage you to submit your abstracts and participate in the conference that will be held in Nairobi (Kenya), from the 23rd to the 28th of August 2009. Deadline for abstracts is 30 November 2008.

Egypt: Community Outreach & Development Internship - AMERA

2008-11-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/52219

Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA-Egypt) seeks a highly qualified Community Outreach & Development Intern to join the Community Team. The incumbent will work closely with different refugee communities in Cairo that have various problems and needs. The Community Development Intern will work within a community based approach framework towards an ultimate goal of achieving community's self-reliance. The Intern will report to the Community Team Leader and will collaborate with members from other teams whenever required.
Africa & Middle East Refugee Assistance

Community Outreach & Development Internship

Job Description:
Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA-Egypt) seeks a highly qualified Community Outreach & Development Intern to join the Community Team. The incumbent will work closely with different refugee communities in Cairo that have various problems and needs. The Community Development Intern will work within a community based approach framework towards an ultimate goal of achieving community's self-reliance. The Intern will report to the Community Team Leader and will collaborate with members from other teams whenever required.

Responsibilities:
The Community Development Intern will be responsible for carrying out a number of duties including:

· Representing AMERA in meetings with refugee community based organizations (CBOs) and with Egyptian NGOs.
· Participating in assessment studies conducted on refugee communities in Cairo.
· Raising awareness of the different refugee communities in Cairo and their problems and needs - this may involve giving talks to groups.
· Assisting with the organization of events and workshops.
· Providing support to refugee support groups to develop themselves further.
· Giving workshops/presentations about key elements of fundraising and grant writing.
· Researching national and international donors and keep updated of global funding themes.
· Managing and recording information about donors and their funding criteria.
· Providing counseling to community leaders on fundraising and grant writing which includes rreviewing grant applications and proposals.

Qualifications:

· University degree in a related social discipline with an equivalent combination of education, training and experience in fundraising and/or grant writing. M.A in development or a related field is an advantage.
· Fluent in spoken and written English being the official language of the office. Fluency in Arabic is an asset.
· An interest in community development issues and human rights in general.
· Ability to independently apply a broad knowledge of management, fund-raising practices and principles.
· Experience in working with people from different cultural backgrounds. Previous work experience with refugees is an asset.
· Excellent communication and interpersonal skills

The Deadline to receive applications is December 20th, 2008.

To apply, email a cover letter (in English), a complete CV and names and contact details of two references to mfarag@amera-uk.org (please mention the internship title in the subject).

"We regret that, due to the significant number of applications received for vacancies advertised, we are unable to respond to each and every application received. Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted to notify them of the next phase in the selection process. Also we would like to draw your attention that incomplete applications will not be considered".

Egypt: Program Coordinator - Soliya CEC

2008-11-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/52218

Soliya CEC is an educational services company based in Cairo, Egypt. Soliya uses the latest in Internet and communication technologies to bridge the divide between the "West" and the "Arab & Muslim World". Soliya is looking to hire a Program Coordinator based in Cairo who would play a key role in implementing the Soliya Connect Program and Continued Engagement Activities.
Program Coordinator

The Organization
Soliya CEC is an educational services company based in Cairo, Egypt. Soliya uses the latest in Internet and communication technologies to bridge the divide between the “West” and the “Arab & Muslim World”. Its core program currently is the Connect Program – a unique cross-cultural education program that directly connects university students in the US, Europe, the Middle East and the broader Muslim World via the Internet to engage in dialogue and collaboratively create media about the issues currently dividing the West and the Arab & Muslim World.

In the last three years, Soliya has gone from being the idea of two young social entrepreneurs with backgrounds in new media and conflict resolution to an established organization with over 50 universities in over fifteen countries participating in its program and strong established funding relationships in the Middle East, Europe and the United States. Soliya has been recognized by and is affiliated with the United Nations’ Alliance of Civilizations Initiative and the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100 Leaders.

In the coming years, Soliya plans to take its program to scale, connecting thousands of students each semester. Based on this growing network of alumni around the world, Soliya is also in the process of establishing a “social media” network that will leverage the latest in user-generated media, social networking and mobile technologies to bridge the divide between the West and the Arab & Muslim World.

We are growing quickly both programmatically and organizationally, with a staff that has tripled in size over the last 2 years. We expect this growth to continue over the next years, and are seeking someone to be involved in all aspects of running our program. We are looking for a bright, technically savvy individual who is both flexible and detail oriented and who believes that through hard work we can make the world a better place. This position will be based in Soliya’s newly launched Cairo office.

Responsibilities
Soliya is looking to hire a Program Coordinator based in Cairo who would play a key role in implementing the Soliya Connect Program and Continued Engagement Activities. Tasks to be performed by the Program Coordinator include:

• Working with the Program team to oversee the launch and implementation of the
Connect Program
• Coordinating with student participants in the Connect Program
• Providing support to a network of volunteer facilitators
• Facilitating dialogue between Western & Arab/Muslim World students
• Providing technical support for Connect Program students and facilitators
• Assisting with the recruitment of university participants in Soliya’s Programs
• Helping to build the Soliya base in Cairo
• Assisting in revising the curriculum and Program Model.

Required Skills/Experience
• Background in Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and/or Political Science
• Fluency in Arabic & English
• Good writing skills in both Arabic & English
• Strong research skills
• Excellent communication skills
• Technical proficiency in Windows, Office and Internet applications
• Bachelor of Arts or higher
• Self-reliant and independent work-ethic
• Highly detail orientated
• Passion for the work we are doing, flexibility, patience, and a good sense of humor

Salary for this full-time position will be commensurate with experience, with full benefits. Soliya is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

This is a unique opportunity with exceptional growth potential to join a young organization at a dynamic stage in its development and work on one of the world’s most pressing issues.

How to Apply:
Please e-mail a cover letter and resume to coordinator@soliya.net and write “Program Coordinator” in the subject line of your email.
To learn more about Soliya, please visit www.soliya.net

Liberia: Law fellows

2008-11-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/52207

The Government of Liberia, working in cooperation with the John Snow, Inc. Research and Training Institute (JSI R&T) and the Center for Global Development (CGD), is seeking a young professional with a strong legal background to serve as a Law Fellow working in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in Liberia for one year beginning in February 2009. The role of the Fellow will be to provide timely and effective support in a wide range of areas to senior officials in Liberia’s Ministry of Justice. The Law Fellow will work primarily to promote positive change in the Liberian legal and policy landscape.
The Government of Liberia, working in cooperation with the John Snow, Inc. Research and Training Institute (JSI R&T) and the Center for Global Development (CGD), is seeking a young professional with a strong legal background to serve as a Law Fellow working in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in Liberia for one year beginning in February 2009. The role of the Fellow will be to provide timely and effective support in a wide range of areas to senior officials in Liberia’s Ministry of Justice. The Law Fellow will work primarily to promote positive change in the Liberian legal and policy landscape. This job presents a unique opportunity to work on substantive projects on a range of progressive legal issues, including ethics, policy, and criminal justice, among others. Liberians are especially encouraged to apply.

Major Duties:

The Law Fellow’s responsibilities will vary from position to position and will depend on the specific senior official with whom they work, but may include:

Providing litigation, commercial or other legal support as directed by the Minister of Justice or other officials designated by him;
Researching law and draft memoranda reporting relevant findings;
Framing, articulating, and preparing recommendations for senior MoJ officials/staff to resolve assigned issues;
Performing discovery and assisting in the preparation of related documents;
Aiding in the drafting of court pleadings and the Ministry’s prosecutorial efforts;
Reviewing, drafting, negotiating and otherwise handling such other legal matters as directed;
As directed from time to time, working with and providing support to rural county attorneys;
As assigned, providing similar support to other GOL Ministries.
Qualifications:

Strong knowledge of and familiarity with Liberian history and customs is highly desirable.
A law degree (LLB or JD), and at least 1 year of relevant experience.
Admission to a bar. The applicant should list all bar admissions in his/her application.
Excellent research and writing skills along with the ability to anticipate problems, initiate action and take ownership of resolving assigned issues in a timely manner.
High ethical, moral and personal standards in decisions, communications, actions, and when dealing with others.
A team player capable of multi-tasking and independently prioritizing and handling a number of matters concurrently to satisfactory completion.
Ability to take direction and guidance well and flexibility to assist on projects that may be outside immediate area of responsibility.
Willingness to travel and spend time in rural areas working with county attorneys assigned to those jurisdictions.
Prior experience in working in developing countries is highly desirable.
Benefits:

You will be a fellow of JSI R&T, a leading international public health organization, but will report on a daily basis to the relevant senior government official. Fellows will receive a stipend of $44,000 with a $500 monthly housing allowance, international health and evacuation insurance, and will be expected to work in Monrovia for one year. In addition, the program will provide an economy class round trip ticket. Fellowship assignments will begin in February 2009, please do not apply if you are unavailable to take the assignment in February 2009. Fellows will be expected to complete a short paper on their experience by the end of their assignment. The Fellowships are funded through the generous support to Liberia from Humanity United and the McCall MacBain Foundation.

How to apply:

The application process is being managed by JSI R&T (not by CGD). Applicants should submit a cover letter of no more than two pages describing key qualifications, area of expertise, and career objectives, along with a CV/resume by close of business Monday, December 1, 2008 to: Sharon Rocco. Program Manager, JSI, srocco@jsi.com Please indicate “Liberian Law Fellow Application” in the subject line.

JSI R&T and CGD are committed to attracting and maintaining a diverse and dedicated workforce. Minorities, women and developing country nationals with I-9 employment status are encouraged to apply.

Liberia: Liberia fellows

2008-11-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/52208

The Government of Liberia, working in cooperation with the John Snow, Inc. Research and Training Institute (JSI R&T) and the Center for Global Development (CGD), is seeking young professionals to serve as Fellows working in various Ministries in Liberia for one year beginning in February 2009. The role of the Fellow will be to provide senior Liberian government officials with effective support in the realms of policy, speechwriting, ministerial coordination and administration (particularly in areas related to economics and finance).
The Government of Liberia, working in cooperation with the John Snow, Inc. Research and Training Institute (JSI R&T) and the Center for Global Development (CGD), is seeking young professionals to serve as Fellows working in various Ministries in Liberia for one year beginning in February 2009. The role of the Fellow will be to provide senior Liberian government officials with effective support in the realms of policy, speechwriting, ministerial coordination and administration (particularly in areas related to economics and finance). Liberians are especially encouraged to apply. [This program is identical to the Scott Family Liberia Fellows program. You can discover more about it and read bios and blogs of the current fellows here.

Major Duties:

The Fellow’s responsibilities will vary from position to position and will depend on the specific senior official with which they work, but generally will include:

Coordinating and communicating within the Ministry/Agency, across other government agencies, and with major international agencies;
Providing research, analysis and advice to the senior official on selected substantive policy issues;
Drafting policy papers;
Drafting talking points, speeches, letters, notes, correspondence, etc.;
Taking notes and keeping records of meetings, and ensuring follow-through by key personnel on policy decisions;
Helping the senior official to manage his/her schedule, set priorities among commitments, and delegate responsibilities where possible;
Assisting in building the capacity of a Liberian to assume similar responsibilities over time; and
Other duties as required.
Qualifications:

Applicants should have a strong familiarity with the history, culture and political-economic environment of Liberia.
A graduate degree in economics, public policy, finance or other related development fields and one year of related experience, or a bachelor degree with at least three years of related experience.
Superior oral and written communication skills, a strong work ethic, and the ability to interact effectively with all levels of staff, government officials, and the public.
Applicants should also have outstanding organizational skills, be flexible, reliable and able to handle multiple tasks under tight time constraints.
Ability to work behind the scenes in a supportive role.
Benefits:

Those selected will be fellows of JSI R&T, a leading international public health organization, but will report on a daily basis to the relevant government official. They will receive a stipend of $35,000 with a $500 monthly housing allowance, international health and evacuation insurance, and will be expected to work in Monrovia for one year. In addition, the program will provide an economy class round trip ticket. Fellowship assignments will begin in February 2009. Fellows will be expected to complete a short paper on their experience by the end of their assignment. The Fellowships are funded though generous support to Liberia from the Open Society Institute.

How to Apply:

The application process is being managed by JSI R&T (not by CGD). Applicants should submit a cover letter of no more than two pages describing key qualifications, areas of expertise and career objectives, along with a CV/resume by close of business Monday, December 1, 2008 to: Sharon Rocco, Program Manager, JSI, srocco@jsi.com Please indicate “OSI Liberia Fellow Application” in the subject line.

JSI R&T and CGD are committed to attracting and maintaining a diverse and dedicated workforce. Minorities, women and developing country nationals with I-9 employment status are encouraged to apply.

Uganda: Research & Advocacy Officer - Refugee Law Project

2008-11-28

http://www.transitionaljustice.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2892

The Refugee Law Project seeks to recruit a Research and Advocacy Officer for the African Transitional Justice Research Network (ATJRN) based with Refugee Law Project, Makerere University, Uganda. To apply, please send your application letter and CV including the names and contacts for at least two references simultaneously to the following email addresses no later than December 15, 2008.

Fahamu