Back Issues

Call for the immediate release of ZPP director, Jestina Mukoko

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/action/52431

We, the undersigned organizations, register our serious distress and concern on the news received this morning concerning the abduction of Zimbabwe Peace Project Director, Jestina Mukoko. Ms Mukoko was reported as having been forcefully taken from her home in Norton Harare, at 5am, this morning still wearing her nightdress. Her abductors are suspected CIO and police agents.
A joint statement calling for the immediate release of ZPP director, Jestina Mukoko

3 December 2008

We, the undersigned organizations, register our serious distress and concern on the news received this morning concerning the abduction of Zimbabwe Peace Project Director, Jestina Mukoko. Ms Mukoko was reported as having been forcefully taken from her home in Norton Harare, at 5am, this morning still wearing her nightdress. Her abductors are suspected CIO and police agents. The fifteen armed men were in plain clothes, driving a Mazda Familia with no registration plates. Mukoko’s child, who witnessed the abduction, alerted fellow human rights organizations immediately and human rights’ defenders are now checking at police stations in and around Harare to ascertain her whereabouts. We call for the immediate release of Ms Mukoko by Zimbabwean authorities. The Zimbabwe Peace Project has worked tirelessly over the last several years in systematically documenting violence and torture across the country through its network of Peace Monitors.

This development comes as the security situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate, despite all political parties having committed themselves in the September agreement to ensuring that continued violations of human rights and the use of violence, abductions and torture will cease. The abduction of Jestina follows the lifting of the ban on the operations of various civil society organizations. We condemn unreservedly the ongoing persecution of human rights defenders. As per the September 15 agreement, the ZANU PF regime has a responsibility to ensure that all state security structures respect the rule of law, that militia groups are disbanded, and that those responsible for these abuses are held to account.

The abduction of Jestina Mukoko is ample demonstration of the need for all stakeholders to intensify efforts to bring to an end the humanitarian and political crisis unfolding. We call on the South African government and other regional leaders to act decisively in this matter by demanding the immediate release of Justina Mukoko and to further put pressure on the Zimbabwean government to abandon the use of terror and intimidation, and use every leverage at their disposal for the quick resolution of Zimbabwe’s crisis.

Signed
Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR)
Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR)
Institute for Democracy in Southern Africa (IDASA)
Freedom House Southern Africa – (FHSA)
Heinreich Boll Foundation Southern Africa
Press Release Spokesperson: Contact Glen Mpani, 076 123 3652
Contact Persons Respect Organizations:
(CSVR) Glen Mpani, gmpani@csvr.org.za, 076 123 3652
(IJR) Shuvai Nyoni, snyoni@ijr.org.za, 072 147 1427
(Idasa) Karen Alexander, kalexander@idasa.org.za, 072 208 9794
(FHSA) Vukasin Petrovic, vpetrovic@freedomhouse.org, 079 529 7208
(HBF) Keren Ben-Zeev, Keren@boell.org.za , 072 323 9393
(Crisis Coalition) Elinor Sisulu, esisulu@netactive.co.za 084 402 4931

Release Jestina Mukoko

Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/action/52530

Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) became aware of the abduction of our sister Jestina Mukoko on Wednesday from her home in Norton. We are advised that 15 armed men took her away in her nightdress whilst her teenage son looked on helplessly.

We firmly believe that these were state agents and wish to say that we hold Robert Mugabe and his party that is still illegally ruling accountable for this abduction. We demand her immediate and unconditional release.

We call on all solidarity networks to please call Norton police station +263 62 2120 and demand her immediate release.

To state agents who took her our message is simple: your identity will not remain a secret and you will be held accountable – we are mobilising – the world is watching.

4th December 2008
For more information, contact Jenni Williams through info@wozazimbabwe.org / wozazimbabwe@yahoo.com or www.wozazimbabwe.org

Zimbabwe: Declaring a health emergency is not enough!

WOZA

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/action/52467

The outbreak of cholera in epidemic proportions has brought Zimbabwe back to the attention of the region and the world. Zimbabwe’s complex emergency, which is now causing so much suffering, taking lives and breaking the society apart at its seams, has been several years in the making. A key factor in creating a perfect environment for the breeding and spread of the cholera bacterium has been the neglect of essential services by the ZANU PF government over the years.
Introduction

The outbreak of cholera in epidemic proportions has brought Zimbabwe back to the attention of the region and the world. Zimbabwe’s complex emergency, which is now causing so much suffering, taking lives and breaking the society apart at its seams, has been several years in the making. A key factor in creating a perfect environment for the breeding and spread of the cholera bacterium has been the neglect of essential services by the ZANU PF government over the years. But this has only been one effect of complete mismanagement and deliberate disregard for the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans. ZANU PF rule has brought a decline in basic standards of living for many years now; but in the months while Robert Mugabe has clung to power in the face of rejection by the people at the polls in March this year, the downward spiral has changed into a precipitous plunge.

In August this year, just when the first cases of cholera were being reported in Harare and Chitungwiza, WOZA undertook research designed to present a picture of the living standards of our members in Harare-Chitungwiza and Bulawayo. Some of the results of that study are now available, and present a stark demonstration of the circumstances, which have provided the backdrop for the cholera epidemic.

Water and Sanitation

Cholera thrives where there is inadequate provision for sanitation and inadequate supplies of pure water for household use such as drinking, cooking and bathing. The germs breed in human faeces and are spread through ingestion, when contaminated water or foods are used. Thus, it spreads easily where a sewage system is not functioning and raw sewage is present, or people are forced to defecate on the ground when toilets are blocked. The absence of purified water has also become a critical factor in the spread of cholera in the urban areas of Zimbabwe.

The results of WOZA’s survey highlight all of these problems in relation to water and sewage. The survey sampled just over 1,000 of WOZA’s members from Bulawayo, Harare and Chitungwiza. Of these, virtually all depend on their city council for water. 31% stated that they usually get their water from a council tap inside their house, while 62% use a council tap outside their house; 5% use a public tap, and 1% a borehole. 50% use a borehole sometimes (mainly in Bulawayo where many boreholes were drilled in response to recurring drought conditions in previous years) – suggesting that half are forced to use a borehole when the water is not flowing in the tap. 97% stated that they have experienced water cuts, with 60% having gone for a week or more without water. This masks some who have gone for much longer, many for weeks and months.

Of those surveyed, only 6% said they usually had access to clean water, while 77% sometimes had such access, and 16% never did. Obviously, during the time of water cuts residents are at serious risk as they seek water from sources other than their taps. However, what is not clear from the statistics, because residents cannot know the facts from day to day, is that even when water is present, it has rarely been treated with all the chemicals required to make it safe.

The other serious implication of failing water supplies is the dysfunction of the sanitation and sewage system. 88% of the respondents stated that they depend on flush toilets with, on average, 9.8 people using each toilet. 5% use a pit latrine and 4% a Blair toilet. When the water is cut off for days or weeks at a time, toilets do not function. Even when the water is on, the frequency of cuts means that the pipes have become clogged, resulting in many leaks and breaks, with sewage flowing all over. 11% of the respondents indicated that they had experienced burst sewers, which took more than six months to repair, while 23% had waited more than a month for repairs. When toilets are not working, people begin to use the bushy areas between residential suburbs as a toilet, with all that implies for attraction of flies and spread of any germs, including cholera. Such practices also have security implications as a teenage WOZA member was recently raped in Bulawayo whilst using the bush as a toilet.

In August, when the survey was conducted, 20% already reported cholera or some other form or diarrhoeal infection had affected their families during sewer bursts. Heavy rain, which began only in November, takes the human waste both over the ground and down to the underground water table while many people are looking for useable water in shallow wells; it then becomes clear that contaminated water is the norm.

At a recent meeting, WOZA members painted a graphic picture of daily realities in some areas. Recent heavy rains have carried faeces and waste matter from overflowing sewers right into houses. Women then have to remove maggots, which live in the sewage, along with solid faecal stools. They try to block the flow of sewage into their homes but because the rains were heavy this has been unsuccessful. Sometimes if someone upstream is trying to unblock their drain, the sewage backs up into the toilets and the bowls overflow into the houses. To stop the raw sewage flow, members have had to adopt the strategy of putting rocks and sand on top of the sewer covers to prevent the flow of solid matter. But even if they succeed, they still have to cope with the stinking water, which seeps out.

In spite of massive failures in provision of clean water and functioning sewerage, residents continue to be billed for the “service.” Many council workers are asking for payment in rand currency. Some who have left employment because council could not pay them decent salaries are said to have helped themselves to the long rods used to clear blockages, leading to long delays in carrying out repairs.

As if the problems of water and sewage were not enough, garbage also becomes another breeding ground for disease. 93% of the respondents stated that they lived in areas where the council was expected to collect rubbish; in fact the payment for rubbish collection is normally included in the rates bill. But over the past six months very few had experienced any rubbish collection, and have had to find a way of disposing of it themselves. 43% stated that they dumped their rubbish, only 11% created a rubbish pit, while 45% burned their rubbish, leaving of course the residue, which cannot be burned. It is thus hardly surprising that mounds of garbage are found throughout the high-density areas, breeding grounds for all sorts of disease carriers including rats and mosquitoes. The acrid smoke from burning garbage hangs over the streets, causing breathing difficulties for the many inhabitants suffering from asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

Access to Food

What type of diet do Zimbabweans in these circumstances manage to access? The women answering the questionnaire were asked to indicate what foodstuffs they had purchased within the preceding two weeks. 93% responded that they had purchased vegetables (generally leafy green vegetables – rape or choumoullier, spinach or sometimes cabbage) demonstrating the important role that vegetables play in providing nutrition. Only 67% had purchased mealie (maize) meal, while the others had doubtless a supply of mealie meal from before the two weeks. Only 8% had purchased rice, an alternative staple to mealie meal, but clearly now an unattainable luxury for most households. Only 13% had purchased milk or amasi (sour milk eaten with sadza), 12% meat or chicken, 5% eggs, 19% beans, 27% kapenta and 22% soya chunks (a protein-rich meat substitute). The last three items, then, provide the majority of the protein input to diets, but clearly many households are going without. 65% managed to buy soap, but only 9% bought toilet paper (presumably using newspaper which further clogs pipes) and only 8% bought pads or cotton wool used for sanitary needs. The absence of anything except the bare necessities is reflected in the purchases of drinks or mazoe orange (5%), beer or chibuku (opaque beer) (1%) cigarettes or snuff, a form of tobacco, which is inhaled (2%).

In all areas of the country, food, if available, is now sold in foreign currency. Those without access to it rely on barter trade. Some WOZA members have resorted to bartering firewood for essential items – one bundle of firewood fetching a single plate of mealie meal or a quarter of bar of soap.

Recently two young children (siblings), aged eight and nine-years old, from Robert Sinyoka, a peri-urban area on the outskirts of Bulawayo, starved to death after trying to survive on a form of maize gruel (created by boiling the husks and sweepings of ground maize). It is not nutritious and much of the husk is not digestible. Other members in Robert Sinyoka testified to trying to survive on wild fruits.

Despite the evident starvation, WOZA members, along with members of the opposition parties, cannot access food aid being distributed by humanitarian organisations because ZANU PF civil servants have a stranglehold on distribution points. Only 13% of the respondents had received any food aid since the year 2000. WOZA has thus found that humanitarian organisations have not been able to assist our members – and so despite their courageous defiance, they are starving. Even purchase can be problematic if one does not belong to the ruling party. A massive 49% said they had been prevented from buying food at some time because they were not members of ZANU PF, as youth militia or war veterans often man queues at shops selling scarce commodities.

Health Services

This is the context in which Zimbabwe’s health system has experienced a virtual total collapse. The conditions are ripe for the spread of diseases, most of which are treatable, but the government and local council health services are not available. While private medical services still function for those who can afford to pay, very few of the women surveyed ever use private doctors.

The women were asked what they do when they or a member of their family falls ill. 77% reported that they never see a private doctor, 18% sometimes do, and only 5% usually do. 46% usually rely on their own treatment, and 36% use a council clinic. The rest usually see a religious healer (14%) or a traditional healer (3%). Considering the fact that the majority of council clinics are at the time of writing (December) either closed or functioning only with skeletal staff and no medicines or equipment, it can be clearly seen how vulnerable the population is. For example, Budiriro Clinic in Harare is the only clinic still open in the area and therefore has to service seven large suburbs, each of which previously had its own clinic. In fact only that 5% who usually consult a private doctor would be likely to receive adequate treatment. But in the early stages of the epidemic, those not recognizing the seriousness of the disease and relying on their own treatment or even the nearest clinic, religious healer or traditional healer, were at high risk of losing their lives. The fact is that the figures show that even when the clinics were still open in August, only just over a third of residents went to them as their first port of call – either because they could not get treatment there or because they could not afford to pay the fee charged.

Corruption in the health sector is also commonplace. Many areas in Harare and Bulawayo report that their local clinic dispensaries are refusing to give medication and Anti-Retroviral (ARV) tablets even to those who are long term customers. Clinic staff are said to whisper to people to go ‘outside’ to purchase from an appointed person in foreign currency. A member from Matshobana in Bulawayo testified that she was directed to the private home of a doctor to buy ARVs after a tip-off from a nurse at a clinic. Water purification tablets are also being sold at inflated prices ‘outside’. Even the plastic packets that tablets are put in are sold ‘outside’.

Another member in Bulawayo whose relative is seriously ill and survives on drip infusions described her problems in getting drips fitted. Her relative was recently admitted to hospital and four drips were needed. After the drips were bought in foreign currency and the family had paid to have her attended to, nothing happened until someone whispered that if they wanted to be attended they had to go and pay again ‘outside’ in forex, which they did, and were given another receipt with a stamp but no amount reflected. Despite paying for four drips, every time a new drip was fitted they had to pay again because a different nurse was on duty.

The collapse of essential services is a direct result of the deliberate manipulation of the economy by the ZANU PF government, the attempt to claim control of local government services in spite of the incompetence and unwillingness of central government to handle them, and corruption inspired by greed. Resources needed for these services were diverted through various criminal activities for the benefit of cronies. Local councils in the hands of the opposition were deliberately starved of funds by refusing to allow them to raise tariffs sufficiently to meet requirements in a time of hyperinflation. The level of corruption and incompetence goes beyond simple neglect on the part of government - it reflects at a minimum criminal negligence and at worst planned genocide.

Conclusion

In recent weeks, two WOZA leaders have passed away – victims of a humanitarian crisis that could have been avoided. Julia Chipeyama (44) died from cholera in Harare whilst another life cut short was that of Bulawayo leader Thembelani Lunga, a 32-year-old mother of two who was the breadwinner of an extended family. She was HIV positive and constantly had problems accessing a regular supply of ARVs. She was also denied these during a four-day incarceration at Bulawayo Central Police Station in August 2008.

WOZA women form a cross-section of the dwellers of Zimbabwe’s high-density residential areas. Their experiences are those of average Zimbabweans. The attention of the world is focused on the spread of cholera, which results from these conditions. What has not been adequately described is the daily struggle to find water, to deal with sewage and garbage, to buy sufficient food, and to handle illness when it strikes. The deaths from cholera are just those from one very dangerous and rapidly spreading infection. To them must be added the pregnant women turned away from hospitals who go home to deliver, and die from want of a simple caesarian section operation, those whose insulin has run out, the appendicitis cases, the asthma attacks, bleeding ulcers, septicemia, - all treatable conditions from which thousands of deaths are now occurring. And this does not include those with kidney failure, who cannot be dialysed, those needing chemotherapy, even a simple plaster cast on a limb, or treatment for a wound. In September an eight-year old boy in Bulawayo fell in his schoolyard and twisted his knee; a week later he was dead. The death certificate cited cause of death as “swollen knee”. The family could not afford to pay for an autopsy, so no one knows the medical cause of death. But the real cause of death is clear – criminal negligence of the worst kind on the part of the ZANU PF government. If the life expectancy of Zimbabwean women was 34, as reported by the World Health Organisation three years ago, what must it be today, when our situation is so much worse?

Recommendations
• Zimbabwe is now a “complex emergency”, a failed state, without a functioning government and with the destruction of the economy, the infrastructure, and social capital. This requires an immediate political solution and we call on the international community, and in particular the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU), to act in defense of the ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe.
• The Ministry of Health has finally declared a national health emergency but we do not trust them to administer an emergency health programme efficiently and with integrity. We call on the Ministry to step aside and allow the World Health Organisation (WHO) to take over all cholera treatment centers, including the payment of a decent wage to emergency health workers.
• We call on public health and clinic employees to honestly assist people and to put a stop to corruption in provision of medicines and bedside care and in attending to sewerage system repairs.
• We call on city councils to provide support for decent and speedy burials – Zimbabweans deserve to be buried with dignity.
• We call on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to initiate plans to resuscitate the water and sewage reticulation systems, which should be handed directly to local councils and not central government for implementation.
• We ask that international humanitarian organizations alter their food distribution methods to allow easier access by all the needy to food aid.
• To Zimbabweans, we say - take your life into your own hands and help stop the spread of cholera. Clean up your areas of rubbish and try to stop the flow of sewerage. Demand an audience with local and provincial leaders and immediately report any corruption by health or council professionals.
• To ZANU PF – enough lives have been lost to your inability to govern and care for the nation - your time is up. Please leave us free to elect leaders who can address this humanitarian catastrophe you have created.

The current situation in Zimbabwe cannot be resolved by a corrupt, incompetent and illegitimate group of rulers who are responsible for creating this disaster in first place. We need urgent intervention by the international community operating on the ground independently of any ZANU PF-controlled government structures.

4th December 2008

For more information, contact Jenni Williams +263 912 898 110/112 or +263 912 362 668
Or email us at info@wozazimbabwe.org / wozazimbabwe@yahoo.com or www.wozazimbabwe.org


Appendix – A tribute to Julia Chapeyama

On Saturday 15th November 2008, Julia Chapeyama (44), a leader of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) was admitted to Budiriro Clinic, which caters for seven large suburbs of Harare. She was immediately infused with two drips, which took ten minutes, but her condition did not improve and she died two hours later. She was laid to rest at Glenville Cemetery on 20th November 2008. Cemetery officials told members that Julia was one of 34 cholera victims to be buried at that cemetery that day alone. Four female children, Tatenda, Primrose, Sandra and Cynthia, survive Julia. Sandra was writing her ‘O’ Levels when her mother died and Cynthia had just finished her Grade 7 exams.

Julia started to feel sick on the morning of 15th November with vomiting and diarrhoea. She refused to go to the clinic, insisting that her daughter, Cynthia, be taken first. Cynthia was admitted and has since recovered. When the friends who had taken Cynthia to the hospital returned, they found that Julia’s condition had worsened and they had to rush her to Budiriro Clinic, but she died two hours later.

She was laid to rest on 20th November at Glenville Cemetery. Although council officials had ordered that no large crowds were allowed at cholera funerals, Julia’s friends and fellow WOZA members paid their respects to her by attending in a steady stream of small groups that only stayed a short time.

Julia joined WOZA in 2003 and has been in the leadership structure since then. Although a quiet person, she was always ready for demonstrations and capable of mobilizing friends and neighbours. To be a WOZA member, one must complete a ‘Sisterhood Promise’ and to become a leader, one has to prove relevance to their community. Julia proved this to the last as she nursed members of her structure through their cholera bouts, only to finally succumb herself.

As we review her loss, we place her untimely death at the hands of David Parirenyatwa, Minister of Health. If he had been humble and accepted help from UNICEF when it was first offered, Julia might still be alive today. We place responsibility for her death also on ZINWA, who took over water supply from our democratically elected council without our consent. For over a year, water supply has become worse by the day. But ultimately the responsibility rests squarely with the entire ZANU PF leadership for the destruction they have wrought in Zimbabwe.

To Julia, we promise, they will be held accountable for these crimes against humanity. Her courage and commitment to demand social justice lives on in our hearts. May her soul rest in peace.

A Place in the City: A film

2008-11-27

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/Announce/52221

Nearly 15 years since apartheid ended, millions of black South Africans still live in self-built shacks – without sanitation, adequate water supplies, or electricity.

But A Place in the City will overturn all your assumptions about ‘slums’ and the people who live in them.

In this film, shot in the vast shack settlements in and around Durban, members of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the grassroots shackdwellers’ movement, lay out their case – against forcible eviction; for decent services – with passion, eloquence, and sweet reason. The film captures the horrible conditions in which shackdwellers live – but it also captures Abahlali’s bravery and resilience, in a political climate where grassroots campaigners like them are more likely to be met with rubber bullets than with offers to talk.

‘For the first time now’, says S’bu Zikode, Abahlali’s elected leader, ‘poor people have started to speak for themselves. Now, that challenges those who are paid to think for us – who are paid to speak for us.’

At the heart of Abahlali’s struggle is the struggle for meaningful citizenship rights for South Africa’s poor majority. ‘Or does freedom in South Africa,’ asks Abahlali volunteer organiser Louisa Motha, ‘only belong to the rich?’
Made with assistance from Fahamu – Networks for Social Justice through a grant from TrustAfrica.

Edited at VET, Hoxton Square, London
Editor: Duncan Harris
Filmed, produced and directed by Jenny Morgan
© Grey Street Films 2008

Available on DVD: Fahamu ISBN: 978-1-906387-41-9 A place in the city. Profits go to Abahlali and towards production of multiple language versions.

Ah, now that was one satisfying issue...

Mukoma Wa Ngugi

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/editorial/52479

Every now and then we put together an issue and the whole editorial team says, “Ah, now this is one satisfying issue” – a short hand way of saying that the essays are deep, urgent, far reaching and also, a sheer pleasure to read. This is one such issue.

The essays are much longer than our usual ones – but we promise they will be worth every minute you spend on them.

At the top of the list is Mahmood Mamdani's incisive analysis of the struggle for land reform in Zimbabwe.

You will find Amiri Baraka arguing that the left outlook on Obama is wrong-headed and that the left risks being left (pun intended) behind by the people. Amiri Baraka thunders at the left and says “the task of the revolutionary is to lead the people by taking what they already know and giving it back to them with the focus of the present the past and the future.” Along the same lines, you will find, Michael Novick arguing that revolutionary resistance cannot be organized against Obama, or alongside him necessarily, but ahead of him.

In contrast, you will find Patrick Bond deriding Obama on his cabinet picks that seem to be taking him further away from the promise of change, bring on board hawks and the neoliberals.

But just as soon you are done with the Baraka and Novick pieces, Doreen Lwanga will ask you: What of the relationship between Africans and African Americans in the US? No one has really looked at the implications of an Obama presidency in the light of this important relationship, subversive but also fraught with contradiction.

AFRICOM is now official and Daniel Volman provides an invaluable comprehensive background piece. And Jacques Depelchin does the same for the food crisis while contextualizing the crisis in the old days of the invisible hand and in the equally invisible equality promised by globalization.

Silence Chihuri looks at the cholera epidemic, the massive economic meltdown and why home affairs remain the gate keepers of Zimbabwe.

While Neville Alexander and colleagues critique the crisis of education in South Africa.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, in the Pan-African Post Card is piercing - as always - cutting through the bubble wrap, this time using Uganda to ask whether we need liberation from the liberators.

And as usual, we have letters, the African blogosphere, and a round up on China in Africa.

But this also reflects the ever growing number of high quality articles being submitted to Pambazuka News, itself a reflection of the growth of critical voices on the African continent.

Can you tell just how excited we are by this issue? Now, be sure to let us know what you thought of it by sending comments to editor@pambazuka.org or commenting online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Lessons of Zimbabwe

Mahmood Mamdani

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/52407

It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe. Liberal and conservative commentators alike portray him as a brutal dictator, and blame him for Zimbabwe’s descent into hyperinflation and poverty. The seizure of white-owned farms by his black supporters has been depicted as a form of thuggery, and as a cause of the country’s declining production, as if these lands were doomed by black ownership. Sanctions have been imposed, and opposition groups funded with the explicit aim of unseating him.

There is no denying Mugabe’s authoritarianism, or his willingness to tolerate and even encourage the violent behaviour of his supporters. His policies have helped lay waste the country’s economy, though sanctions have played no small part, while his refusal to share power with the country’s growing opposition movement, much of it based in the trade unions, has led to a bitter impasse. This view of Zimbabwe’s crisis can be found everywhere, from the Economist and the Financial Times to the Guardian and the New Statesman, but it gives us little sense of how Mugabe has managed to survive. For he has ruled not only by coercion but by consent, and his land reform measures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa. In any case, the preoccupation with his character does little to illuminate the socio-historical issues involved.

Many have compared Mugabe to Idi Amin and the land expropriation in Zimbabwe to the Asian expulsion in Uganda. The comparison isn’t entirely off the mark. I was one of the 70,000 people of South Asian descent booted out by Idi Amin in 1972; I returned to Uganda in 1979. My abiding recollection of my first few months back is that no one I met opposed Amin’s expulsion of ‘Asians’. Most merely said: ‘It was bad the way he did it.’ The same is likely to be said of the land transfers in Zimbabwe.

What distinguishes Mugabe and Amin from other authoritarian rulers is not their demagoguery but the fact that they projected themselves as champions of mass justice and successfully rallied those to whom justice had been denied by the colonial system. Not surprisingly, the justice dispensed by these demagogues mirrored the racialised injustice of the colonial system. In 1979 I began to realise that whatever they made of Amin’s brutality, the Ugandan people experienced the Asian expulsion of 1972 – and not the formal handover in 1962 – as the dawn of true independence. The people of Zimbabwe are likely to remember 2000-3 as the end of the settler colonial era. Any assessment of contemporary Zimbabwe needs to begin with this sobering fact.

Though widespread grievance over the theft of land – a process begun in 1889 and completed in the 1950s – fuelled the guerrilla struggle against the regime of Ian Smith, whose Rhodesian Front opposed black majority rule, the matter was never properly addressed when Britain came back into the picture to effect a constitutional transition to independence under majority rule. Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, but the social realities of the newly independent state remained embedded in an earlier historical period: some six thousand white farmers owned 15.5 million hectares of prime land, 39 per cent of the land in the country, while about 4.5 million farmers (a million households) in ‘communal areas’ were left to subsist on 16.4 million hectares of the most arid land, to which they’d been removed or confined by a century of colonial rule. In the middle were 8500 small-scale black farmers on about 1.4 million hectares of land.

This was not a sustainable arrangement in a country whose independence had been secured at the end of a long armed struggle supported by a land-hungry population. But the agreement that Britain drafted at Lancaster House in 1979 – and that the settlers eagerly backed – didn’t seem to take into account the kind of transition that would be necessary to secure a stable social order. Two of its provisions, one economic and the other political, reflected this short-termism: one called for land transfers on a ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ basis, with the British funding the scheme; the other reserved 20 per cent of seats in the House of Assembly for whites – 3 per cent of the population – giving the settler community an effective veto over any amendment to the Lancaster House terms. This was qualified majority rule at best. Both provisions had a time limit: 1990 for land transfers based on the market principle, and 1987 for the settler minority to set limits on majority rule. The deal sustained illusions among the settlers that what they had failed to achieve by UDI – Smith’s 1965 declaration of independence from the UK – and force of arms, they could now achieve through support from a government of ‘kith and kin’ (as Smith called it) in Britain. In reality, however, the agreement drew a line under settler privilege.

The inadequacy of the Lancaster House provisions for the decolonisation of land ensured that it remained the focus of politics in independent Zimbabwe. The course of land relations and land reform in Zimbabwe has over the years been meticulously documented by Sam Moyo, a professor who directs the African Institute of Agrarian Studies in Harare. Transfers during the first decade of independence were so minimal that they increased rather than appeased land hunger. The new regime in Harare, installed in 1980 and led by Mugabe and his party, Zanu, called for the purchase of eight million hectares to resettle 162,000 land-poor farming households from communal areas. But the ban on compulsory purchase drove up land prices and encouraged white farmers to sell only the worst land. As the decade drew to a close, only 58,000 families had been resettled on three million hectares of land. No more than 19 per cent of the land acquired between 1980 and 1992 was of prime agricultural value.

As the 1980s wore on, land transfers actually declined, dropping from 430,000 hectares per annum during the first half of the decade to 75,000 hectares during the second. The greater land hunger became, the more often invasions were mounted; in response, Mugabe created local ‘squatter control’ units in 1985, and they were soon evicting squatters in droves. At this point Zimbabwean law still defined a squatter in racial terms, as ‘an African whose house happens to be situated in an area which has been declared European or is set apart for some other reason’. By 1990, 40 per cent of the rural population was said to be landless or affected by the landlessness of dependent relations.

When the Lancaster House Agreement’s rules on land transfer expired in 1990, the pressure to take direct action was intensified by two very different developments: an IMF Structural Adjustment Programme and recurrent drought. Peasant production, which had been a meagre 8 per cent of marketed output at independence in 1980, and had shot up to 45 per cent by 1985, declined as a result of the programme. Trade-union analysts pointed out that employment growth also fell from 2.4 per cent in the late 1980s to 1.55 per cent in the period 1991-97. The percentage of households living in poverty throughout the country increased by 14 per cent in five years. There was now widespread squatting on all types of land, from communal areas to state land, commercial farms (mainly growing tobacco), resettlement areas and urban sites.

The demand for land reform came from two powerful groups at extreme ends of the social spectrum yet both firmly in Mugabe’s camp: the veterans of the liberation war and the small but growing number of indigenous businesses, hitherto the main beneficiaries of independence under majority rule. At the end of the liberation war in 1980, 20,000 guerrillas had been incorporated into the national army and other state organisations, and the rest – about 45,000 – had had to fend for themselves. They found it difficult to survive without land or a job, which is why land occupations began in the countryside soon after independence.

Mugabe and the Zanu leaders tended at first to dismiss complaints from veterans as expressions of resentment on the part of the rival liberation movement, Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu, which had been marginalised in 1980. But after Zanu and Zapu signed a unity accord in 1987, former fighters from both groups became involved in land agitation. Their most significant joint initiative was to form a welfare organisation, the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) in 1988, which called for pensions to be paid and land redistributed. It soon gained a large membership drawn from most sections of Zimbabwean society and from the two ethnic groups – the Shona majority and the Ndebele – which had defined Zanu and Zapu respectively. Its members, about 200,000 of them, came from a variety of classes, employed and unemployed, urban and rural, with positions in different branches of the state and party and the private sector. Although their strength lay in the countryside, the war vets formed the only alliance that was both independent of Mugabe and Zanu-PF, and could claim to have national support, giving them a decisive advantage over the better organised but urban-based trade-union federation in the power struggle that would shortly tear the country apart.

War vets were among the first targets of Structural Adjustment, when its effects began to be felt in 1991. Entire departments and ministries that had been heavily staffed by ex-combatants were disbanded and the stage set for a series of high-profile confrontations between veterans and government. Mugabe accused the vets of being ‘armchair critics’ at the inaugural conference of the ZNLWVA in April 1992; they went on to organise street demonstrations, lock top government and party officials in their offices, interrupt Mugabe’s Heroes’ Day speech in 1997, intervene in court sessions and besiege the State House.

After the Lancaster House Agreement had expired, the government tried to occupy the middle ground by shifting from the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ formula with a new law, the Land Acquisition Act of 1992, which gave the state powers of compulsory purchase, though landowners retained the right to challenge the price set and to receive prompt compensation. By the late 1990s, market-led land transfers had dwindled to a trickle. So had British contributions to the fund set up to pay landowners, with a mere £44 million paid out between 1980 and 1992, much less than anticipated at Lancaster House. When New Labour took over in 1997, Clare Short, the minister for international development, claimed that since neither she nor her colleagues came from the landed class in Britain – ‘my own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers,’ she wrote to the Zimbabwean minister of agriculture and land – they could not be held responsible for what Britain had done in colonial Rhodesia.

This effective default coincided with a rise inside Zimbabwe of demands for compulsory acquisition. Veterans led land occupations at Svosve and Goromonzi in 1997, clashing with Mugabe and Zanu-PF. They were joined by local chiefs and party leaders, peasants and spirit mediums (who had played a key role in the liberation war against Ian Smith). The next year, a wave of co-ordinated land occupations swept across the country, with veterans receiving critical support from the Indigenous Business Development Centre (IBDC), an affirmative action lobby set up in 1988 by members of the new black bourgeoisie. From now on, two very different elements huddled under the war vets’ banner: the landless victims of settler colonialism and the elite beneficiaries of the end of settler rule.

It was largely for his own purposes, but also as a response to pressure from squatters, occupiers and their local leaders, as well as from sections of the new black elite, that in 1999 Mugabe decided to revise the constitution drafted at Lancaster House. Two major changes were envisaged: one would allow him to stay in power for two more terms and would ensure immunity from prosecution for political and military leaders accused of committing crimes while in office; the other would empower the government to seize land from white farmers without compensation, which was held to be the responsibility of Britain. The proposals were put to a referendum in February 2000 and defeated: 45.3 per cent of voters were in favour. But only a little more than 20 per cent of the electorate had cast a vote. The urban centres of Harare and Bulawayo were three to one against adoption; voting in the countryside was marked by large-scale abstentions. Post-colonial Zimbabwe had reached a turning point.

Very early on, the colonial bureaucracy had translated the ethnic mosaic of the country into an administrative map in such a way as to allow minimum co-operation and maximum competition between different ethnic groups and areas, ensuring among other things that labour for mining, manufacture and service was not recruited from areas where peasants were needed on large farms or plantations. These areas, as it happened, were mainly Shona and so, unsurprisingly, when the trade-union movement developed in Rhodesia, its leaders were mostly Ndebele, and had few links with the Shona leadership of the peasant-based liberation movement (Mugabe belongs to the Shona majority). I remember listening to the minister of labour in Harare in 1981 complain that workers had failed to support the nationalist movement. When I suggested that it might be useful to turn the proposition around and ask why the nationalist movement had failed to organise support among workers, there was silence.

The Shona-Ndebele divide so conspicuous in the two guerrilla movements produced great tension after independence between the mainly Shona government and the mainly Ndebele labour movement, with Mugabe’s ferocious repression in Ndebele areas in 1986 remaining the bloodiest phase in post-independence Zimbabwean history. The slaughter in Matabeleland was followed by a ‘reconciliation’ that paved the way for a unity government in 1987, but Zanu-PF leaders thereafter suspected all protest – from whatever source – of concealing an Ndebele agenda. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, formed in 1981 with the blessing of the government, had by the end of the decade distanced itself from its Zanu patrons, purged internal corruption and elected an independent leadership. In the 1990s it spearheaded the national agitation against Structural Adjustment and the one-party state that acquiesced in it. Yet its organisation in the countryside was confined to workers on commercial farms. The ZCTU had at first been an umbrella body for private sector unions. The spectacular growth of ZCTU, publicly its organisation of public sector workers, has been written about by two Zimbabwean social historians, Brian Raftapolous and Ian Phimister. After independence, workers in the rapidly Africanised public sector had retained close links to the government. But this began to change when the Structural Adjustment Programme led to public sector job losses and many African workers – especially veterans – were dismissed. When government workers came out on strike in 1996, the ZCTU was able to establish a base in the public sector. A general strike in 1997 and mass stay-aways the following year set the trade unions against the government. Civil servants – including teachers and health workers – who had declared allegiance to the ruling party and the state now began to affiliate to the ZCTU. In 1998, it organised a National Constituent Assembly, with the participation of civic, NGO and church groups.

By the time Mugabe put forward amendments to the Lancaster House constitution, an impressive alliance of forces – not only trade unions, churches, civic and NGO groups, but white farmers and Western governments – was arrayed for battle. The Movement for Democratic Change was formed a few months before the 2000 referendum, to campaign for a ‘no’ vote. The coalition was diverse, containing, on the one hand, public sector workers trying to roll back the tide of Structural Adjustment; on the other, uncompromising free-marketeers such as Eddie Cross, the MDC secretary of economic affairs and a senior figure in the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, who was intent on privatising almost everything, including education.

The veterans reacted to the defeat of the constitutional proposals by launching land occupations in Masvingo province. This prompted a split in the ruling party. With Mugabe out of the country, the acting president, Joseph Msika, told the police to torch the new squatter shacks. This was consistent with Zanu-PF policy: in the early days, Mugabe had been praised as a ‘conciliator’ by the international community for ensuring the security and property of those whites who remained in Zimbabwe, and evicting black squatters. Two decades later the position had changed: the support of the whites was no longer so important to Mugabe, and he was under enormous pressure from the veterans. With much to gain from casting his lot in with the rural insurgency, he returned from his trip and announced that there would be no government evictions. As land occupations spread to every province – 800 farms were occupied at the height of the protests – the split in the government and party hierarchy deepened. Inevitable tension between the executive and the judiciary undermined the rule of law; the executive sacked a number of judges, replacing them with others more sympathetic to land reform, and enacted pro-squatter legislation.

‘Fast-track’ land reform was now underway. The types of land that would be acquired compulsorily were specified by the government: unused or underutilised land, land owned by absentees or people with several farms; land above a certain area (determined by region) and land contiguous with communal areas. The white owners of around 2900 commercial farms listed for compulsory acquisition and redistribution were given 90 days to move out. Government directives specified that ‘owners of farms marked for redistribution will be compensated for improvements made on the land, but not for the land itself, as this land was stolen from the original owners in the colonial era.’

The closing date for ‘fast-track’ land acquisition – August 2002 – came and went, but occupations continued unimpeded until mid-2003, and on a diminished scale for a year or so after that. Chiefs fought for land for their constituents and for themselves, and so did their counterparts in the state bureaucracy and the private sector. In Matabeleland, a minority of pro-MDC chiefs were sceptical of land reform, but later submitted claims. The black elite made a brazen land grab in direct contravention of the ‘one person, one farm’ policy, provoking a hue and cry in society at large and within the ruling party; the government set up a presidential commission to determine the facts. Crucially, in 2005 the government passed an amendment declaring all agricultural land to be state land. Land was seized from nearly 4000 white farmers and redistributed: 72,000 large farmers received 2.19 million hectares and 127,000 smallholders received 4.23 million hectares.

What land reform has meant or may come to mean for Zimbabwe’s economy is still hotly disputed. Recently there have been signs that scholarly opinion is shifting. A study by Ian Scoones of Sussex University’s Institute of Development Studies – in collaboration with the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape – challenges some of the conventional wisdom in media and academic circles within and beyond Zimbabwe.

The problem with this wisdom is that certain highly destructive aspects of reform – coercion; corruption and incompetence; cronyism in the redistribution of land; lack of funds and an absence of agricultural activity – have come to stand for the whole process. In particular, Scoones identifies five myths: that land reform has been a total failure; that its beneficiaries have been largely political cronies; that there is no new investment in the new settlements; that agriculture is in ruins; and that the rural economy has collapsed. Researchers at PLAAS have been quick to point out that over the past eight years small-scale farmers ‘have been particularly robust in weathering Zimbabwe’s political and economic turmoil, as well as drought’. Ben Cousins, the director of PLAAS and one of the most astute South African analysts of agrarian change – who had previously argued that the land reform would destroy agricultural production – now says that the future of Zimbabwe lies in providing small farmers with subsidies so that food security can be achieved. According to researchers at the African Institute for Agrarian Studies in Harare, new farms need to receive subsidised maize seed and fertiliser for a few seasons before achieving full production. Some might give up during this period, but not many – partly because the land tenure system doesn’t allow land sales; only land permits or leases can be acquired.

Zimbabwe has seen the greatest transfer of property in southern Africa since colonisation and it has all happened extremely rapidly. Eighty per cent of the 4000 white farmers were expropriated; most of them stayed in Zimbabwe. Redistribution revolutionised property-holding, adding more than a hundred thousand small owners to the base of the property pyramid. In social and economic – if not political – terms, this was a democratic revolution. But there was a heavy price to pay.

The first casualty was the rule of law, already tenuous by 1986. When international donors pressured the regime in the run-up to the parliamentary elections of 2000 by suspending aid and loans – a boycott favoured by the MDC and the unions – the government simply fixed the result in its favour. In the violence that followed, more than a hundred people died, including six white farmers and 11 black farm labourers. Some of the violence was government-sponsored and most of it state-sanctioned. The judiciary was reshaped, local institutions in rural areas narrowly politicised, and laws were passed which granted local agencies the powers necessary to crush opponents of land reform. Denouncing his adversaries in the trade unions and NGOs as servants of the old white ruling class, Mugabe authorised the militias and state security agencies to hound down opposition, as repression and reform went hand in hand. In 2003, the leading independent newspaper, the Daily News, was shut down. While jubilant government supporters applauded the sweep of the revolution in agrarian areas, the opposition denounced the repression that accompanied it. Land reform had been ruthless, but in 2004, the violence began to abate. There was noticeably less violence surrounding the parliamentary elections of 2005.

In retrospect, it is striking how little turmoil accompanied this massive social change. The explanation lies in the participation of key rural figures in ad hoc but officially sanctioned land committees. When first introduced in 1996, these committees had mixed fortunes, some not functioning at all, others becoming instruments of this or that group of squatters. But a radical change occurred in 2000, when the committees were expanded to include centrally appointed security officials, ruling party representatives and local government personnel, as well as local veterans and traditional leaders. Charged with implementing fast-track land reform, these committees sidelined the old local administrative structures. They also had a national impact, since they reported to similarly constituted provincial committees, which in turn reported to the Ministry of Local Government. It was the infusion of veterans that gave the new semi-bureaucratic committees the edge over their wholly bureaucratic counterparts. Local committees usually comprised between 15 and 30 members. The veterans formed ‘base camps’ represented by ‘committees of seven’ which took the lead in identifying land for acquisition as well as finding prospective beneficiaries (mostly from veterans’ waiting lists and rosters in former ‘communal areas’). They also judged disputes, punished petty criminals and allocated farm equipment, seeds and so on. In a word, the committees co-ordinated everything, thus constituting new centres of power.

The second casualty of the reform was farm labourers. There were about 300,000 in all, around half of them part-time. Fast-track reform resulted in a massive displacement of these workers, who were traditionally drawn from migrant labour. Nearly a fifth came from neighbouring states and were regarded with suspicion by peasants in communal areas; even if they’d been born locally, they were often seen as foreigners and denied citizenship rights. Migrants and women (many employed as casual labour) were the weakest links in the rural mobilisation for land reform. Many were thought to have been encouraged by landowners to vote against the government’s constitutional proposals, and the anti-land-reform lobby certainly tried to organise farm workers, ostensibly to protect their jobs, but really to protect the white ownership of farms. When the workers rallied by the MDC, civil society activists and white farmers clashed with veteran-led occupiers, they came off badly. Occupiers held meetings to explain to workers what was at stake and eventually came themselves to distinguish between white farms, not only on the basis of size, proximity to communal areas, and the amount of unused land, but also on the basis of the farmer’s attitudes, particularly on race and towards his workers, and whether he had participated in the counter-insurgency during the independence struggle.

Some of the 150,000 full-time farm workers threw in their lot with the occupiers, though usually not on the farms where they had been employed. About 90,000 kept their jobs on sugar and tea estates, and on new or already established tobacco and horticulture farms. About 8000 were granted land, but most were denied it on the grounds that they or their elders had come from foreign countries, though some were given citizenship. Many went from steady employment to contract or casual work; many others were forced to supplement their meagre incomes through fishing, petty trading, theft and prostitution. The best publicised casualties of the land reform movement were the urban poor who hoped to benefit from extending land invasions to urban areas. The veterans spearheaded occupations of urban residential land in 2000-1. Housing co-operatives and other associations followed their lead and set up ‘illegal’ residential or business sites. But the state feared that it would lose control over towns to the MDC if the land reform movement was allowed to spread and met these occupations with stiff repression, including Operation Restore Order/ Murambatsvina, a surprise military-style intervention in 2005 in which tens of thousands of families were evicted. Not surprisingly, those who opposed land reform in rural areas were the strongest critics of government efforts to stifle occupations in urban areas.

The final casualty was food production: Zimbabwe, once a food surplus country, is today deficient in both foreign exchange and food. In 2002-3, half the population depended on food aid: this was a drought year and the figures improved in 2004-5. The UN now estimates that nearly half the country’s 13.3 million inhabitants will once again be dependent on food aid in 2009, after another drought year. A million of these are poor, urban residents who can’t afford imported food. The rest are peasants, most of them hit by drought. Climate change is clearly a factor here, its role most obvious in marginal land: the communal areas worked by millions of small farmers. A 2002 World Food Programme study noted that there had been three droughts in Zimbabwe since 1982 and that the 2002 drought, which also affected several neighbouring countries in Southern Africa, was the worst in 20 years. The WFP estimated that 12.8 million people in the region would require assistance as a result of that drought and that in Zimbabwe alone, overall production would decline by 25 per cent, with cereal production down 57 per cent and maize, the staple in the diet of ordinary Zimbabweans, down by a devastating two-thirds.

To separate out the effect of drought and that of reform – and thus to understand how land reform has hit production – one needs first to distinguish between three groups of agricultural producer: local white farmers, who were the target of the land reform; peasants with farms in communal areas; and foreign corporations, whose large farms (except for small tracts of unused land) remain intact. Harry Oppenheimer, for example, lost most of his private land, but his firm, Anglo American, kept its sugar estates, which it then sold to Tongaat Hulett, a South African firm with 15,000 hectares in Zimbabwe. In a nutshell, white commercial farmers focused on export crops, whereas communal farmers were the major source of food security. The production of tobacco, hitherto the main source of foreign exchange, is concentrated in large-scale commercial farms; it has seen the most severe decline, almost entirely as a result of land reform. Maize and cotton are peasant crops and have not really been directly affected by land reform, but have suffered badly from prolonged drought – maize production was down by 90 per cent between 2000 and 2003. In contrast, the production of crops – sugar, tea, coffee – grown mainly by the large corporate plantations has remained steady.

Besides drought and reform, there is a third cause of declining production: the targeted donor boycott. Zimbabwe has been the target of Western sanctions twice in the last 50 years: once after UDI in 1965 (very ‘soft’ sanctions, which did not stop the country becoming the second most industrialised in sub-Saharan Africa by the mid-1970s) and again after Zimbabwe’s entry into the Congo war in August 1998. Zimbabwe’s involvement in the war was not well received in the West. Participants in the donor conference for Zimbabwe that year were decidedly lukewarm about committing funds. Britain announced a review of arms sales to Zimbabwe and, after the conference, again disclaimed any responsibility for funding land reform. The following year the IMF suspended lending to Zimbabwe, while the US and the UK decided to fund the labour movement, led by the ZCTU, first to oppose constitutional change and then to launch the MDC as a full-fledged opposition party. Its enemies have claimed that, by the late 1990s, the ZCTU was dependent on foreign sources for two-thirds of its income. Once ‘fast-track’ land reform began in 2000, the Western donor community shut the door on Zimbabwe.

The sanctions regime, led by the US and Britain, was elaborate, tested during the first Iraq war and then against Iran. In 2001 Jesse Helms, previously a supporter of UDI, sponsored the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery bill (another sponsor was Hillary Clinton) and it became law in December that year. Part of the act was a formal injunction on US officials in international financial institutions to ‘oppose and vote against any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit or guarantee to the government of Zimbabwe’. In autumn 2001 the IMF had declared Zimbabwe ‘ineligible to use the general resources of the IMF’ and removed it from the list of countries that could borrow from its Poverty and Growth Facility. In 2002, it issued a formal declaration of non-co-operation with Zimbabwe and suspended all technical assistance. The US legislation also authorised Bush to fund ‘an independent and free press and electronic media in Zimbabwe’ and to allocate six million dollars for ‘democracy and governance programmes’. This was fighting talk, Cold War vintage. The normative language of sanctions focuses less on the issues that prompted them in the first place – Zimbabwe’s intervention in the Congo war and the introduction of fast-track reform – than on the need for ‘good governance’. In citing the absence of this as a reason for its imposition of sanctions in 2002, the EU violated Article 98 of the Cotonou Agreement, which requires that disputes between African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the EU be resolved by the joint EU-ACP Council of Ministers.

Clearly, the old paradigm of sanctions – isolation – has given way to a more interventionist model, which combines punishment of the regime with subsidies for the opposition. So-called ‘smart’ sanctions are intended to target the government and its key supporters. In 2002, the US, Britain and the EU began freezing the assets of state officials and imposing travel bans. Only four days after the EU imposed sanctions, the US expanded the list of targeted individuals to include prominent businessmen and even church leaders, such as the pro-regime Anglican bishop, Nolbert Kunonga.

Nonetheless, sanctions mainly affect the lives of ordinary people. Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, wrote recently that the country’s foreign exchange reserves had declined from $830 million, representing three months’ import cover in 1996, to less than one month’s cover by 2006. Total foreign payments arrears increased from $109 million at the end of 1999 to $2.5 billion at the end of 2006. Foreign direct investment had shrunk from $444.3 million in 1998 to $50 million in 2006. Donor support, even to sectors vital to popular welfare, such as health and education, was at an all-time low. Danish support for the health sector, $29.7 million in 2000, was suspended. Swedish support for education was also suspended. The US issued travel warnings, blocked food aid during the heyday of land reform and opposed Zimbabwe’s application to the Global Fund to Fight Aids – the country has the fourth highest infection rate in the world. Though it was renewed in 2005, the Zimbabwe grant is meagre. Agriculture has been affected too: scale matters, but no one disputes that subsidies are vital for agriculture to be sustainable, and sanctions have made it more difficult to put a proper credit regime in place.

Despite the EU’s imposition of sanctions in the run-up to the parliamentary elections of 2002, Mugabe polled 56.2 per cent of the vote against Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC’s 42 per cent. There were widespread allegations of Zanu-PF violence and last-minute gerrymandering, with polling stations in urban areas – Tsvangirai’s electoral base – closing early and extra stations being set up in rural areas, where Mugabe’s support was assured. Nonetheless, it was clear that support for Zanu-PF was higher than in the pre-fast-track elections of 2000. Bush and Blair refused to recognise the outcome, but Namibia, Nigeria and the South African observer team, which had monitored the elections, concluded that the result was legitimate. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Africans could do little in the face of mounting Western pressure, from Britain especially: a three-member panel of Commonwealth countries – Australia, Nigeria and South Africa – was convened to consider the question of Zimbabwe. There were reports of intense pressure from Tony Blair on Thabo Mbeki. The panel suspended Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth for a year. Zimbabwe withdrew from the organisation.

The experience of land reform in Zimbabwe has set alarm bells ringing in South Africa and all the former settler colonies where land shortage is still an issue. In South Africa especially, the upheaval and bitterness felt in Zimbabwe seems to suggest that the ‘Malaysian path’ to peaceful redistribution and development is not inevitable. An anxious South Africa and less powerful members of the Southern Africa Development Community tend to feel that sanctions, along with other destabilising policies pursued by the West against Zimbabwe, have only made matters worse. SADC states have long tried to reconcile the need to resist Western influence with the fact that they serve as a bridge between Africa and the wealthy Western economies, but South Africa’s non-confrontational policy vis-à-vis Mugabe – which Mbeki pursued despite mounting criticism from the ANC and the unions in South Africa – along with its provision of fuel and electricity to its northern neighbour, set it at odds with Western governments. South Africa and the SADC states describe their approach as one of ‘non- interference’, ‘stabilisation’ and ‘quiet diplomacy’, but the West sees it as a deliberate effort to undermine sanctions, and critics in South Africa – most recently Mandela – found the Mbeki line much too conciliatory.

In 2007, SADC called for an end to sanctions against Zimbabwe and international support for a post-land-reform recovery programme, but earlier this year Western countries brought their influence to bear on key SADC members – Botswana and Zambia – to split the organisation. Ian Khama, the president of Botswana, went so far as to announce publicly that he would not recognise the results of the 2008 elections. The pressure on SADC came not only from Western countries, but from trade-union movements in the region, in particular Cosatu of South Africa, which has strong links with the ZCTU. Here is another striking aspect of the current Zimbabwe crisis: it is not just Western and pro- Western governments that have joined the sanctions regime, but many activists and intellectuals, for the most part progressives, have aligned themselves with distant or long-standing enemies in an effort to dislodge an authoritarian government clinging to power on the basis of historic grievances about the colonial theft of land. Symbolic of this was the refusal by Cosatu-affiliated unions to unload a cargo of Chinese arms destined for Zimbabwe when the An Yue Jiang sailed into Durban in April.

The arguments, which are not new, turn on questions of nationalism and democracy, pitting champions of national sovereignty and state nationalism against advocates of civil society and internationalism. One group accuses the other of authoritarianism and self-righteous intolerance; it replies that its critics are wallowing in donor largesse. Nationalists speak of a historical racism that has merely migrated from government to civil society with the end of colonial rule, while civil society activists speak of an ‘exhausted’ nationalism, determined to feed on old injustices. This fierce disagreement is symptomatic of the deep divide between urban and rural Zimbabwe. Nationalists have been able to withstand civil society-based opposition, reinforced by Western sanctions, because they are supported by large numbers of peasants. The tussle between these groups has even greater poignancy in former settler colonies than it had a generation earlier in former colonies north of the Limpopo, for the simple reason that the central legacy of settler colonialism – the land question – remained unresolved and explosive after independence. Southern African leaders have tried, with some success, to put out the fires in Zimbabwe before they spread beyond its borders. It is worth noting that the agreement between Zanu-PF and the MDC signed in September and brokered by Mbeki accepts land redistribution as irreversible and registers disagreement only over how it was carried out; it also holds Britain responsible for compensating white farmers. In the wake of Mbeki’s resignation as president of South Africa it is vital that this agreement remains in place. Few doubt that this is the hour of reckoning for former settler colonies. The increasing number of land invasions in KwaZulu Natal, and the violence that has accompanied them, indicate that the clock is ticking.

* This article also appeared in the London Review of Books and is published here with the permission of the author.

* Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology, Political Science and International Affairs at Columbia University. He is from Uganda.

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

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Moyo, Sam & Paris Yeros (2005b), ‘Land Occupations and Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Towards the National Democratic Revolution’, in Reclaiming the Land, edited by Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros, London: Zed Books; Moyo, Sam and Paris Yeros (2007), ‘The Radicalised State: Zimbabwe’s Interrupted Revolution’, Review of African Political Economy, 111; Moyo, Sam & Paris Yeros (forthcoming), ‘After Zimbabwe: State, Nation and Region in Africa’, in S. Moyo, P. Yeros & J. Vadell (eds.), The National Question Today: The Crisis of Sovereignty in Africa, Asia and Latin America; Chambati, W. and S. Moyo, Fast Track Land Reform and the Political Economy of Farm Workers in Zimbabwe, Harare: AIAS Monograph Series, forthcoming For a critical point of view, see, Lloyd Sachikonye, “The Land is the Economy: Revisiting the Land Question,”African Security Review 14(3), 2005; and, Raftopoulos, Brian & Ian Phimister (2004), ‘Zimbabwe Now: The Political Economy of Crisis and Coercion’, Historical Materialism, 12: 4; Patrick Bond and Masimba Manyanya, Zimbabwe's Plunge - Exhausted Nationalism, Neoliberalism and the Search for Social Justice, Merlin Press, 2002; Henry Bernstein, ‘Land reform in Southern Africa in World Historical Perspective,’ ROAPE 96, 2003.

On the non-Zimbabwean debate on the land reform, see, www.lalr.org.za/news/a-new-start-for-zimbabwe-by-ian-scoones.html (accessed on 27 September, 2008); IRIN, “Small Scale Farming Seen As the Only Alternative to Food Insecurity,” 22 September 2008. For a contrary point of view, see, Henry Bernstein, ‘Land reform in Southern Africa in World Historical Perspective,’Review of African Political Economy 96, 2003

On war veterans, see, Sadomba, W (2006) War veterans and the land occupation movement in Zimbabwe, forthcoming, Harare;

On climate change and the impact of drought, see, C.H. Matarira, J.M. Makadho, F.C. Mwamuka, "Zimbabwe: Climate Change Impacts on Maize Production and Adaptive Measures for the Agricultural Sector," Interim Report on Climate Change Country Studies, 1995, www.gcrio.org

On sanctions, see, Gregory Elich, ‘Zimbabwe Under Siege,’ Swans Commentary Zimbabwe Under Seige, http://www.swans.com/library/art8/elich004.html; Dr. Gideon Gono: How sanctions are ruining Zimbabwe, opinion piece, African Business, 2007.

On the debate among progressive intellectuals in Zimbabwe, see, Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros, ‘The Zimbabwe Question and the Two Lefts.’ Forthcoming in Historical Materialism, vol. 14, no. 4, 2007

We Are Already In The Future!

Amiri Baraka

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52408

At election’s denouement, to the Right the outraged, self loathing of the loser and the losers, including one dude standing mutely in Michigan, a Republican delegate, in a Klan suit, describing Obama as an “Islamic communist”. To the Left, the self important dreamers who had urged us to throw our votes away, as they objectively, in the name of their “principles”, gave votes to John McCain.

Even dizzier, we supposedly hear from the left right corkscrew terrorist. Al Qaeda insults that Obama is a “house slave.” But as I said in an instant rejoinder, “Anyone who thinks suicide is revolutionary ain’t all that bright to begin with. And as for that slave calling, best they refrain from drawing our attention to the fact that some of the Arab ruling class always thought of Black people as slaves”. But we are willing to be momentarily cool, remembering Mao’s dictum, “fight your enemies one by one”.

But back to reality. We have just won an election. We, meaning the masses in the US, indeed the people of the world. (I was in Italy, France, Spain, Norway during the period leading up to and through the election. In Italy just before the election at my readings I urged the Italians to call the states, since I knew they had a bunch of relatives over here, and tell them to vote. In city after city the crowds all seemed to cheer for Obama’s victory.) And whoever seeks to downplay that victory is fool or enemy.

We should understand the white supremacy junkies on the right. Their last pop was Old Dutch cleanser and seltzer water, so they have had almost to cold turkey off that WS they been shootin' up, though still dizzy from its fumes. But the Left or some distant would be Left or some who style themselves, what? - progressive, moderate, wheeze wheeze. Some of these, certainly the vote wasters, sound almost as pitiful. As one pitiful pundit warns us, “Obama’s election is to save capitalism…not bring equality to the society.” What a silly person.

First of all the very election of Obama has done more to bring some aspect of equality to the society than reams of pseudo leftist posturing. Which, all returns in, is meant merely to show the writer is smarter than you are. But what, dreary pundits, would a McCain victory have done? And suppose your wasted vote had contributed to such? To always be on the outside nitpicking away with not one sign of useful political practice or construction, this is too often what the Left has become. I say it again, people who have never and cannot elect a dogcatcher but who are full of immense ideas about politics. Bah, Humbug!

No single election, my friends, will ever bring us Socialism, if that’s what you really seek. The struggle is protracted, hasn’t that been said? We have yet even to convince the “revolutionaries” they are in the United States. But Obama is not even in office yet these pundits of pitifulness already have the hole card on what his governance cannot or will not do. This is especially irritating from those commentators who counseled us not to vote for him in the first place. One wonders if they think their counsel, which meant nothing, is more valuable than having an actual person of color with the widest mandate in history actually elected president?

But to run off howling about it’s not this and it’s not that, when we do not yet have a viable analysis of what it really is! Not understanding how that victory was achieved is to willfully miss a rare opportunity of learning how to master the capitalist electoral system. One of the reasons we do not yet understand how to harness the electoral process to a revolutionary and socialist agenda is that too many of the very people who should be leading such a process denounce and/or avoid it.

To do what? Make statements and demonstrate.

To withdraw from the most acceptable way of gaining power in the society defies understanding by any rational means. Except for the hold that infantile leftism and anarchism have on too many wishing to present themselves as revolutionary. Barack Obama raised hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it as a result of using the internet culture for fund-raising and organizing. Let the foolish Right agonize over their attempt at denigrating “Community Organizer”. Now they have at least felt a C.O. foot planted up their B &A Hinds.

Obama raised 150 million dollars in October alone! He beat both Hilary Clinton & John McCain fund raising. At one point he wanted to buy one hour of time on CNN to lay out a complete campaign message, but CNN vetoed it. And here we thought that money was the ultimate boss. What the Right cannot forget nor the milksop Left is that Obama was/is smarter than both of them! And more in tune with the popular mind, not only of the 98% of the Afro American population but, obviously of the great majority of Americans. This, in itself, is a fantastic new precedent that must be acted upon immediately, before the corporate right media and all our “independent” smarty pants commentators cloud over the main issues.

The “bottom line” of Obama’s campaign was his initiation at the grass roots level in his appeal. The 04 Democratic convention is widely seen as the opening of his campaign and I can accept that, but even to be there to do that. A first term senator of color from Illinois. How did he get to be a Senator in the 1st place? I watched the biopic on CNN and what I got from it is a skill developed as a, what? - community organizer. To organize significant groups around their own interests and with that connecting them in motion around some larger issue. Obama carried his Chicago, his Illinois constituency with him and as he made more powerful meaningful connections, like an extension cord, his total reach and power expanded.

For the Left, they should never speak another word about “politics” unless they can understand and explain to their own constituents, how this Black man, Ok, this person of color, Ok, this half white dude, became President of the United States. Because it is just such grounding in basic everyday electorally oriented politics that the Left denounces and eschews. To all our detriments. In the main, the Left holds rallies and makes statements. Community Organization is almost as foreign to them as the Right. (But then the Right does its “community organization” through their media.)

Usually, when the Left talks about “the people” or “the masses” they come out of some comic book academic manual confusing the US, the most highly developed 21st century monopoly capitalist society, with 19th century Russia or early 20th century China. Both largely peasant societies with small but developing working classes. The US is neither.

The US is both debtor and predator state, at the same time. With a highly developed yet debt burdened working class who are told every day that they are the middle class. There is a middle class, a petty bourgeoisie, a very, very affluent sector, who are the lieutenants and paid liars, the middle management who are also deeply in debt. There is also a petty petty bourgeois, the teachers, government workers, civil servants, office workers, etc. Racism still internally divides these classes horizontally, with the Afro American people still at the bottom, yet those same Afro American people, nearly 50 million, have a gross national product of 600 Billion dollars a year, the 16th largest in the world.

There have already been Four Revolutions in the United States. The first in the 18th century, for “independence” (quotes because in some ways it never completely happened. Check out British holdings in the US). The 2nd in the 19th century, the Civil War, which ended chattel slavery (& w/the 13th, 14th 15th amendments) and competitive capitalism, ushered in monopoly capitalism and began to free the white worker from the land.

The 3rd revolution was the 50’s to 70’s Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements which ended petty apartheid & segregation (Civil Rights Bill, Voting Rights Bill, Brown vs. Board of Education). Though a case could be made that this was an extended motion that was initiated by the post Civil War move out of the south by millions of Black people transforming the Afro American people from a largely peasant rural people to a working class. An urban proletariat.

The Obama election is the 4th Revolution! What is needed now is for the would be Left, the revolutionaries, , the progressive sector of the body politic, the Communists to correctly analyze and project widely just what kind of revolution this is. But more than that, lay out exactly what is to be done at this point, the entry to a new stage of US social development, like we used to say, What is the key link, to make the next forward motion.

We should know that the stage of society to which we are moving toward would be some kind of Peoples Democracy. Fundamentally, this is the social base of Obama’s victory, the so-called Post racial coalition. We understand that there is yet no such reality existing concretely in the institutions and relations of US society, except that is the oncoming force that won the 4th Revolution and it is this force that must harnessed as a living material entity in transforming US society.

This would place us near the most advanced stage of bourgeois democracy. We can see Monopoly capitalism crashing down around their and our heads! We have agreed to give the rulers a trillion dollars so they can continue to be rich and the rulers. But for the would be Leftists to tell us that Obama’s only or that his “primary function is to save capitalism by building a united front to rescue capitalism NOT to bring about a more egalitarian, anti-racist anti-sexist pro-environment society”. Why would anyone who was actually struggling for Democracy say that? It sounds like the sour grapes of the people who wanted us to waste our votes , but even though they tailed 98% of the Afro American and half of the rest of the American people, still want to give us advice and instructions. Actually, it is they who need advice and instructions.

To make such a one sided infantile Leftist or Trot like analysis of the election would only turn that overwhelming majority whom you tail anyway, even more sharply and outspokenly against you. There is neither balance nor real analysis in that statement. Just an attempt to be again, more revolutionary than the people. But the task of the revolutionary is to lead the people by taking what they already know and giving it back to them with the focus of the present the past and the future.

Plus to see Obama’s victory as simply a victory for monopoly capitalism is so thoroughly anarchist that it rejects the most important essence of the entire Obama drama, i.e. it was the highest stroke of the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements yet. We bled to integrate lunch counters, buses, public toilets, water fountains, was that struggle just to create a united front to save monopoly capitalism? Do you think Obama’s victory less than those? It was a concrete victory for Democracy. Don’t you understand that you cd say the victory of the North in the civil war was just to preserve capitalism? Yes, at a higher level. But don’t you think the concomitant advance of the Afro American people worth noting?

So to those who say Obama’s only function is to save monopoly capitalism, we say, ”I’m glad you can dig it, but that's not all ...“ To claim merely an anarchist or infantile position and not deepen the analysis so we can understand that monopoly capitalism cannot survive unless it adopts some aspects of social democracy. Obama’s election is the first aspect of that social democracy. In the same way that FDR’s “New Deal” could not survive, even as a method of maintaining monopoly capitalism unless it adopted important features of socialism, social democracy, i.e., social security and Unemployment insurance, the WPA public Works project to put people back to work. Even the artists. I said before that what Obama must bring us is “A New New Deal”! That is why it is so important that he hit the ground running, in much the same way that Roosevelt did in his first 100 Days. I was glad to hear that he was reading accounts of the emergency bills Roosevelt passed before the reactionary congress could block him. Obama faces the same exigency. We need a “fast break” strategy with a few ”alley oop” dunks perhaps. Before the opposition can re-solidify itself.

We have a great unity among the people now with Obama’s victory and we and the people must move forward with that catalyst. We must unite principally against still existing racism and white supremacy. We must also unite against the domination of monopoly capitalism over the people’s needs. The theft of a trillion dollars has infuriated the people, certainly we can unite them, build a united front around the need to destroy surviving racism and white supremacy and for creating greater regulations on monopoly capitalism. If we give the investment banks a trillion dollars we should own those investment banks. If we give another two hundred fifty billion to the auto industry, we should own that auto industry.

We cannot wipe away monopoly capitalism with one election but our minimum program must include regulation of it, Public ownership reversing the trend of outsourcing, and sending factories out of the country, usually out of working class and minority neighborhoods. Certainly we can build a united front around these things.

We should be listing those things we can do, those things that Obama’s election has enabled us to do rather than spending time telling people that what they and he did was nothing!

In attacking monopoly capitalism we shd support small capitalism and minority capitalism and fight so that those businesses and institutions in working class and minority communities get the dollars that we are giving the investment banks and auto industry.

The development of small capitalism in those communities and state ownership of these financial institutions would be steps forward in terms of the development of a Peoples Democracy. Is this socialism, No, but we must first regulate and weaken monopoly capitalism, in tune with the peoples newly awakened appetite for expanded democracy and their hard times which we know and can make them better understand is caused by the domination of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, including the Iraq war.

It is up to us, the Left, to build on the powerful democratic coalition Obama’s campaign and election have already built. We must strive to make such a democratic coalition more than just an temporary election campaign call and fight to turn such ideas and momentary commitment into a powerful new base on which to focus Obama’s first term, but also to build this into a permanent aspect of US society. The anti war forces are another key aspect of this coalition and a means to call for a refocusing of the 10 billion dollars a month now spent on the Iraq war.

We should try to build a broad united front out of the consensus coming out of the 63% of the electorate that voted for Obama! One wonders how people in the Black Left who were at the North Carolina meeting and some others, can really call for an smaller united front than the hundred or so people who were there. What we need is a unity based on real struggle over actual objectives and motives, i.e. being “open and above board” without “conspiracy and intrigue”.

There are forces who dropped out of the Black Radical Congress because they were angry about alleged CPUSA “domination”, domination of what, and to what end? Just as a somewhat earlier canard that they couldn’t be in any group where there were white people. We wonder is this some fear of not being able to struggle for the correct line in these forces presence?

Too often it seems that some of the Black Left are really nationalists straining for a new identity by claiming to be Left but never Marxist Leninists. Some are Black Nationalists who claim “Left” by being influenced by Trotskyist or Anarchist stands.

At any rate we need an even broader United Front guided by genuine revolutionaries, communists not Trot influenced Black Leftists.

There are questions about Obama’s appointments even before he is inaugurated. Just as there were questions about him refusing public funding. On the second issue, it shd be obvious by now that Obama saw the public funding, as it is now constructed, to be a ruse to cripple his fund raising, while the Republicans would run ragtime and out raise him, just as Hillary would have done.

On the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, we should try to understand that this was a very smart choice. The constant calumny against Obama that he is a Muslim. The Right kept screaming his middle name, Hussein, in hopes that would stop the Obamacoaster that enveloped the country. The constant questions about his support for Israel or from the other side about his relationship to the “Zionist entity” were a constant negation Obama faced. Even now, after the election, the fool, al Qaeda’s Zawahari, hurls insults about Obama. Just as some ignorant American anarchists threaten to disrupt the inauguration because of “Obama’s Zionism & Militarism”.

Rahm Emanuel’s selection is due to confound those who are not thoughtful about just what challenges Obama faces. The ever lurking actual Zionists will always make trouble until they can have what they really want, not peace, but the entire Middle East as a fiefdom ruled by Israel.

The Emanuel appointment stops Zionist mischief at the door. Karl Rove’s television appearance blasting Emanuel as “combative, ill tempered and foul mouthed” and that he was Obama’s worst appointment, were very encouraging to me. Let the rumormongers and mischief-makers and other nattering nabobs try to cause havoc at the gates. I trust Emanuel to handle that as chief of staff, both the constant undermining questions of the Zionists as well as the others who want to make Obama a Zionist. To be a friend of the Israeli people is no crime, to foster a Zionist dictatorship over the Middle East would be a crime. We cannot see Obama doing the latter.

The first necessity of the Obama precedent is to put out a call for a nationwide Democratic Coalition, to heighten even further the attack on white supremacy and racism. Even to fight to get these made illegal, unlawful. This would be the essence of the Post racial coalition, which has already shown its potential power with the election of the President. The Kennedy years could have set something of a precedent, but his assassination along with the assassinations of Malcolm X, Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy, peaked with the election of Nixon and then the takeover at the end of the 70’s by the Reagan steamroller which has been with us in essence until today.

Those assassinations were a right wing coup, an oil smelling coup that at its denouement was the invasion of the Middle East and the outright takeover of the oil fields, plus the move of the financial markets to Dubai, as alternate to London and Wall St. Monsters covered with and bathing in oil. The crash of the financial markets in the US and to some extent worldwide can mark the end of this domination if we will move on the new precedent of Obama’s election.

Not only must this new Democratic Coalition take on white supremacy and racism but to oppose and struggle to end the domination of monopoly capitalism over the people of the US, end the war in Iraq and in essence its domination of the world. State ownership, nationalization, new funding for non monopoly and small business. This democratic coalition must be built into a permanent electoral presence as well to combat the still powerful and ruthless forces of white supremacy and the domination of society by monopoly capitalism.

The Public Works' New New Deal would see Katrina damaged New Orleans as a top priority and seek to reconstruct the entire gulf ravaged area from Louisiana to Texas. The sagging infrastructure of bridges and tunnels and urban structures must be repaired. This is one solution to chronic unemployment. Certainly these inner cities are in need of public dollars for employment and reconstruction. Just as in the depression 30’s Roosevelt’s new deal even supported the arts, we must see that our new Democratic Coalition demands the same kind of support after years of the Republicans attacks on public support of the Arts.

We want to build a new Democratic Coalition as an engine for the bringing of a People’s Democracy. Any narrowing of the “Post racial coalition” that elected Obama is a mistake. We must fight to make it real. Those who think that tailing “Labor” mostly the labor bureaucrats or pushing economism as a substitute for political organizing and fielding candidates for every position we are able to are merely continuing the marginalization and irrelevance of the Left. The call for an anti racist anti monopoly Democratic Coalition is correct and necessary and the only move that will give the genuine revolutionaries leadership of the progressive political struggle in the US.

* Amiri Baraka is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist who has recited poetry and lectured on cultural and political issues extensively in the USA, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe.

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

Obama: Channeling Clinton, extending Bush

Patrick Bond

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52451

Obama was elected on a platform of change. Yet, his actions are pointing to more and more of the same. The question of whether Obama can possibly replace Bush as a danger to world peace is worth considering.

The president-elect’s turn to the Zionist, militarist wing of the US ruling class in recent weeks negates the interest and support he showed for the Palestinian cause while a Chicago community organiser during the 1990s and to the anti-war movement when Bush attacked Iraq five and a half years ago.

To counteract ongoing their economic and cultural decline, it appears that US imperialist managers have adopted two strategies: political revitalisation via Obama’s carefully-crafted image as a non-imperialist politician with roots in African-American, Kenyan and even Indonesian traditions; and the activism anticipated through his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, a firm supporter of the US war against Iraq.

In reaction to election campaign allegations that he is a peacenik, Obama himself uttered that the ‘surge’ of US troops in Iraq ‘succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.’

Responded Ray McGovern (formerly a CIA agent, now an anti-imperialist), ‘Succeeded? You betcha - the surge was a great success in terms of the administration's overriding objective. The aim was to stave off definitive defeat in Iraq until President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney could swagger from the West Wing into the western sunset on Jan. 20, 2009.’

In spite of having last week renewed the contract of the Bush regime’s current military leader, defense secretary Robert Gates, Obama may not run as extreme a militarist regime as Bush/Cheney or as McCain/Palin would have.

Yet as US reporter Jeremy Scahill points out, there is an awful precedent from Washington’s imperialist habits during Bill Clinton’s administration: ‘The prospect of Obama's foreign policy being, at least in part, an extension of the Clinton Doctrine is real.’

That doctrine, ‘paved the way for projects eventually carried out under the Bush/Cheney administration.’ Obama turned to ‘top players’ from the Clinton Administration for advice, and then, according to Cahill, generated the following militarist positions:

- His plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan;
- An Iraq plan that could turn into a downsized and rebranded occupation that keeps U.S. forces in Iraq for the foreseeable future;
- His labeling of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a ‘terrorist organization’;
- His pledge to use unilateral force inside of Pakistan to defend US interests;
- His position, presented before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that Jerusalem ‘must remain undivided’ -- a remark that infuriated Palestinian officials and which he later attempted to reframe;
- His plan to continue the War on Drugs, a backdoor US counterinsurgency campaign in Central and Latin America;
- His refusal to ‘rule out’ using Blackwater and other armed private forces in US war zones, despite previously introducing legislation to regulate these companies and bring them under US law.

In addition to Hillary Clinton, Scahill warns of the following imperialist influences: vice president Joe Biden, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher, former defense secretary William Perry, former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and a host of other key Clinton-era figures (Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Anthony Lake, Lee Hamilton, Susan Rice, John Brennan, Jami Miscik, John Kerry, Bill Richardson, Ivo H. Daalder, Sarah Sewall, Michele Flournoy, Wendy Sherman, Tom Donilon, Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert).

As Scahill concludes, ‘Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to bring change to Washington. “I don't want to just end the war,” he said early this year. “I want to end the mindset that got us into war.” That is going to be very difficult if Obama employs a foreign policy team that was central to creating that mindset, before and during the presidency of George W. Bush.’

One danger zone is Africa, where the Bush/Cheney/Gates geopolitical and military machinery ground to a halt in the form of the Africa Command. No state aside from Liberia would entertain the idea of hosting the headquarters (which remained in Stuttgart), notwithstanding an endorsement of Africom from even Obama’s main Africa advisor, Witney Schneidman.

More importantly, even if Obama restores a degree of US credibility at the level of international politics, US military decline will continue to be hastened by failed Pentagon strategies against urban Islamist guerilla movements in Baghdad, rural Islamist fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the belligerent nuclear-toting state of North Korea.

None of these forces represent social progress, of course, but they probably are responsible for such despondency in Washington that other targets of US imperial hostility, such as the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, remain safe from blatant overthrow in the near term.

Still, it is also worth noting that Obama’s lies about ‘change’ extend to economic mismanagement, and that too will cause immense suffering by countries – like South Africa – increasingly tied into the world economy by decades of pro-corporate policies adopted by Bush, Clinton, Bush senior and Ronald Reagan, since 1981.

Although he announced a stimulus package aimed at creating 2.5 million jobs through public works by January 2011, Obama’s team of economic policy managers is decidedly neoliberal.

A central figure in the current crisis is the deregulatory yet pro-bailout financial manager, Tim Geithner, chosen as Obama’s treasury secretary. Head of the Council of Economic Advisors is neoliberal University of Chicago professor Austan Goolsbee, a strong advocate of financial deregulation even as the subprime crisis broke the US economy’s back.

Similarly, Lawrence Summers was not only the main force in Washington responsible for the most disastrous recent financial deregulation, in 2000 as Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, he was also the central figure in the prior world financial crisis, in 1997-99, when he pushed Asia to open its doors to foreign banks in exchange for bailout loans.

And the prior economic crisis featured Paul Volcker, Obama’s most senior and persuasive advisor. By tripling the world interest rate in 1979-80 as US Federal Reserve chair, Volcker caused the Third World debt crisis and countless associated deaths, so as to restore US economic power and refuel financial globalisation.

Judging by their record and ideology, these men will do yet more intense damage to the rest of the world, and they will do so with far greater power – thanks to undeserved credibility associated with Obama’s election - than did Bush’s financial managers.

Fighting US imperialism and neoliberalism is hence more important than ever, by a broad front of progressive forces. How long will it take such people to drop illusions about Obama and generate countervailing power?


* Patrick Bond is director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society – http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs - and this originally appeared as a column for Muslim Views.

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

Obama’s election: Lessons for rebuilding revolutionary resistance

Michael Novick

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52402

The election of Barack Obama has been greeted in a variety of ways: elation and relief (tempered by fear of a racist backlash or assassination attempt) by supporters, particularly US Africans; predictions of enhanced recruitment opportunity by organised white supremacists; doomsday predictions by conservatives. On the Left there have been ‘exposes’ of Obama's Zionism, militarism and dismissal of the particular needs of black people or the working class. A group of DC anarchists has called for a disruption of his inaugural.

But any analysis needs to start from this reality: masses of people in the US feel they have helped make and change history by electing Obama. His victory is indeed historic in many ways. It required the largest voter turnout ever, and the highest percentage of registered voters in decades. Obama gained a clear majority, the highest percentage from a Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt – except for Johnson's landslide after the JFK assassination. He ran the most expensive campaign in history. He is the first "bi-racial" (called black or African-American) president-elect, and incidentally the first child of an immigrant. He is the first Hawaiian-born, one of the youngest presidents and by far the least ‘embedded’. Moreover, his was the first victory by a self-proclaimed 'anti-war' candidate in the midst of a war. But Obama's victory hardly signals that we are a ‘post-racial’ society, as evidenced by the self-contradictory self-congratulation of those who proclaim that “by electing the first black president” we have shown we are “colour-blind." Exit polls showed that about a fifth of ‘white’ voters acknowledged that ‘race’ was a significant factor. Interestingly, of those, 30 per cent voted for Obama. One explanation of this is that Obama's race made his intellect acceptable. US voters would never have elected a ‘white’ candidate as obviously intelligent as Obama. Yet they accepted and understood that a 'black' candidate would have to be twice as smart, twice as cool, as any 'white' to have a chance to succeed.

Paradoxically but perhaps most essentially, Obama's election is also a manifestation of the extent of the radical Left's weakness, irrelevance and inability to communicate. Over the past eight years of Bush misrule, what effective strategies or serious ability to develop a countervailing force or consciousness has the Left or the anarchist movement shown? In that vacuum, people made a judgment that Obama represented the best hope for the kind of change that could be achieved through electoral means. This was not merely because he was ‘black,’ but because he was intelligent, calm, organised, and an effective and reassuring campaigner. McCain's charges of 'inexperience' didn't stick because Obama was attractive as a relative outsider uncorrupted by any long tenure in Washington DC. His mild centrist critique of the Iraq war made sense in a context in which the anti-war movement had proven incapable of making a dent or marshalling an extra-parliamentary opposition. Within the spectrum of the Democratic Party --and the anti-war movement has been tailing the Democrats for years-- he was the electable 'opponent' of the Iraq war.

To imagine that a proclamation of opposition to Obama's inauguration as a capitalist, imperialist and statist will do anything to overcome the Left's weakness, irrelevance and inability to communicate -- in fact, that it will do anything other than deepen and intensify those failures -- is the height of arrogance. I have a different take on what we have to do or learn in response to Obama's victory. It starts from the perspective that the greatest on-going weakness of the Left strategically and politically is a refusal to recognise the nature of US society as an empire based on white-supremacist settler colonialism. Related to that is our greatest tactical flaw, an inability to practice authentic self-criticism, through which we learn from our errors and defeats in order to eventually overcome them and win. Our failure to do that has engendered a deep defeatism in masses of people -- manifest as accommodation and unwillingness to struggle against or even make a sharp break with the system.

One thing this election has demonstrated is how far into the past the revolutionary militancy of the civil rights and black power movements and the mass anti-imperialist opposition to the Vietnam War and domestic colonialism have receded. McCain's inability to make the Bill Ayers smear stick to Obama was because not only Obama but most of the electorate was no older than 8, or perhaps not yet born, when Ayers was an armed propaganda radical. That period of revolutionary optimism, when the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army or the WUO were the tip of the iceberg of a massive upwelling of rebelliousness and armed resistance, is now ancient history. (Speaking of white privilege and class, Obama never would have associated with ex-BLA members, nor would any have been on the board of an Annenberg charity.) No amount of posturing could recreate ’68 (or even 2000) in Denver for the DNC or in DC for the inaugural. 47 per cent of high school seniors in the US today were registered to vote in time for the election, and I suspect an overwhelming majority of them cast their first ballots. They were born when the first George Bush was president! Who better to speak to them than Anti-Racist Action, which has historically been an attractor of high school students? Yet ARA's current ability to do outreach, education, agitation and organising in high schools (or prisons, factories, community colleges or the military) is miniscule.

The DC call relates that anarchists opposed and disrupted the last two inaugurations, and therefore should do the same again. This flawed reasoning lacks a material analysis of the consciousness of masses of people in relation to the electoral process and the presidency. Bush's two stolen victories undermined the authenticity and legitimacy of the electoral process and of the imperial presidency. For his first inaugural, he was anointed president by the Supreme Court after having lost the popular vote. For his second, he was plagued by an unpopular war and evidence of vote flipping and vote suppression. Protesters and disrupters were speaking for millions when denouncing the inaugurals and the presidency, and our message fell on receptive ears.

The current situation is far different, and blaming it on the voters is another example of the Left's lack of self-criticism and ability to grow. Obama's victory signals a new lease of life for the presidency, electoral politics and the two-party system. Obama won by a clear majority, in which voter suppression was a negligible factor and in which all minor parties together barely hit 1% of the vote, including McKinney, Nader, Barr and Baldwin combined. His inauguration, even apart from the historicity of his ‘blackness,’ is being welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the US population as proof of the ‘mystery and majesty’ of electoral democracy. In that context, a disruption wouldn't express the unease of the general population in a radical and uncompromising way, but would be taken as an alienating slap in the face. It wouldn't be seen as a call to a higher form of direct democracy, but as a rejection of the popular will expressed through a peaceful, honest and democratic election.

Now is the time for a sober reassessment of how to grapple with these new realities. Obama did not merely collect millions of dollars from hundreds of thousands of people -- he established a relationship with them. He organised effectively tens of thousands of volunteers, and turned out tens of millions of people to vote. Why has the Left or the anarchist movement been incapable of inspiring, stimulating or organising anywhere near that level of support, involvement, voluntarism or participation? How can we start to do so?

Obama accurately read the demographic, technological and ideological changes that are taking place in the US and effectively offered himself and his campaign as a vehicle for implementing or realising some of the aspirations those changes have generated. Obama seized on the opportunity of the latest and deepest capitalist economic crisis to develop a compelling narrative of how a lack of regulation, a lack of attention to the ‘middle class,’ and an arrogant unilateralism in ‘foreign policy’ weakened the economy, national security and the fiscal stability of the state. Neither the statist Left nor the anarchists are anywhere close to having the intellectual, political or organisational capacity to challenge that narrative or that definition of ‘change.’

Unless and until the Left engages in a thorough self-criticism and re-orientation towards anti-colonialist politics as the basis of an effective anti-capitalism, it will be on the sidelines of history.

We need to put forward and undertake effective organising strategies, not merely demands, for self-determined direct action against economic and environmental devastation, mass incarceration, militarism, occupation and anti-immigrant hysteria. We need to participate in building self-reliant communities of resistance. It is only oppressed and exploited people who can make revolution, and save the planet by saving ourselves. Go to the 25 per cent of ‘homeowners’ who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth and unite them with the homeless. Go to 30 per cent of ‘War on Terror’ veterans who report no earned wage income, and who have massive unemployment rates, and help unite them with GI resisters, with teens resisting recruitment, or with the millions of prisoners and their families. Then we can begin to make some history of our own.

Africans in America

Identity, images, and African-American–African relations

Doreen Lwanga

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52403

A lot has already been said about the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America. Immeasurable excitement expressed all around the world, tears shed, hope revealed and work already started. Almost two weeks since the elections, the main word on the street is still about Obama. And no, Obama's supporters have not yet gone out of business, as ‘The Onion’ suggests. It is the first topic of conversation every time I call my family in Uganda or receive an email from friends outside the United States: ‘I hope you have began seeing some changes.’ Well, not really but emotionally yes. It feels like a heavy stone lifted off my chest.’

So, what does this election mean for Africans in America and who are these Africans? I am referring to the African diaspora called ‘The new Africans’ in migration studies, who trace their immediate belonging to one of the 54 states on the present day post-colonial continent of Africa. I am aware of the debates surrounding this definition, and sensitive to the fact that there are some among Africans in America taken away as slaves of Europeans who identify with a country in Africa. However, I wish to use this distinction of ‘the new Africans’ not to perpetuate the divide but illustrate my point. For this purpose, I will use the terms ‘the new Africans’ and ‘African-Americans’ to distinguish between the two groups and conclude with reuniting the two.

The new Africans in America are overjoyed that one of ‘their sons’ and black man is now president of the United States. Even those who had never identified with Kenya see Obama first and foremost as a black man, although the Kenyan media is steadfast in identifying Obama as a Kenyan-American. It doesn't matter that his entire upbringing was outside Kenya in the United States and Indonesia, that he does not speak Luo or did not make Kenya one of the central themes of his election campaign. It no longer matters what his nation group is – Luo, Kalenjin, Masai or Kikuyu – he's Obama the Kenyan and American. But what does Obama's election mean to all Africans in America?

Perhaps it is time to re-examine ourselves, our place in America, and our relationship with African-Americans from the ‘slave ship’ (no pun intended). The relationship between these two sets of Africans has never been a smooth one, but on 4 November they all came together to usher Obama to the US presidency. Obama received 95% of the black vote and overwhelming support from African-Americans. He was able to break through to the US presidency because of the groundwork laid by African-Americans fighters and the struggles of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshal, Rosa Parks, Harriet Turban, Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. DuBois, and many others. Their struggles for the humane treatment of coloured people in America, for equality, justice, and civil rights made the dream of having a black leader a reality in the election of Obama as US president. Granted it took the vote of non-black voters to get Obama elected, but the significance of the black electoral turnout and togetherness is election cannot be downplayed.

Yet, the tension and sentiments between the new Africans and African-Americans in the US did not go away. These two groups see each other as different. Many new Africans are resistant to identifying as black in America because to them, it refers to African-Americans. Many have confessed that when filling out US legal forms, they check ‘other’ instead of ‘black’ under racial category and insert either Eritrean-American, Ethiopian-American, or Ugandan-American. To many new Africans, African-Americans are lazy, violent, racially bitter, and poor, while many African-American view the new Africans as coming from impoverished, disease-, and conflict-ridden countries. The question most African-Americans ask is, ‘Why don't [new] Africans love African-Americans?’

Can the election of Barack Obama with the overwhelming support of African-Americans turn a new leaf in the mindset of the new Africans? It is disheartening that many Africans perpetuate the negative stereotype of African-Americans fed to us by mainstream media even before we step foot in the USA. Each community has its own ills and positives but the ills of African-Americans tend to override the positives in the minds of several new Africans. I came into this country carrying those negative stereotypes about African-Americans that I saw and read in US international media and Hollywood movies that often featured African-Americans in gun violence, drugs, and prison. During my early days here, whenever I encountered African-Americans on the streets of Washington, DC, I would get really scared and walk as fast as my legs would carry me to get out of their sight. Since then, I have learned many more and learned differently, thanks to my move from Washington, DC, to Atlanta. In Atlanta, I met African-Americans of all professions in banking, medicine, education, law, engineering, the arts, and self-employment to mention just a few. Atlanta is a mecca for black people and host to the ‘Sweet Auburn historical district’ of the richest blacks in America during segregation and the home of Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Site. It also hosts the prestigious historically black colleges/universities (HBCU) conglomerate of Spelman College, Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University, and Morris Brown College. During segregation when blacks were not allowed to enrol in white institutions, African-Americans founded colleges like Spelman and Morehouse, whose educational standards today match places like Harvard University.

The experience of living in Atlanta has exposed me to the ‘other’ face of African-Americans as pioneers of their lives as hardworking, high-achieving, and respectable people, in sharp contrast to media depictions of violent, lazy, gangster, and thuggish lifestyles. It also made me re-examine some of the stereotypes I had carried with me about a lazy, underachieving, and unqualified group. If African-Americans are lazy, how were they able to build this country that we now enjoy on free forced labour without pay? How come they fought hard, endured racial prejudice, lynching, murder, assassination, unfair court sentences, and segregation to make life better for future generations including the new Africans? Many new Africans claim that African-Americans are underachieving because they do not work hard to become successful, yet when Africans come to the US, they work hard and become successful in a short time. My question is, if the new Africans are more hardworking (than African-Americans), why do they have to leave their countries in order to become successful? Why can't they apply that same ingenuity in their own countries? Secondly, with all these smart Africans, how come African countries are still a mess and perpetually begging the United States for help? It is true that we achieved our independence but war, famine, deficit budgets, and dependency on Western governments and Western consumerism are still rampant in Africa. Why aren't our smart brains being put to work and develop Africa and, perhaps forge lasting respectful relationships with African-Americans?

We could excuse many African-Americans because they have not been exposed to Africa as much as we have, both on the continent and in America. Our education and social life is filled with Western lifestyles and systems of government and development. In fact many of us know more about New York city skyscrapers and St Lawrence Seaway through our geography classes than the average American living in this country. Thanks to CNN, we live with the rich and famous of America and are constantly fed with images of the high-class life of America. On the other hand, Americans, including African-Americans, get the ugly face of Africa – war, famine, hunger, disease, witchcraft, and cannibalism from CNN. Their opinions are shaped by what they are fed by their media sources. Granted Americans have the highest access to the internet, but generally very few utilise it to learn about other countries, unless of course if the US is bombing a particular country. This is not an excuse but to see and to travel is to learn.

We the new Africans – especially those in America – have learned enough from our stay here to continue the ill stereotypes about African-Americans. We have witnessed racial prejudice in America, poor services, and ill-treatment of black and coloured people in America which can hold back the formation of fresh and better perceptions of African-Americans. Even though we often get a better reception from white America compared to African-Americans, Amadou Diallo did not have to be an African-American to be shot dead by racist police. No! We are not more hardworking that African-Americans, we are simply transplanted from the comfort of our homes and have to make it or die trying. Yes, we might be more educated than many from the African-American population but that's just as a percentage of the many uneducated masses back in Africa. In fact we might be misinformed about our black/African-American history. We should take advantage of how Obama's presidential campaign brought together black people in the US and Africa toward a common good and remember that even the struggle against colonial domination in Africa, apartheid South Africa, and the global pan-African Movement was a union of Africans on the continent and in the Americas, from Bob Marley to W.E.B. DuBois, to Malcom X and others. We should used this opportunity to forge new and lasting relationships not built on fear or denigration of one another but on respect, similarities and solidarity. As a mother of a four-month old son born out of a union of a new African and African-American father, I would like my son to grown up in an America where all Africans (new and American) will enjoy an abundance of justice, liberty, opportunities, leadership, and respect for one another.

* Doreen Lwanga is a pan-Africanist living in Atlanta, Georgia.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Africom: From Bush to Obama

Daniel Volman

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52409

On 6 February 2007, President Bush announced that the United States would create a new military command for Africa, to be known as Africa Command or Africom. Throughout the Cold War and for more than a decade afterwards, the U.S. did not have a military command for Africa; instead, U.S. military activities on the African continent were conducted by three separate military commands: the European Command, which had responsibility for most of the continent; the Central Command, which oversaw Egypt and the Horn of Africa region along with the Middle East and Central Asia; and the Pacific Command, which administered military ties with Madagascar and other islands in the Indian Ocean.

Until the creation of Africom, the administration of U.S.-African military relations was conducted through three different commands. All three were primarily concerned with other regions of the world that were of great importance to the United States on their own and had only a few middle-rank staff members dedicated to Africa. This reflected the fact that Africa was chiefly viewed as a regional theater in the global Cold War, or as an adjunct to U.S.-European relations, or—as in the immediate post-Cold War period—as a region of little concern to the United States. But when the Bush administration declared that access to Africa’s oil supplies would henceforth be defined as a “strategic national interest” of the United States and proclaimed that America was engaged in a Global War on Terrorism following the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, Africa’s status in U.S. national security policy and military affairs rose dramatically [1].

According to Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs—the highest ranking Defense Department official with principal responsibility for Africa at the Pentagon, who has supervised U.S. military policy toward Africa for the Bush administration—Africom attained the status of a sub-unified command under the European Command on 1 October 2007, and is scheduled to be fully operational as a separate unified command no later than 1 October 2008. The process of creating the new command will be conducted by a special transition team — which will include officers from both the State Department and the Defense Department—that will carry out its work in Stuttgart, Germany, in coordination with the European Command.

WHAT IS AFRICOM?

Africom will not look like traditional unified commands. In particular, there is no intention, at least at present, to assign the new command control over large military units. This is in line with ongoing efforts to reduce the presence of large numbers of American troops overseas in order to consolidate or eliminate expensive bases and bring as many troops as possible back to the United States where they will be available for deployment anywhere in the world that Washington wants to send them. Since there is no way to anticipate where troops will be sent and the Pentagon has the ability to deploy sizable forces over long distances in a very short time, Washington plans to keep as many troops as possible in the United States and send them abroad only when it judges it necessary. This, however, was exactly the intention when the Clinton and Reagan administrations created the Central Command and based it in Tampa, Florida; and now the Central Command is running two major wars in southwest Asia from its headquarters in Qatar.

Africom will also be composed of both military and civilian personnel, including officers from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the commander of the new command will have both a military and a civilian deputy. On 10 July 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the President had nominated four-star General William E. “Kip” Ward to be the commander of Africom. General Ward, an African-American who was commissioned into the infantry in 1971, is currently serving as the deputy commander of the European Command. Previously he served as the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) in Mogadishu, Somalia during “Operation Restore Hope” in 1992-1994, commander of the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia during “Operation Joint Forge” in 2002-2003, and chief of the U.S. Office of Military Cooperation at the American Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. The novel structure of the new command reflects the fact that Africom will be charged with overseeing both traditional military activities and programs that are funded through the State Department budget.

WHAT IS AFRICOM’S MISSION?

The Bush administration has emphasized the uniqueness of this hybrid structure as evidence that the new command has only benign purposes. In the words of Theresa Whelan, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August 2007, while “there are fears that Africom represents a militarization of U.S. foreign policy in Africa and that Africom will somehow become the lead U.S. Government interlocutor with Africa. This fear is unfounded [2].” Therefore, Bush administration officials insist that the purpose of Africom is misunderstood.

As Theresa Whelan put it in her congressional testimony:

"Some people believe that we are establishing Africom solely to fight terrorism, or to secure oil resources, or to discourage China. This is not true. Violent extremism is cause for concern, and needs to be addressed, but this is not Africom’s singular mission. Natural resources represent Africa’s current and future wealth, but in a fair market environment, many benefit. Ironically, the U.S., China and other countries share a common interest—that of a secure environment. Africom is about helping Africans build greater capacity to assure their own security.

DoD recognizes and applauds the leadership role that individual African countries and multi-lateral African organizations are taking in the promotion of peace, security and stability on the continent. For example, Africom can provide effective training, advisory and technical support to the development of the African Standby Force. This is exactly the type of initiative and leadership needed to address the diverse and unpredictable global security challenges the world currently faces. The purpose of Africom is to encourage and support such African leadership and initiative, not to compete with it or discourage it. U.S. security is enhanced when African nations themselves endeavor to successfully address and resolve emergent security issues before they become so serious that they require considerable international resources and intervention to resolve [3]."

On closer examination, however, the difference between Africom and other commands — and the allegedly “unfounded” nature of its implications for the militarization of the continent—are not as real or genuine as the Bush administration officials would have us believe. Of course Washington has other interests in Africa besides making it into another front in its Global War on Terrorism, maintaining and extending access to energy supplies and other strategic raw materials, and competing with China and other rising economic powers for control over the continent’s resources. These include helping Africans deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and other emerging diseases, strengthening and assisting peacekeeping and conflict resolution efforts, and responding to humanitarian disasters. But it is simply disingenuous to suggest that accomplishing these three objectives is not the main reason that Washington is now devoting so much effort and attention to the continent.

Indeed, General Ward, his military deputy Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, and the other professional military offices who will actually run Africom have made it clear in their public statements that they are under no illusion about the purpose of Africom or about its primary missions. Thus, General Ward cited America’s growing dependence on African oil as a priority issue for Africom when he appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on 13 March 2008 and went on to proclaim that combating terrorism would be “Africom’s number one theater-wide goal.”[4] He barely mentioned development, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping, or conflict resolution. And in a presentation by Vice Admiral Moeller at an Africom conference held at Fort McNair on 18 February 2008, he declared that protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market” was one of Africom’s “guiding principles” and specifically cited “oil disruption,” “terrorism,” and the “growing influence” of China as major “challenges” to U.S. interests in Africa [5].

And of course Washington would prefer that selected friendly regimes take the lead in meeting these objects, so that the United States can avoid direct military involvement in Africa, particularly at a time when the U.S. military is so deeply committed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and preparing for possible attacks on Iran. The hope that the Pentagon can build up African surrogates who can act on behalf of the United States is precisely why Washington is providing so much security assistance to these regimes and why it would like to provide even more in the future. Indeed, this is actually one of the main reasons that Africom is being created at this time.

WHY IS AFRICOM BEING CREATED NOW?

So why is Africom being created and why now? First, the Bush administration would like to significantly expand its security assistance programs for regimes that are willing to act as surrogates, for friendly regimes—particularly in countries with abundant oil and natural gas supplies—and for efforts to increase its options for more direct military involvement in the future; but it has had some difficulty getting the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon to provide the required funding or to devoting the necessary attention and energy to accomplish these tasks. Using a number of new security assistance channels—which are described in detail below—the Bush administration has increased the value of U.S. arms deliveries and military training programs for Africa from about $100 million in 2001 to approximately $600-800 million in 2008. But the administration wants Africom to spend far more money on security assistance in the coming years—as well as on U.S. military exercises in Africa; the operations of the Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa—including continuing attacks on Somalia—conducted from the U.S. base in Djibouti and base improvements at the U.S. base in Djibouti and at local military facilities elsewhere on the continent; expanded naval operations, particularly off the Gulf of Guinea; and setting up the new Africom headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany (including the creation of a Joint Intelligence Operations Center, a Theater Special Operations Command for Africa, and regional Africom offices in five African countries).

The creation of Africom will allow the White House to go to the U.S. Congress and argue that the establishment of Africom demonstrates the importance of Africa for U.S. national security and the administration’s commitment to give the continent the attention that it deserves. If Africa is so important and if the administration’s actions show that it really wants to do all sorts of good things for Africa, it hopes that the next president will be in a much stronger position to make a convincing case that the legislature must appropriate substantially greater amounts of money to fund the new command’s operations. And within the Pentagon, the establishment of Africom as a unified command under the authority of a high-ranking officer with direct access to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will put the new command in a much stronger position to compete with other command for resources, manpower, and influence over policymaking.

Secondly, key members of the Bush administration, a small, but growing and increasingly vocal group of legislators, and influential think tanks have become more and more alarmed by the growing efforts of China to expand its access to energy supplies and other resources from Africa and to enhance its political and economic influence throughout the continent. These “alarmists” point to the considerable resources that China is devoting to the achievement of these goals and to the engagement of Chinese officials at the highest level—including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, both of who have made tours of the continent and have hosted high-level meetings in Beijing with African heads of state—as evidence of a “grand strategy” on the part of China that jeopardizes U.S. national security interests and that is aimed, ultimately, at usurping the West’s position on the continent. The creation of Africom, therefore, should be seen as one element of a broad effort to develop a “grand strategy” on the part of the United States that will counter, and eventually defeat, China’s efforts. It should also be understood as a measure that is intended to demonstrate to Beijing that Washington will match China’s actions, thus serving as a warning to the Chinese leadership that they should restrain themselves or face possible consequences to their relationship with America as well as to their interests in Africa.

WHAT WILL AFRICOM DO?

So, what will Africom actually do when it becomes fully operational? Basically, it will take over the implementation of a host of military, security cooperation, and security assistance programs, which are funded through either the State Department or the Defense Department.

BILATERAL AND MULTILATERAL JOINT TRAINING PROGRAMS AND MILITARY EXERCISES

The United States provides military training to African military personnel through a wide variety of training and education programs. In addition, it conducts military exercises in Africa jointly with African troops and also with the troops of its European allies to provide training to others and also to train its own forces for possible deployment to Africa in the future. These include the following:

FLINTLOCK 2005 AND 2007

These are Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) exercises conducted by units of the U.S. Army Special Forces and the U.S. Army Rangers, along with contingents from other units, to provide training experience both for American troops and for the troops of African countries (small numbers of European troops are also involved in these exercises). Flintlock 2005 was held in June 2005, when more than one thousand U.S. personnel were sent to North and West Africa for counter-terrorism exercises in Algeria, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Chad that involved more than three thousand local service members. In April 2007, U.S. Army Special Forces went to Niger for the first part of Flintlock 2007 and in late August 2007, some 350 American troops arrived in Mali for three weeks of Flintlock 2007 exercises with forces from Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

TRANS-SAHARAN COUNTER-TERRORISM PARTNERSHIP (TSCTP)

Both Flintlock exercises were conducted as part of Operation Enduring Freedom—Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) which now links the United States with eight African countries: Mali, Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. In 2004, the TSCTP was created to replace the Pan-Sahel Counter-Terrorism Initiative, which was initiated in 2002. The TSCTP also involves smaller, regular training exercises conducted by U.S. Army Special Forces throughout the region. Although changing budgetary methodology makes it difficult to be certain, it appears that the TSCTP received some $31 million in FY 2006, nearly $82 million in FY 2007, and $10 million in FY 2008.

EAST AFRICA COUNTER-TERRORISM INITIATIVE (EACTI)

The East Africa Counter-Terrorism Initiative is a training program similar to the TSCTP. Established in 2003 as a multi-year program with $100 million in funding, the EACTI has provided training to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.

AFRICA CONTINGENCY OPERATIONS TRAINING AND ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (ACOTA)

This program, which began operating in 2002, replaces the African Crisis Response Initiative launched in 1997 by the Clinton administration. In 2004, it became part of the Global Peace Operations Initiative. ACOTA is officially designed to provide training to African military forces to improve their ability to conduct peacekeeping operations, even if they take place in hostile environments. But since the training includes both defensive and offensive military operations, it also enhances the ability of participating forces to engage in police operations against unarmed civilians, counter-insurgency operations, and even conventional military operations against the military forces of other countries.

By FY 2007, nineteen African countries were participating in the ACOTA program (Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia). In 2004, ACOTA became a part of the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) and the Bush Administration’s FY 2008 budget includes a request for a little more than $40 million for ACOTA activities. The GPOI itself, a multilateral, five-year program that aims to train 75,000 troops—mostly from African countries—by 2010, will receive more than $92 million under the president’s FY 2008 budget, which also provides $5 million to reorganize the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, $16 million to reorganize the Liberian military, and $41 million to help integrate the Sudan People’s Liberation Army into the national army as part of the peace process for southern Sudan.

INTERNATIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROGRAM (IMET)

The IMET program brings African military officers to military academies and other military educational institutions in the United States for professional training. Nearly all African countries participate in the program—including Libya for the first time in FY 2008—and in FY 2006 (the last year for which country figures are available—it trained 14,731 students from the African continent (excluding Egypt) at a cost of $14.7 million.

U.S. PRIVATE MILITARY CONTRACTORS IN AFRICA

In FY 2003, the State Department awarded five-year contracts worth $500,000 each to DynCorp and to Pacific Architects and Engineers to train and equip the new Liberian armed forces, to train and equip the Southern Sudanese military as part of the implementation of the peace agreement for Southern Sudan, and to train and equip African troops from all over the continent as part of the GPOI and ACOTA programs. In February 2008, the State Department announced that it would be awarding more than $1 billion worth of contracts in Africa for the next five-year period (2009-2013) to as many as four private military contractors [6].

FOREIGN MILITARY SALES PROGRAM (FMS)

This program sells U.S. military equipment to African countries; such sales are conducted by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency of the Defense Department. The U.S. government provides loans to finance the purchase of virtually all of this equipment through the Foreign Military Financing Program (FMF), but repayment of these loans by African governments is almost always waived, so that they amount to free grants. In FY 2006, sub-Saharan African countries received a total of nearly $14 million in FMF funding, and the Maghrebi countries of Morocco and Tunisia received almost another $21 million; for FY 2007, the Bush administration requested nearly $15 million for sub-Saharan Africa and $21 million for the Morocco and Tunisia; and for FY 2008, the administration requested nearly $8 million for sub-Saharan Africa and nearly $6 million for the Maghreb.

DIRECT COMMERCIAL SALES PROGRAM (DCS)

Under this program, the Office of Defense Trade Controls of the Department of State licenses the sale of police equipment (including pistols, revolvers, shotguns, rifles, and crowd control chemicals) by private U.S. companies to foreign military forces, paramilitary units, police, and other government agencies. In FY 2008, American firms are expected to deliver more than $175 million worth of this kind of hardware to Algeria through the DCS program, along with $2 million worth for Botswana, $3 million worth for Kenya, $19 million worth for Morocco, $17 million worth for Nigeria, and $61 million worth for South Africa. Citing the commercial nature of these sales, the State Department refuses to release any further information on these transactions to the public on the grounds that this is “proprietary information,” i.e. this information is the private property of the companies involved.

AFRICAN COASTAL AND BORDER SECURITY PROGRAM (ACBS)

This program provides specialized equipment (such as patrol vessels and vehicles, communications equipment, night vision devices, and electronic monitors and sensors) to African countries to improve their ability to patrol and defend their own coastal waters and borders from terrorist operations, smuggling, and other illicit activities. In some cases, airborne surveillance and intelligence training also may be provided. In FY 2006, the ACBS Program received nearly $4 million in FMF funding, and Bush administration requested $4 million in FMF funding for the program in FY 2007. No dedicated funding was requested for FY 2008, but the program may be revived in the future.

EXCESS DEFENSE ARTICLES PROGRAM (EDA)

This program is designed to conduct ad hoc transfers of surplus U.S. military equipment to foreign governments. Transfers to African recipients have included the transfer of C-130 transport planes to South Africa and Botswana, trucks to Uganda, M-16 rifles to Senegal, and coastal patrol vessels to Nigeria.

ANTI-TERRORISM ASSISTANCE PROGRAM (ATA)

The ATA program was created in 1983—under the administration of the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security—to provide training, equipment, and technology to countries all around the world to support their participation in America’s Global War on Terrorism. In FY 2006, Sub-Saharan Africa received $9.6 million in ATA funding; for FY 2007, the administration requested $11.8 million and for FY 2008, the request was $11.5.

The largest ATA program in Africa is targeted at Kenya, where it helped created the Kenyan Antiterrorism Police Unit (KAPU) in 2004 to conduct anti-terrorism operations, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in 2004 to coordinate anti-terrorism activities (although the unit was disbanded by the Kenyan government in 2005, and is now training and equipping members of a multi-agency, coast guard-type unit to patrol Kenya’s coastal waters. Between 2003 and 2005 (the most recent years for which this information is available), ATA provided training both in Kenya and in the United States to 454 Kenyan police, internal security, and military officers in courses on “Preventing, Interdicting, and Investigating Acts of Terrorism,” “Crisis Response,” “Post-Blast Investigation,” “Rural Border Operation,” and “Terrorist Crime Scene Investigation.” The creation of the KAPU was financed with $10 million in from the FY 2003 Peacekeeping Operations Appropriation for Kenya, along with $622,000 from ATA; the ATA spent $21 million on training for Kenya in FY 2004 $3.5 in FY 2005, and another $3.2 in FY 2006. The administration requested $2.9 for FY 2007 and an additional $5.5 in FY 2008.

The second largest ATA program in Africa at present is one used to help fund the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP). For FY 2007, the administration requested $7.2 million in ATA funding for the TSCTP and for FY 2008 requested another $6 million in ATA funding for FY 2008 for Africa Regional activities, most of which may be used to fund the TSCTP.

ATA programs are also being used to train and equip police, internal security, and military forces in a number of other African countries, including Tanzania ($2.1 million in FY 2006), Mauritius ($903,000 in FY 2006), Niger ($905,000 in FY 2006), Chad ($625,000 in FY 2006), Senegal ($800,000 in FY 2006), Mali ($564,000 in FY 2006), Liberia ($220,000 in FY 2006), Ethiopia ($170,000 in FY 2006). Training courses provided to these countries includes topics like “Investigation of Terrorist Organizations,” “Rural Border Operations,” “Antiterrorism Instructor Training,” Terrorist Crime Scene Investigation,” and “Explosive Incident Countermeasures.” In Djibouti, this training helped to create the country’s National Crisis Management Unit, within the Ministry of the Interior, to respond to major national emergencies.

ATA utilizes training facilities at three International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) centers, one located in Botswana. In 2003, students from Botswana, Ethiopia, and Tanzania attended a course on “Terrorist Investigations” at the Botswana ILEA center. In 2004, students from Djibouti, Malawi, Uganda, and Zambia took the same course there. In 2005, students from Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania attended a course on “Combating Domestic and Transnational Terrorism at the Botswana ILEA center and students from Angola, Mozambique, Uganda, and Zambia took a course on the “Police Executive Role in Combating Terrorism.”

SECTION 1206, 1207, AND 902 PROGRAMS

These programs are funded through the Defense Department budget and are named for provisions approved by Congress in the FY 2006 and FY 2007 National Defense Authorization Acts. The Section 1206 program—known as the Global Equip and Train program—was initiated in FY 2007 and permits the Pentagon—on its own initiative and with little congressional oversight—to provide training and equipment to foreign military, police, and other security forces to “combat terrorism and enhance stability.” The program received $200 million in FY 2007 and has been authorized to spend $300 million in FY 2008 for programs in fourteen countries, including Algeria, Chad, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sao Tome and Principe. In addition to paying for the cost of sending private military contractors to recipient countries to provide training, the fund is also being used to supply radar systems, surveillance equipment and sensors, GPS navigation devices, radios and other communications systems, computers, small boats, trucks, and trailers.

The Section 1207 program—known as the Security and Stabilization Assistance program—was also started in FY 2007. It allows the Defense Department to transfer equipment, training, and other assistance to the State Department to enhance its operations. The program received $100 million in FY 2007 and has been authorized to spend another $100 million in FY 2008. It has been used in Somalia and in Trans-Saharan Africa. The Section 902 program—known as the Combatant Commanders’ Initiative Fund—was created by Congress in FY 2008. It can be used by the commanders of Africom and other combatant commands to fund their own relief and reconstruction projects, rather than relying on the State Department or the Agency for International Development to undertake these efforts. The program received $25 million in FY 2008.

The Bush administration’s FY 2009 budget request calls for total funding for these programs to be increased to $800 million: $500 for the Equip and Train program, $200 million for the Security and Stabilization Assistance program, and $100 million for the Combatant Commanders’ Initiative Fund. Of this, an estimated $300-$400 million will go to provide training and equipment to military, paramilitary, and police forces in Africa.

COMBINED JOINT TASK FORCE-HORN OF AFRICA (CJTF-HOA)

In October 2002, the U.S. Central Command played the leading role in the creation of this joint task force that was designed to conduct naval and aerial patrols in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the eastern Indian Ocean as part of the effort to detect and counter the activities of terrorist groups in the region. Based at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, long the site of a major French military base, the CJTF-HOA is made up of approximate 1,400 U.S. military personnel—primarily sailors, Marines, and Special Forces troops—that works with a multi-national naval force composed of American naval vessels along with ships from the navies of France, Italy, and Germany, and other NATO allies.

The CJTF-FOA provided intelligence to Ethiopia in support of its invasion of Somalia in January 2007 and used military facilities in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya to launch air raids and missile strikes in January and June of 2007 and May of 2008 against alleged al-Qaeda members involved in the Council of Islamic Courts in Somalia. The command authority for CJTF-HOA, currently under the U.S. Central Command, will be transferred to Africom by 2008. Under the initial five-year agreement with Djibouti, the CJTF-HOA base occupied less than a hundred acres, but under a new five-year agreement signed in 2007, the base has expanded to some five hundred acres.

In addition, the CJTF-HOA has established three permanent contingency operating locations that have been used to mount attacks on Somalia, one at the Kenyan naval base at Manda Bay and two others at Hurso and Bilate in Ethiopia [9]. A U.S. Navy Special Warfare Task Unit is currently based at Manda Bay, where it is providing training in anti-terrorism operations and coastal patrol missions [8].

JOINT TASK FORCE AZTEC SILENCE (JTFAS)

In December 2003, the U.S. European Command created this joint task force under the commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet (Europe) to carry out counter-terrorism operations in North and West Africa and to coordinate U.S. operations with those of countries in those regions. Specifically, JTFAS was charged with conducting surveillance operations using the assets of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and to share information, along with intelligence collected by U.S. intelligence agencies, with local military forces. The primary assets employed in this effort are a squadron of U.S. Navy P-3 “Orion” based in Sigonella, Sicily. In March 2004, P-3 aircraft from this squadron and reportedly operating from the southern Algerian base at Tamanrasset were deployed to monitor and gather intelligence on the movements of Algerian Salafist guerrillas operating in Chad and to provide this intelligence to Chadian forces engaged in combat against the guerrillas [9].

And, in a particularly ominous incident, in September 2007, an American C-130 “Hercules” cargo plane stationed in Bamako, Mali, as part of the Flintlock 2007 exercises was deployed to resupply Malian counter-insurgency units engaged in fighting with Tuareg forces and was hit by Tuareg groundfire. No U.S. personnel were injured and the plane returned safely to the capital, but the incident constitutes a major extension of the U.S. role in counter-insurgency warfare and highlights the dangers of America’s deepening involvement in the internal conflicts that persist in so many African countries [10].

NAVAL OPERATIONS IN THE GULF OF GUINEA

Although American naval forces operating in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea and other areas along Africa’s shores are formally under the command of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, based in the Mediterranean, and other U.S. Navy commands, Africom will also help coordinate naval operations along the African coastline. As U.S. Navy Admiral Henry G. Ulrich III, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces (Europe) put it to reporters at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, in June 2007, “we hope, as they [Africom] stand up, to fold into their intentions and their planning,” and his command “will adjust, as necessary” as Africom becomes operational [11].

The U.S. Navy has been steadily increasing the level and pace of its operations in African waters in recent years, including the deployment of two aircraft carrier battle groups off the coast of West Africa as part of the “Summer Pulse” exercise in June 2004, when identical battle groups were sent to every ocean around the globe to demonstrate that the United States was still capable of bringing its military power to bear simultaneously in every part of the world despite its commitment to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

More recently, American naval forces led an unprecedented voyage by a NATO fleet that circumnavigated the African continent from August to September 2007. Under the command of its flagship, the guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Normandy, the ships of Standing NATO Maritime Group One—composed of warships from Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, and the United States—conducted what were described as “presence operations” in the Gulf of Guinea, then proceeded to South Africa, where they participated in the Amazolo exercises being held by the South African Navy, and then sailed to the waters off the coast of Somalia to conduct more “presence operations” in a region which has experienced an upsurge in piracy. Later that same month, the guided missile destroyer U.S.S. Forrest Sherman arrived off South Africa to engage in a separate joint training exercise with the South African Navy frigate S.A.S. Amatola.

And in another significant expansion of U.S. Navy operations in Africa, the U.S.S. Fort McHenry amphibious assault ship began a six-month deployment to the Gulf of Guinea in November 2007, the first phase of the Africa Partnership Station Initiative. The U.S.S. Fort McHenry was accompanied by the High Speed Vessel HSV-2 “Swift” (the prototype for a new fast assault ship capable of operating in shallow, coastal waters) and two maritime prepositioning ships— the U.S.N.S. 2nd Lieutenant. John P. Bobo and U.S.N.S. Lance Corporal Roy M. Wheat—from Maritime Prepositioning Ship Squadron 1, one of three prepositioning squadrons used to stockpile equipment at strategic locations around the world. The ships made ports of call in Senegal, Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, Sao Tome and Principe, Gabon, and Angola, and trained more than 1,200 sailors and other military personnel from these countries.

During their deployment, the ships conducted three weeks of amphibious assault exercises off Monrovia, Liberia, (known as Western Africa Training Cruise 2008) in March 2008 and conducted similar exercises off of Dakar, Senegal, in April 2008 before returning to Norfolk, Virginia. Its mission was to serve as a “floating schoolhouse” to train local forces in port and oil-platform security, search-and rescue missions, and medical and humanitarian assistance. According to Admiral Ulrich, the deployment matched up perfectly with the work of the new Africa Command. “If you look at the direction that the Africa Command has been given and the purpose of standing up the Africom, you’ll see that the (Gulf of Guinea) mission is closely aligned,” he told reporters in June 2007 [12].

In February 2008, the U.S. 6th Fleet conducted seven days of joint maritime exercises (known as Exercise Maritime Safari 2008) at Nigeria’s Ikeja Air Force Base with the Nigerian Navy and Air Force as part of the African Partnership Station Initiative. The American forces involved included P-3 “Orion” aerial surveillance aircraft from the squadron based in Sigonella, Sicily, and elements of the 6th Fleet’s Maritime Patrol Operations Command Center. The highlight of the exercises was a search and rescue exercise off of Lagos.

The U.S.S. Forrest Sherman and the U.S.S. Normandy, as part of the 6th Fleet’s Southeast Africa Task Force, made the first tour by American warships of the waters off East Africa in 2007 with visit to eight countries. The Southeast Africa Task Force made its second voyage in April 2008, when the landing ship dock U.S.S. Ashland visited Madagascar, Mauritius, and Reunion.

BASE ACCESS AGREEMENTS FOR COOPERATIVE SECURITY LOCATIONS AND FORWARD OPERATING SITES

Over the past few years, the Bush administration has negotiated base access agreements with the governments of Botswana, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierre Leone, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zambia. Under these agreements, the United States gains access to local military bases and other facilities so that they can be used by American forces as transit bases or as forward operating bases for combat, surveillance, and other military operations. They remain the property of the host African government and are not American bases in a legal sense, so that U.S. government officials are telling the truth—at least technically—when they deny that the United States has bases in these countries.


In addition to these publicly acknowledged base access agreements, the Pentagon was granted permission to deploy P-3 “Orion” aerial surveillance aircraft at the airfield at Tamanrasset in southern Algeria under an agreement reportedly signed in during Algerian President Aldelaziz Bouteflika’s visit to Washington in July 2003 [13. The Brown and Root-Condor, a joint venture between a subsidiary of the American company, Halliburton, and the Algerian state-owned oil company, Sonatrach, is currently under contract to enlarge the military air bases at Tamanrasset and at Bou Saada. In December 2006, Salafist forces used an improvised mine and small arms to attack a convoy of Brown and Root-Condor employees who were returning to their hotel in the Algerian town of Bouchaaoui, killing an Algerian driver and wounding nine workers, including four Britons and one American [14].

WHERE WILL AFRICOM’S HEADQUARTERS BE BASED?

Over the coming year, there is one major issue related to the new command that remains to be resolved: whether and where in Africa will Africom establish a regional headquarters. A series of consultations with the governments of a number of African countries—including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti, Nigeria, and Kenya—following the announcement of Africom found than none of them were willing to commit to hosting the new command. The public response throughout Africa was so unanimously hostile to the idea of a permanent and highly visible American military presence on the continent that no African government—except that of Liberia—was willing to take the political risk of agreeing to host the new command.

This constitutes a signal victory for civil society all across the continent and an important demonstration that the dynamics of global relations and political relations within states have changed radically since the end of the Cold War. Even in Africa—once treated as a convenient arena for manipulation and intervention by both superpowers—the United States can no longer rely on compliant regimes to do its bidding and faces growing opposition from popular political organizations and civic institutions (political parties; newspapers and other independent media; churches, mosques, and other religious institutions; trade unions; community associations; human rights organizations; environmental groups; and private business interests) that are gaining more and more power to challenge U.S. policy. Privately, however, many African rulers have assured the United States that they are still eager to collaborate with the Pentagon in less visible ways, including participating in U.S. security assistance programs and agreeing to allow U.S. forces to use local military bases in times of crisis.

As a result, the Pentagon has been forced to reconsider its plans and in June 2007 Ryan Henry, the Principal Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, told reporters that the Bush administration now intended to establish what he called “a distributed command” that would be “networked” in several countries in different regions of the continent [15]. Under questioning before the Senate Africa Subcommittee on 1 August 2007, Deputy Assistant Secretary Whelan said that Liberia, Botswana, Senegal, and Djibouti were among the countries that had expressed support for Africom—although only Liberia has publicly expressed a willingness to play host to Africom personnel—which suggests that at least some of these countries may eventually agree to accommodate elements of Africom’s headquarters staff [16].

For the time being, therefore, Africom’s headquarters will be set up in Stuttgart, Germany. In its FY 2009 budget request, the Bush administration is asking for $398 million to create and staff the new command. This will cover the cost of creating an Africom intelligence capacity, including a Joint Intelligence Operations Center; launching a stand-alone Theater Special Operations Command for Africom; deploying support aircraft to Africa; building a limited presence on the African continent that is expected to include the establishment of two of five regional offices projected by Africom; and conducting training, exercises, and theater security cooperation activities over the coming year.

However, the Pentagon is already experiencing enormous difficulty assembling a staff for Africom—which was originally expected to total some 1,300 personnel—because it has so few officers with the required training and expertise. Moreover, the Pentagon has had to cut back its ambitious plan to undertake more development and relief work in Africa because of growing resistance from the State Department and the Agency for International Development, as well as increasing opposition from private U.S. aid agencies. Even Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently conceded, “I think in some respects we probably didn’t do as good a job as we should have when we rolled out Africom.” Gates noted that Africom was created by his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and argued that as the United States proceeded with the creation of Africom, “I don’t think we should push African governments to a place they don’t really want to go in terms of relationships [17.”

WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH AFRICOM?

Africom became fully operational on 1 October 2008, just a month before the election of Senator Barack Obama to succeed President Bush. Thus, it will be up to president-elect Barack Obama to decide whether or not to follow the path marked out by the Bush administration—a strategy based on a determination to depend upon the use of military force in Africa and elsewhere to satisfy America’s continuing addiction to oil—or to chart a new path based on an international and multi-lateral partnership with African nations and with other countries that have a stake in the continent (including China and India) to promote sustainable economic development, democracy, and human rights in Africa and a new global energy order based on the use of clean, safe, and renewable resources.

The best indications that we have about what course the Obama administration will pursue on Africom come from the answers that the Senator Obama gave to the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation in response to their Presidential Town Hall Meeting Africa Questionnaire in October 2007 and in the remarks made by Whitney W. Schneidman (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Clinton administration and adviser on Africa to the Obama campaign) to the Constituency for Africa’s 2008 Ronald H. Brown African Affairs Series at the National Press Club on 24 September 2008.

In his response to the Sullivan Foundation questionnaire, Senator Obama maintained that Africom “should serve to coordinate and synchronize our military activities with our other strategic objectives in Africa.” But he contended “there will be situations that require the United States to work with its partners in Africa to fight terrorism with lethal force.” And he went on to assert “having a unified command operating in Africa will facilitate this action [18].”

This statement, when considered alongside Senator Obama’s campaign statements on the need to intensify U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan and on the right of the United States to make unilateral military strikes into Pakistan against alleged members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist organizations in violation of that country’s sovereignty, demonstrate that he is genuinely convinced of the necessity and legitimacy of the Global War on Terrorism and, at least implicitly, of the necessity and legitimacy of recent U.S. military attacks on Somalia. Since Vice Admiral Moeller cites the attacks on Somalia as a model for the type of activity that Africom expects to conduct all across the continent[19], this suggests that the Obama administration will continue to expand the entire spectrum of U.S. military operations in Africa, including increasing U.S. military involvement in the internal affairs of African countries (including both counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations) and the direct use of U.S. combat troops to intervene in African conflicts.

Therefore, according to Whitney Schneidman, the Obama administration “will create a Shared Partnership Program to build the infrastructure to deliver effective counter-terrorism training, and to create a strong foundation for coordinated action against al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Africa and elsewhere.” He explained that the proposed program “will provide assistance with information sharing, operations, border security, anti-corruption programs, technology, and the targeting of terrorist financing.” In particular, Schneidman argued “in the Niger Delta, we should become more engaged not only in maritime security, but in working with the Nigerian government, the European Union, the African Union, and other stakeholders to stabilize the region [20].”

In addition, President Obama is certain to come under pressure from business interests and lobbyists (especially from the oil companies); certain think tanks and NGOs; officials at the State Department, the Agency for International Development, and the Pentagon; and from some African governments to pursue the plan for Africom initiated by the Bush administration. It is likely, therefore, that the Obama administration will continue the militarization of U.S. policy toward Africa unless it comes under pressure to change direction. However, members of the U.S. Congress are now beginning to give Africom the critical scrutiny it deserves and to express serious skepticism about its mission and operations. Moreover, a number of concerned organizations and individuals in the United States and in Africa—the Resist Africom Campaign—came together in August 2006 to educate the American people about Africom and to mobilize public and congressional opposition to the creation of the new command. And the Resist Africom Campaign will continue to press the Obama administration to abandon the Bush plan for Africom and pursue a policy toward Africa based on a genuine partnership with the people of Africa, multi-lateralism, democracy, human rights, and grass-roots development [21].


*Daniel Volman (dvolman1@verizon.net) is the Director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC, (www.concernedafricascholars/african-security-research-project), and a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars. He is a specialist on U.S. military policy in Africa and African security issues and has been conducting research and writing on these issues for more than thirty years.

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


NOTES:

1. Daniel Volman, “The Bush Administration and African Oil: The Security Implications of US Energy Policy,” Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 30, No. 98 (December 2003), pp. 573-584; Michael Klare and Daniel Volman, “Africa’s Oil and American National Security,” Current History, Vol. 103, No. 673 (May 2004), pp. 226-231; Daniel Volman, “The African ‘Oil Rush’ and the Scramble for Africa’s Oil,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 4 (May 2006), pp. 609-628; and Michael Klare and Daniel Volman, “America, China and the Scramble for Africa’s Oil,” Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 33, No. 108 (June 2006), pp. 297-309; Daniel Volman, “Africom: The New U.S. Military Command,” online article posted on Pambazuka.org on 7 November 2007 and on AllAfrica.com on 9 November 2007; Daniel Volman, “U.S. to Create New Regional Military Command for Africa: Africom,” Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 34, No. 114 (December 2007), pp. 737-744; Daniel Volman, “Why America Wants Military HQ in Africa,” New African, No. 469 (January 2008), pp. 36-40; and Daniel Volman, “Africom: What Is It and What Will It Do?” Bulletin of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, No. 78 (August 2008).

2. Theresa Whelan, Exploring the U.S. Africa Command and a New Strategic Relationship with Africa, Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on African Affairs, Washington, DC, 1 August 2007, electronic version accessed at www.loc.gov on 6 August 2007.

3. Theresa Whelan, Exploring the U.S. Africa Command and a New Strategic Relationship with Africa, Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on African Affairs, Washington, DC, 1 August 2007, electronic version accessed at www.loc.gov on 6 August 2007.

4. General William E. Ward, Written Statement, Testimony Before the House Armed Services Committee, 13 March 2008, pp. 6-9, electronic version accessed at www.loc.gov on 14 March 2008.

5. Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, United States Africa Command: Partnership, Security, and Stability, Powerpoint Presentation at the Conference on Transforming National Security: Africom—An Emerging Command organized by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources and by the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, DC, 18 February 2008, pp. 3-4.

6. Office of Logistics Management, Department of State, AFRICAP Program Re-Compete, 21 February 2008, electronic version accessed at www.fbo.gov on 5 March 2008; see also, David C. Walsh, “Africom: Stabilizing a Region in Chaos,” Serviam, Vol. 3, No. 2), pp. 6-12.

7. Thomas P. M. Barnett, “Africa Command: Inside the Mission,” Esquire, 19 June 2007, electronic version accessed at www.esquire.com/features on 3 May 2007 and “The Americans Have Landed,” Esquire, 27 June 2007, pp. 4-9, electronic version accessed at www.esquire.com/features on 3 May 2008.

8. Steve Cline, “Across Kenya, U.S. Forces share knowledge, assistance,” U.S. Central Command news release, 2 May 2008, electronic version accessed at www.hoa.cencom.mil on 7 May 2008.

9. “US deploys further forces in Africa,” Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst, 4 August 2004, electronic version accessed at www.jiaa.janes.com on 24 October 2004 and “US to bolster counter-terrorism assistance to Africa,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, 6 October 2004, electronic version accessed at www.jiaa.janes.com on 24 October 2004.

10. Tiemoko Diallo, “U.S. plane hit by gunfire on resupply flight in Mali,” Washington Post, 13 September 2007, electronic version of Reuters news service article accessed at www.washingtonpost,com on 14 September 2007 and Almahady Cisse, “Gunmen Hit U.S. Military Plane in Mali, Washington Post, 13 September 2007, electronic version of Associated Press news service article accessed at www.washingtonpost.com on 14 September 2007.

11. Gerry Gilmore, “U.S. Naval Forces Europe Prepares for AFRICOM Stand Up,” American Forces Press Service, 1 June 2007, electronic version accessed at www.defenselink.mill on 4 September 2007.

12. Gerry Gilmore, “U.S. Naval Forces Europe Prepares for AFRICOM Stand Up,” American Forces Press Service, 1 June 2007, electronic version accessed at www.defenselink.mill on 4 September 2007.

13. “US deploys further forces in Africa,” Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst, 4 August 2004, electronic version accessed at www.jiaa.janes.com on 24 October 2004, “US to bolster counter-terrorism assistance to Africa,” Jane’s Defense Weeky, 6 October 2004, electronic version accessed at www.jiaa.janes.com on 24 October 2004, and Craig S. Smith, “U.S. Training African Forces to Uproot Terrorists,” New York Times, 11 May 2004, accessed at www.nytimes.com on 14 May 2004.

14. Craig S. Smith, “Qaeda-Linked Group Claims Algerian Attack,” New York Times, 13 December 2006, electronic version accessed at www.nytimes.com on 13 December 2006.

15. Simon Tisdall, “Africa united in rejecting U.S. request for military HQ,” Guardian, 26 June 2007, electronic version accessed at www.guardian.co.uk on 30 August 2007 and Craig Whitlock, “North Africa Reluctant to Host U.S. Command,” Washington Post, 24 June 2007, electronic version accessed at www.washingtonpost.com on 24 June 2007.

16. Deborah Tate, “US Officials Brief Congress on New Military Command for Africa, Voice of America, Voice of America News, 1 August 2007, electronic version accessed at www.voanew.com on 30 August 2007.

17. Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Africa Command Trims Its Aspirations,” Washington Post, 1 June 2008, p. 18, electronic version accessed at www.washingtonpost.com on 20 June 2008.

18. Senator Barack Obama, “Presidential Town Hall Meeting Africa Questionnaire,” Undated, but posted in October 2007, electronic version accessed at www.thesullivanfoundation.org/foundation on 9 July 2008.

19. Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, United States Africa Command: Partnership, Security, and Stability, Keynote Address at the Conference on Transforming National Security: Africom—An Emerging Command organized by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Forces Transformation and Resources and by the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, DC, 18 February 2008.

20. Whitney W. Schneidman, “Obama’s Three Objectives for Continent,” Online Guest Column for AllAfrica.Com, 29 September 2008, electronic version accessed at www.allafrica.com on 10 November 2008.

21. For more information about the Resist Africom Campaign, go to the website at www.resistafricom.org

Police in custody of Zimbabwe’s health

Silence Chihuri

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52462

Thousands of Zimbabweans today are travelling on Emergency Travel Documents, commonly referred to as ETDs. The reason is not because they can’t afford or do not want passports, but rather the ministry of home affairs has been failing to issue people with their rightful documents due to a lack of capacity to do so.

Several ministries that are important to the smooth running of our country are on their knees. These include the ministries of health, education, agriculture, local government and finance not to mention defence and the thorny home affairs.

This is typical of the breakdown of functionality at the heart of central government in Zimbabwe. Nothing is working and nothing is happening. Even the eagerly awaited government of national unity which most Zimbabweans saw as a way out of the abyss has failed to take off.

That said, when it comes to the button sticks wielded by the police, the torture cells in the dilapidated police stations dotted around the country - especially in the “used to be urban” centres - the ministry of home affairs seems to by at least marginally functional.

They say that a bad tradesman always blames his tools, he does not blame himself. The ZANU PF government has been apportioning blame left right and centre except at themselves. Nothing has been their making and everything is the work of enemies of the state; of which countless lists have been compiled with a view for meting out punishment.

The ministry of home affairs is one government department that never used to be that important. In a country like Zimbabwe ministries such as tourism, finance, industry and commerce have always been more in the lime light than small police units. Not many people even knew where the famous Depa (affectionate name for Tomlinson Deport) was located.

I can still remember in late 1980s and early 1990s when my uncle Wilbert Chihuri was the director general of the formerly Zimbabwe Tourist Development Corporation ZTDC, now called the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority and headed by Karikoga Kaseke. He was a very highly regarded individual who probably held more say than the commissioner of police today.

That’s just how much things have changed in Zimbabwe. The way things are is such that the police are more important than even nurses and doctors. I do not mean to say that the police are nothing but picture this, nurses and doctors save lives while the police are there only to protect and keep them!
Even when a person is severely assaulted, the police may be called in simply to investigate the cause of the assault but they would still have to quickly pass the victim into the custody of nurses and doctors who must ensure that the person lives.

Today in Zimbabwe the keepers of lives are now the savers or the takers of them because they have been transformed into a tool that can be used for that purpose. If the police want you to live, you live, if they want you to be hurt again you can be hurt and quite badly so! You only need to belong to the opposition to experience that.

As for nurses and doctors well, their status and relevance has been severely eroded because the hospitals are now death centres as opposed to the health centres. No one cares if one is a nurse or a doctor especially when the patients are as much in control of their own survival as the health professionals at their bedside.

For example, if a patient brings their own medicines to the hospital the nurses will simply check on them! In that kind of situation how can they be the last line of life? Health in hospitals is now in the hands of the patients just as much as the nurses.

Unfortunately it is not the case with the police because instead of merely looking after people they can now also look for people and that can mean serious trouble.

This returns me to the thorny issue of the ministry of home affairs and why the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is adamant that they get it. Its not about equitable distribution of ministries, it is about the ministry and what it has been proven to be capable of doing that the MDC fear leaving it in the hands of ZANU PF.

Most of the MDC leaders have all at one point or another suffered at the hands of the police and they just do not want to take anymore chances. Under ZANU PF the budget for the police force has overtaken those of health and education. Most of the spending has gone towards acquiring repressive tools such water canons and anti-riot gear and tear gas canisters.

This has seen the health delivery system being completely compromised while the energies of the government are wasted on ensuring the police are well equipped to brutalise their own people. The education system has been equally run down because there is no longer any focus on that very essential foundation of the nation’s fabric.

In any other circumstance politicians would be clamouring to run the ministries of health or education or industry and commerce or finance, not the police.

Zimbabwe does not even have a department for immigration as it were, only customs officials who double up as immigration officials. That’s just how insignificant the ministry is supposed to be. But enter the police into the equation and it all changes.

With people leaving the country in droves there is no scope for a fully fledged immigration supervisory authority, and rightly so. Could an emigration unit put an end to the exodus then?

I really hope that the MDC - as badly as they seem to need the police on their side - genuinely want to transform the force into the former professional and highly acclaimed body that it used to be. It would be really sad if the police under the MDC auspices would continue to be the same ferocious tool of repression with new targets.

Given the history of African politics I would not rule that out completely. As glamorous and seemingly faultless opposition parties have been, they often turn into monsters once drenched and intoxicated with political power. Only time will tell.

And lastly to the passport or ETD saga week, surely it should have never been an issue at all. Morgan Tsvangirai is a man of the people and instead of mourning about someone of his stature not having a passport, he should have seized the opportunity to reconnect with the ordinary hardworking people of Zimbabwe who do not have passports, not by will or by design, but by the denial of a careless government.

There are so many Zimbabweans who are using ETD’s more often than they have used real passports and they also deserve to have the passports. Someone like Tsvangirai and his world acclaim would never be stranded anywhere on this planet just because he held no passport and events of this week can serve as testimony.

This is how our leaders lose the bigger picture of things. This is a real cause for concern in our country because a passport does not allow access to a person, it is the authorities of the country into which the person is entering that can determine the entry.

Similarly, in the scurry for the ministry of home affairs, the significance of the health and education system of our nation have been consigned to secondary status.

As long our politicians continue to have their priorities elsewhere i.e. passports and ministries, our problems are never going to end. What guarantee is that even if the issue of the ministry of home affairs is resolved another thorny issue will not emerge? What would happen then to the government of national disunity? Cry Zimbabwe the beloved country.

* Silence Chihuri writes for the NewZimbabwe.com among other online publications and is currently resident in Scotland. He can be contacted on silencechihuri@googlemail.com
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Hungry for a voice: The food crisis, the market, and socio-economic inequality

Jacques Depelchin

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52480

In order to live, one needs to eat; and in order to live, one needs more than just food. In a world ruled by worshippers of the market, it has come to be accepted that principles of justice and solidarity shall take second place to everything else. Indeed, that is why one hears more and more often of the distinction between justice and social justice – as if calling for the former will not automatically cover those most affected by the growing disappearance of justice and equality.

Given the current mentality, dominated by greed, selfishness, and selfish charity, it is worth remembering a few cautionary principles: beware of the names given to a problem or a disease or a person without the consent of that person. Always remember the Arawaks and those who welcomed Christopher Columbus and his party on what Columbus called Hispaniola. The Arawaks soon died of hunger and disease after welcoming the Europeans. Always remember those who resisted the conquest of their land because they were defending much more than their land. To remember requires much more than mining memories and archives, it will take listening with loving attention to the voices which tend to be ignored, to poets, to those who did die of hunger, to those who would like to speak for themselves as they are, whoever they are (Pygmies, !kung, or Hazabe).

As Ernest Wamba dia Wamba has pointed out, at times like these it is crucial to hear the thinking of ordinary people (e.g., people living in forests or deserts), on how they have understood food security. For example, among the Kongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, earth is a package of food and medicine provided by God so people can face hunger and illness. During slavery (in the USA), slave masters sometimes wondered how Africans survived without access to what the masters considered food. It did not occur to the latter that the Africans managed to invent more nutritious food than their masters.

The food crisis is not just about food, it is about understanding humanity and its relation to nature. How the issue is framed or problematised shall determine the process of rethinking and finding a solution which is satisfactory, primarily to those who have suffered the most from the predatory nature of the current and triumphant economic and financial system. For Wamba dia Wamba, ‘it is the destruction of Mother Earth and the building of walls between people and Mother Earth which is at the centre of the food crisis. In the process Mother Earth is transformed, sterilized and turned into the mother of profits for the rich. For the victims it is unconscionable that food should be destroyed in order to increase prices, make people suffer while generating huge profits for the destroyers of Mother Earth.’[1]

SETTING THE PARAMETERS

The current food crisis in the midst of a multiple crisis should provide a wake-up call for all those who are trying to provide solutions by focusing only on food. At first glance, there are at least two competing narratives; one set by those who have run the world and their allies, and the other by those who are expected to submit and accept the word of the self-appointed masters of the world. Formally speaking, the former set their own agendas, among other places via the G8 and the yearly Davos meetings. Those who are expected to submit are reduced to using the United Nations and its specialised agencies, and the World Social Forum. Soon the Security Council and its permanent members will be changed, but it will not matter since the G8 and Davos meetings have ensured that the decisions which do matter to them will no longer be taken within the UN system.

In other words, it is not only in justice, health or, more prosaically, air travel, that the class system has imposed itself; there is justice and health for the poor and justice and health for the rich. Indeed, if one looks more carefully, it is not difficult to detect that the super rich would like to separate themselves from the rest. But, no matter how hard they would like to distinguish themselves from the rest of humanity, there is only one humanity. Splitting it apart – as the atom was split – willl yield worse results than the process which led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Still, more than 50 years later, how many are willing, like Dwight McDonald, to see the dropping of those atomic bombs as the modernisation of Auschwitz and Dachau? Given what happened in the Second World War, (and, more importantly, in the centuries leading up to it), shouldn’t one ask if the current crises are the by-product of the same competition-to-death mentality which gave rise in several countries with the most advanced economies to political leadership that saw nothing wrong with getting rid of, once and for all, any racially defined group (be it Africans, Asians, Armenians, pygmies, Jews, Tutsi, Hutu)? Asking the question does not mean that one knows the answer. When one can see that the mindset of those genocidal times is still vibrant, it would be irresponsible not to ask questions like, who are the slaves, who are the Jews, who are the colonised? Asking these questions will help uncover, along the way, how poverty and hunger are created, who named them and why they are so named?

The mindset which has trampled humanity under different names – slavery, colonisation, holocaust, apartheid – has not retreated; it has grown like a cancer, destroying the living principle. At the same time, it passes itself off under names which disguise its lethal, predatory nature, such as bio-technology, which presents itself as promoting life when it is engaged in the process of killing, brutally, softly, and all the ways in between. Bio-technology is a misnomer; given the antecedents, its proper name should be thanato-technology: to live on planet earth according to death principles. The chain toward self-destruction has no end: to rape, to enslave, to colonise, to seek the final solution, to bantustanise, to ethnically cleanse a country. Humanity has yet to see the end of its genocidal tendencies and sequences. Under the previous submission processes, the responsibility could be traced back to some sort of state authority, but with submission to the market’s rules, responsibility and authority seems to be nowhere and everywhere.

Peoples and nations have been enslaved and colonised by other nations, but at the core of the process, the rules of the market have reigned supreme. The capitalist market has superseded all previous conquering, enslaving, and colonising mechanisms. Indeed, unlike the empires of old, the market (as guided by capitalist principles) has modernised (automated) the mechanisms of domination in ways imperial powers could never have dreamed of achieving. Through market mechanisms, a few former slaves or a few former colonised could become part of the ruling cliques, and in so doing move away from the miseries of hunger and poverty. In times when denunciations of corruption have become a perpetual mantra, the sweet murmurs of the market and the promise of greater wealth to be made through its labyrinths, gag and/or muffle the few voices trying to change course. Before trying to restrict the food crisis to the last few decades and to the usual culprits, one should revisit the histories of those who (since the inauguration of capitalism a few centuries ago) died of hunger in times when the words food crisis were not even uttered.[2] At least not in the manner one hears them today.

Increasingly, food is only accessible through the market, as is work, education, health, justice, birth, the right to exist, the right to breath clean air, and the right to drink to clean water. Everything which goes into making life worth living, into making a human being worth being a human being, is only accessible through mechanisms controlled by a few individuals, but above all by a mindset which is accountable to nobody. The market fundamentalists might say that this is an exaggeration, that they are just as interested in the above objectives as anyone else. As fundamentalists who have benefited from the market, understandably, their primary objective has been, is, and will be to maintain the prism of the market as key determinant in assessing life’s value. If the food crisis is not problematised from within this situation, the histories of those who were famished because of who they were (i.e., dispensable), then the exercise is more than likely to only provide solutions beneficial to the so-called discoverers of hunger and famine. Historically, the discoverers have never seen themselves, at least initially, as the possible and probable source of problems of a socio-economic nature which are now affecting more than 90% of the world’s population.

By discussing the current food crisis from the perspective of the last few decades, these very short-term analysts, consciously or unconsciously, are saying that the problem is momentary and conjunctural. It is neither and has been in the making for a very long time.[3] Sometimes, like now, the time span can be even shorter because of the emphasis on the concomitant financial, energy, and ecological crises. This essay would like to address the current food crisis from a perspective which goes back at least to 1491. As Ch. Mann has pointed out, 1492 as the starting point of a post-1492 narrative tends to give the impression that prior to 1492 there was nothing worth remembering. The dominant mindset which emerged out of the so-called discoveries emphasises only the positive aspects, to the exclusion of any aspect which might blemish its record.[4]

The term consciousness of evil is one which has been used to describe what happened during and after the Second World War. Fifty years later, one has slowly but irresistibly, slid into a situation leading to the eradication of people who stand in the way of the total and complete triumph of the will of the richest people of the earth. When Native Americans were driven out of their land, when they lost the material basis of their way of living, they died of hunger and disease. Centuries later, on a bigger scale, masses of people are being starved, while a few are stuffing themselves, to death.[5] Some, because they are not eating the proper food, others because they just overeat, excited, driven by never ending advertising campaigns. This killing, anti-humanity mindset has reached such a level of intensity that those who are its victims fail to grasp that they do not have to submit to it. All it would take is affirming humanity and the living principles.

THE CURRENT FOOD CRISIS SEEN FROM THE STARVED

From way back, if one is willing to listen carefully to the historical echoes of those who screamed against inhumanity, one can hear something like the following:

When people were punished through starvation they protested, but who were they? Slaves. They responded: We are not slaves, we are Africans who were enslaved. For having spoken they were killed.

The generic human being protested. The screams were heard, but she was a colonial subject. She was jailed, raped, sent to exile only for having spoken when she was supposed to keep silent.

The human being protested babies, children, old men and women. Protested. Followed by animals, birds, nature. Life protested against death. To no avail. The market must prevail, keeps prevailing, is kept prevailing. The most powerful so dictated.

The habit of not listening to human beings less powerful. The habit of raping with impunity. Led to humanitarianism, a discovery aimed at covering up crimes against humanity. By those who had refused to listen to humanity. And lost their humanity.

From Columbus to today, the discoverers have not changed. They changed tunes to reinforce their mindset, leading one to ask: was their discovery of humanitarianism a diversion or a negation of their own humanity?

Or are they saying there is a humanity? To be understood, represented, or defended – by them or their agents – through humanitarianism, charitably. And there is a humanity, a humanity against which no crime must be committed.

They discovered themselves as the best representatives of humanity. But they are disconnected from humanity. They have never known starvation. The only thing they understand is how to make money out of their discoveries. Whatever their names: land, slaves, colonies, poverty, misery, hunger.

The history has been known for a long time, but it keeps being pushed back, even when, one should say especially when, it manages to free itself from the shackles of the dominant mindset. An enslaved person who frees herself without waiting for the master’s abolition or a colonised people which decolonises itself before it is considered appropriate by the coloniser shall be ‘taught a lesson’. From Saint-Domingue/Haiti to Indochina/Vietnam, to Cuba, to Kenya, to the DR Congo, to Mozambique, the lesson has been drilled with all the means at the disposal of the dominant mindset: from extreme violence to extreme seduction. The objective is the same: to ensure that fear and/or shame will keep the descendants of those who tried the impossible (and succeeded) to never ever try again to free themselves. More on shame further below.

IDENTIFYING AND ADDRESSING THE DEEPEST ROOTS OF THE FOOD CRISIS

If the current food crisis is going to be resolved for the benefit of those who have been most affected by its unfolding, and in a way that those who have most suffered from hunger participate in the thinking of how to remove hunger, then the food crisis must be examined far and away beyond the rattling of statistical tables which reveal nothing more than the obvious – that the poorest of the poor[6] have been getting poorer and poorer for the benefit of the richest of the rich. For as long as humanity has existed the former have risen against the latter, but one must resist the temptation of accepting the idea that emancipatory politics will always fail. Closer to us in historical time, one must also resist the temptation of accepting the notion that thoughts expressed by highly educated intellectuals count more than the thoughts of uneducated or poorly educated peasants. Being uneducated does not mean that one is incapable of thinking. The Africans who overthrew slavery in Saint Domingue/Haiti thought better from within their situation than those who predicted that they could not possibly achieve such a feat. It is not difficult to imagine the slave owners (and the Enlightenment philosophers) saying to whoever would listen: what do the slaves know about freedom?

Yet, these were the very people who, having dared against all odds and all predictions of failure, left us with lessons on how to achieve freedom. But again, the lessons retold by the discoverers and their descendants and their allies shall always differ from the ones recounted, remembered by the so-called ‘discovered’ and their descendants and their allies. More often than not, one finds among the latter the most vociferous distorters of the histories and lessons emerging from battles against those who defend submission to the dominant mindset. For example, listening to the history of Haiti as recounted by C.L.R. James or, more recently, Peter Hallward is not the same as hearing it from Alex Dupuy.[7] The richest of the rich have multiple ways of enforcing their views, but so too do the poorest of the poor, provided they are convinced that they can.

For any human being, suffering can reach unbearable points. But at the same time, over and over in history, people have shown a heroic capacity to resist and rise above the most extreme forms of torture, especially when people are motivated by a political understanding of their situation disconnected from the idea that the way out can only be through the dominant mindset way of thinking.

Again if one looks at the history of Haiti, it is easy to understand why the slave and plantation owners would seek, by any means necessary, to prove that the Africans who overthrew slavery on Saint Domingue should never have tried: financial, economic, political, religious, cultural, and intellectual means were used to convey the message that the inhabitants of Saint Domingue would have been better off had they not risen against slavery. In a nutshell, everything has been done to ensure that other enslaved Africans (or any subsequent enslaving system) reconsider emancipatory politics as a viable option.

The history of Haiti is one of the most exemplary for both sides of the ideological fence separating emancipatory and consensual/submissive/abolitionist politics.

CONVERGENCE BETWEEN FEAR OF ONE’S HISTORY AND FEAR OF HUNGER

From the historical record, it is known that the turnover ratio of Africans in Saint Domingue was very high. Supply was cheap and less costly than seeking to improve maintenance. It was cheaper to get fresh bodies and use them to death. The demographic ratio was also favourable to the Africans, free and enslaved ones. From the beginning to the end of the 18th century, the number of Africans went from around 2,000 to about half a million. As in any such situation, a range of possibilities must have been discussed: improve the conditions of work/treatment, including better food; or get rid of the system altogether.

However, before going further in our examination, it is important to connect the history of Africans in Saint Domingue and Africans from one of their geographical points of origin: the Kongo Kingdom. Only 85 years (about three generations) separate two events related to the overthrow of slavery. On 2 July 1706, Kimpa Vita (some times known as Dona Beatriz) was burned at the stake for having tried to convince the Kongo King to put an end to the activities of the Portuguese slave raiders/traders. This was not just a one-person enterprise. Those who agreed with her denunciations rallied behind a movement known as the Antonian movement, so called because Kimpa Vita said that she had received her message from St Anthony. Little is known about the movement following the death of Kimpa Vita, but it is not unreasonable to surmise that memories of the movement survived and may have influenced those who, in 1791, in Saint Domingue, decided and vowed to end slavery. And, it would not be unfair to presume that, as a principle, humanity has genes which are allergic to any form of slavery. From within humanity there are always going to be those pushing for emancipatory politics.

The Africans who ended up in Saint Domingue lived in a most fearsome situation. In order to understand their determination to do away with slavery, one should try to understand what slavery was about.[8] The latter is almost impossible, regardless of the descriptions available either through historical, fictional, or cinematographic accounts.[9] The use of an entire continent as a hunting ground for enslaving people is the kind of trespassing of humanity which, because it has remained unacknowledged, opened the door to further trespassing, not just in terms of the number of people maimed, slaughtered, and raped but also because it further reinforced the mindset based on the notion that competition-to-death, by any means, is the most efficient way of organising any economy. One shall never stress enough that unless the enormity of what happened is eventually understood, it will be impossible to do anything with regard to the current challenges faced by humanity.[10]

Out of this mindset has grown a habit of minimising or erasing what the industrial enslavement of an entire continent has done. Such a process of slowly building a mindset aimed at minimising, muffling, or eradicating the efforts of those who, long before it was so proclaimed by the ‘discoverers’, stood up against a crime against humanity, ends up distorting any attempt to rise up against some of its most damaging consequences. This minimising of slavery and its consequences has been repeated at every subsequent transition (e.g., the end of the colonial period and the end of apartheid).

When the French government passed the legislation recognising slavery as a crime against humanity (Loi Christiane Taubira, 2001)[11], it was done in a way which was aimed at shielding those who collectively benefited from slavery. How else should one interpret the French government behaviour toward President Jean Bertrand Aristide (JBA) in 2004. The kidnapping was carried out by the American military in collaboration with the French and Canadian governments and their allies, including the Central African Republic.. The whole episode reminded one, more than 200 years later, of the kidnapping of Toussaint l’Ouverture.

It might be asked what is the meaning of this long detour into the history of Haiti for the purpose of confronting the current food crisis? It has to do with resisting the attempt to frame the food crisis from the perspective of those who want to benefit the most from it. In its most simplistic terms, the food crisis is being analysed and explained within the parameters put in place by a dominant mindset which has its deepest roots in how it organised the pauperisation of those who had defeated the biggest scourge of those times. Indeed it was more than a scourge, it was the embryo of what was to become known under globalisation two centuries later.

The Africans, then, understood their situation without political or charitable representatives. Their understanding and thinking of how to get out of their situation was arrived at through their own thinking and, certainly, without the help of the Enlightenment philosophers. 1789 had taken place and helped bring forward the idea, at least among some, that if the banner of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality was going to have any meaning, then it had to lead to the complete and total abolition of slavery. Massive efforts took place, not just from France, but also from England and Spain to try and reverse what the Africans had done. The abolition of slavery in French-controlled territories would not take place till 1848. A date which also coincides with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But as stated above, these rights apply differently whether one belongs to humanity (first class) or to humanity-existing-through-humanitarianism (second and third classes).

Will the food crisis be resolved according to the discriminatory perspective above or according to an understanding that there is only one humanity? In other words, will the question of how to eradicate hunger and poverty be posed by those whose dominant mindset has generated massive hunger and poverty, or will the poor and the hungry frame the questions and provide the answers without the humanitarian or charitable advice of the ‘discoverers’ of poverty and hunger?

It is not difficult to see that the food crisis is connected to other crises – economic, financial (the so-called credit crunch), and climatic change. It is also clear that all institutions have been mobilised, from those with apparently appropriate knowledge on the issue (e.g., the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), and government ministers) to personalities like the former UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, who understand the seriousness and gravity of the crisis. But when all of these specialists meet and discuss, the voices of peasants, the voices of those who do produce food, either for themselves and families or for corporations, are rarely, if ever heard. Moreover, how can people whose mindsets are responsible for the food crisis be expected to provide satisfactory answers? How can people who see nothing wrong in their mindset be expected to get rid of, or distance themselves from, the very way of thinking which has brought the inhabitants of the planet face-to-face with permanent disaster?

The fear at work in the minds of the above group is not the same as the one to be found among those who belong to the most vulnerable inhabitants of the planet. A mind which does not have to worry about eating three meals a day, nor about providing food for all members of its family, can be at peace while those who go hungry on a daily basis often resort to suicide as the solution to their daily miseries (Raj Patel, 2007). An inconvenient question arises which is not unlike the one which arose with regard to the HIV/AIDS epidemic: could it be that the richest of the rich would rather let the hungry die than discuss with them the best way to resolve the crisis?

FEAR AND SHAME: CONSCIOUSNESS OF EVIL OR CONSCIOUSNESS OF SHAME?

In addition to fear there is shame. While psychologists have studied how to detect people who are lying, there has been little interest on trying to understand why and how, individually and collectively, human beings are eager to hide anything which might be shameful. The fear of having a shameful act revealed to all provides a powerful incentive to hide.[12]

How a segment of humanity has treated others in the past can lead to a sense of shame and the desire to ask for forgiveness. Unfortunately, one is not operating under conditions which are levelled: those who know from their own historical records that they have perpetrated shameful acts are not eager to bring them to the surface. What was done to Africans and to Native Americans by other people in the name of a way of thinking – an ideology, a religion – has been felt unevenly all over the world. In some cases, such as France towards Africans and slavery, it has been has acknowledged that slavery is a crime against humanity, but little has been done to reverse associated direct and indirect consequences. Indeed, a belated apology has often been used as the most efficient way of preserving the gains acquired through the crime.[13]

Once a taboo has been trespassed, it becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to overcome its direct and indirect consequences. With regard to food, in a world in which people should not go hungry, people do go hungry precisely because it has become acceptable, in a mindset dominated by a dictatorial free market system, that some people are going to die of hunger. The accepted norm, under the present mindset, is that hunger cannot be eradicated, regardless of the efforts. The fact that humanity has been able to eradicate certain diseases, including hunger, is not seen as the proof that hunger could be banned.

WHY ARE THE HISTORIES OF SAINT DOMINGUE/HAITI MORE EMBLEMATIC THAN EVER?

In their self-congratulatory march to the top, the richest of the rich have always feared what the poorest of the poor would or could do if they were to understand their own situations without outside interferences. Along the way, the former segment of humanity has resorted, directly or indirectly, to fearsome practices in order to submit and/or obliterate those they considered less than human.[14] The process of how Haiti has been impoverished following 1804 is pertinent to how to think about the current food crisis.

Haiti, for example, used to be self sufficient in rice, while the DR Congo used to export cassava and many other food commodities. Both countries now have to import thanks to a process which involved the World Bank economists and the US government’s common strategy of liberalisation. The process of turning self-sufficient economies into dependent ones has been documented ad infinitum.[15] Aid and charity complement each other as the remedy to the predatory extremes unleashed by the dictatorial rule of competition.[16]

Succeeding where success was not expected, as the Africans did in eradicating slavery, could have inflicted a serious blow to the system.[17] Those who had most benefited from slavery had to impose their own timing: it took another half-century for France to abolish slavery. Timing was crucial in order to tame those who had thought, back then, that slavery was indeed a crime against humanity. Again, as with abolition, the timing for the recognition had to be imposed by those who had most benefited from the crime itself. It was only in 2001 that France finally passed a law recognising slavery as a crime against humanity.[18]

While working in Mozambique between 1979 and 1986, I once had a poster against apartheid: ‘Apartheid is a Crime against Humanity’. Looking at it a visitor asked what it meant. I remained speechless, thinking it was self-explanatory. How long will it take for the South African government to acknowledge apartheid as a crime against humanity? Or, is it that, in the name of Truth and Reconciliation, the multiple roots of the crime shall be silenced?

From 1962 to 1974, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) succeeded, against all odds, in putting an end to Portuguese colonial rule. Such a success, as in Haiti, had to be reversed. The context, in Mozambique, was dominated by the Cold War. Frelimo had been supported by the USSR, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Vietnam, the German Democratic Republic, but also by people from Western countries like Italy, Holland and Sweden. As Henry Kissinger stated during a visit to southern Africa in April 1976, communism had to be defeated in the region.[19] Not long after that one of the most vicious civil wars aimed at what looked like a process of ‘teaching Frelimo a lesson’ began to unfold.

The consequences of the war have been so devastating that, in the name of the peace achieved in 1992, it has become preferable not to speak about the war. So much so that the silence around the civil war is now being extended to the war against the colonisers, as if that was the war which should never have taken place. Again, it is difficult not to think of Haiti and what the Africans did to slavery. Today’s elite in Haiti acts as if it wishes slavery had not been abolished, at least not in the manner it was done between 1791 to 1804. Today’s elite in Mozambique prefers to focus on how to become as rich as possible and as quickly as possible, and, it is possible that some of them might even be inaudibly saying to themselves that had it not been for Frelimo, they would be much better off today.[20]

Both Haiti and Mozambique are most talked about as very poor countries. Thanks to outside donors, anti-poverty programs do help the poorest of the poor overcome hunger and other problems. It is understandable that those who suffered the consequences of war (especially the civil war (1980–1992)) would rather not face that situation again. A question arises though: should the fear of what happened during colonial rule, or after, lead to the fear of politics – that is, thinking for oneself on how best to get out of a given situation? Moreover, should the fact that the Soviet Union and all its allies ‘lost’ the Cold War lead Mozambicans to the conclusion that anything which resembles, directly or indirectly, socialism and/or communism must be banished forever?

The process of enforcing only one way of thinking with regard to colonial rule and its demise has followed the same pattern as the one which has been observed in Haiti: everything must be done so that a different way of organising society, production, and distribution does not emerge. Differences will be acceptable if they are not antagonistic towards the dominant way of thinking.

CÉSAIRE, POETRY, POLITICS, AND HISTORY

When Aimé Césaire passed away recently it dawned on many people, including myself, that someone very special had lived among us who had not been heard or understood as he should have been.[21] This has happened before and will happen again. Later on, some shall describe him as a prophetic voice. He always insisted, without saying it in this manner, that he was not a politician and that his politics were in his poetry.[22] To a specific question by Françoise Vergès on the relationship between his poetry and politics he points out the following: ‘La poésie révèle l’homme à lui-même. Ce qui est au plus profond de moi-même se trouve certainement dans ma poésie. Parce que ce ‘moi-même’, je ne le connais pas. C’est le poème qui me le révèle et même l’image poétique.’ (Aimé Césaire. Entretiens, 2005:47) (‘It is poetry which reveals the human being to itself. What comes from deepest within myself can be found in my poetry. Because even this self of mine, I do not know. It is the poem which reveals it to me, even the poetic imagery. [My translation])

Using statistical data to demonstrate the insanity and the injustices behind the current food crisis will not make a dent in the consciousness of those who are responsible for it. For someone like Césaire – and Françoise Vergès is right to emphasise this point (Césaire. Entretiens, 2005:111-136) – the immensity of the wound inflicted by one segment of humanity onto another, through slavery and later compounded by colonisation, has never been assessed. Such an assessment is deliberately avoided because of the fear and shame of what would happen to all those who only know one truth, one history: the history, the truth of humanity seen through the eyes and the mindset of those who have enslaved, who have colonised. The resulting shock of discovering what had been hidden could be overwhelming to those who are unprepared.

From within this kind of historical narrative, the dominant mindset is bound to present access to food, health, education, and justice as something which is easily available to anyone provided it is so desired. To paraphrase Françoise Vergès, the dominant mindset (in France) is convinced that the 1848 abolition of slavery was France’s gift to the Africans. This paternalistic mindset is as deeply embedded today as it was in 1848. Enslavement to the dominant system is being carried out with different means, but the results are just as devastating on humanity as a whole. The direct and indirect consequences of slavery and colonisation have never been dealt with. As a result, one hears calls to the poor to change their attitude. It is very easy to promote the idea that the poor are poor because they want to be poor. Just as it is easy to accuse peasants of laziness. No one among the richest of the rich ever accuses the land stealer, the bankers, the speculators of being lazy, even though, most of the time, their robbing is conducted from comfortable offices.[23]

From Aimé Césaire’s poetry one has heard, but not yet learned, that living is an art. The food speculators, the financiers, the colonisers, the enslavers, and all those who have never seen anything wrong in their mindset, or in living as an accounting exercise, may praise our beloved Césaire and even quote from his poetry, but they will do so from within the accounting mindset, willing to accept him paternalistically, just as they accepted the abolition of slavery in 1848. As stated in the preamble, the food crisis is one of the multiple manifestations of humanity approaching a dead end.

More and more of humanity’s members are beginning to sense that when living principles determined by human beings are being superseded by principles anonymously determined by a deity called the Market, then something, somewhere, has gone wrong. When food, such as corn or maize, is being produced for reasons other than feeding people, then, surely, it is a sign that the segment of humanity which promotes such a diversion has modernised, exponentially, as with what happened during the Second World War. For the sake of defending or promoting a mindset, masses of people are being reduced to a status of non-existence.

FREEDOM WITHOUT EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY IS FREEDOM TO ANNIHILATE

The market, unfettered of any rules based on equality and fraternity between all segments of humanity, can only lead to annihilation of humanity. This is not a prediction. It is happening as surely as the melting of the ice caps at both poles, as surely as global warming is progressing. How does one reverse a mindset which has taken hold not just of the speculators, bankers, political, and religious leaders, but of ordinary people around the world? How does one defeat the deeply rooted tendency of thinking that the task at hand is impossible?

For one, the voices which have been saying the same things for centuries must be heard, and acted upon. It is not enough to say that humanity is one if, at the same time, one refuses to listen to some of the voices, regardless of the reasons. When the crisis is as serious as the current one, regardless of the angle from which it is tackled, is it not wise to acknowledge that every single member of humanity has a say. Should one not call and encourage the tiniest voices to rise? Isn’t the wisest course to accept, in the face of inconvenient truths, the inconvenient truths uttered for the past centuries by the poorest of the poor?

When confronted with the systematic denial of one’s humanity, there is only one possible course: to stand up against such a denial. It is crucial that resistance against the dominant mindset be conducted from within the principles aimed at a different mindset. It must be firmly grounded on solidarity. The only force to be used shall be the force of art, poetry, and science at the service of humanity.

Artists, poets, and scientists must eat too. Freedom by itself does not feed, but freedom with equality and fraternity can. Artists, poets, and scientists do not have to congregate in places designated by the market promoters. In such places, all voices shall be heard, provided respect for basic principles to be agreed upon by those who insist on the necessity to change the mindset. Among the principles, the following ones could be considered:

• Food producers and the poorest of the poor must be heard in their own voices
• The multiplicity of the voices calling for emancipatory politics must be accepted
• No representation shall be accepted
• Each voice must heard from where it is, as it is.

These are, by no means, the only principles one could highlight.

HEALING FROM FEAR AND SHAME

The transition from apartheid, even with the help of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), has not lived up to its heralded promises. The recent (May 2008) pogroms against the poorest of the poor by other poorest of the poor has revealed the shortcomings of the TRC as a panacea, on the one hand, and on the other, has brought out very sharply the shortcomings of the African National Congress (ANC) as the governing party as well as the government with regard to educating and informing the population about the international support without which apartheid would not have been defeated. In that process of informing and educating, the role of ordinary Africans who risked their lives and generously gave all they could, should have been highlighted. This failure, however, must be shared by most African governments because of their common tendency to disregard the role of ordinary people in the making of their histories. The failure to inform and educate must also be shared by those who, during apartheid, remained silent and profited. As has been remarked, sometimes listening to what happened during apartheid in South Africa, it sounds as if everyone was a resistant to it.

As with all previous major transitions (from slavery to post-slavery, from colonialism to post-colonialism), the defeated side quickly reorganises itself with the objective of minimising losses. In that process they are helped by their previous enemies (now referred to as adversaries). As in Nkrumah’s famous motto, the defeated side is convinced that once the political kingdom has been seized, the rest will follow. Yet, in social and economic terms, they find themselves suddenly far from the very individuals and groups who have made it possible to seize the kingdom, and, much closer to their previous enemies whose main thinking was focused on how to keep the economy going as well as before. And, one might add, as fast as possible, if possible, faster than before.

In South Africa, the fear of the new government was to show that things in the country would from then on be different from what had happened in the rest of the continent. That fear led the ANC leadership to move away from the Freedom Charter, but even from creative principles to provide the poorest of the poor with genuine rewards and, more importantly, a say in transforming politics.

To have a say in transforming politics meant, among other things, as pointed out by the members of AbahlalibaseMjondolo, to speak for themselves and not be represented by politicians. The poorest of the poor who live in shacks in Durban, Johannesburg, and Cape Town see themselves as the ones who are really defending the principles contained in the Freedom Charter. Democracy means that everyone thinks, that everyone deserves respect and dignity. Freedom must mean that when decent housing, and decent living conditions are not provided for the poor, they are the best qualified to make sure that their voices are heard, clearly without translators or intermediaries, be they lawyers, municipality leaders, university lecturers, politicians.[24]

The similarities between what the poorest of the poor and peasants are suffering across the world call for a reinforcement of already existing links, and for greater sharing of the stories and histories of resistance against what Amit Bhaduri has referred to as the TINA syndrome (There Is No Alternative to globalization)[25]. This syndrome is not new. The imposition of colonial rule was presented as an altruistic exercise bringing civilisation to Africa. Forced labour was presented as an educational exercise.

Emancipatory politics must go hand in hand with emancipatory historical narratives and move away from narratives framed by the so-called success stories of globalisation told from the perspective of multinational mega corporations and financial institutions at their service.

Author’s p.s. 6 October 2008 – This essay was drafted sometime in June–July 2008. The question of naming remains as crucial as ever. The so-called financial crisis is not just about finances, banking, and credit. And it is not just about the deregulation of the banking industry. More and more it looks like a deregulation of all the principles which, one would have thought, have made humanity what it is. The reluctance to face history and humanity, as such, in all of its dimensions and complexities, is more entrenched than ever. Only Mr Market counts, but even it, or so it seems, has grown tired and would like to rest.

* Jacques Depelchin is a CAPES fellow at the Universidade Federal da Bahia.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Notes

[1] Personal communication from Professor Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, 27 October 2008.
[2] At one time, during its triumphant emergence, the Roman empire tried to resolve its food crisis by conquering Egypt.
[3] Fernand Braudel, and many others since, have rightly insisted on approaching history from a long-term perspective. Unfortunately, such an approach has tended to favour the questions emerging out of the dominant narrative. In the issue of Pambazuka News 383 focused on the food crisis, the length of time was even shorter, being limited to the 1970s. If one is going to make sense of the food crisis today, but also try to understand other food crises in the past (e.g., the potato famine in Ireland in the 19th century), the framing of how the crisis has unfolded should be as deep and wide as possible.
[4] For example, Howard Zinn in his People History of the United States can only go as far as providing an inventory of the slaughter of the Native Americans and the Africans. For him 1776 is still the event. And as the subtitle indicates, the starting point of his narrative is 1492.
[5] See Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved, The Hidden Battle for the World Food System
[6] The history of how the poorest of the poor reached this stage has been observed across the planet and for centuries and generations: from food producers, they were forced off their land and reduced to search for work in an environment in which there was only work for a few.
[7] C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins; Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment, Verso. 2007; see also Peter Hallward’s review of Alex Dupuy’s The Prophet and Power: Jean Bertrand Aristide, the International Community and Haiti, Rowan and Littlefield, 2007. http://tinyurl.com/5rgyx6
[8] The importance of this cannot be overstressed in view of the tendency within the dominant mindset to downplay the horrors of slavery. See J. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800. Cambridge University Press. 1998.
[9] In His Black Jacobins, C.L.R. James did try. Fiction writers have tried, from Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons to Toni Morison’s Beloved. Haile Gerima in his movie, Sankofa, offered a harrowing view of what it was like. Still, when all is said and done, I would argue that no one, to this day and with my greatest respect for the above writers, has come any way near to measuring what slavery meant both individually and collectively. I have to assume that such measurement, not just in physical terms, shall one day be possible. This hope rests, in part, on the realisation that someone somewhere did achieve that impossible act, but that it has not been recorded in the form and/or in the place where it would get noticed. There are exceptions, most notably Aimé Césaire (2005)
[10] A point cogently made by Françoise Vergès in Césaire (2005).
[11] Its application officially began on 10 May 2004.
[12] In recent times, it has been possible to see how difficult it is to accept that people in very powerful positions can lie. In earlier times, Hitler and his acolytes found out that a lie repeated a thousand times became a truth.
[13] France, among the nations most involved in transatlantic slavery, has probably taken the boldest step by declaring, through the Loi Taubira, that slavery a crime against humanity. However, this bold step has triggered a sort of blowback against it, particular by historians. See Pierre Nora’s ‘Liberté pour l’histoire’ in Le Monde (10.10.08) and Christiane Taubira’s response a few days later: ‘Mémoire, histoire et droit’ in Le Monde (15.10.08).
[14] A few months ago (in May 2008), in South Africa, the poorest of the poor (so-called indigenous South Africans) went on a rampage against poorest of the poor foreigners. This has been the most recent and exemplary illustration of how entrenched the competitive mindset is. It also reveals the structural shortcomings of the transition from apartheid to post-apartheid founded on the erroneous notion that colouring the richest of the rich in black would radically transform the economic/financial tenets of apartheid days.
[15] One of the most interesting accounts has been given by John Perkins in his Confessions of An Economic Hit Man. See also Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved.
[16] That it does not have to be so has long ago been proved. See, for example, Marcel Mauss’s essay Essai sur le don (1924). And also the website of Revue du M.A.U.S.S. http://www.revuedumauss.com
[17] What was feared was the effect it could have on other Africans wanting to get rid of slavery in other parts.
[18] In 2006, 40 members of the French National Assembly called for the abrogation of the Loi Taubira. See http://tinyurl.com/69m675
[19] Glijeses, Piero. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976.
[20] Such inaudible murmuring may even come from the mouths of bona fide veterans of the armed struggle. See Duarte Tembe’s book on Samora (Maputo, 2000). And also the interview given to the weekly Savana (Ericinio Salema and Paola Rolletta) on 6 July 2008. It can be viewed at: http://tinyurl.com/6jhq5e
[21] Obviously there are exceptions to this deficiency. There is a difference between knowing someone was special and having understood the true worth of the person. See for example Daniel Maximin’s Préface to Césaire’s Ferrements et autres poèmes (Editions Points, 2008).
[22] Aimé Césaire, ‘Calendrier laminaire’, in Moi, Laminaire. In Anthologie Poétique, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1996, pp. 233-234; and Aimé Césaire, Nègre je suis, nègre je resterai. Entretiens avec Françoise Vergès. Paris, Albin Michel, 2005, pp. 47–50.
[23] There are exceptions. Karl Marx being the most prominent one with his reference to ‘coupon clipping capitalists’.
[24] In his most recent intervention, S’bu Zikode has made these politics very clear. See S’bu Zikode’s speech at the Diakonia Economic Justice Forum, 28 August 2008: [url=http://www.abahlali.org/]http://www.abahlali.org/[url]/
[25] http://www.india-seminar.com/2008/582/582_amit_bhaduri.htm

South African education crisis: Call in the people

Neville Alexander

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52404

As usual at this time of the year, there has been a sudden spurt of analyses, discussions, and scenarios about our education system. Some of these are symptomatic of the annual matriculation exams-related national itch. This year, some of them are undoubtedly related to contests between political parties positioning themselves for next year’s general election. And yet we believe that something even more important is taking place – as South Africans we are sensing more clearly the depth of our crisis in education. And we are realising that education should be placed on the national agenda as a priority item.

A BLEAK FUTURE?

Every South African citizen who knows that the future of this country ultimately depends on the health of the education system has come to realise that at this moment we have no future. This is so because of the fact that the system continues to stagnate and even to regress in crisis mode, in spite of all well-intentioned interventions by the government and other interested parties.

By way of reminding ourselves of the depth and the extent of the dysfunctionality of the system, a few examples must suffice. Behind these, there is a veritable archive of statistics and other data that demonstrate in brutal detail just how bad the situation is:

• Very many of our children – especially in the impoverished rural areas and townships – go to school hungry. They are by definition unable to learn effectively.
• The majority of our children are not learning to read and write confidently in any language. The culture of reading, which is the foundation of any modern nation, is confined to a thin layer of privileged people.
• Too many schools are unsafe, bleak, uninspiring places where violence and abuse are rife. Teachers and their students are too often traumatised, demotivated, and merely going through the motions. Schools as learning spaces, where opportunities exist for experiencing the joy of learning, exploring, experimenting and achieving, are few and far between. Where they do exist, they are to be found mainly in established suburban, former white areas.
• In most other cases, schools are no more than dumping grounds where parents hope the teachers will cope with their offspring as best they can. And, indeed, given class sizes and other anti-educational factors, many teachers are no less than miracle workers!
• 79% of our schools do not have libraries and 60% do not have laboratories.
• 60% of children are pushed out of the schooling system before they reach Grade 12.
• If you dropped out before completing Grade 12, your chances of employment are not significantly higher than someone without any schooling.
• Teachers are the most important group of professionals in any society since everything depends on their dedication and effectiveness. Yet the quality of teacher education and professional development, as well as the levels of support for most teachers, are grossly inadequate. So much so, indeed, that 55% of those in the profession would leave it if they could.
30,000 teachers in fact do leave the profession annually, while only 7,000 enter it.

CRUX OF THE PROBLEM

The long and the short of the crisis is that we have a two-tier educational system in South Africa, one for the children of the rich and another for the urban and the rural poor. Schooling is based on middle class norms – such as literate parents, homes with some books and newspapers, daily access to English, and homes with longstanding confidence in discussing schoolwork with children. The majority of our children who come from other kinds of families and homes are doomed to fail and to be frustrated.

The consequences can be seen everywhere in our streets and in our prisons. We need to address the social inequality which is at the root of this phenomenon, inter alia by creating a supportive environment and providing the inspiration, the leadership and the resources that all children need to benefit from their schooling.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

We have to call in the people and do again – and even better – what we did under apartheid. We have to make education into a people’s affair. Communities, especially working-class and other poor communities, have to become directly involved in looking for immediate ways out of the crisis. Government and educationists have to engage the people in open, public, and transparent processes where the issues are canvassed in detail and social contracts between relevant arms of government, educational institutions, and the relevant communities are entered into. Schools of education at universities should place the engagement with poor communities at the top of their list of research and development priorities, and government as well as other organisations with resources should see this as worthy of public investment.

The Department of Education should institute a national commission on restoring quality education immediately after the 2009 elections. Such a commission should not consist merely of ‘experts’ and an army of consultants. It should, like the poverty hearings, involve all communities over a period of at least eighteen months and issue interim reports and recommendations until it can produce a final report on a well-considered and realistic programme for the radical transformation of the system as a whole.

IMMEDIATE ACTIONS

Three issues should receive immediate attention: improving the quantity and quality of teachers in the system, especially in the primary school; improving the availability of quality learning and teaching resources for all learners and educators; and, above all, instituting a corruption-free compulsory nutritional scheme co-delivered with, and accountable to, communities so that even the poorest child is given at the very least the chance to attend school on a full stomach.

We are engaged in weaving together a network of educators and other interested people to launch an initiative to come together, across differences, to mobilise for education – sensing that our future depends on urgent and wide public participation in education. We believe that all those who are serious about salvaging our proud educational heritage and building on it for the liberating future we held up to our youth and our people in 1994 will want to be part of this non-party political network and educational movement.

We stand at the proverbial crossroads. We either take the road that goes around in a long detour only to come back to where we are now – in crisis – or we take the direct, if difficult, road to the kind of education we want for our children and other members of our society equally in need of educational development. It is only if we have the courage to do this that we can build the kind of South Africa for which we have fought so long, and for which we continue to struggle.

We believe that the choice is crystal clear.

* Statement signed by: Neville Alexander, Ivor Baatjes, Nhlanganiso Dladla, Andre Keet, Nobuntu Mazeka, Nomsa Mazwai, Enver Motala, Kim Porteus, Brian Ramadiro, John Samuel, and Salim Vally.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Liberation from ‘liberators’?: Uganda and the NRM

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/52405

What happens to revolutionaries when they get into power? This familiar question was haunting me all of last week when I was back ‘home’ (I lived in Uganda from 1992–2005 and still hold a Ugandan government diplomatic passport). We were having the Africa retreat of the UN Millennium Campaign at the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel (better known as the Clinton Hotel, with a Clinton suite and a Clinton Pavilion to show for it, because that was where President Clinton stayed during his 1998 Monica-de-stressing visit to Africa). We were in Entebbe in October with Millennium Development Goals (MDG) campaigners from 16 countries across Africa to celebrate this year’s Guinness world record-breaking ‘Stand Up’ action in support of the MDGs campaigning globally and especially around Africa. More than 50 million Africans in 40 countries participated in Stand Up this year as part of the 117 million participants in more than 130 countries across the world.

For an event that began with 14 million in 2006 to have grown by almost eight times in only two years with a more diverse group of people participating in it is proof, if indeed any is still needed, that the peoples of the world are outraged at the level of grinding poverty experienced by billions in a world where ‘there is enough to satisfy our needs but not enough to satisfy our greed’!

The guest of honour was a long-term comrade, a ‘historical’ member of the Ugandan National Resistance Army/Movement, a senior member of the government since 1986, a pan-Africanist and controversial public figure, and a man to whom I owe my life, who has fished me out of life-threatening situations twice. He was not disappointing in raising a lot of controversies about MDGs and how they can be achieved in Africa but some of his conclusions were most disappointing. As an ideologue of the NRM, he has displayed the kind of gross insensitivity to the ordinary citizen and ideological retreat that has characterised President Museveni’s long-term hegemony over the Ugandan state and society. They have stayed in power so long that they have all but forgotten their previous jobs, values, and visions. From heralding ‘fundamental change’ they have become apostles of ‘no change’. They have become reactionaries, tired revolutionaries exhausting the country they claim to have liberated. The challenge now facing Ugandans is similar to what is facing Zimbabweans, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and other post-liberation societies: how to liberate themselves from their liberators.

These liberators have now become establishment reactionaries blocking future changes. My good comrade reduced the attainment of the MDGs to ‘putting money in the pockets of individual Africans’. I have no problem with Africans becoming richer and having more money to in their pockets. But can we all make money like ministers? He went on further to state without any coyness or sense of decorum that ‘my children do not go to UPE [Universal Primary Education] schools’, adding that if he was sick he would not go to Mulago, the national hospital. If ministers do not use the services provided by the government of which they are members why should the public trust those departments? My comrade the minister was being honest, but that honesty also reveals how far the NRM oligarchy has travelled in the opposite direction of the fundamental change they promised. They are no longer changing the system because they are the system. The burden of change is now squarely on the shoulders of another generation. They are no longer part of the solution but very central to the problem.

The following day we had a public forum at the Grand Imperial on how Africa can achieve the MDGs in 2015. The speakers included Professor Augustus from Makerere University, Dr Tola from the Make Our Money Work For Us MDG/GCAP coalition in Nigeria, a young Ugandan woman/youth activist, our Global Director Salil Shetty, and me as the wrap up speaker. It was a well attended meeting, very passionate and most engaging with participants from a broad section of the Ugandan society and pan-Africanist constituencies. The consensus was that the MDGs may not be achieved, not because there are no resources but for lack of political will by African leaders for goals No1 to No 7 and the political leaders of the enriched countries who are not delivering on the eight goals.

The discussion was even more passionate. A participant who is a senior bureaucrat from the Ministry of Health of Uganda earned well-warranted opprobrium from the audience when he suggested that the meeting was just about noisemakers shouting the usual taunts about governance, accountability, corruption, and saying less about ‘the how question’. For a senior bureaucrat supposedly appointed as a qualified technocrat to go to a public meeting for ‘the how question’ raises questions about his qualifications. But his dismissal of the governance issues raise even more questions in the context of Uganda. A senior official from a ministry that is overwhelmed with corruption charges that led to the censure and sacking of ministers and exposure of grand corruption involving all kinds of well-connected people and their fake NGOs is the last person to be so pompous as to dismiss public outcry. But his attitude represents what is wrong with the NRM regime: their contempt for the ordinary citizen. They have stayed so long in power that they behave as though they are monarchs. Many of them hope to remain in power for as long as President Museveni is there. This is why Museveni and the NRM have no form of exit strategy. They cannot remember not being in power and cannot contemplate not being in power, whatever their citizens may think.

* 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/

DR Congo: Call for international solidarity

2008-12-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/52534

The Confédération Paysanne du Congo (Peasant Confederation of Congo), COPACO-PRP, member of La Via Campesina in Africa, launches an appeal for international solidarity, given the armed conflict and insecurity situation that has intensified in the last weeks in the Northern province of Kivu, on the border with Rwanda.
SITUATION IN THE NORTH KIVU, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO:

CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

NO TO WAR!

YES TO LIFE AND TO FOOD SOVEREIGNTY!



The Confédération Paysanne du Congo (Peasant Confederation of Congo), COPACO-PRP, member of La Via Campesina in Africa, launches an appeal for international solidarity, given the armed conflict and insecurity situation that has intensified in the last weeks in the Northern province of Kivu, on the border with Rwanda.

The victims of this armed conflict between regular Congolese troops and rebel groups are the innocent civil populations, forced to leave their houses and fields, forced to wander along the roads and to join the refugee camps, in better cases.

They are already a million of displaced people and three million dead in the region, victims of insecurity for more than fifteen years now.

In this war and impunity context, women are regularly violated, where violation is regarded as a battle weapon like any other one.



These populations are, in their majority, whole families, of peasant men and women that today are prevented from accessing their fields, their cattle, their crops, and cannot return to their homes. Besides, their working tools such as hoe and machete are confiscated, regarded as cold-steel.



We, peasant men and women of Congo, want cassava fields!

We do not want mine fields neither wars!



This war is clearly also a hazard to Food Sovereignty of these families and of the country as a whole. Forcing the peasant men and women to leave their fields, and therefore, preventing them from tilling them (the fields) in accordance with the agricultural calendar, the door thus being opened shamelessly for international food aid, which often is in the hands of the transnational companies of the agro-food sector, and all this in the allegedly called food security and international aid!



At the hour of worldly food crisis, we reaffirm that Africa in general, and Congo particularly, can feed themselves! This war contributes to the accelerated disappearance of peasant men and women, and of peasant agriculture, at the same time.



This is the reason why we, from Confédération Paysanne de Congo, launch an appeal for international solidarity, towards all Via Campesina members and all our friends, in Africa and in the whole world.

Solidarity messages to peasant men and women of Eastern Congo, whom are affected by this infamous war, can be sent to copacoprp@yahoo.fr and/or to vcafrica@gmail.com
We ask that messages be also sent to DRC embassies in your countries, of Rwanda, and to United Nations Organization, UN, which handles the peacekeeping duty in Congo – so that measures are undertaken for protecting innocent civil populations, the majority of which are peasant men and women, so that unpunished violations against women are stopped. Measures must also be undertaken that will enable these displaced peasant families to return to their homes, and engage in their agricultural activities.


FOOD SOVEREIGNTY NOW! WITH THE UNITY AND STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLES!

GLOBALIZE STRUGGLE! GLOBALIZE HOPE!





Contacts :

COPACO-PRP, Nathanael Buka, national spokesperson, Tel : +243 81 16 48 430, copacoprp@yahoo.fr

COPACO-PRP, Alphonsine Nguba, ICC member of La Via Campesina, Tel : +243 99 46 42 963, ngubaalpha@yahoo.fr

Renaldo Chingore João, UNAC, Mozambique, ICC member of La Via Campesina, renaldo.unac@gmail.com

Ibrahima Coulibaly, CNOP, Mali, ICC member of La Via Campesina, i_ibracoul@yahoo.fr

Fatimatou Hima, Plateforme Paysanne du Niger, ICC member of La Via Campesina, fatimatou3@caramail.com

Kenya: call for mass boycott

2008-12-05

http://sukumakenya.blogspot.com/2008/12/massboycott10th-12th-december-2008.html

Faced with spiraling food costs, Bunge la Mwananchi and others are calling for a mass boycott and non-violent actions on 11 and 12 December 2009.

Kudos, Pambazuka News

J. Paul Martin - Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52419

In my undergraduate course (Human Rights and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa) at Barnard College, Columbia University, I required students to subscribe to and to read Pambazuka weekly. Occasionally we would discuss the readings in class. It was a real success. I was surprised by the number of students who chose the topics of their research papers on the basis of articles they had read through Pambazuka. My main suggestion would be to try to include more news from West Africa. Best wishes and thanks for making Africa so visible to my students.

South Africa: Fool me once...

Edrissa Jarju

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52411

Great piece, Herbert Ross, A new day in America: Lessons for Africa . The political situation on South Africa (SA) is particularly worrying for me and a lot of other Africans. I saw in SA during Mandela's presidency that we were seeing a model form of Governance that would be an excellent example for the rest of Africa... As here was an African nation, run by Africans with a constitution that was the envy of the world. There would have been no more excuses, I thought, by other African heads of states about "democratic" governance, rule of law etc being an imposition by outsiders.

How they (African dictators) love to winge and whine about these "foreign concepts". Lately I have been very disappointed by what has been happening in SA. First the babaric and heinous crimes committed again other fellow Africans recently and now the chisms within the ANC - the tit for tat child like behaviour we see within the ANC Elite. I am totally embarassed by it!!!!!! Hah!! I was actually fooled to think that something that positive can come out of Africa.

As you rightly said, this is a time for SA to re-examine what had happened and to make sure that safeguards are put in place to prevent it happening again. No !! No !! not for Africans!! they just have to go personal on every thing. Attack and kill if they dont get there way. The new breakaway party is being threatend with violence for deciding to separate and yet I heard no statements of restraint from any of the current leaders. Thabo Mbeki may have had his problems, but thats no reason for the ANC to commit suicide by electing someone with attitudes that makes you think you are in another past century in Africa. No what Africa needs is an electorate that is sophisticated enough to boot out the self serving, unscrupolous, dictators where ever they are.

A house in Zambia

Recollections of the ANC and Oxfam at 250 Zambezi Road, Lusaka 1967-97

2008-12-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/52546

This is a story about a house with a history and about the people who lived or worked there. It captures something of the spirit of the times in worlds of politics and development, and it discusses the links which were established between Oxfam GB in Zambia and the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa. Edited by Robin Palmer, Bookworld Publishers, Lusaka 2008: ISBN 9789982240512. Also available from http://www.africanbookscollective.com/

Do Bicycles Equal Development in Mozambique?

James Currey Publishers

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/6eehkg

Is Mozambique an African success story? It has 7 percent a year growth rate and substantial foreign investment. Fifteen years after the war of destabilisation, the peace has held. Mozambique is the donors' model pupil, carefully following their prescriptions and receiving more than a billion dollars a year in aid. The number of bicycles has doubled and this is often cited as the symbol of development. In this book Joseph Hanlon challenges some key assumptions of both the donors and the government

Exclusive literary auction to help women worldwide

WOMANKIND

2008-12-04

http://www.womankind.org.uk/auction.html

Exclusive literary auction to help women worldwide

On behalf of WOMANKIND, Pambazuka News would like to promote a new short story entitled Grab Pots and Pans and Spoons and Make a Noise, which you can bid for at http://www.womankind.org.uk/auction.html

Written exclusively for WOMANKIND by Jackie Kay, Ali Smith, and Jeanette Winterson, signed and unsigned copies of Grab Pots and Pans and Spoons and Make a Noise which was are available now on WOMANKIND's website!

The book, which was beautifully designed by Sarah Wood, is available as part of an online silent auction which will raise funds for WOMANKIND's work. There are only 250 copies of this 36-page story which was inspired by the words of a South African woman who benefited from WOMANKIND's work.

From the Freedom Charter to Polokwane

The evolution of ANC economic policies: by Ben Turok

2008-12-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/52553

This book traces the economic debates in the ANC from the Freedom Charter, to Morogoro, to the RDP and to the present. It shows that the shift to macro-economic stabilisation in thetransition to democracy in 1994 was due to international pressure and how it changed the trajectory of ANC policies.
The government became frozen in the pursuit of cautious economic policies in the interests of fiscal prudence.

The commitment to development lost momentum, compensated partially by the provision of modest social services and social grants.

The book traces the revolt against economic orthodoxy at the ANC Polokwane conference which was pressed forward at the Tripartite Economic Summit in 2008. The book analyses the economic challenges that will face the new government in 2009 with original insights into what should be done to address the economic crisis. It sets out a framework for alternative development programmes based on a change of mindset about the centrality of development planning in a pro-people developmental state.

The analysis is based on 15 years work in parliament and in economic committees of the ANC which provided unequalled access to vast documentation and discussions with the top policy makers of the ANC and government.

The contents include extensive examination of the international conditions at the transition in 1994, the creation of the RDP, the switch to Gear, the distortions of BEE, the dual economy, the lessons from Africa and the reasons why the productive sectors of the economy have stalled. There is a postscript on the decisions of the Tripartite Economic Summit in which the proposed changes to government policies are assessed.

Prof Ben Turok is a member of parliament in South Africa and visiting professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He is a veteran of the ANC, Editor of New Agenda, and founder of the Institute for African Alternatives in the UK and Africa. He has published many books on development economics and politics in Africa.


NEW AGENDA (S A) ISBN: 978-0-620-42565-0 Enquiries; Germaine, Tel: 021 403 2593/ 073 9559 473, Fax: 021 461 9390, Email bturok@anc.org.za , PRICE: R150

Revisiting the heart of darkness

Explorations into genocide and other forms of mass violence. 60 years after the UN Convention

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/52449

This Development Dialogue is published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9th December 1948. On the basis of the normative framework created and more recently also applied in a few cases, the contributions seek to explore further the socio-historical and -political contexts of genocide and mass violence and test the common approaches against analyses of social realities as well as theories. The historical dimension is of significance to many of the chapters, which have a main focus on African cases and contexts. The contributions, which are based on two conferences held in Uppsala in December 2006 and Oslo in November 2007, present scholarly as well as politically and morally guided forms of engagement. This blend seeks to acknowledge the need to unite differently posed concerns and appeals in their common efforts to examine further the notion of genocide (as well as its limitations), with the aim of reducing the risks of history repeating itself. The volume is accessible also for download at the Foundation’s web site: www.dhf.uu.se
Revisiting the heart of darkness – Explorations into genocide and otther forms of mass violence. 60 years after the UN Convention. Edited by Henning Melber. Uppsala: The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (development dialogue, no. 50, December 2008), 302 pp.

Interview: Whiteness and African writing

John Eppel

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/52410

Conversations with Writers: When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

John Eppel: About age 12. Around that time I stopped believing in God, I became consciously aware of my mortality, I began to feel uneasy about my privileged status as a white boy, and I fell in love with a girl who barely noticed me. So even at that age, it was a sense of loss combined with a flair for rhyme, which made me want to become a writer. Perhaps because I’m left-handed, I think metaphorically, which is the way lyric poets apprehend the world.

Conversations with Writers: Who would you say has influenced you the most?

John Eppel: British writers and, marginally, North American and European writers. In my formative years I had no access to literature in English which was coming out of Africa and other colonised parts of the world. Our teachers in primary school were expats from England, Wales and Scotland, and they were very patriotic about the homes they had abandoned. Our little heads were stuffed with characters like Robin Hood, King Arthur, and the Billy Goats Gruff.

Two writers who have had quite a strong influence on me are Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy (the poet, not the novelist); Dickens for his humour, his characterisation and his concern for the marginalised people of his world; Hardy for his exquisite sense of loss, not just personal loss but the loss that is felt by an entire people in times of dramatic socio-political change. I’ve also been influenced by the great satirist poets, in particular Chaucer and Pope.


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

John Eppel: My main concern in my poetry is to find a voice, which merges British form (prosody) with African content (mostly nature) so that, if not in my life, in my art, I can find an identity which is not binary, not black/white, African/European colonizer/colonized. My main concern in my prose is to ridicule greed, cruelty, self-righteousness and related vices like racism, sexism, jingoism, and homophobia. Of course I am under no illusion that my satires will make the slightest bit of difference, but nobody, not even those who are ashamed of nothing, likes to be laughed at. I am also acutely aware that satirists are themselves prone to self-righteousness and I keep before me the words of Jesus: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

As a younger person, in the 70s and 80s I was quite preoccupied with guilt and self-loathing, a crisis of identity -- all the baggage of apartheid. But now, after a quarter of a century in independent Zimbabwe, things have balanced out a bit. In the last seven years especially, the now tiny settler community (the few filthy rich wheeler-dealers notwithstanding) seems to have paid (and continues to pay) its dues. The government controlled media, aping the ZANU PF hierarchy spews out virulent anti-white propaganda reminiscent of Rwanda just before the genocide. We are called scum, insects, Blair’s kith and kin. The once neutral Ndebele word for a white person, Makiwa, now has pejorative connotations equivalent to mabhunu (boer) or even kaffir.

I am beginning to see bad behaviour more in terms of class than race. Blacks with political connections, who have been catapulted into shocking wealth, the so-called middle class (in a country where 80% of the people live in abject poverty) behave just as badly as their white counterparts behave. They are Rhodies too; their desire for ostentation, parading their Pajeros (the women at 40 km per hour!) and their Mercedes Benzes, acquiring not one suburban home but a dozen; not one farm but a dozen; not one overseas trip per year but a dozen, makes me sick at heart.

Something else which deeply concerns me is the place, the “soil”, the people where I grew up and where I still live: Matabeleland. But here a dark cloud hovers above me. I grew up speaking, not Ndebele but fanakalo, a kind of 'lingua franca', which originated in the gold mines of South Africa where migrant workers speaking many different languages were employed. It is a language of oppression which I have not been able to unlearn and which interferes with my attempts to speak proper Ndebele. I am always afraid of accidentally saying something offensive; consequently I keep quiet or speak in English. Most Africans, even those with little formal education, speak several languages.

The spirit of Matabeleland is to be experienced most potently in the Matobo hills, which were inhabited thousands of years ago by the aboriginal people of this region. They left a legacy of awesome rock paintings. It is also the location of a sacred shrine (at Njelele) revered by Ndebele and Shona alike; it is a retreat for Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus and poets. It is epiphanic!

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

John Eppel: A lot, of course. I was four years old when my parents emigrated to Rhodesia from South Africa. My father was a miner; my mother was a housewife. They never owned one square inch of this land. When my parents left Zimbabwe shortly after Independence they took with them an old Volvo station-wagon stuffed with their worldly goods, and a meagre pension. So when I get lumped by the new colonisers, the NGOs (shortly to be replaced by the Chinese), with tobacco barons, safari operators, and mining magnates, it is a personal experience I resent, and it nourishes the satirist in me.

The experience of fatherhood, on the other hand, and being a school teacher, and, yes, a lover, have enriched me beyond words. That’s the bitter logic of lyric poetry: expressing the inexpressible.

When I was in my early twenties, the girl I was hoping to marry, was killed in a car accident. In my late twenties I spent two years in the Rhodesian army. I lived for several years in England working variously as a steam cleaner, picker, packer, furniture remover, nightwatchman, assistant on a cargo ship. As a Rhodesian I was labelled a fascist; as a Zimbabwean I was labelled (at least in the early years of Independence) as a Marxist-Leninist. These are all personal experiences, which have influenced my direction as a writer. Of course there are many others, not least being the ageing process, and the prospect of having to work until I drop dead.

Conversations with Writers: What would you say are the biggest challenges that you face?

John Eppel: The same challenges that most Zimbabweans face, linked to the economic collapse of the country: how to pay the bills, how to put food on the table; how to stay alive as long as possible because it’s too expensive to get sick and die. There is no social welfare left in this country, the extended family system has collapsed; pension funds and other savings have been looted by people with huge bellies and wallets of flesh on the backs of their necks. And then there is AIDS.

Zimbabwe is, de facto, a police state. It is routine now for people to be beaten up in prison, whether or not they have been charged. People live in fear as well as hunger and illness. People are depressed. Those who can’t get out, turn their faces to the wall. There is no culture of maintenance, there is no accountability, there will always be someone else to blame. Like the Jews in history, the whites, and to a lesser extent, the Indians, have become scapegoats. When these marginalized groups have gone, it will be the turn of the Ndebeles. Then, God help this country. You ask me why all this is happening. It’s simple. It’s because of a megalomaniac who refuses to relinquish power.

Conversations with Writers: How do you deal with these challenges?

John Eppel: I write, I work hard, I cherish the company of my children and my few friends; I drink more than I should; I fall in love! In between I read and listen to the BBC World Service. I used to watch videos but my machine broke down and I can’t afford to have it repaired. The same goes for my washing machine, my music centre, my electric frying pan, my jaffle machine and my toaster. You see, I was once quite rich for a schoolteacher.

Maybe I should get more politically involved, but it’s difficult if you are white. You tend to become a liability to the party if it’s in opposition to this government.

Conversations with Writers: How many books have you written so far?

John Eppel: About eleven. My first book of poems, Spoils of War, was published in 1989 by a small press in Cape Town called Carrefour (now defunct). It took me twelve years to get it published. Baobab Books in Harare rejected it. It won the Ingrid Jonker prize.

My first novel, D. G. G. Berry’s The Great North Road took me fifteen years to find a publisher. No Zimbabwean publisher, including Baobab Books, was interested in it. It won the M-Net prize. Only five hundred copies were printed. My second novel, Hatchings, was shortlisted for the M-net prize. In the same year I wrote a third novel, The Giraffe Man. Both were published in South Africa.

When my second book of poems, Sonata for Matabeleland, came out in in 1995, Baobab Books, for the first time, reluctantly put their logo on its cover. It was published by Snailpress in Cape Town, and Baobab’s commitment was to undertake to sell 100 of the 1000 copies printed. As it turned out I sold seventy of those at my launch in Bulawayo. Most of the remaining 30 were sold through the Bulawayo Art Gallery.

My next two novels, The Curse of the Ripe Tomato and The Holy Innocents, were provisionally accepted by Baobab Books, on the recommendation of Anthony Chennells. Nothing was done about them for several years and then Baobab Books collapsed. Then I and some friends created ‘amaBooks publishers for the initial purpose of getting those two novels into print. We got started thanks to a generous donation by an ex-pupil of mine called Ilan Elkaim. International donors like HIVOS and SIDA and the British Council will not support white Zimbabwean writers, no matter how poor they may be. These novels were published in 2001 and 20002. In 2004 ‘amaBooks brought out The Caruso of Colleen Bawn and other Short Writings and they may, finances permitting, bring out my most recent book, White Man Crawling and other Short Writings, next year.

Incidentally, I submitted the last named book to Kwela Books in South Africa. It was rejected on the basis of this reader’s report -- I quote the final paragraph: “While the author has a pleasant conversational writing style and some stories are fairly well written, it is doubtful whether this collection is publishable as it stands. Even if the African setting of some stories might have suited Kwela’s publishing philosophy, this is not a truly original African voice, let alone an original South African voice.”

In 2001 Childline published my Selected Poems 1965-1995, and in 2005, Weaver Press published eighty of my poems in a collection called Songs My Country Taught Me. Last year Hatchings, with an introduction by Dr K. M. Mangwanda was re-published by ‘amaBooks.

Conversations with Writers: How much time do you spend on your writing?

John Eppel: Very little. Like most serious writers I earn almost nothing from my books. I teach full time at Christian Brothers College. In between I give private lessons, and I also teach Creative Writing modules (which I wrote) for UNISA. I am also a single parent so I have untold household chores to perform. I reserve school holidays to catch up on my reading and writing. That is why I now find very short stories an appropriate form.

* 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.
* John Eppel is an award-winning poet and novelist. His first novel, D.G.G. Berry’s The Great North Road (1992), won the M-Net Prize in South Africa. His second novel, Hatchings (1993), was short-listed for the M-Net Prize and his third novel, The Giraffe Man (1994), has been translated into French.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Africa blogging roundup 2nd December 2008

Sokari Ekine

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/52425

The two major stories covered in the blogosphere this week are the riots which took place in Jos last weekend following reports of rigging in local election. This week also marks the 20th anniversary of World Aids Day an event regularly remembered by African bloggers.


Glorly O Nigeria rests some of the blame for the riots on the tendency for Nigerian leaders to “blend religion and politics” which when added to what he describes as “thugs and illiterates” and politicians who are thieves, it is not surprising that the country has repeated riots like the ones in Jos.

“In Nigeria, this type of killing usually comes with the backings of some wicked politicians. The perpetrators enjoy privileged protection or anonymity and they will be unleashed again to do the same harm in the future. This is why religious riots or political riots associated with religion remains recurring incidents in Nigeria.

One of the reasons why this type of nonsense happens in Nigeria is because the politicians are thieves. Who would fight or kill in the name of service to the people? Politics in Nigeria is a winner takes all game. The winner steals and loots the treasury while the losers lick their wounds. If someone or a politician would pay or go to jail for stealing or for looting, I do not think there will be this mad rush to government houses across Nigeria.”


My Nigeria takes a slightly different view whilst at the same time criticising western media for their inaccurate analysis of the riots by describing them as religious.

“ So Nigerian papers say the strife was as a result of what is being perceived as a stolen election, but the BBC takes that, twists it around, and turns it into a story of Christians vs. Muslims, obviously a story that will garner more interest in the West, but one that sets religious relations back immensely across the board.”


Finally, Moot Box asks the old question “Why cant we all get along”. Indeed if pigs could fly! He believes the new generation of young Nigerians will lead the country to a being a better place!
“I will stick to what a wise old man told me ten years ago, he said, “when it comes to sectarian violence in Nigeria, in the end, all violence in Nigeria is driven by Economics”. In my opinion, Nigerians are largely peace loving and enjoy the good life. The quickest and most efficient route to reducing violence in Nigeria is by increasing the average standards of living. In addition to this, ‘time’ is Nigeria’s friend. As the older generation of Nigerians who got a bit too comfortable with military rule get past their prime, and the younger Nigerians who have known liberty, freedom and democratic rule all their lives start to take the reins, Nigeria promises to be a better place.”


Africa is a country reports on a Harvard University study which claims that former South African President Mbeki could have prevented 365,000 Aids related deaths between 2000 and 2005.
“The Harvard study concluded that the policies grew out of President Thabo Mbeki’s denial of the well-established scientific consensus about the viral cause of AIDS and the essential role of antiretroviral drugs in treating it.
Coming in the wake of Mr. Mbeki’s ouster in September after a power struggle in his party, the African National Congress, the report has reignited questions about why Mr. Mbeki, a man of great acumen, was so influenced by AIDS denialists.”

Nonetheless the debate between those that believe HIV virus leads to AIDS and those in denial continues and so far the jury is still out on who is right.


Kenya Environment & Political News has a report on the lives of HIV positive prisoners in Kenya who he claims suffer from discrimination outside and inside of the prison system. However the recent arrival of a project aimed at improving the lives of HIV sufferers has brought some hope for the prisoners.

“HIV-positive inmates suffer double stigma - for their being prisoners and for their HIV status,” said Nancy Muchemi, a project officer at the Kenya office of the African Medical and Research Foundation.

“We offer them psychosocial support to relieve their stress, as well as expose them to HIV information: we train them on issues of prevention, safe sex, reinfection, healthy living and adherence to ARV [antiretroviral] drugs.”
Prisoners said the most useful thing the Zingatia Maisha project had taught them was the benefit of forming a support group for HIV-positive prisoners, giving them the opportunity to talk about their thoughts and feelings others in the same position.


Black Looks publishes a post by Zimbabwean activist, Kester on the plight of HIV positive patients in Zimbabwe where people are dying because there are no ARVs. She also ties this in to Zimbabwean asylum seekers asking that the British government allow them to work so they can send monies home for family to buy the necessary drugs and generally support them.


Two final posts, one from Timbuktu Chronicles writes that a staggering 90% of the worlds resources creates products and technologies which serve a mere 120% of the worlds’ population. The video can be watched : here .





The other one is from Ghana - Tales from the loo. Apparently last week was International Toilet Day which got the blogger thinking about how lucky he was to be one of the 10% of Ghanaians who have access to a good loo. But what about those millions across Ghana and the rest of the continent who have to live with woefully horrible and inadequate sanitary conditions. We have all been there at some point but fortunately for many of us our experiences were temporary.

“I am talking about those who have to join a queue to use a KVIP or a pit latrine. I've been there before and I know how it feels like to jump repeatedly just to 'manage' the urgency of the moment.

If your loo is shared by the whole community and you need to walk ten minutes to reach it, one of your constant prayers is to cast out the demons of “running” – when your bowels become so loose that the calls of nature become annoyingly incessant. I've been there before.

If you think you are unlucky because you are forced by circumstances to use a stinking KVIP just pause a moment and count your blessings. I've seen people use the areas around KVIPs as social centres. If you are not busy trying to suppress 'the things', those moments in the queue provide a fine opportunity to catch up on neighbourhood gossip or chat up the beautiful chick next door. This is how we did social networking long before 'Facebook'.

If you have neither a loo in your house nor a “public place of convenience” you are in deep trouble. In circumstances like these people are compelled to either do it “free range” or resort to “tie and throw”. I've done both before – especially when I lived in an uncompleted building in Adenta.”

* Sokari Ekine blogs at www.blacklooks.org

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

The Mumbai terror attacks, but business as usual for China

Sanusha Naidu

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/52529

The Mumbai terror attacks have dominated the news headlines last week. China’s top brass still remain cautious about the country’s economic future. The Summit in Beijing has definitely sparked an interest among other emerging powers. Meanwhile, the African Union has also expressed concern that the slowdown in China may affect the continent’s strategic relationship with Beijing. At the same time, China appears to be increasing its competitive advantage for mining deals, and South Africa seems unlikely to extend Chinese import quotas. And China has pledged vaccines to assist in the Zimbabwe cholera outbreaks. This and much more in this week's round-up by Sanusha Naidu.
The Mumbai terror attack has dominated news headlines over the past week. Termed India’s 9-11, the reign of terror unleashed in India’s financial and Bollywood capital has exposed the weaknesses in India’s inland security apparatus. It also aroused an angry domestic public opinion against what was seen as the inertia and complacency of the Congress led ruling coalition in response the attacks. While India’s navy had successfully battled with piracy in the Gulf of Aden a week before, it took India’s security forces almost 72 hours to regain the offensive against the terrorists. And that only after India’s prestigious elite special forces, the National Security Guard or ‘black caps’ were called in to break the deadlock. With Mumbaikers and the rest of India demanding answers of their government around responsibility, the Asia Online Times reported that the terror attacks has indeed changed the complexion of geo-security in the sub-continent. As suspicion fell on the Pakistan-based terrorist group, Lakshar-e-Taiba, , even China has become concerned about the increasing tensions in the region and called for India to show restraint. Of course with Condolezza Rice’s visit to New Delhi on Wednesday to ease tensions between the two South Asian protagonists and prevent any nuclear threat from materializing, Beijing is perhaps also worried about the regional spillover along its border regions.

REFUELING CHINA’S ECONOMY

China’s top brass still remain cautious about the country’s economic future. In an address to theCCP’s powerful political bureau, President Hu warned that the current financial crisis posed [url =http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/11df7c1dff91241a] critical challenges to the government’s domestic policies[/url] and to the country’s competitive edge in global trade. This comes on the back of continued domestic uncertainty around employment security and factory closures as the manufacturing sector felt the impact of hi global weaknesses .

While the stimulus package continues to attract mixed reactions, the chairman of China’s sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp, has expressed concerns about investing in Western Banks . According to Mr. Lou Jiwei, China is trying to limit its own vulnerability and is worried about the viability of western financial institutions with what was seen as a ‘lack of consistency in government policies’.

Nevertheless, Mr. Lou reaffirmed that the sovereign fund will continue to seek more investments and depending on the outcome of Thursday’s (04 December 2008) Summit in Beijing with US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, around US-China trade and a re-evaluation of the strong Yuan, will decide on the future direction of the fund.

INVESTING IN OTHER EMERGING MARKETS

The Summit in Beijing has definitely sparked an interest among other emerging powers. Even in India despite the terror attacks, one financial commentator was calling for investments from China’s US$2 trillion into Indian bonds and stocks . While China may be cautious of redeploying its reserves away from the US, Mr. Gao Xiqing, President of the China Investment Corporation who is responsible for about US$200 billion of China’s foreign assets [/url] called for that the creation of a sustainable financial system that changes the way that household and personal debt is avoided.

AFRICA CONCERNED

The African Union has also expressed concern that the slowdown in China may affect the continent’s strategic relationship with Beijing. With the 6th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit to be held in Cairo next year, it is understandable that the AU is worried that there maybe less Chinese trade and investment . AU Commissioner, Jean Ping, warned that: “If you have a recession in China, which apparently will be the case, we will have a reduction in the demand of our raw materials". Yet, this does not seem to have affected China’s continued interest in Africa so far. According to the Lusaka Times China has increased its investments in the continent from US$70 billion to US$80 billion dollars this year.

THE SHOPPING SPREE CONTINUES…

At the same time, China appears to be increasing its competitive advantage for mining deals. Chinese mining companies have been holding talks with South Africa’s Standard Bank for M&A mining deals at bargain prices. The Bank’s head of mining and metals investment banking, Mr. Thys Terblanche, confirmed that the prospective companies were ICBC clients who had a keen focus on Africa as well as ‘seeking opportunities in Peru, Chile, Brazil, Australia and Indonesia’.

Telecoms is the other area of strategic interest. China’s state owned telecommunication corporation ZTE recently announced that it intends to offer cheap handsets to operators in West Africa. Going head to head with South Africa’s cellular service provider MTN, which recently also unveiled plans to source cheap handsets from China for its African operations, ZTE’s strategy reflects a more entrenched presence in Africa’s mobile device market.

NOT SO GOOD NEWS FOR THE CLOTHING AND TEXTILE MARKET

With South Africa’s clothing and textile quotas on cheap Chinese imports due to expire at the end of 2008, Director General, Tshediso Matona, in the Department of Trade and Industry, revealed that South Africa is unlikely to ‘extend Chinese import quotas beyond December 2008’ since there were no applications received to this effect. While this is good news for South Africa’s retailers, the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU) will probably lobby for further restrictions, especially with unemployment being a central feature for next year’s national elections in South Africa.

IN OTHER NEWS…

As a response to the growing cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, China has pledged to provide vaccines worth US$50 000 to assist the in the fight against the outbreak.

Africa’s fertile agricultural land continues to attract investors, this time from the Gulf states. Qatar is in talks with the Kenyan government to lease 100 000 hectares of arable agricultural land for farming . In exchange, the Kenyan government is pushing for investment in the Lamu port project. This, according to government officials, will help ease congestion in the Mombasa port.

On the other hand, chairman of the Bahrain Export Development Society, Dr. Yousef Mashal predicted that Africa could become a breadbasket for the GCC , particularly in the supply of water and food products. Dr. Marshal urged Gulf countries to strengthen the GCC-Africa-Cooperation Forum through incentives and said that “some countries in Africa could offer Bahrain joint ventures in exchange for technology and some might have industries that want to base production in Bahrain to utilise the US-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement”.

* Sanusha Naidu is Director of Research for Fahamu's China in Africa programme.

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

Botswana donates to Zimbabwe crisis

2008-12-04

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5030

Botswana's government said Wednesday it would give 370,000 dollars to neighbouring Zimbabwe for cholera and food relief, but that the money was not intended for President Robert Mugabe's regime. "We have no quarrel with the people of Zimbabwe. They are in this because their leadership has failed to form a government. The money is intended for the people and not authorities," said Clifford Maribe, a foreign affairs official.

Full text of ZANU-PF and MDC agreement

2008-12-04

http://www.swradioafrica.com/pages/fultext160908.htm

CONCERNED about the recent challenges that we have faced as a country and the multiple threats to the well-being of our people and, therefore, determined to resolve these permanently...CONSIDERING our shared determination to uphold, defend and sustain Zimbabwe's sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity, as a respected member of the international community, a nation where all citizens respect and, therefore, enjoy equal protection of the law and have equal opportunity to compete and prosper in all spheres of life.

Government to deal with rampaging soldiers

2008-12-04

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5027

Zimbabwe government announced Wednesday that it will bring to book soldiers who went on a rampage beating up people and looting shops in central Harare, the defence minister told journalists. "A number of properties were damaged, innocent people injured, money, and property stolen. These acts are deplorable, reprehensible and criminal," defence minister, Sydney Sekeramayi told journalists at a press conference.

ISO Zimbabwe update

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/52422

The situation in Zimbabwe has reached unprecedented levels of crisis. As we have been saying for the last few years, such crisis was climaxing and with a number of possibilities arising. Firstly and most likely was the likelihood of the bourgeois elite politicians in Zanu PF and the opposition MDC uniting together in an elitist government of national unity in which Zanu PF would be the senior partner and MDC the junior around a western and capitalist supported neoliberal economic agenda.
FROM ISO ZIMBABWE:

Comrades
The situation in Zimbabwe has reached unprecedented levels of crisis. As we have been saying for the last few years, such crisis was climaxing and with a number of possibilities arising. Firstly and most likely was the likelihood of the bourgeois elite politicians in Zanu PF and the opposition MDC uniting together in an elitist government of national unity in which Zanu PF would be the senior partner and MDC the junior around a western and capitalist supported neoliberal economic agenda. The MDC's popularity would be used to pacify the urban working people from rising up. The strong possibilities of this happening has been shwon with the MDC's willingeness to accept the crumps offered by Zanu PF and endorsed by the regional body SADC in which Mugabe would remain virtually all his executive presidential powers with Tsvangirai acting as a prop. Indeed the cnysism of the whole plot was shown in that as MDC signed Constitutional Amendemnt 19 with Zanu PF, Mugabe was appointing Gono for another five years as Reserve Bank Governor. The same Gono who has been the central figure in Zanu PF and the ruling classes' neoliberal onslaught against working people in th elast five years. He is the virtual de facto Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, unelected and unaccouintable to the people but to his equally unelected and illegititmate masters.

However, we also argued that if the elites did not quickly resolve their differences through an elitist government of national unity and if the country did not descend into a failed state like Somalia, there was a real possibility of uprisings from below led by the working class but critically invovling a united front of labour and radical civic groups and social movements and militant rank and file activists from the MDC. We have consistently called for the urgent formation of such united front to lead united mass action, centrally demanding a people driven and anti-neoliberal constitution.

In the last few weeks the tensions and fights between the elites in Zanu PF and MDC over the share out of power and the continuation of sanctions and the economic crisis has accelerated the economic crisis and brought greater political disllusionament amongst the ordinary people leading to an increasing wave of discontent in the last few weeks, with strikes and protests by teachers, nurses, doctors, the NCA, women, students etc. And most decisively in the
last few days, riots by lower ranks of the army in Harare beating up cash vendors sent by Gono as well as shops selling in foreign currency. Yersterday they ran in the city centre singing and followed by scores of of people denouncing Gono and the government. The situation is now extremely delicate ahead of the protests called for the 3rd December 2008 by civic groups led by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions and also invovling critically involvement from the Zimbabwe Social Forum and the National Constitutional Assembly.

The International Socialist Organisation is centrally invovled in the demonstrations through the Zimbabwe Social Forum where many of its leading cadres are playing a critical role. We welcome the demonstrations as the first sign of united front mass action that we have been calling for as the alternative to the elitist political parties negotiated settlement.Find attached herewith the statement issued by the Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Social Forum, Munyaradzi Gwisai who is also the General Co-Ordinator of ISO calling for local, regional and international mobilisation and support for the mass action tomorrow on the 3rd December 2008.

We shall continually update comrades on developments whilst we call for your support on what could be a decisive day of action. The resolution amongst the leadership of the ZCTU, ZSF and NCA is that we are going all out no matter what the dictatorship throws at us and we are confident that hundreds will turn up for the demonstration.

No to Dictactorship! Viva Socialsim!

National Co-Ordinating Committee
International Socialist Organisation - Zimbabwe

Kenyan PM calls for Mugabe ouster

2008-12-04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7764883.stm

Power-sharing in Zimbabwe is dead and it is time for African governments to oust President Robert Mugabe, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said. After talks with Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Nairobi, Mr Odinga told the BBC that Mr Mugabe had no interest in sharing power.

Mutsvangwa says Mugabe status not official

2008-12-04

http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=8027

A top-ranking official of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF has publicly admitted that Mugabe is merely the “de facto” and not legally the Zimbabwean Head of State. Zimbabwe’s former ambassador to China and a senior Mugabe aide Chris Mutsvangwa conceded Friday that Mugabe can only become Zimbabwe’s legitimate President when the pending Constitutional Amendment 19 Bill is passed into law.

Secret police seize leading activist Jestina Mukoko

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/5jna8m

A leading Zimbabwean human rights activist was seized yesterday by suspected secret police, in the most high level abduction operation yet by President Mugabe’s government. Fifteen armed men in civilian clothing burst into the home of Jestina Mukoko, the executive director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, in the small town of Norton 40km west of Harare at 5am, lawyers said.

Somalia: Women in Puntland demand greater role in government

2008-12-04

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81792

Women in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, north-eastern Somalia, are calling for greater representation in the region's parliament in the upcoming elections to reflect their role in society. Asha Gelle, the Puntland Minister of Women and Family Affairs, told IRIN on 3 December that women were demanding "to be represented at the table where decisions are made. This time around we want to make sure that our rights and interests are represented."

Zimbabwe: Women victims of torture and rape picket in SA

2008-12-04

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news031208/women031208.htm

As desperate Zimbabweans continue to fight a daily battle to survive, a group of young refugee women have taken their struggle against the Robert Mugabe regime to the streets of South Africa. The group of up to fifty women at a time has been picketing outside South Africa’s Union Buildings in Pretoria since last week, in protest against the ongoing violence and abuse of women by Zimbabwe’s state agents.

Africa: Children as weapons of war

2008-12-03

http://www.mediaforfreedom.com/ReadArticle.asp?ArticleID=13007

Over the last five years, the global campaign to stop the use of child soldiers has garnered an impressive series of successes, including new international legal standards, action by the UN Security Council and regional bodies, and pledges from various armed groups and governments to end the use of child soldiers. Despite gains in awareness and better understanding of practical policies that can help reduce the use of children in war, the practice persists in at least twenty countries, and globally, the number of child soldiers - about 300,000 - is believed to have remained fairly constant.

Africa: Cluster bombs banned in 34 countries

2008-12-04

http://www.afrol.com/articles/31901

At a historic conference in Oslo, more than 100 countries are signing a convention that will ban cluster bombs that are known to cause great damage on civilians. More than 30 African countries are among them. Every country in East Africa, all Western African countries except The Gambia and the large majority of Southern African and the Indian Ocean countries are signing the convention. Only in North Africa and the Horn of Africa, governments will not ban the devastating weapon.

Burundi: Assembly abolishes death penalty, criminalizes torture

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/5djpts

The Burundian National Assembly adopted important human rights advances in a penal code voted in on November 22, 2008, including abolishing the death penalty and making torture, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity punishable under Burundian law, Human Rights Watch has said.

Global: "Slavery is not history", warns UN Special Rapporteur

2008-12-04

http://www.nieuwsbank.nl/en/2008/11/27/r034.htm

"Slavery is the reality of modern day life. It has evolved in many parts of the world into many diverse and cruel forms", says, new UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery its causes and consequences, Ms. Gulnara Shahinian. "Last year, the world celebrated 200 years of the abolition of the slave trade. However, slavery is not history," warns the UN expert. "Despite significant progress in the fight against slavery in many parts of the world, these efforts seem to be insufficient."

Global: International Detention Monitor Newsletter launched

2008-12-04

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfh8dzsz_3df7tcr8s

The International Coalition on the Detention of Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants has launched the first international newsletter with a focus on global trends in migration-related detention and resources for groups working with detainees. To sign up for the newsletter email: info@idcoalition.org, or visit: http://www.idcoalition.org

Mauritania: Security forces guilty of routine torture

2008-12-03

http://tinyurl.com/6d7wtg

The Mauritanian government is guilty of routine and systematic torture, according to a new Amnesty International report. Mauritania: torture at the heart of the state says that the country's security forces have adopted torture as the preferred method of investigation and repression. The report details the methods of torture and lists the exact locations of some torture centres.

Nigerian: "We still claim victory despite Chevron’s acquittal"!

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/5kk3rc

US district court jury acquitted San Ramon-based Chevron Corporation of complicity in human rights abuses. The case of Bowoto v. Chevron, which pitted Chevron and its relationship with the notoriously violent Nigerian police and military against Nigerians who peacefully protested the destruction of their environment and livelihood by Chevron’s oil production activities. Despite the verdict, corporate accountability advocates vowed to continue the struggle to bring Chevron and other corporations to justice for human rights violations they commit overseas.

Sudan: UN urged to support arrest

2008-12-04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7763527.stm

The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has warned the UN Security Council not to shield Sudan's president if the court issues an arrest warrant. Luis Moreno-Ocampo accused President Omar al-Bashir in July of genocide in Darfur - a charge he denies.

Zimbabwe: Authorities target activists and trade unionists

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/5lboo2

A Zimbabwean human rights activist was abducted from her home at dawn on Wednesday by a group of armed plain-clothes men who identified themselves as policemen. Jestina Mukoko is the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), a local human rights organisation that is involved in monitoring and documenting human rights violations in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe: Eerie silence at mine

2008-12-04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7761268.stm

Godwin Muti was one of the first people to descend on Chiadzwa when word spread that diamonds had been discovered in the arid and impoverished part of eastern Zimbabwe. Mr Muti, 31, an unemployed father-of-two, was wallowing in poverty. He could hardly pay rent for a one-room house where he lodged in the old township of Sakubva in Mutare city.

Africa: At least 20 drown in Gulf of Aden crossing

2008-12-04

http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/49355e3b4.html

At least 20 people drowned off the coast of Yemen earlier this week and two were reported missing after smugglers carrying them across the Gulf of Aden from the Horn of Africa forced them to jump overboard in deep water. The boat was reportedly carrying around 115 passengers, mostly Ethiopians.

DRC: IDPs are gradually returning home

2008-12-04

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/EGUA-7LYSX6?OpenDocument

Due to the absence of clashes as well as patrol operations by MONUC, nearly 65% of the families that fled from Kanyabayonga, 150km north of Goma due to insecurity, have started returning home during the past week. The same situation is happening in Kaina, Lubero, 200km north of Goma. Unfortunately in Kanyabayonga, most of the houses were looted by armed troops who carried away mattresses, blankets, kitchen utensils and many valuables.

Global: Celebrate International Migrants Day Join the Radio 1812 Event!

Join the Radio 1812 Event!

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/52382

For the third year in a row, Radio 1812 will bring together migrant groups and radios from around the world to celebrate International Migrants Day on 18th December. Last year, over 150 radio stations produced, broadcasted and shared programmes on migration, turning the event into a successful opportunity to make migrants’ voices heard across the world.
Celebrate International Migrants Day and Join the Radio 1812 Event!

Status Update

For the third year in a row, Radio 1812 will bring together migrant groups and radios from around the world to celebrate International Migrants Day on 18th December.

Last year, over 150 radio stations produced, broadcasted and shared programmes on migration, turning the event into a successful opportunity to make migrants’ voices heard across the world.

This year, 59 radio stations from 19 countries already confirmed their participation (see below). We will be adding the names of the participants on a special map which you will find on the home page of the Radio 1812 site.

New jingles (in six languages) will be available for you to use. You can find them here. If you produce your own jingle, then please feel free to put them on our site.

We are looking forward to welcome you (again) as a participant in this unique happening.

Please let us know as soon as possible if you want to take part by writing to the Radio 1812 team at radio1812@december18.net

Confirmed participants to date (by country): Argentina (Radio Ahijúna, FM Raices), Belgium (Al Manar, FM Brussel, RTBF, Radio 1, Europe and You, Indymedia.be, Radio Alma), Bolivia (Radio Evangelización), Canada (CKUT Montreal), Costa Rica (Voces Nuestras), Ecuador (ALER, Coordinadora de Radios Populares y Educativas del Ecuador, Fundación AIG Acción Integral Guamote, Radio Iluman), France (Fréquence Paris Plurielle, Strasbourg RBS, IDFM Radio Enghien,Radio Campus Rennes, Radio G!), Guatemala (Radio Universidad), Honduras (Radio Progreso), Italy (Amisnet, Radio Marconi, Ondemigranti, Radio Delta Lampedusa, Radio Popolare Salento), Mexico (Radio Universidad Ocotlan, X.E.Y.T. TEOCELO 1490 AM), Nepal (Panos Radio South Asia, College of Journalism and Mass Communication FM), Netherlands (Radio Amigo, Radio Eekta, Radio Vahan, Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep), Paraguay (Radio Viva), Peru (La Voz de la Selva, Radio Yaraví, Radio Onda Azul), Slovakia (Radio Slovakia International), Spain (Radio Pueblo Nuevo, Radio RedconVoz, Radio Almenara , Radio Kanal Barcelona, Radio Huétor Tájar, Radio Ibaute, Fiesta FM, Radio Pimienta, Fundación CeiMigra (Fiesta FM), Switzerland (Rhône FM, Radio Suisse Romande, Radio Cité), United Kingdom (Camden Community Radio, London Link Radio, London Chinese Radio, Resonance FM, Refugee Week Radio UK, Wythenshawe FM).

Global: Fraud claims halt refugee program

2008-12-03

http://tinyurl.com/5fgmrz

For three years, Leylo Mohamud has been working to get her family out of Somalia, a land engulfed in civil war for much of the past two decades. Her prospects dimmed significantly last month. "It is so hard, it breaks my heart," said Mohamud, who lives in the Twin Cities. "I cannot support them and they're going to die without food. I want to bring them here, but I cannot."

Sudan: IDPs in the cold as slum demolished

2008-12-04

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81815

Thousands of people in a slum 20km south of Khartoum are living in makeshift shelters made of sticks and cloth after their homes were razed by the government. Local officials said 4,000 homes were destroyed as part of a government plan to reorganise the Mandela settlement to make it more habitable. Another 6,000 are due to be demolished.

Uganda: RDC warns on marrying refugees

2008-12-03

http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/18/662423

Kanungu resident district commissioner Can. Ben Rullonga has warned residents against using Congolese refugees as house maids or wives. Anybody found using the refugees will be taken to the courts of law, Rullonga said. Rullonga was on Friday addressing residents at Kihiihi in Kanungu district at a ceremony where 2,362 out of 13,000 Congolese refugees were transferred to Nakivale refugee camp in Isingiro district.

Africa: Africa, imperialism and the global class struggle

2008-12-04

http://www.workers.org/2008/us/aazikiwe_1204/

Most researchers and writers on African affairs, both bourgeois and historical materialist, have recognized the African origins of human society. The contributions of successive African civilizations and cultures have been well documented in various publications. These efforts to re-correct the distortions in the way African history has been narrated and interpreted are important in understanding the significance and character of political events that are occurring on the continent today.

Global: Get out of the “woods”!

Civil Society supports UN-led Summit on finances

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/52385

As one of the lead elements proposed for recommendation to the Financing for Development Review Conference, the Civil Society Forum supports an international summit on financial and economic architecture and global economic governance structures, in 2009. The Forum position challenges the proposal of some governments that the Bretton Woods Institutions (the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) organize an event, as well as moves to concentrate decision-making in the G-20 group of governments.
Civil Society Forum on Financing for Development. Doha, Qatar

Get out of the “woods”! Civil Society supports UN-led Summit on finances

As one of the lead elements proposed for recommendation to the Financing for Development Review Conference, the Civil Society Forum supports an international summit on financial and economic architecture and global economic governance structures, in 2009. The Forum position challenges the proposal of some governments that the Bretton Woods Institutions (the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) organize an event, as well as moves to concentrate decision-making in the G-20 group of governments.

Speaking to the plenary, Rana Al Sairafi, a civil society delegate from Bahrain, said “instead of focusing on ad hoc mechanisms like the G-20, such a conference should be under the umbrella of the United Nations with the inclusive principles that govern the Financing for Development process, including the active participation of civil society organizations.” In preparation for the event, the UN should be asked to prepare a comprehensive review of the existing global financial architecture.

There are currently four alternate proposals (para.58) regarding the conference in negotiations for the Review Conference. The Forum recommendation supports the UN-led option.

Addressing the Forum regarding the locus and purpose of economic governance, Jens Martens, Global Policy Forum ( Germany ) noted “The G-20 failed to really address the root causes of the crisis. Instead, they primarily intend to stabilize the current financial system-a system that has been characterized for the last 20 years as “casino capitalism”. “We don’t need better rules for the casino,” Martens concludes. “The casino has to be closed down!”

Forum delegates spent Wednesday in sessions focusing on the six agenda items of the Review Conference, followed by intense workshops and caucuses on specific issues, including : women setting the agenda, addressing climate change, achieving the health MDGs, the Currency Transaction Tax, among others. Women, trade unions, and other sector-specific caucuses have met as well.

Further recommendations on finance reform include support for the upgrading of the UN Committee of Experts on tax to become an inter-governmental body, moves to make international financial flows fully transparent, ending illicit transfers of resources, and ensuring rapid fulfillment of aid commitments and enhancement of quality and accountability of aid.

The Civil Society Forum, leading to the Financing for Development Review Conference brings together approximately 250 delegates, from 52 countries, for two days of deliberations preparing a Declaration on behalf of Civil Society to the Review Conference.

For further information contact :
John Foster- Email : jfoster@nsi-ins.ca
Kinda Mohamadieh- Email : kinda.mohamadieh@annd.org/ Tel : 974-625 1980
Eva Hanfstaengl - Email : hanfstaengl@gmx.net / Tel : 974-304-7602

On the Road to Accra and beyond Doha 2008

Women's Statement on FfD

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/52386

We, women from women’s rights organisations and networks gathered in Doha before the official Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) to review the Monterrey Consensus, have been working to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment are at the centre of the FfD process.
Doha 2008: Women’s Rights & Gender Equality in Financing for Development

1. We, women from women’s rights organisations and networks gathered in Doha before the official Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) to review the Monterrey Consensus, have been working to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment are at the centre of the FfD process.

2. The Doha FfD Conference is taking place at a time of financial, food and fuel crises. The combined negative effects of these crises on the real economy and prices exacerbate women’s struggle for livelihoods, food security and improvements in their well-being and those of their families and communities. This is not a new phenomenon nor entirely unanticipated in a systemic order where structural inequalities and discrimination disproportionately affect women’s share of burdens.

3. Women constitute the majority of people working in flexible and informal sectors with often precarious working conditions. Thus, in times of crisis they struggle harder to maintain their jobs and income levels. At the same time, cuts in public service provision, including education and health, increase the burden of unpaid and invisible work done mainly by women. With the frequent fluctuations in prices, women are struggling to deal with increased financial stress within households. Women in conflict situations suffer more severely but are often left out of peace negotiation processes.

4. Past experiences have shown that crises and neoliberal policies responses, such as structural adjustment programmes of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have disproportionately affected women. Yet the very same misguided polices of market liberalization, deregulation and privatization now continue to be promoted as the solution.

5. This reality demonstrates that macroeconomic policies are not gender-neutral. This means that any effort concerned with solving the crises or putting in place real commitments to financing for development must challenge and overcome gender injustice at all levels.

6. The participation of women's networks and other civil society actors in the FfD review process has been consistent, focused and aimed at ensuring that its outcome strongly addresses the gaps in the Monterrey Consensus in ways that affirmed commitments to women's rights and gender equality. From early on in the process, we struggled against efforts by certain governments to reduce the scope of the review and to further erode the significance of the FfD and the United Nations in global economic governance. However, the rush to find solutions to the global financial meltdown produced an exclusionary process exemplified by the G20 Summit in Washington, DC. The result has pre-empted the FfD Review Conference limiting the policy options and actions that could correct long-term systemic imbalances.

7. We believe that this Conference must build upon existing United Nations commitments to gender equality and women’s human rights, based on the principle of mutual responsibility and the obligations of governments to fulfil internationally agreed development goals, targets and actions which have been identified primarily in the Beijing Platform for Action, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the International Labour Organization Conventions.

8. In this context, we welcome the recognition of gender equality as a fundamental human right and an issue of social justice essential for economic growth, poverty reduction, environmental sustainability and development effectiveness as is stated in the new paragraph 3bis (as of November 25, 2008 draft). However, we need not only a good preamble which acknowledges the need of gender mainstreaming, we need policy action.

9. We strongly stress the importance of concrete steps to increase resources for gender equality as stated in paragraph 40bis (as of November 25, 2008 draft) to fulfil women’s rights and empowerment. Also, in relation to mobilizing domestic financial resources for development, paragraph 9bis (as of November 25, 2008 draft) is a commitment to eliminate gender-based discrimination acknowledging women’s full and equal access to economic resources and the importance of gender responsive public management. However, we demand stronger gender equality policy commitments and actions throughout the document on development, trade, finance, debt, aid and systemic issues.

10. We reaffirm our commitment to keep fully engaged in all follow-up processes stressing the need to convene a major international conference under the UN auspices to undertake the structural issues that underpin international economy and financial governance. All follow-up mechanisms must be effective spaces for consistent and regular inputs on gender equality ensuring the participation of women’s rights organizations and networks, and gender equality advocates.

11. We call on governments of UN member-states that are about to begin the meeting in Doha to: (a) insist on the primacy of the United Nations as the site for an open transparent and inclusive multi-stakeholder process providing institutional spaces for women’s rights organizations and gender equality advocates in the follow-up to the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus; (b) stress the continuing need for undertaking a full and gender sensitive analysis of the structural issues that underpin international economic and financial governance; (c) seriously move forward in the follow-up to the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus the general commitment to gender equality, analysis and monitoring tools and indicators as proposed in the introductory section and found in selected paragraphs of the Doha Declaration.

Women’s groups that co-elaborated this statement

AWID, IGTN, DAWN, WIDE, ICAE, Women’s WG on FfD, Coordinadora Spain, Global Policy Forum, FEMNET, NETRIGHT Ghana, ENLACE/ FTF-GCAP, African Peace Network (APNET), NETRIGHT/ ATWWAR, Venro, African Women's Network/ AWW/ AWEPON, Women Environmental Programme - Nigeria, ITUC, DAWN, FOKUS Forum for Women and Development, KOO, United Church of Christ, German Foundation for World Population, Ag Miss/ FTF-GCAP, UBUNTU Forum, AWEG, Women Resourced Advocacy Centre NAWU/APWW/ FTF-GCAP, Action Aid UK, Action Aid.

SIGNATORIES. Please sign on by November 28th 2008; to diana@igtn.org and aschoenstein@awid.org

South Africa: Resident shot with live ammunition

2008-12-04

http://www.abahlali.org/node/4618

On Tuesday last week (25/11) Thokozani Mkhotli, from the Arnett Drive settlement in Reservoir Hills, was shot by a Securicor Guard with live ammunition. The bullet entered his left buttock and emerged lower down in the front of his left thigh. The trajectory of the bullet shows clearly that he was shot from behind and from above. Thokozani is 33. He is from Bizana and works as a builder's labourer fixing ceilings.

Zimbabwe: Trial of Williams and Mahlangu postponed

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/52414

Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, leaders of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), appeared in Bulawayo Magistrate's Court this morning before a packed courtroom. They were on trial for charges relating to the combined cases of the 16 October 2008 case and a 19 June 2004 arrest. The state, represented by Mr. Shawarira, was not ready for trial however and so Magistrate Msipa postponed the trial until 22 January 2009.
Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)

Tuesday 2nd December

Trial of Williams and Mahlangu postponed to 22 January 2009

JENNI Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, leaders of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), appeared in Bulawayo Magistrate's Court this morning before a packed courtroom. They were on trial for charges relating to the combined cases of the 16 October 2008 case and a 19 June 2004 arrest. The state, represented by Mr. Shawarira, was not ready for trial however and so Magistrate Msipa postponed the trial until 22 January 2009. All bail and reporting conditions were removed after an application for relaxation by the defence.

The pair had been charged under the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act with disturbing the peace for the 2008 case and under the Miscellaneous Offences Act (which was replaced in 2006) with breaching the peace for the 2004 case. None of the state witnesses were present in the courtroom for the 2008 matter. Only one of the state witnesses for the 2004 matter was present.

Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu look forward to travelling outside of a 40 kilometre radius of Bulawayo and thank all friends who offered their solidarity.

CAR: Announcement of inclusive dialogue welcomed

2008-12-04

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29167

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has welcomed the decision by the Central African Republic (CAR) to hold an inclusive political dialogue shortly, but cautioned that the country continues to face political, security and socio-economic challenges. In his latest report to the Security Council on the country made public today, Mr. Ban wrote that the situation in the CAR is being compounded by a weak economy, complex social problems and impunity.

Ghana: EISA continental observer mission

2008-12-04

http://www.eisa.org.za/EISA/pr20081203.htm

Following an invitation extended by the Electoral Commission of Ghana, EISA is deploying a mission to observe the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Ghana, scheduled for Sunday 7 December 2008. The Mission is led by Mr Denis Kadima, EISA Executive Director. It consists of 15 members drawn from civil society organisations (CSOs) from 13 African countries, namely Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mozambique, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Zambia.

Mauritania: EU to 'examine' crisis

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/5ufpo8

The European Union has said it will take "appropriate measures" to punish Mauritania after failing to restore constitutional rule, the French foreign ministry has said. Frederic Desagneaux, the foreign ministry spokesman, said on Thursday: "Given that the junta's proposals have been deemed insufficient by the international community, EU member states will examine, based on the proposals of the European Commission, appropriate measures".

Zimbabwe: Botswana targets Mugabe exit

2008-12-04

http://www.africanews.com/site/list_messages/21960

The Botswana President Ian Tseretse Khama has unveiled his government is ready to fund the whole election re-run in Zimbabwe. Speaking on national television, he said Botswana is not part of the quiet diplomacy employed by other leaders saying its time for such tactics fast expired long time ago.

Kenya: Corruption charges for MPs

2008-12-04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7759731.stm

Kenya's anti-corruption watchdog is suing seven current and former members of parliament for taking illegal allowances worth $250,000 (£166,000). Information Minister Samuel Poghisio has denied taking 2.8m shillings ($35,000, £23,000) in 2006 and 2007. Similar allegations have been filed against the assistant defence minister and five former members of parliament.

Kenya: Name and Shame Corruption Networks (NASCON) Campaign

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/corruption/52417

We, the undersigned members of the Name and Shame Corruption Networks (NASCON) Campaign, working with Bunge La Mwananchi, the Goro Goro Campaign (Hosted by the Citizens Coalition for Constitutional Culture – 4Cs) and other Civil Society networks throughout Kenya, Concerned that the current crises facing the Kenyan nation have resulted from a leadership crisis and have caused much suffering to the citizens of this country...
Press Statement


Public Boycott on 10th and 11th December

For Immediate Release


Wednesday, 3rd December 2008

We, the undersigned members of the Name and Shame Corruption Networks (NASCON) Campaign, working with Bunge La Mwananchi, the Goro Goro Campaign (Hosted by the Citizens Coalition for Constitutional Culture – 4Cs) and other Civil Society networks throughout Kenya,

Concerned that the current crises facing the Kenyan nation have resulted from a leadership crisis and have caused much suffering to the citizens of this country,

Further convinced that the various problems facing Kenya such as the Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDPs) failed resettlement programme, the unnecessary controversy over implementation of the Waki report recommendations, criminal refusal by Members of Parliament to subject their allowances to taxation, as well as escalating food and commodity prices, are a pointer to a failed leadership,

Aware that our governance system and culture have been highly exploitative of Kenyans since colonial times and have pre-disposed the state to continued conflict and instability,

Concerned that there is concerted effort by political and business interests, including owners of large tracts of land, to stifle reform of the Kenyan state through a New Democratic Constitution, land and housing reforms, among other critical reform areas,

Aware that the Kenyan people have reached the peak of tolerance and have collectively challenged the status quo in various settings including the recent peoples’ actions in Lang’ata and Eastleigh areas of Nairobi,

Hereby, NOW, call on Kenyans to a boycott of oil and oil products on the 10th and 11th December 2008.

This is part of the national campaign to reclaim the Kenyan state from the forces of exploitation both national and international.

We call upon the people of Kenya to reclaim their rights by collectively forcing a reduction in the prices of oil in line with reductions in international oil prices.

We further call upon Kenyans to act collectively to stop the culture of exploitation by multinationals and to commit to reclaim Kenya from greedy political and business interests that have continued to stifle development through growth of the economy and realisation of fundamental rights of the Kenyan people, notably the right to food and life itself.

We note that despite continued decrease of the prices of oil at the international level, oil prices in Kenya have remained exploitative. Further, this has had a ripple effect on other sectors of the economy such commodities, transport, costs of electricity, among others. Commodities have now become unaffordable for a majority of Kenyans compromising the right to food and, by extension, the right to life itself;

We present the following programme of action to the people of Kenya:

10th December 2008

• Campaign begins officially – Kenyans to use the occasion of the International Human Rights Day to mobilise themselves through their various people institutions for the boycott action. Various opportunities including church and mosque summons, meetings in public places, meetings organised by various organisations, etc
• Kenyans to hold overnight vigils to symbolise their reclamation of the state
• Kenyans to picket outside the offices of various multinationals especially oil conglomerates



11th December 2008

• The official boycott day
• Kenyans to refrain from going to work
• Kenyans to refrain from boarding public transport vehicles
• Industry owners to close down their machines
• Public Transport Operators to withdraw their vehicles from the roads around the country



12th December 2008

• Kenyans to organise themselves in various areas to petition their leaders in public meetings celebrating Jamhuri day
• Kenyans to communicate their various grievances to their leaders in the various public meetings during Jamuhuri Day Celebrations
• Kenyans to congregate through their churches and mosques to further communicate messages of solidarity



We hereby call upon the Kenyan Government to undertake the following measures with utmost speed to address the suffering of Kenyans:

• Reduce the burden of taxes on Kenyans particularly through zero-rating of basic commodities
• Introduce a legal framework to regulate the activities of multinationals and transnationals so as to cub their exploitative designs
• Introduce appropriate legislation to protect Kenyan consumers from exploitation
• Immediately commence taxation of the allowances of Members of Parliament and earnings of other holders of public office



We note that the measures so far introduced by both Government (announcing prices of maize) and specific players in the oil industry (reduction of pump prices by Kshs.15 by Shell) are mere tokenism. Kenyans will reclaim the state through fundamental change not tokenism.

SIGNED THIS 3RD DAY OF DECEMBER

BY:

Kenya: Parliamnetary team to probe MPs tax plan

2008-12-04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7762314.stm

Kenya's parliament has set up a committee to review MPs' generous salaries and allowances. This follows a widespread public outcry over a decision by the country's legislators to drop a proposal to tax their allowances.

Nigeria: Protect anti-corruption czar

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/5tlqnv

Nigeria's leading anti-corruption campaigner has in recent weeks been subject to an escalating campaign of harassment, threats, and an apparent attempt on his life, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch called on the Nigerian government to protect the campaigner, Nuhu Ribadu, former chairman of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Africa: Africa 'offers food security'

2008-12-04

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=236736&Sn=BNEW&IssueID=31258

Africa could be the breadbasket for the GCC - providing valuable water and food supplies to the entire region, a Bahraini expert claimed. He said the huge continent could be the answer to the region's prayers, since the Gulf is facing massive water shortages and its harsh climate is unsuitable for large-scale agriculture.

Africa: Harnessing the Zambezi

2008-12-04

http://www.ipsterraviva.net/europe/article.aspx?id=6810

If the socio-economic development goals of the eight countries that share the Zambezi River basin are to be met, countries along the river should quickly implement plans towards managing water resources in an efficient, effective and sustainable manner. This was the agreement made during the Fourth Zambezi Basin-wide Stakeholders Forum which took place in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe from Nov. 26-27.

Africa: The State of the African Cities Report 2008

2008-12-03

http://www.unchs.org/pmss/getPage.asp?page=bookView&book=2574

With rapidly increasing urban populations, cities in Africa are faced with enormous challenges and will have to find ways to facilitate by 2015 urban services, livelihoods and housing for more than twice as many urban dwellers than it has today. A worrying trend with the African urbanization process is that it is a process rooted in poverty rather than an industrialization-induced socio-economic transition as in other major world urban regions.

Global: Ecuador declares foreign debt illegitimate and illegal

2008-12-03

http://www.alternet.org/story/108769/

Amidst the spreading global financial crisis, a special debt audit commission released a report charging that much of Ecuador's foreign debt was illegitimate or illegal. The commission recommended that Ecuador default on $3.9 billion in foreign commercial debts--Global Bonds 2012, 2015 and 2030--the result of debts restructured in 2000 after the country's 1999 default.

Tanzania: Poverty reduction slow despite economic growth

2008-12-04

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=44979

Tanzania is lagging behind on key development goals for safe water, income and health, even though the east African nation has benefited from a growing economy over the last few years, according a newly released household budget survey. Supported by budding financial markets, the proportion of Tanzania's population living below the poverty line dropped to 33.3 percent last year from 35.7 percent in 2000/01, stated the 2007 survey, which was released by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics.

Global: Criminalizing HIV transmission will increase women’s risk to violence

2008-12-02

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/52373

As women around the world celebrate the international 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, the Women Won’t Wait. End HIV and Violence Against Women. Now (WWW) Campaign has expressed concern at the alarming trend of governments criminalizing HIV exposure and transmission worldwide. More than 58 countries worldwide have laws that criminalize HIV transmission and/or exposure or use existing laws to prosecute HIV positive people for supposed transmission of the virus, with another 33 countries considering similar legislation.
Women Won’t Wait

Criminalizing HIV transmission will increase women’s risk to violence and undermine gains made in the global aids response

World AIDS Day, Cape Town, 1 December 2008

As women around the world celebrate the international 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, the Women Won’t Wait. End HIV and Violence Against Women. Now (WWW) Campaign has expressed concern at the alarming trend of governments criminalizing HIV exposure and transmission worldwide. More than 58 countries worldwide have laws that criminalize HIV transmission and/or exposure or use existing laws to prosecute HIV positive people for supposed transmission of the virus, with another 33 countries considering similar legislation.

The campaign noted that the trend to criminalise HIV transmission and exposure is short-sighted, ineffective and in violation of human rights. Further, it will undermine global AIDS prevention, treatment and care efforts.

According to Neelanjana Mukhia of ActionAid, the secretariat of the Women Won’t Wait campaign, laws that criminalize exposure and transmission compound women’s risk to violence. Women are likely to know their status first, as a result of their interface with prenatal and antenatal health services. Women’s ability to safely disclose their status and adhere to treatment is already severely limited by the threat of violence from their intimate partners and/or families. The threat of prosecution by the state will only increase their inability to manage their health and well being. We are very concerned that such laws will only result in disproportionate targeting and prosecuting of women for the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Secondly, existing stigma and discrimination HIV positive men and women face is likely to be reinforced by these laws making access to HIV prevention, testing and counselling and treatment services even more difficult.

Thirdly, women and men in sex work will be at even greater threat, especially in countries which criminalise sex work. According to Meena Seshu of SANGRAM, a member of the campaign in India, the law to criminalise HIV transmission and exposure will be sure to increase stigma and rights violations sex workers already face. This law has the potential to threaten or even reverse gains made to secure sex workers rights and their access to HIV services.

Finally, in some countries which have passed the law, women can be prosecuted for mother to child transmission of HIV. This is particularly outrageous when globally prevention of mother to child transmission coverage is only at 33%. In resource poor settings, criminalization puts the blame solely on the woman for transmission that she may be unable to prevent due to dismally poor PMTCT coverage. .

“Criminalization does nothing to address the real problem which is women’s overall lack of power in society. As a campaign we have said over and over again, there is no magic bullet or quick fix to address the growing pandemics. We already know that programs that address the rights of women and girls work. Instead of considering and passing ineffective laws, we call on governments to fulfil their longstanding and legally binding commitments to end violence against women and support survivors of violence. ” says Alessandra Nilo of Gestos, a member of the campaign in Brazil.
“At this point of our efforts to address HIV and AIDS, we have already learnt so much. We already know what works are interventions that uphold and advance human rights, generally and women’s rights specifically. We are asking governments especially in Africa to fulfil their responsibility to end the two intersecting epidemics. We are also asking them to stop couching these draconian laws as efforts to address violence against women, instead resource and implement laws that indeed respect, protect and fulfil women’s human right to be free of violence. ”says Christine Butegwa from Akina Mama wa Afrika, a member of the campaign in Uganda.


The WWW campaign adds that what is really needed is to channel more resources into strengthening efforts that address the driving force of the HIV&AIDS pandemic – gender inequality and violence against women. This includes increasing current funding for programmes that integrally address issues of violence, stigma, and discrimination that fuel this epidemic or we will continue to lose ground.

The use of criminal law to address HIV infection is inappropriate, ineffective and likely to undermine HIV prevention, treatment, care and support efforts and increase women’s risk to violence. All societies in the world should say no to this law.

Contact: Shamillah Wilson (+27 83 703 4862); Alessandra Nilo (+558199653716); Meena Seshu (+919960660444)

Guinea: Mining zones take on AIDS

2008-12-04

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81724

With an HIV infection rate of 5.2 per cent, the lucrative mining sector in Guinea is particularly at risk from the epidemic. Some mining companies have begun setting up their own programmes to make up for the lack of HIV/AIDS services on offer. But they say a public-private partnership is essential if local residents are not to be excluded.

Morocco: Artists sign Aids Pact

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/6czs6h

The Moroccan Ministry of Health called on all artists to help raise public awareness about AIDS, in an effort to curb the spread of the disease. A large number of artists signed the "Artists' AIDS Pact" on World AIDS Day (December 1st).

Nigeria: Government buys baby poison antidote

2008-12-04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7763142.stm

Nigerian medical authorities are flying in 100 doses of an antidote to try and stem the deaths of babies poisoned by a contaminated teething syrup. The number of children who have died from kidney failure after being given the tainted paracetamol-based remedy called "My Pikin" has risen to 34.

Zambia: Volunteers help AIDS patients

2008-12-04

http://www.africanews.com/site/list_messages/21360

Zambia has not been spared by HIV and AIDS. 17 percent of the 12 million Zambians are HIV/AIDS. The government and other stakeholders put concerted efforts to fight this deadly disease. "They were there, when I needed them."Care International is one of the NGOs that have embarked on HIV/AIDS. Care International regional office in the boarder town of Livingstone, is running a Home Based Care (HBC) programme for HIV/AIDS patients. The boarder towns are the most affected areas.

Zimbabwe: Cholera declared a national emergency

2008-12-04

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7764200.stm

Authorities in Zimbabwe have declared a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 550 people to be a national emergency, state media reports. Health Minister David Parirenyatwa said hospitals were in urgent need of medicine, food and equipment and were suffering a critical staff shortage.

Zimbabwe: Misery for thousands with HIV and AIDS as food shortage bites

2008-12-03

http://tinyurl.com/5fk2vu

Thousands of people with HIV and AIDS are being forced further into misery in Zimbabwe, as drastic food shortages and spiralling prices make it difficult to follow antiretroviral (ARV) treatment regimes, the potent medications essential to manage HIV infection. Five local organisations partnered by international development agency Progressio report that “scores” are having to quit or skip medication due, in part, to side effects associated with lack of nutrition and the soaring devaluation of the country’s currency, which is making poor people poorer.

Zimbabwe: Weekly situation report on cholera

2008-12-04

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/JBRN-7LZC57?OpenDocument

Suspected cumulative cholera cases continue to rise in the nine out of ten Provinces of Zimbabwe. The increase of the outbreak is attributed inter–alia to poor water and sanitation supply, collapsed health system and limited government capacity to respond to the emergency. Trans–border outbreaks are also reported and mainly at the Beitbridge border post in the Matabeleland South of Zimbabwe and Plumtree in Botswana border post.

Global: Education for All global monitoring report 2009

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/5w687t

This report argues that while there has been some remarkable progress towards some of the EFA goals since 2000, progress is being undermined by a failure of governments to tackle persistent inequalities based on income, gender, location, ethnicity, language, disability and other markers for disadvantage. Unless governments act to reduce disparities through effective policy reforms, the EFA promise will be broken.

Global: Financing education in fragile states

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/5cbzkl

This framing paper for an INEE Policy Roundtable provides analysis, lessons learnt and recommendations on the financing of education in states affected by fragility. The paper focuses mainly on aid to education, but also considers it in the context of domestic financing for education. The authors discuss the current state of financing in terms of both official development assistance and humanitarian funding, focusing on the trends and recent commitments to education.

Global: Low-cost private education

Impacts on achieving universal primary education

2008-12-04

http://publications.thecommonwealth.org/low-cost-private-education-577-p.aspx

In recent years developing countries have expanded their government education systems in an attempt to meet the Millennium Development Goals on education by 2015. One consequence has been a dramatic growth in low-cost private education institutions, which are increasingly being seen as a popular alternative to the public education system. Using independent first-hand research, this study investigates the low-cost private education sector in India, Nigeria and Uganda.

South Africa: COSATU condemns unfair treatment of UKZN academics

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/52430

The Congress of South African Trade Unions regrets the resignation of University of KwaZulu-Natal physicist, Professor Nithaya Chetty, who, together with mathematics Professor John van den Berg, was facing disciplinary action and likely dismissal on charges of "failing to take due care in communicating with the media, breaching confidentiality and dishonest and/or gross negligence". This related to their public criticisms in the media of the university's academic freedom record
COSATU condemns unfair treatment of UKZN academics

The Congress of South African Trade Unions regrets the resignation of University of KwaZulu-Natal physicist, Professor Nithaya Chetty, who, together with mathematics Professor John van den Berg, was facing disciplinary action and likely dismissal on charges of "failing to take due care in communicating with the media, breaching confidentiality and dishonest and/or gross negligence". This related to their public criticisms in the media of the university's academic freedom record.

Van den Berg is reported to have signed a settlement agreement last week allowing him to keep his job and terminating disciplinary proceedings but Chetty refused to sign the settlement, which involved an apology and partial admission of guilt.

COSATU shares the concern of 35 academics from Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley and Stanford universities who have submitted a document to the university council chairperson, Mac Mia, expressing deep concern that the disciplinary process flew in the face of "globally recognised standards regarding the rights of academic staff to speak and act on policies of their institutions".

COSATU agrees that this action is an attack on free speech and employees’ rights. The federation also supports the call on the university by the National Tertiary Education Staff Union to remove outside legal representatives from disciplinary inquiries and allow academics and students to meet freely and voice concerns about academic freedom.

Patrick Craven (National Spokesperson)

Tunisia: Muslim delegations adopt Tunis Pact

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/56ghvc

Leaders from Muslim countries and civil society organisations adopted a new pact on Wednesday (November 26th) in Tunis to promote the rights of youth and to advocate a better role for them in society. The "Tunis Pact" was proposed at the International Conference on Youth Issues in the Islamic World: Present Stakes and Future Challenges, which was held on November 24th-26th in Tunis.

Burundi: Gays oppose new anti-homosexual penal code

2008-12-04

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=burundi&id=2015

Growing concerns about the new Burundian Penal Code have surfaced with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community in that country opposing the fact that it criminalises homosexuality. The penal code, which was voted in by the National Assembly on 22 November 2008 abolishes death penalty, makes torture, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity punishable under Burundian law.

South Africa: Honouring lgbti people who died of hiv and aids

2008-12-04

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=health&id=2011

As the world commemorates World Aids Day whose theme is Leadership and Unity to stop HIV, Aids and TB, gay rights groups in the country have said that the gay community is still marginalized in terms of HIV and AIDS programming in the country. Mmapaseka Steve Letsike, OUT LGBT Sexual Health Fieldworker, said that government does not recognise LGBTI people as high risk in their programming.

South Africa: Protest seeks reaction on Qwelane’s case

2008-12-04

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=southafrica&id=2014

The South Africa Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (SA GLAAD) and other gay rights groups will stage a protest outside South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC)’s head office on Thursday 4 December. SAHRC has come under fire recently following its alleged silence on the controversial column written by Sunday Sun’s John Qwelane, published in July this year.

Breaking free and moving on

"I" Stories

Kalamauwa

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52391

It was July 2006 when I met a certain guy. At first, he was everything to me but after just two months of moving in together problems began. I was only happy for a short period. He was an excessively jealousy and over protective man. He always accused me of having affairs with other man of which it was all wrong. He started beating me telling me that “I am bitch and cheap”. He beat me sometimes four times a month.
It was July 2006 when I met a certain guy. At first, he was everything to me but after just two months of moving in together problems began. I was only happy for a short period. He was an excessively jealousy and over protective man. He always accused me of having affairs with other man of which it was all wrong. He started beating me telling me that “I am bitch and cheap”. He beat me sometimes four times a month.

He started exhibiting strange behaviour. For instance, he would receive phone calls at midnight. When I asked him about it he would say it is not important. In September 2007 I began my fasting period. After two weeks of fasting, we began to fight and he told me to go to my boyfriend otherwise he was going to kill me.

So I ran off to my friend in Turffontein. The following day I went to meet with my boyfriend’s friend in Braamfontein. I waited for two hours but he would not open the door. Then I remembered that his friend had a hair salon and so I went there since I had nowhere to go. I found our friend’s younger brother who told me that his brother was there at home.

So, we went and knocked at the door and for sure his brother was there with my boyfriend and another girl. Because they were not expecting me, my boyfriend locked himself in the toilet. I asked the girl and she confirmed that she was with my boyfriend. She told me everything about how they met. This was a painful period because I was fasting. In retaliation, I took his wallet and cellphone. He started calling me and I continued to ignore him. After three days, I went back and that same day he beat me up.

I cried asking myself why, what I had done wrong to deserve this and asked the Lord to help me. I tried desperately to show him that I was not a prostitute like the one he thought. I cried and was even thinking of killing myself. He accused me of dating someone. I lost weight from a size 34 to size 28.

He would not even come near me for three months and slept away from the house. When he came home, he beat me up. He sometimes left me with no food in the house until I decided that I had had enough. I asked myself why I was not leaving. I left the house and went to stay with my friends in Turffontein, luckily, there was an unoccupied room and I took it up. I wanted to start a new life but my boyfriend started following me everywhere.

He would come to my place and if did not let him in he would break the door. This happened for two months. He would beat me up until I decided to call the police. The police never caught him red-handed because he would run away before they arrived. I stopped picking up his phone calls even though I still loved him.

Now I pray to God that He gives me strength to forget about him and God has answered my prayers. I am fine and I do not think I will go back to him again. Even if I do not have a job right now, I am fine.

If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone to live with this man in the first place. However, it is never too late. I am happy I am moving on. I pray that every one who is going to read this story will think twice before jumping into a relationship before they get to really know the other person.

* Kalamauwa is not her real name

* 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.

Chased away for being disabled

"I" Stories

Etty Khoza

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52395

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.
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.

In 2001 trouble started when my neighbour said to me, “Why can’t you go and stay where the disabled people are staying?” I was heartbroken and reported him to the street committee. We talked about it and he apologised. After two weeks, his kids broke my window with a ball, l told him about the incident, and he did not reply nicely. He said the kids were just playing and it is because I did not have a child that I complained.

After that, his kids started throwing tins and garbage in my yard. Most of the time l stayed in the house because if I went out I would be greeted by strong words that will hurt my heart. Whenever I wanted to go out, I would first look out through the window so that l don’t have to see him and he doesn’t have to see me. The painful thing was that l cannot run and even when I am locking the door, he can follow me, saying painful words that hurt.

One day I was coming from work. There is one road where l have to pass by his house. He made sure to see me and said, “Here is this disabled woman.” I ignored him and kept walking towards my house. Before l got home, he followed me with his car wanting to hit me. Lucky enough there were kids playing and they blocked the car as l passed.

When l was heading home my heart was broken and l was hurt, because he said to me that I am a disabled person, why am l working while his wife is not disabled but she is not working. At last, when l was nearing home he said to me, “Disabled grandmother today l want you in a box dead.” l just stood and stared at him.

I do not know why I became his target, if maybe he had a problem in his house and was solving it by abusing my feelings. I asked him, “Do l owe you anything so that l can pay you and you can leave me alone.” He did not want to listen to me.

He came to me and kicked me. I fell on the ground. While l was on the ground, he took my walking stick and hit me with it twice in my head. During this time, he was verbally abusing me and the blood was all over. l could not see where my walking stick was. I could not move and I needed someone to lift me up. God is there for us all, and at that moment, a man came and helped me to get up.

He looked for my walking stick and gave it to me. I went to the police station. When l arrived they sent me back saying l should go to the hospital because l was bleeding. At that time, it was too late and there was no taxis until in the morning. l realised that he was jealous of me, because I was working and had a house, though I could not understand why he was so jealous of a disabled person.

My mother said I should come home and my younger sister must go and stay at my house. That was in 2001. Okay no problem, I am still working and I have my life. But l would like it to get this memory out of my heart. I still have scars on my face that remind me of that day.

Many people they feel sorry for us because we are disabled. For me l am okay. l have the belief that God loves us all and if you believe, good things will be yours. However, I want to tell people, do not take people with disabilities for granted, we are human.

* 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

Demanding change

"I" Stories

Grace Ayanda

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52390

I am a 38-year-old woman born in Lubumbashi, who did not enjoy love from her parents. At the age of three, my father passed away and my brother and I had to separate from my mother. The way the culture was then, the husband’s family must take over everything including the children. My mother remarried her husband’s brother and we started our new life with problems in a house with two wives and nine children. I did not understand why my mother had chosen to marry her husband’s brother.
I am a 38-year-old woman born in Lubumbashi, who did not enjoy love from her parents. At the age of three, my father passed away and my brother and I had to separate from my mother. The way the culture was then, the husband’s family must take over everything including the children.

My mother remarried her husband’s brother and we started our new life with problems in a house with two wives and nine children. I did not understand why my mother had chosen to marry her husband’s brother. When I reached twelve years I started to see that this was wrong and then this new father chased me out of his house. I went to stay with my other uncle until I got my matric.

Because of this life, I was forced to leave my family and start my own life. I met a man whom I thought would make me happy in this world. It was a very good beginning when I got my first child in 1995, but eight months after the child was born, everything changed. The first time he beat me was after his mother had left her house keys with me, on his arrival later, I could not find the keys and he got angry and started beating me. During the beating, he tore my dress and he left me half-naked in the lounge. After the beating, he went to the bedroom and I used that as a chance to run to my neighbour’s place for help and peace of mind. Following this incident, there was a family meeting and I had to stay with him as it was expected of a wife to obey her husband and to forgive him.

A year later in 1998, we came to South Africa because of what was happening in Congo.

Fortunately, I found a job and I was away from the house from 7am to 7pm. My love, unemployed at the time, would be at home waiting for me to come back from work in order to do the housework. This situation was very stressful to the point where I felt happier at work than at home. Going home was like being in prison charged with slavery. He expected me to perform my duties as a wife and to provide the money for us to survive.

In 2006, on Christmas Day, he came home with two men and they started drinking from 8am until 10pm. During this time, he left the house to drop people off and while he was away one of the man started to fight in my house. I asked him to leave but when I wanted to close the door, he pulled me out onto the steps and opened the gate, which came back and hit me on the face, and my face became green with bruising. When my husband returned he did not react. He said he could not take me to the hospital unless I put petrol in the car. I went to open a case at the police station, but I did not know the guy who had assaulted me because it was my first time to see him. My husband did not want to show me the guy and he said I deserved what I got because I’m a bitch. His reaction hurt me.

On a another day he came home late drunk, he found a letter from school that my son had jumped through the window. At the time, I was sleeping and I didn’t know anything about the letter; he entered the bedroom demanding an explanation about the letter and when I had no answer he started to hit and strangle me and said he would kill me. I went to apply for a protection order and after a postponement and several appearances, the matter was concluded after a year.

During the time of the case, the two of us were not even communicating. For example if he wanted to talk to me, he would send one of the children to talk to me. Throughout this, I tried to leave but because of the children, I had to go back to him. On the last day of the court appearance, he apologised for his behaviour and promised not to hurt me again. I chose to forgive because I believed him. I am glad to say that he has not beaten me since.

I decided to speak out about my story to help other women to know their rights and if there is an abuse problem to ask for help from organisations working with abused women and they will get help.

* Not her real name

* 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.

Disability does not mean inability

"I" Stories

Grace Dimakatso Maleka

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52392

My name is Grace Dimakatso Maleka, I was married to my husband for 20 years. We were blessed with three children, two of whom are still alive. Since we began to live together we did not have a happy relationship, we used to fight every weekend when he came home drunk. Shortly after my first child was born, in 1990, we separated and I went to my mother’s place.
My name is Grace Dimakatso Maleka, I was married to my husband for 20 years. We were blessed with three children, two of whom are still alive. Since we began to live together we did not have a happy relationship, we used to fight every weekend when he came home drunk.

Shortly after my first child was born, in 1990, we separated and I went to my mother’s place. He later came to my mother’s place accompanied by his mother to apologise for what he had done and promised not to do it again. As he is the father of my children, I forgave him and offered for us to start a new life with him.

In 1995 I helped him get a new job where I was working. He started to drink heavily again and often came home in the middle of the night. He would insult me in front of my daughter. Each time I spoke to him about his behaviour he promised not to do it again.

The following year, I fell pregnant with my second baby. The doctor asked me whether I had problems at home and said I did not. He warned me that I should not keep quiet about the problems. Meanwhile, we used to fight a lot when I was pregnant. I lost my baby boy. I explained to him what had caused the loss and he apologised, promising that he would be a real father to his daughter.

The following year life dealt us a heavy blow when we faced retrenchment. I persuaded my husband to go to Ratanda and get a house there because we were not working. Later that year I returned to work as I had found a new job in July 1998. Transport from Heidelberg to Balfour is very scarce. I had to wake up in the morning and come back late. He started to grumble and sometimes promise to beat me about this. He was very aggressive especially when he smoked dagga.

I again spoke to my director and we worked together. He also experienced the same transport problems and so he opted to go and stay with his relatives in Balfour. I suggested we must find a place to stay together, but he said no. I spoke to my neighbors at Ratanda to look after our house, as we would come only on Fridays. I stayed in Balfour with my mom while he stayed with his relatives. On Fridays, we met at the taxi rank to go to Ratanda.

At the end of the month he did not want to buy food. Instead, he would become moody and leave me to do everything by myself. Meanwhile I fell pregnant with my third child, who was born on 1 March 2000 and by then my husband was in temporary employment. This was hard on me because I was on maternity leave.

When my baby was about two months my husband started to beat me when I requested that he show me love. He beat me until neighbours shouted at him. They threatened to report him to his family. He said to me that his mother and sister come first in his life and me I’m the last person to talk.

When our house was broken into and things got stolen my mother-in-law blamed me and insulted me in front of our neighbours telling me that I am a white lady, I trust people from outside rather than the family. I told myself that I should leave Ratanda and live in Johannesburg since I did not feel free. On 1 October 2000, the day before I was supposed to start a new job, I was involved in a car accident that left me disabled. I stayed in hospital for four months hoping that my leg would be okay. When I went to Baragwaneth hospital, the doctors told me that my leg must be amputated.

I phoned my husband and told him. He responded that the doctors needed to make a plan because he was too young to stay with a disabled woman. He said in front of his family that he could not stay with me if they cut off my leg. I explained to him, “I didn’t make any application to be disabled.”

In 2002, doctors amputated my left leg. I stayed in hospital for three weeks. When my husband called, I told him that my leg had been cut off. He came to the hospital to see for himself if this was indeed true. He brought me nothing, not even bananas, instead he just looked at me without a saying anything. After, I went to my mom’s place.

My husband then came to fetch my children and me. Things appeared to be rosy and he even bought me a cellphone. However, after two months he took it back and said he needed it. He would not allow me to even touch it when it rang. We fought a lot because he was earning a lot of money and did not want to take responsibility for his family.

I started seeing a social worker by the name of Florence Mohloai. One time she took me to Lesotho to visit with her relatives as part of her way to assist me in relieving stress. My children were traumatised to see their mom crying all the time. That social worker helped me regain my confidence and taught me to believe in myself, despite my condition. My husband used negative words and then afterwards apologised saying he was joking. The God that I worship certainly has way to heal broken hearts so I chose not to let my disability take control of my life. In 2004, I moved out with my children to my own house and obtained a protection order that prohibited my husband from coming to my place. This was such a relief to me.

The decision to move on with my life with a disability meant taking a risk into an unknown future that was likely to be full of challenges. Learning that I would not walk properly again was devastating, but I knew that I had to strengthen my state of mind and think positively. That is when I decided to join an organisation for disabled people. They empowered me to know my rights and to accept myself; I started to participate in different activities including those organised by the community and government.

The following year I got a job at Heidelberg hospital. I was later elected to lead women in the province as chairperson for women with disability and I am now representative for Disabled Women in Africa. When my husband noticed these achievements, he begged me to come back and I refused. The opportunities I have made me view my condition as a blessing to me, in a very painful way. We need to change the perceptions of our families to become more tolerant

and accepting of disabled people. Our families disable us, not our disabilities. Women with disabilities enjoy relationships and are indeed highly sexual, just as any women.

It helps me to talk openly, hoping to break stigma and dispel some of the myths attached to disability. I believe that I am a beautiful creation of God. I may not be physically attractive (whatever that means) but I believe my spirit and soul carries a beauty that cannot be measured. I wish to share this beauty with the rest of the world at every waking moment so that we can appreciate that we are very privileged human beings. If one door shuts, then you must know that another one will open. There is no time to look back, but move forward, nothing is impossible for today’s women.

I want to thank my mom’s sisters, Pote and Martha and my younger sisters, Gladys and Lindiwe for being so supportive.

* 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.

Healing body and soul

"I" Stories

Germina Setshedi

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52396

I am a mother of 4 children. I was staying together with them and my husband. My husband was jealous, and as for me I did not have any suspicions about him. He was cruel and I did not realise that at the time. He used to beat me up for nothing but I was not aware, I sometimes wondered if I was born to suffer.
I am a mother of 4 children. I was staying together with them and my husband. My husband was jealous, and as for me I did not have any suspicions about him. He was cruel and I did not realise that at the time. He used to beat me up for nothing but I was not aware, I sometimes wondered if I was born to suffer.

I cried everyday, I prayed for years asking God to change my life for the better. Instead, my problems were getting worse everyday. I had given up on having any chance of happiness with my husband. Sometimes he would strangle me and I would wake up crying, and he would tell me to stop making noise. I tried to talk to him many times, about how his behaviour made me feel inadequate and unhappy but that still caused a big fight between us.

The violence continued for a long time until in September 1996. On Sunday 7 September 1996, two days after a car knocked down my son and he was admitted to hospital with a head injury, I was preparing to go to the society. My husband was not around. When I was about to leave, he came back and found me wearing my uniform. He came in and locked the door, swearing and pointing at me with his fingers in my eyes.

When we where arguing, I was so scared because I was afraid of him. He started pushing me. He pushed me until he threw me out of the window. It was from the 4th floor to the ground. Both my legs and my spine were broken. I spent three months in a General Hospital sleeping.

When I came out of the hospital, I opened a case against him but nothing was done because my husband was friends with one of the officers. I was staying with my younger sister and he kept on phoning, telling me to come back home. I was using crutches and could not walk perfectly or move my body because the plasters were so heavy.

When I was still staying at my sisters, he would come knowing that my sister is at work and the children are at school, obviously, I would be alone. He would kick the door roughly and just open the door. He would tell me that he wants me home as soon as possible. All that I could do that time was to sit and cry.

Within a short period, I moved back home to my husband. Oh…oh…oh…God, after three days he had started swearing and pointing me again. Remember that by that time I could not walk fast, I was still on crutches. That was the beginning of the end. One day he hit me with a hammer on my head. I was bleeding so badly and that was a good chance to get him arrested.

With the help of my neighbours, the police where called and I told them what happened to me. They arrested him, I was able to open a case, and he went to Sun City prison. He was on trial for three months and in the following months he went to court. He then asked me for forgiveness, I forgave him. After the courts, he never slept at home but would arrive the next day. We did not speak to one another, it was very hard for me because the kids where at school and I would be alone in the house. I trusted in God and prayed all the time. I would say this” God help me because this man is going to kill me.”

Nothing changed; I stayed in that horrible life. He started not to eat at home, coming home late and sometimes not coming at all. Life in that house was that way until he decided to leave the house. He packed all his belonging and left. When I thought it was over at last, he went to the police and opened a case against me. He said that I had chased him away. The police told him to go to family violence and open a case there, because they believed that he was lying. His case ended nowhere.

Now I have realised that he is in love with my neighbour’s daughter and they have a baby boy. But I don’t care and I haven’t said anything till today. I just kept quiet. He is suffering and wants to come back home, unfortunately, he does not have the space in my house anymore. That took me back to my mother’s words before she died, “what are you doing with that hooligan, a thug and a monster.” My mother did not like him at all but because they knew that I loved him they accepted him.

As for now he does not even a have a place to put his head down and he wants me to assist him but I won’t. I had a choice to stop the cycle of abuse, a privilege that some women in my position do not have. I was empowered and became fully aware of my rights as a woman, a person and a citizen. I knew all the steps I could take to report domestic violence in my community, but distanced myself from this practice and suffered in silence.

I did not tell anybody about my husband who was abusive. I now advise survivors of domestic and others forms of violence in my community, It is because what I would like most is to have a good normal life like anyone. I am telling a painful story that has shaped my life, helped me to heal and most importantly to move on.

* 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

Hidden truths

"I" Stories

Kathy Barolsky

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52388

I met my abuser who I confused as my partner for three and a half years when I was seventeen, on the set of his first big break. He was alive and enthusiastic with a magnetism that lured me and catapulted me back at the same time. We raised many eyebrows in the supposedly new South Africa, me the white suburban Jewish girl from the northern suburbs paired with an unknown ghetto boy with a shady past from the depths of Zola.
I met my abuser who I confused as my partner for three and a half years when I was seventeen, on the set of his first big break. He was alive and enthusiastic with a magnetism that lured me and catapulted me back at the same time.

We raised many eyebrows in the supposedly new South Africa, me the white suburban Jewish girl from the northern suburbs paired with an unknown ghetto boy with a shady past from the depths of Zola. It seemed mismatched from the outside, but to me at eighteen it was proof that race, culture and class differences meant nothing for two people who delighted in being with one another. It became a fairytale, spending time in Yeoville as we waded through the sea of constantly glaring eyeballs on the streets.

In a matter of months, he had a meteoric rise to fame. Finding his way in the chaos, he decided having a white girlfriend did not suit his image. Now a huge part of his life, it seemed like I had to agree with this. I allowed myself to be hidden from the public in order not to damage his career.

In public, he sprouted monologues about being progressive and forward thinking in all spheres from domestic issues to culture and politics. Publically he was the man with an answer for everything. I watched this from a distance, agitated as he grew louder and I grew more silent.

The engaging debates and conversations we used to have spiraled into tirades of rage. I would try to hold him to get him to listen, to understand, as his uncontrollable energy bulldozed through all that I believed in about us. He would lie like it was the truth, fight against me as If I was his worst enemy and slump into my arms like I was the only thing left in the world. Scenes at clubs, restaurants and in the streets would ensue, leaving me begging for a rational response, which never came.

Eventually, he had lied to, cheated on and emotionally battered me so many times that the adrenalin to fight, to beg, to talk, to become hysterical, ran out. I threw him out as he had thrown me out so many times, but this time there was no inviting him back. I knew after three and a half years this was not going to easy.

He began to stalk me, peering through my windows, waiting for me outside my house, serenading me with love songs that were to further delude the country that this man was not only a representative for all people, but a lover boy too. I thought if we could be friends, it would calm him down. For a while, it worked, until I started a serious relationship and reflected on the kind of person I wanted to become, and how I could process my past in order achieve that.

I went to his house where he embraced me with open arms. For the first time in our relationship, I stood up for myself knowing what I really wanted. I told him that we had been broken up for two and a half years and that for respect for the person I was now dating and myself, I had to break all ties. In a split second, I was right back in that ugly place. He started screaming and shouting, hurling abuse. I stood there numbed and silent for a while, feeling like I was in a warped tunnel with these obtrusive sounds whooping round, my head urging it to explode. I had not experienced this for such a long time, it was so abnormal yet I was right back in the throws of it.

In my frustrated stupidity, I vaguely attempted to slap him. He grabbed my hand, said, “If a woman can hit a man a man can hit a woman,” and proceeded to punch me blow after blow. I am a fighter and so I tried to slap him in return to get him off me until I managed to flee.

For two weeks after the incident, I was not able to drive, somehow though I managed to get to my sister’s house, which was in the same suburb as his. Without her support, I would have been lost. She took me to the police station to lay a charge. As I walked in the police officers jovially told me my famous ex had already been there to get an affidavit, an attempt to cover his back. As I dictated my statement, they slowly absorbed that the hero and ambassador of all worthy causes had over-stepped his mark.

The next step was to get a protection order against him, another obstacle of bureaucracy that you have to plough through to be heard and taken seriously. However, this incident did not seem to deter my ex-boyfriend’s illusions of grandeur.

After the beating, I deliberately had not gone to the press. I felt that the fact that this had gone so far with his “mama’sekhaya” and that he would never see me again was enough. Also, the experience of the police, the family courts and the Zuma rape trial that was going on at the time was not much encouragement. I was coming to terms with my own battles and was not willing to take on the countries’ responses too.

I retreated; intimidated by the fact that my abuser was such a huge public figure who had successfully deceived a large sector of the South African public into thinking he stands for everything that he is the opposite of in his private life. Fighting women abuse is a difficult thing in a country that claims to be supportive of women where in reality patriarchal attitudes dominate.

Last year I discovered a major campaign where men speak out against women abuse had appointed him an ambassador. I was horrified, my mouth ran dry and my stomach flipped inside out. How could he even dare after what had happened? Did he have no limits? Even though I realised I could answer that myself.

When I saw the proposed ad and him heralding the flag for real men, I realised it was time to do something. I contacted the organisation, shedding light on the personal history of the ambassador. They immediately pulled the campaign before it got any more airtime. Yes, it was a small victory for me, but I also realised that if I could not stand up against him, how could I expect other women to stand up against women abuse too?

I write this story in the hope that other South African women will share their stories to highlight the fact that we are not isolated in our experiences. Relationships are complex, they force us to examine who we are and it is not always comfortable. However, if we find the strength to take responsibility that we do have power, and that we are not alone, women’s voices can be mobilised to become far greater than just voices.

* 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

Losing everything and finding myself

"I" Stories

Gugu Mofokeng

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52387

Freeing myself from a psychopathic lover (I call him a psychopath because of his behaviour and actions, only he wasn’t one as he was fully aware of his dehumanising actions) came at a great cost to me; having lost my house, part of my ear, my self-worth and my dignity. It is still not easy for me to cope with that situation, but I am trying very hard to face my giant. In the name of love, I again found myself trapped with a psychopath, but because of God, who is the source of my life and destiny, he gave me another chance to prove to the world that he alone “can turn my scars into stars”; “my pains into other people’s gains” and “bad into good.”
Freeing myself from a psychopathic lover (I call him a psychopath because of his behaviour and actions, only he wasn’t one as he was fully aware of his dehumanising actions) came at a great cost to me; having lost my house, part of my ear, my self-worth and my dignity. It is still not easy for me to cope with that situation, but I am trying very hard to face my giant. In the name of love, I again found myself trapped with a psychopath, but because of God, who is the source of my life and destiny, he gave me another chance to prove to the world that he alone “can turn my scars into stars”; “my pains into other people’s gains” and “bad into good.”

All my life I have experienced abuse, and yet today I am a strong and confident woman in pursuit of my destiny and because I understand that God was training me for a great battle that women, children and men are facing. The experiences were not easy, but today I believe it was worth it. There is this myth that Christian women cannot be abused, it’s not true, I think many are wearing masks and are scared to tell the truth. Abuse has no gender, colour, race or religion.

I got myself trapped with a psychopath in 2006. At the time, I was still hurting and on the run from another abusive man. Initially I thought to myself that God must finally be answering my prayers, giving me a father, a friend and the man of my dreams.

He loved me and couldn’t live without me. He asked me to move into a back room with him at his mother’s house. I loved him so much, so I left my house to stay with him. For a year and five months, I totally abandoned my house and it was broken into twice. We were together 24 hours 7 days a week and lived as if we could not breathe without one another.

He introduced me to pornography and dagga, so that I can be high and do the things we saw in movies. Again because I thought this was love, I did those things. Because of my desire to please him, I turned into a sex slave. He enjoyed sex in such a way that when I was busy or tired he would cry. He would literally lock me in the room for us to be together. If I wanted to go to my house or to visit my family he would accompany me, but two hours away from his place was too much.

When his friends came to visit him five minutes was too long, after which he would chase them away. He allowed some friends to stay longer, but on leaving, he would accuse me of having affairs with them and beat me up. His method was this: he would never beat me during the day; he would switch the lights off, sit on my torso with my arms at my side and only my head exposed, he would slap me nonstop for what felt like three or four hours, until my face became numb and swollen.

While beating me he would accuse me of “ukumfebela” while also telling me about how much he loved me. In the end, he would blame me from having pushed him to do what he did, cry, apologise, then lock me in the room and buy me gifts. He would still have sex with me as part of saying sorry.

When went to buy food, clothes, furniture and even my underwear, together. He abused me financially, he never gave me money, he chose the clothes I wore and the food I ate. Sometimes he would prevent me from seeing my family and from checking my house. There were times I ran away only for him to find me.

One day I decided to run away to a place he would never suspect. I switched off my cellphone for a month, but he finally found me. Since I loved him, I went back with him. In the month that I had left him, he found himself another woman who moved in. He told me he did not love her and he was sorry. When we went back to “our home” that night, the woman came.

He tried to stop her from entering, but she fought her way in. He tried to solve the matter but the woman refused to go anywhere. She undressed and got into the bed that I thought was only for the two of us. At midnight, he carried me onto the bed. He raped me, in his words, to justify his love for me.

After that, the other woman asked him for sex and they did it in front of me. I felt dead and useless, as if this was not happening. The following morning, I went to open a rape case. After much pressure from his family and friends and as a way to leave him, I withdrew the case.

I ran away again and I found a home for abused women in Boksburg, where I stayed for six months. On my return in January 2008, he found out I was back. He came and told me he was a changed man and that he wanted to marry me. He begged me until I fell for it because I still believed I loved him, but I soon saw he had not changed.

Instead, he accused me of sleeping with white men while I was at the place of safety. He saw that my life had indeed changed and that I was now pursuing my dreams. I went on radio to counsel and motivate other women and to train them on abuse. He became jealous that I had found myself, and his new mission was to oppress me.

At the end of February, I told him I was ending the relationship and he said he would rather we both die than end it. I repeated this for a whole week until he saw that I was serious. On March 3 2008, he came to my house drunk and took me out by force, threatening throughout the night to kill us both.

On our return to the house after midnight, I told him to stop coming to my place. He then began to beat me, he grabbed me by my hair and bit off a part of my left ear and tried to bite off another piece, leaving my ear in two pieces. He was also poking my eyes, he pulled my hair and when I broke free, he was holding a clump of my hair in this hand. On top of it all he also stabbed me in the head.

After a mammoth struggle, I was able to run away and 15 minutes later, my house was on fire. I opened a case. I struggled to understand the court proceedings, but the matter is still on.

What I like is that I am still alive to tell other women out there that “get out early while

you are still alive and stay beautiful. Don’t let your vulnerability and need for love expose you. Know the difference between love and obsession. Finally, I was able to take charge of my life and I am now single, strong and have regained my sense of worth .I am empowering other women out there. I am busy registering a shelter for abused women and children. I am unstoppable now.

* 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

Not a victim, a survivor

"I" Stories

Sally Kisten

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52389

My story is about culture, belief systems, early marriage and alcohol abuse that negatively affected my life as a teenager. My children paid the price as well. My story however has a happy ending. Allow me to give voice to my story. When I was 16, young and vulnerable, had not even experienced puppy love as yet, I was chosen while at a wedding, to be married to a man 10 years older than myself. While growing up as a typical South African Indian girl, deeply held morals, values, and belief systems were passed on to me.
My story is about culture, belief systems, early marriage and alcohol abuse that negatively affected my life as a teenager. My children paid the price as well. My story however has a happy ending. Allow me to give voice to my story.

When I was 16, young and vulnerable, had not even experienced puppy love as yet, I was chosen while at a wedding, to be married to a man 10 years older than myself. While growing up as a typical South African Indian girl, deeply held morals, values, and belief systems were passed on to me. I had to fulfill my parents wishes. That mainly meant I had to get married, have children, be a slave to my husband and his family. I did this for 17 long, dreadful and painful years.

After marriage at the tender age of 16 years, I had 2 children, a boy at 17 and a girl at 19. I had to cook, clean, take care of 10 people in his family, my children and myself, whom I had little time for. During my marriage, I realised that my husband was an alcoholic, but it did not bother me because we lived with his family and I felt safe. He used to have terrible fights with his mum.

He had a wonderful family whom used to care for my children and myself. We did not go out much because I used to stay home and be the maid. I sometimes visited my family. I was not allowed to speak to people that I grew up with. Thinking that my husband loved me, I accepted his rules and had no social life. I thought this was his way of showing that he loved me. Due to his abusive behavior towards his mum we were thrown out of his house a few times until we found a place to rent.

We moved into an outbuilding and here I thought this would bring my family bliss with no outsiders but our little family. The reality was that his mum was not around but I was. We did not have it all but we lived comfortably regarding the rent, food, children’s clothes and school. He could not miss his weekend binges of alcohol. When he opened a bottle, he had to finish it and if it is still the weekend, he had to get more alcohol. I used to buy and pour his drinks believing that’s what I had to do as a good Indian wife.

I did not finish school; I had poor knowledge of the outside world. I did what I knew best on how to be a good wife, who loved her husband despite his insults, physical and verbal abuse. He drank the whole weekend, he could not even eat, he vomited all over the place and I had to clean up after him. I still did not complain because both sides of the families said that “he will change as the children grow older.” This is what most Indian parents say - I later found out.

We moved to a home that we applied for, which I had forced him to initiate the process. We moved in with my mum’s assistance and not his, but nothing changed. In fact, our lives got worst. He drank more often, locking the children and myself out of the house a few times. My neighbour, an elderly woman always stood by me. We never opened the door during weekends and we rarely attended functions, because we were too embarrassed of his drunken state. I had never put him down to the children; I was father and mother to them. We did not have proper meals or slept on weekends, due to his abusive behavior. He was however a good man when he was sober, which was rarely. I convinced him that I should get a job so that we could live a better life, while the auntie next door looked after the children.

I went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He wanted to know where I went with his sister and brother-in-law and this is how he attended the meetings. This failed after six months. He refused help from Social Services and the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (SANCA) until I spoke to a lawyer, who advised me to take legal steps. I applied for a divorce with the lawyers assistance, put it on hold when he fell and broke his leg.

He left home which was what he did often that I eventually lost count of. This was the last of many times that I was accepting him back. I signed the divorce papers, he tried to oppose it but it was too late and I was granted the custody of the children and the house. He had to be evicted from the house. My life changed with many years of new challenges.

I was depressed for two years, but had to wake up and smell the coffee, because I realised that my children needed me. I worked long and hard hours in a clothing company, while maintaining the house; I had to fend for my children and myself. I was an extreme introvert until my daughter assisted me in getting out of my shell, by changing my style of dressing, meeting other people, most importantly talking to men, which I had never done previously unless they were relatives.

While working in the factory I volunteered my services to assist women and children of Domestic violence. I was trained by Social Department at that time, which helped broaden my horizons.

I grew from strength to strength with now my 8th year of counseling. The programmes and workshops have helped me heal tremendously. My children and I have dealt with our past and have moved forward with positivity and prosperity. I now work as a mediator assisting many people with similar problems. My children are responsible and reliable adults, working and independent. With positive thinking and most importantly prayer, I have never looked back but progressed abundantly. To the women out there, I did it so can you; let’s build bridges instead of walls.

* not her real name

* 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.

South Africa: Taking a closer look at the Domestic Violence Act

2008-12-04

http://www.ngopulse.org/article/taking-closer-look-domestic-violence-act

From 26-28 November 2008, the Centre for the Study of Violence of Reconciliation (CSVR) hosted the ‘South African Domestic Violence Act (DVA) Lessons from a Decade of Legislation and Implementation’ conference in Johannesburg. Attended by approximately 120 delegates came together to review the implementation of the DVA over the past 10 years.

Turning life around

"I" Stories

Alisha Maharaj

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52394

I grew up in the arms of poverty, having just basic meals and two sets of my uniform throughout my primary and high school years. One pair of sandals got me through many years right up to high school. As a Hindi speaking child, I had to live within a certain protocol. I felt as if I did not have any rights. I was not supposed to demand, but to do as I was told. Doing household chores and my schoolwork was not enough. I had to do the homework of my brothers as well.
I grew up in the arms of poverty, having just basic meals and two sets of my uniform hroughout my primary and high school years. One pair of sandals got me through many years right up to high school. As a Hindi speaking child, I had to live within a certain protocol. I felt as if I did not have any rights. I was not supposed to demand, but to do as I was told.

Doing household chores and my schoolwork was not enough. I had to do the homework of my brothers as well. If I did not, I would be beaten, called names, and sworn at. At times, I felt I deserved what came to me. To keep the peace I would do all that I was told to do. Numerous times, I hated my body and wished myself death.

My teenage years became more torturous. My brothers were very dominating and demanded a lot from me. The load of homework from them became a lot and it had to be done right. At age 14 years, my dad passed away and poverty grew intensely, and so did the abuse. My mum could not do much about it. Even if she tried to defend me, abuse would come her way, my brothers swearing, screaming, and breaking of dishes. High school was difficult. To me, this was how Indian girls grew up.

My tears did not seem to be exhausted and the downpour would continue. When I finished matric my mum found an escape for myself and that would be marriage. She found a suitable suitor for me straight after matric. I was not allowed to study afterwards, as it was not what Indian girls did. I was married off against my wishes.

My husband seemed to be the knight in shining armour that was going to make my problems disappear. He seemed to be angel like, sent by God to protect me and carry me away from all the pain. At first the marriage was a perfect bed of roses. Then, the alcohol and abuse started. The dominating behavior took off like a jumbo jet. The verbal, psychological, emotional, financial and sexual abuse became a normal thing in marriage. There was no way of getting out of the marriage.

To get out meant going back to the abuse that I left. Indian girls do not leave their marital home at all. There cultural beliefs and myths were that they stick to their marriage and endure all no matter what. I told no one of the abuse and continued to cry in silence. About ten years back I found out about an advice desk. This took me by surprise as I had then only come to realise that I had been a victim all my life.

As a way of getting out, I applied to learn counseling skills and worked as a volunteer at the advice desk. This too, was against my husband’s wishes and I would continue to serve the advice desk without his knowledge. When he would find out I served a shift, I would take the brunt and abuse. I became so numbed that I became a living corpse and shut everything out. The abuse did not matter anymore because I could not feel.

The only love that prevailed in me was the love for my children. There was no other love. Going through all the programmes and workshops made a huge difference to me and I have healed and become stronger. I became a mediator and am now financially secure and a little independent. The abuse still continues from time to time. I have since learnt not to let it affect me emotionally. The programmes and the workshops that I have attended has made me realise that one can turn their life around.

I have come to a stage in life where I realise that life is a gift and we need to live it. I received my gift very late in life and I plan to live it to the fullest. Life is never perfect but I have learnt to make each day count and face every challenge life throws at me. My experiences had taught me to teach others that abuse is never right.

One should not have to endure abuse and stay quiet about it. Speak up and make that difference. Life is for living. Live life to the fullest! No one should take abuse especially not by the opposite sex. You are made for them to love you and that’s the way it should be!

* Alisha Maharaj is not her real name
* 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.

When a child is raped

"I" Stories

Natasha Kangele

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/16days/52393

My name is Natasha Kangele and I am from Malawi. I came to South Africa when I was ten years old. As a child, I grew up with my mother’s sister due to family problems. Growing up in my aunt’s house was not a piece of cake. It was like living in hell because she did not like me that much. So one of the horrible days of my life came, the day I lost my womanhood in a way that I did not expect. I was raped when I was 12 years old.
My name is Natasha Kangele and I am from Malawi. I came to South Africa when I was ten years old. As a child, I grew up with my mother’s sister due to family problems. Growing up in my aunt’s house was not a piece of cake. It was like living in hell because she did not like me that much.

So one of the horrible days of my life came, the day I lost my womanhood in a way that I did not expect. I was raped when I was 12 years old. We were living with another woman by the name Anne. That morning, Anne sent me to the shops to buy something. Coming back from the shops, a man was following me. He came to me and said that I should follow him or else he will kill me.

I felt a gun on my back, so I had no choice. He took me to his place in Berea. There he raped me. When he finished what he wanted with me, by God’s grace he took me back home. It was not easy getting home but I managed to get there. Before going in the house, he threatened me by saying that “if you tell anyone about what happened…I know you... I will kill you.”

When I got home Aunt Anne was waiting for me, and she suddenly noticed that something was wrong with me. So, I told her what happened to me that morning. She suggested that we wait for my aunt who at that time was at work. We waited from 9am until 6pm, that’s when she came home.

When she saw me, she said that I was not raped, but that it was my boyfriend. She managed to tell everyone at home that I was lying, saying that I was raped. Everyone believed her story. Can you believe this? Even my best friend believed the whole story.

I was so disappointed and I was very angry with everyone. I needed my family and friends, but they where nowhere to be found. For me, home was no home; it was just a place to live because I had nowhere to go as a child.

As a child, I felt the rejection and I started to hate my family. I hated them all, I hated myself and everything around me, especially men. The biggest reason that I hated men was because I had lost my pride as a woman in a way that I have never dreamed in my life.

All these years I have carried this secret with me, until recently I spoke to a very good friend of mine about what happened to me years back. He said that it was not my fault and he made me realise that I have to let go of the whole situation and move on with my life. One day he phoned me when I was at work and he asked me if I was ready to speak out and let other women know about my story.

I agreed because I needed to move on and I was tired of living with that anger and hatred. He took me to the “I” Stories workshop speaking out on Gender Violence in Southern Africa. There I met great women and men, some who lived in abusive relationships and some are still living in abuse.

So, now that you heard and read my story of abuse, please women and men of South Africa say “NO” to abuse. Remember that there is no abuse in love. If someone is abusing you in the name of love, then you are living in hell.

If you know someone who is living in abuse, my brother, my sister, my mother and mothers of Southern African please give them as much support as you can. If you are going through the same situation that you think is abuse, then say, “enough is enough”. Say no to violence in your life because that is not love but that is violence abuse.

I pray that may God give you the strength that you need to say no and to go on living even when you feel like you cannot go on. Remember that you are the reason that the sun is shining out there and, because you live, a new day comes. For you are the pillar to the women and children of this country.

* 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

Africa: EU Bank 'financing destruction' in Africa

2008-12-04

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=44959

The European Union is financing ecologically and socially destructive projects in Africa, a Brussels conference has been told. Officially, the Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank (EIB) is committed to using the 53 billion euros (67 billion dollars) it releases each year, to pursue policies that protect the environment and alleviate hardship.

Global: Climate Action - New publication

2008-12-04

http://www.earthprint.com/productfocus.php?id=3749

The second edition of Climate Change and supporting website feature a range of articles that encourage the sharing of best practice and the development of new technologies. These initiatives, illustrates the opportunities for business and governments to reduce costs and increase profits while tackling climate change. Separated into four sections, the first three mirrors the thematic building blocks laid out by the Bali Action Plan in 2007, which will be discussed in detail during COP 14 - The United Nations Climate Conference in Poznon, Poland, and in the lead up to COP 15 in Copenhagen.

Global: Climate change and human rights: A rough guide

2008-12-04

http://www.gsdrc.org/go/display&type=Document&id=3080

How can human rights principles help to focus climate change policymaking? This report from the International Council on Human Rights Policy discusses the human rights impacts of climate change and maps research agendas. It includes Forewords by Mary Robinson and Romina Picolotti.

Kenya: Basque government to support tree-planting

2008-12-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/52542

The Green Belt Movement, founded by Nobel prize-winner Wangari Maathai, has a partnership with the Basque government for community-based tree planting and natural resource management initiatives in southern Mt.Kenya.
Fighting Climate Change Through local projects

Wednesday 10 December, 9.00 – Archaeological museum, Poznan

A GREEN BELT MOVEMENT project in partnership with the BASQUE GOVERNMENT. Community-Based Tree Planting and Natural Resource Management Initiatives in Southern Mt.Kenya.

TERI-The Energy and Resources Institute and BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change-Klima Aldaketa Ikergai, project spreading and transference of knowledge


The Green Belt Movement (GBM) was founded over thirty years ago by Professor Wangari Maathai (Nobel Laureate 2004). Through a rights-based and environmental education approach GBM has mobilized rural women in Kenya to plant over 40 million trees. More than simply protecting the environment, the Green Belt Movement’s strategy is to secure and strengthen the very basis for ecologically sustainable development. Prof. Wangari Maathai and her work at GBM are an example and source of inspiration for Communities worldwide facing the challenges of Climate Change. Prof Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.

Professor Rajendra K. Pachauri is the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002, and is also the director general of the The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, an institution devoted to researching and promoting sustainable development. He stands out for his high contributions to the environment, for what he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award, and also for the defence and the recognition for reaching a sustainable development also for the neediest.

The Basque Government believes the best investment we can make is to devote our efforts now to reducing the effects of Climate Change and that Prof. Maathai is a strong voice speaking for the best forces in Africa to promote peace and good living conditions on that continent. Only by making a significant commitment now can we hope to avoid paying the huge economic, environmental and social costs climate change will bring in the future. The Basque Government understands this and has made the fight against this phenomenon one of the main priorities of its environment policy, which includes a partnership with GBM to restore the forests of southern Mount Kenyan, the approval of the Basque Climate Change Action Plan 2008-2012 and the creation of the Basque Center on Climate Change (BC3).


The speakers of the conference are:

Prof. Wangari Maathai
Nobel Peace Prize for 2004 for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.

Prof. Rajendra K. Pachauri
Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 shared with Al Gore for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change

Ms. Esther Larrañaga
Minister for Environment and Land Use, Basque Country
Seats are limited, to secure your place please click here

Mauritania: Desertification threatens to wipe out livelihoods, communities

2008-12-04

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81782

Environmental degradation, responsible for the dangerous displacement of sand dunes in Mauritania, has wiped out homes, livestock and livelihoods throughout the desert country. An October UN study estimated that land degradation costs nearly US$200 million annually in potential revenue losses and health care expenses.

Uganda: Dam slammed by World Bank appeals body

2008-12-04

http://www.bicusa.org/en/Article.10962.aspx

The benefits of the Bujagali Dam project, now being built by private companies on the Nile River in Uganda, have been overstated and its risks understated, according to a 17-month investigation by the World Bank Inspection Panel. Worse, most of those risks fall on Uganda – one of the world’s poorest countries – rather than the project developers. The result could be a project that fails to fulfill the Bank’s “broad objective of sustainable development and poverty reduction embodied in Bank policy,” the Panel states.

Zambia: A slow start to saving the trees

2008-12-04

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81797

Zambians are gradually turning to greener energy technologies to save trees after suffering years of extensive flooding and droughts, which could slow the impact of climate change. Charcoal-fed braziers are being replaced by those burning briquettes made of treated coal waste, which are smokeless and emit low levels of sulphur dioxide gas.

Global: Rich countries carry out '21st century land grab'

2008-12-05

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026854.200-rich-countries-carry-out-

Until the mid-20th century, many European countries grew rich on the resources of their colonies. Now, countries including China, Kuwait and Sweden are snapping up vast tracts of agricultural land in poorer nations, especially in Africa, to grow biofuels and food for themselves. The land grabs have sparked accusations of neocolonialism and fears that the practice could worsen poverty. Yet some organisations think this could be a chance for poor countries to trade land and labour for the technology and investment vital for developing their own food and energy production.

Africa: Congress of African juornalists 'a milestone'

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/6mjy6y

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has today welcomed the conclusion of the first working congress of the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), held in Nairobi, Kenya last week end as a historic milestone in strengthening African Journalists. "IFJ affiliates in Africa have finally realised a long-held ambition to set up their own federation. This will have a tremendous impact on journalists and media in Africa.

Africa: IWMF Names Centers of Excellence for Africa Initiative

2008-12-03

http://www.iwmf.org/article.aspx?id=778&c=press

L’Essor and Radio Klédu have been named “Centers of Excellence” in the International Women’s Media Foundation’s (IWMF) new initiative, Reporting on Agriculture and Women: Africa. The goal of the four-year initiative is to enhance news media coverage of agriculture, women in agriculture and rural development in Africa.

Burundi: Freedom of expression endangered, UN rights expert says

2008-12-04

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29136

An independent United Nations human rights expert today voiced his deep concern over the diminishing freedom of expression and association in Burundi, warning that violations of these freedoms imperil the rule of law in the African Great Lakes country. “The Government must restore a calm political climate and take all necessary measures to end the harassment and intimidation of journalists and representatives of civil society, trade unions and political parties,” said Akich Okola, the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Burundi.

Kenya: Government proposes draconian law

2008-12-04

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/98985/

A new law that, if passed, will allow the Kenyan government to determine the content, style, manner and schedule of broadcasting, has drawn fierce resistance from the media industry. The Kenya Communications Amendment Bill 2008, which is now in its final stages of the legislative process in Kenya's Parliament, proposes to set up a communications commission appointed by the government to issue licences to broadcasters and a raft of heavy fines and prison sentences for various offences.

Kenya: Kenyan Union of Journalist oppose Kenya Communications Amendment Act

2008-12-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/52531

We are concerned that the media community is sitting idly and letting politicians decide our fate. We cannot afford to allow Parliament to pass the Kenya Communications Amendment Act with its provisions that will definitely lead to our emasculation. And nobody should be deceived that this Act will be good for the media and the country. The devil is in the detail, and upon a closer look, one will discover that what the Government has done or condoned in the past against the media – the May, 2005 attack by First Lady Lucy Kibaki on hapless journalists, the March, 2006 raid by Mamlukis at the Standard, and the ban on live broadcasts early this year — will just be but a prick compared to the proposals in the Kenya Communications Amendment Act. We met Members of Parliament serving in the committee that deals with media, led by Eng. James Rege, on September 15, 2008 at their invitation to discuss this Kenya Communications Amendment Act, and gave them a raft of proposals.
Recommendations by the Kenya Union of Journalists to the Parliamentary Committee responsible for Information and Communications, on the Kenya Communications (Amendment) Bill 2007


1. The Kenya Communications Act bestows a very broad mandate on the Communications Commission of Kenya, which it has not been able to, nor is it likely to discharge effectively, especially with the proposed amendments. There is a need to separate mass media from information technology, which the CCK seems to concentrate on.

2. We therefore recommend the creation of a Constitutional Commission, similar to the Parliamentary Service Commission and the Public Service Commission etc, under Section 79 of the Constitution. We are providing text for this proposed Mass Media Commission.

3. We need a Constitutional Commission on Mass Media because freedom of expression, which is best expressed through the mass media, is a fundamental human and constitutional right provided for in Section 79 of the Constitution of Kenya.

4. The independent Constitutional Commission will ensure that the country is protected from abuse of the power to control mass media, which has been experienced before in the arbitrary issue and withdrawal of licenses and broadcast frequencies, and other abuses as was witnessed during the post-election crisis of early 2008, when the government arbitrarily banned live broadcasts.

5. We therefore recommend that the provisions of the Bill as relates to broadcasting, be removed and transferred to the Mass Media Commission.

6. We also recommend amendments to the Media Act 2007 to transfer the functions relating to media and composition of the council to the Mass Media Commission.

7. We also recommend the creation of a Journalism Society of Kenya through an Act of Parliament, to participate in the Mass Media Commission and deal with all issues relating to the discipline of journalists in this country.

Unfortunately, Rege’s committee either ignored our input or fell under the spell of the Ministry of Information and Communications, which has all along been pushing hard for the enactment of this new draconian law.

Now we hear that MPs are so pissed off with the media that they are ready to pass any law that can stop us from questioning their frivolous ways.

It is clear from past experience that in this country, you get nothing on a silver platter. You have to force the hand of the adversary and stop them in their tracks. Press conferences, commentaries and diplomatic meetings will not stop MPs from doing what they please.

It is necessary therefore for members of the Fourth Estate to come out fighting and defend their turf. We know that we are as disparate as ever, pursuing interests that are often so individualistic that they work against the overall good of the media. Is it possible to forget our differences and work together to stop politicians from running this country as if the rest of us are perpetual, hapless passengers in a crowded matatu?

The media can flex its muscle by simply giving a news blackout to the Government and politicians. We can also endeavor to raise this issue at every news conference, every event that we are called to cover, until we have what we want. There are a number of other tactics which can work.

The starting point would be to form a committee to coordinate a sustained campaign to ensure everybody wakes up and takes media seriously. KUJ is ready to be in this committee. Any takers?


Eric Orina
Secretary General
Kenya Union of Journalists
P.O Box 20969-00202
Tel +254 721 397 167
Nairobi
Kenya

Mauritania: Editor jailed

2008-12-04

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29496

Reporters Without Borders condemns the imprisonment of Abdel Fettah Ould Abeidna, the editor of the privately-owned Arabic-language weekly Al-Aqsa, in Nouakchott on a criminal libel charge. Abeidna was immediately jailed on his arrival from Dubai, from where he was extradited.

Sudan: Papers suspend publication

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/5hfxoq

Ten Sudanese newspapers have suspended publication as part of a growing protest against state censorship, Sudanese journalists said. Reporters said on Tuesday that it was the biggest voluntary shutdown of the media since the days of British rule in the 1950s.

DR Congo: Activists Slam World's "Grotesque Indifference"

2008-12-05

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44965

International lust for the enormous mineral and resource riches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) abetted by international indifference has turned much of country into a colossal "rape mine" where more than 300,000 women and girls have been brutalised, say activists.

DR Congo: Peril and privilege

2008-12-05

http://news.csu.edu.au/director/features.cfm?itemID=959AC9C0014527FC5CA79B7542953A92

Widespread rape and murder continues in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in central Africa, but Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic Dr Elaine Dietsch says her annual visit to the strife-torn country puts trans-cultural midwifery, primary health care and women's and children's health into a global perspective for her.

Nigeria: Prevent further bloodshed in Jos

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/66jbtw

The Nigerian government should investigate and prosecute those responsible for killing up to 400 people during several recent days of violence in the city of Jos, Human Rights Watch has said. The federal government should immediately establish an independent inquiry to find out who sponsored and carried out the killings, including any members of the security forces who appear to have responded to violence with disproportionate use of forc

Somalia: Total destitution without effective aid, UN relief official warns

2008-12-04

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MYAI-7LZ445?OpenDocument

Without an effective response to the deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia, the population there could face "total destitution", said Mark Bowden, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, warning that "this is now a make or break year for Somalia".

Sudan: Can Washington ’save Darfur’?

2008-12-03

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/777/40072

Few humanitarian crises have occasioned as much media and activist attention in the US as the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Major politicians routinely pay homage to suffering Darfurians in their speeches, well-heeled Darfur advocacy groups take out full-page ads in the New York Times, and commentators regularly fill op-ed ledgers around the country with righteous, indignant calls for the West to act to end the suffering.

Swaziland: Hunger in the land of plenty

2008-12-05

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/52537

Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) calls on the International Criminal court to arrest Mswati as a perpetrator of human suffering for presiding over a crime against humanity.
Swaziland is a small country south of the equator which shares borders with two democratic countries in the name of Mozambique and the republic of South Africa. Swaziland has been ruled by the Dlamini dynasty for over five hundred years, Mswati is said to have inherited his kingdom from his father Sobhuza and when inaugurated said it clearly that he will follow in his fathers footsteps of not democratizing the country, all influential positions will be headed by his illiterate brothers, there will be no freedom of association, speech and labor rights for the citizens, will continue to have so many wives that will be taken care of by the taxpayers, he will spend lavishly to an extent that he will buy cars like he is buying sweets. And lastly he will cut extensively on social spending hence you see the cut in university scholarships and the crumbling health sector. And lastly he will never uphold the rule of law, with this promise when taking oath he has lived up to it.

CUTTING SOCIAL SPENDING

The Swazi government led by king Mswati has extensively cut on social spending (social spending can be classified as a budget by the government to uplift the standard of living of the country' citizens) with a country that has 70% unemployment rate where do you expect citizens to generate resources to sustain themselves, when also around 600.000 rely on donor food meaning those people are extremely poor they cant afford to cater for themselves so government has to intervene on their behalf but does that happen? Below I will be writing about why we believe the government of Mswati is deliberately subjecting our poor people to such barbaric conditions, further choosing to throttle them (KWEKHAMA) so that they unwillingly submit to the regime’s shenanigans.

MAJOR CUT ON EDUCATION FUNDING

the Swazi regime is a bunch of confused traditionalists who cant see beyond their noses, in today’s world I swear you cant make it if you are not educated instead of pouring more resources on education as a form of capacitating its citizen so that in future they will be self reliant and the skills they will acquire either at university or technikon will boost the country' economy because we be having the skills that are needed by the market instead the government has cut university and colleges funding by 40% percent this year meaning more than 8000 Swazi children wont be able to access tertiary education forever because the percentage will grow next year and eventually tertiary education will be totally privatized.

35%OF EDUCATION BUDGET USED BY PRINCES AND PRINCESES

You might think that the rise of the education budget every year means something to the Swazi child yet it spells doom the reason being that the major cut on university and college funding in Swaziland is because the 35% of the budget is utilized by the royal kids that is Mswati' children inclusive of his sisters and brothers kids and the children of the regimes stogies, mostly to spaza colleges outside of Swaziland, for instance one royal buffoon who studies at a spaza university or college in south Africa is funded at a tune of E100.000 per year excluding transport cost because they are ferried by hired cars to the republic and they come home whenever they wish

This entirely means one thing a university of Swaziland student is funded roughly twenty thousand a year which means you have to sacrifice four tax payers’ children to fund one royal jackal to study animal husbandry outside Swaziland whereas it is offered at the University of Swaziland that’s ludicrous. Only a government led by loom pens can allow that and in this case it is rightly so. What makes the so called royal kids to believe that they have to get preferential treatment; we are all equal stake holders in Swaziland no person is above another.

After all this then comes Mswati’ kids who never even passed your grade seven yet they are now in university and colleges in Europe and America this spoiled rats as part of their packages for studying in Europe are using contract cell phones the 606 number which is a government contract number paid for by the taxpayers, they roam in Europe and America even the richest men in the planet cant afford this. These royal kids they travel on chartered planes even if he/she is alone in the plane with all the luxuries it come with all this money is taken from the education budget. Forget about the parties they throw every weekend at their residences.

The crumbling healthy sector

One day this clown called Mswati will wake and find no one to lead because all the citizens will be dead. What kind of a leader neglects his people (no I am sorry Mswati is not a leader a leader is democratically elected). Swaziland has the highest HIV AIDS rate in the world which stands at 40% meaning 400.000 people in Swaziland are infected. Some of these peoples lives would be prolonged if the Swazi government was serious about the lives of its people the is no government programme on the roll out of ARVs except NERCHA which also does not have the capacity because most of its personnel are not hired on merit but by favor.

There is general chaos in this department starting from the buying of machinery that is not needed in our hospitals, to understaffing, lack of medication lack of specialists even an eye specialists can you imagine to the continuous stealing of medication by hospital staff and being sold to private clinics, the continuous renting of the of public hospital machinery and theaters for private use.

Why is this happening?

All this is the truth you know I have come to the conclusion that the Swazi government is a bunch of pirates that are holding the people of Swaziland by the scruff of their necks for a ransom once the ransom(TAX) has been paid then they buy themselves lavish commodities. The man called a king built himself a state of the art hospital next to one of his palaces that usually houses his train loads of girlfriends these hospital only caters for royalty it has a state of the art modern machinery doctors outside of Africa only soldiers guard it when a royal member is not responding to treatment there he/she is transferred either to south Africa or Taiwan, whereas the masses when they are not responding to treatment they are expelled from hospital how on earth can you expel a sick person from hospital. What kind of a government that allows that anyway we are not referred as citizens but mere subjects. The sad part is that 42% of the healthy budget is consumed by the royal ticks.

The palala fund

the confused government from 1998- 2003 led by the chief terrorist himself Barnabas (he is a terrorist because he doesn’t uphold the rule of law, doesn’t believe in democracy, he ruled the country on statements November 28, brought back the sixty days detention without trial, never believed in an independent judiciary he showed these by continuously harassing of then clerk to parliament when courts had intervened on zwane' favor and the undemocratic expulsion of the then speaker Mgabhi for allegedly cow dung theft all two gentlemen won in court and the tax payer was forced to cough up that’s a definition of a terrorist) not PUDEMO and SWAYOCO.

Coming back to the phalala fund a sane government cannot start initiatives that are parallel to existing structures why a separate structure for what and for whom and then you allocate a paltry amount when knowing very well that half the Swazi population is seriously sick the worst part of it is that even the affluent your cabinet ministers (Lutfo, sipho shongwe, and the hordes of these royal hangers on who are dying because of their continuously imbibing in alcohol at the various mswati' residences at the expense of the taxpayer)are also catered by these fund. Why not build more hospitals and equip them with the best machinery and get the best doctors so that we can all benefit? Children are dying of rabies because all the country' hospital doesn’t have any antibiotics for rabies these days you cant even find a pan ado in the hospitals because they are either stolen by the under staffed and overtime worked but not paid workers or the government hasn’t bought them. Our hospital’s having become gallows because once you go there I bet you will come out in a coffin.

Salaries for royal kids

The latest news on the salaries that these royal kids get is really frightening there twenty two of them at the moment all even one year olds are paid a salary of fifteen thousand rands per month apart from the eight hundred thousands rand that they are paid annually that brings the amount to R980.000 per child when you add all 22 kids you get R21560000 no wonder their mothers consumed R35.000.000 when shopping for the forty one day idiotic celebrations when you enquire where does this money comes from you are told never ask its uncultured and unswazi to do that. That’s why these kids believe that we as taxpayers are a charitable case in that they go about donating to communities and the government keeping quite what nonsense is that where on earth a school going kid can donate an amount of more than R100000 where did he get the money from. This should not be allowed.

If you are a genuine leader one that has in heart the people he leads why is mswati doing all these, why is he plundering our resources together with his family instead of using these resources to upgrade the standard of the Swazi citizens and also build infrastructure if you have a man who is a king and can withdraw thirty five million and carries it in black bags to Asia then knows that we are in trouble, a leader who is hot headed and don’t take advice from economist and various professional bodies as to how is spending and priorities will dearly cost the country but he doesn’t listen. If you can answer these questions then you will know that the Swazi ship is sinking we need new captains that will steer us clear of trouble
The questions:

1 Why was the forker 100 bought when the PEU chief Jackson advised against such and in no time it was sold at far below its value?
2 Why was the skhuphe airport built when we don’t have an airplane (it’s like buying socks yet you don’t have shoes)?
3 we need answers as to why be there no one prosecuted for the drugs that were found in one of his majesty luggages when going overseas.
4 Why was Sandile Mdziniso not welcomed in Canada to be Swaziland' high commissioner (full explanation)?
5 Swazi need an explanation to the expulsion of then kings office ceo Roy fanourakis amid claims that he stole hundred million rands that belonged to mswati and invested it in oil fields in Nigeria where did mswati get this money was it not donor funding?.
6 Why even today has no one who has been slapped with charges for the death in police cells the following citizens of Swaziland.

A] Muzi Dlamini killed by Malkerns police.
b]Mathousand Ngubane killed by Sgodvweni police( no wonder the station commander at that time MAYISA has been promoted to be the head of BARNABAS security isn’t strange and the detective involved LUKHELE has also been promoted from sergeant to the next rank).
c] Cde Dlabha Ngozo killed by lukhoz.i
The two boys who were killed by the bhunya police (one Danka Fakudze was who was the investigation officer has been promoted he now heads the traffic department at Swaziland' busiest city with a rank above that of sergeant).
d] Mphikeleli Zwane killed by Malkerns police Gulwako who was involved was given a promotion he died a sergeant.

the list is endless and the funny part of it is that not even a single police officer was suspended and mswati never even issued any statement yet when six million went missing at piggs peak police station he summoned the nation and told them that these money must be found why didn’t he call a meeting also when his cronies Lutfo, Qhawe Mamba and his sister Thabsile stole 50 million in broad daylight he kept quite like a church mouse a good leader is one that is consistent that’s why swat doesn’t possesses even one characteristics of being a leader let alone a good one. Why has Mswati been quite on the death of 46 Swazi women and children who were killed by David Simelane?

7 why suspend the Piggs Peak police commander when none of the above commanders were suspended is the value of money more than that of human life?
8 Why not expel all those senior army officers for taking bribes and sleeping with aspiring soldiers.
why was the then prime minister Mbilini not charged for accepting more than five hundred us dollars bribe from Inyatsi and intercom for the Mbabane Manzini highway no wonder even the road to his deep rural private Dlalambi home is tarred.
9 Who are the share holders of the Swaziland electricity company and who gave the mandate to privatize this national asset?
10 Tibiyo and Tisuka were started by capital raised from the sale of cattle and goats that were taken from the ordinary people of Swaziland tell me are these two entities benefiting the populace of Swaziland or only the royal family.

MSWATI AND HIS STOOGIES HAVE FAILED THE PEOPLE OF SWAZILAND IT IS FOR THAT REASON THAT SWAYOCO DEMANDS THE FOLLOWING
Immediate and unconditional release of PUDEMO President, Mario Masuku and cessation of all political; hostilities.
All citizens must be equal before the law.
Free quality education up to undergraduate studies.
All royal family members must study in Swaziland.
Free health for all and the construction of new health facilities stocked with latest machinery.
Away with the monthly and annual monies paid to the royal kids the money should be spent on elderly grants.
No overseas shopping for Mswati' wives.
Government should priories a mass role out of ARVs.
No patient must be expelled from hospital.
Arrest and prosecution of all police involved in the death of un armed citizens.
Arrest all army personnel who took bribes and slept with aspiring soldiers
Tibiyo and Tisuka must be returned to the people of Swaziland.
Demote all the police officers who were promoted for killing innocent civilians.

There’s is only one route to equality, freedom of speech, sharing of national resources, freedom of association and having rights as citizens is through multi party democracy. No man will ever stand in the way of change and the winds of change are blowing towards Swaziland we can hear the songs of freedom Swaziland shall be free.

Yours Comradely,
Phinda Mndzebele
SWAYOCO Deputy President

For more details contact the author at;

Email: pmphinda78@gmail.com
Tel: 0736777350

Africa: Africa's first satellite 'fails'

2008-12-04

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-12-02-africas-first-satellite-fails

Africa's first communications satellite has suffered an energy failure just 18 months after its launch. The solar panels have malfunctioned on the Chinese-manufactured satellite, according to Alhassan Zaku, Nigeria's minister of state for science and technology.

Africa: Web 2.0 in Africa - Agriculture and new technologies

2008-12-04

http://tinyurl.com/6oag6p

'Web 2.0 in Africa' is an eight minute Business Africa/CTA video production documenting actual cases on the use of Web 2.0 applications in the development sector, specifically among farmers in Africa. The documentary which highlights the experiences of the interaction with farmers such as BROSDI does in Uganda is available in English and has been translated into Langi (Luo) by WOUGNET/Kubere Information Centre.

Global: Microsoft plays costs card against open source

2008-12-04

http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3771

For years Microsoft denied that open source software was a competitor to its business. And then suddenly a year or so ago it began to talk “standards”, “interoperability” and other good things. It even went so far as to give money to open source projects. But, just as we were starting to think that the company was ready for a new course it comes out with a piece of PR that sounds as if Steve Ballmer could have written it himself.

South Africa: Microsoft muscles in on Unisa students

2008-12-04

http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3736

Students at the correspondence-based University of South Africa (Unisa) will be required to sign up for a Microsoft-provided email address before they are able to receive correspondence from the university. The required email address is part of the first phase to build the MyLife portal to foster a “sense of belonging” among students, the university says.

Africa: A24 Media

2008-12-04

http://a24media.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=31

A24 Media is Africa’s first online delivery site for material from journalists, African broadcasters and NGO’s from around the Continent. A24 Media’s business model ensures that all contributors receive a wide and previously unknown exposure to their content, thereby generating sustainable and generous revenues from the sale of their stories on a 60:40 basis in favour of the contributor. Most importantly, the contributor will continue to OWN the copyright of the original footage.

Africa: Wanjiru Kihoro Fellowship Programme - FAS

2008-12-04

http://www.fasngo.org/wanjiru-kihoro-fellowship-programme.html

The Wanjiru Kihoro Fellowship's broad goal is to contribute to the development of a new generation of African women leaders who are dedicated to utilising their voices and experience to futher women's central role in peace building and development work in their country, region and continent. The Fellowship aims to attract applicants who have substantial experience in local community work and who wish to gain international experience to enrich and enhance their skills.

Global: A 6 month residency opportunity for a visual artist in distress

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/52424

FreeDimensional has been asked to help find a candidate for a 6-month all expenses paid residency for a visual artist who has been in distress or censored in some way. This opportunity is in relation to the Bilbao (Anti-) Censorship Festival.
FreeDimensional has been asked to help find a candidate for a 6-month all expenses paid residency for a visual artist who has been in distress or censored in some way. This opportunity is in relation to the Bilbao (Anti-) Censorship Festival.

The terms are as follows and please do not hesitate to suggest someone who might benefit from this opportunity:

Jose Angel Serrano, in collaboration with BBK Foundation and
Bilbao Arte Foundation assumes :

1. Staying in Bilbao during 6 months.

With these conditions:

1. One single room in a good hotel.
2. Place in one studio to share with another artists in Bilbao
Arte Foundation.
3. 30 euro per diem that will be paid in advance.
4. All the necessary material to paint.
5. Illness insurance.
6. Public liability insurance.
7. Repatriation insurance.

In consideration for the service, the partners will receive from him/her :
- A minimum of three works.
And all that it entails :
¬ All the works will stay in Spain under Jose Angel

Serrano´s responsability for their exhibition at the IV. Festival Against Censorship and at other exhibition halls.

Global: Helleiner Visiting Fellowship - North-South Institute

Call for Proposals for 2009

2008-12-04

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/52428

The North-South Institute is pleased to invite applications for its annual Visiting Researcher position. The Fellowship is named after Professor Emeritus G.K. Helleiner, one of Canada 's leading academics on international development issues, who has dedicated many years to working in Africa and other developing countries and is a founding member and former Chair of the North-South Institute.
Helleiner Visiting Fellowship
at The North-South Institute, Canada

Call for Proposals for 2009
October 2008

The North-South Institute is pleased to invite applications for its annual Visiting Researcher position. The Fellowship is named after Professor Emeritus G.K. Helleiner, one of Canada 's leading academics on international development issues, who has dedicated many years to working in Africa and other developing countries and is a founding member and former Chair of the North-South Institute.

The aim of the Helleiner Visiting Fellowship program, which is funded with the support of Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), is to provide mid-career policy researchers (i.e. 5-10 years' experience), whether presently working in a university, a policy research institute or a think-tank, or another relevant institution, with the opportunity to undertake policy-relevant research in an area that is compatible with the overall goals and areas of interest of The North-Institute. For further information on current research activities please visit the NSI website at http://www.nsi-ins.ca

This year's position is open to African policy researchers interested in spending from nine months to one year at the Institute, which is based in Ottawa , Canada . The proposed policy research should fall in one of the following three broad areas: (1) International Finance, Debt, and Development Cooperation Effectiveness; (2) Trade and Migration; and (3) Governance, Civil Society, and Conflict Prevention. Research that addresses issues of gender equality or sustainable development (including climate change) in any of these three areas are also encouraged.

While at NSI, the successful candidate will be expected to: 1. undertake a major piece of original research, prepare a working paper summarizing the research findings and policy recommendations as well as shorter articles or policy briefs , and make related presentations to staff and other development policy analysts in Ottawa and elsewhere in Canada; and 2. participate in all facets of NSI's work.

The Helleiner Visiting Researcher position covers the researcher's salary for the duration of their stay at NSI and transport between their country of origin and Canada . Funds are also available for participation in professional conferences.

We encourage applicants from people with a Doctoral degree or equivalent in economics, political science or another relevant social science; 5-10 years' work experience; a proven track record of applying quantitative or qualitative research to practical, real-world policy problems; a record of publications; and excellent oral and written communication skills in English or French.

Please send a letter of interest, a two-page research summary (setting out research question, research approach i.e. methodology and data, and policy relevance), a c.v. and two references, by November 15, 2008, to nsi@nsi-ins.ca

We will interview a short-list of candidates by phone in the first week of December 2009.

We are keen to have a researcher in place in Ottawa by April 2009.

Global: ReLaunch of QuickGuides

2008-12-03

http://www.quickguidesonline.com/

We have put our popular series of QuickGuides fundraising and management guides on CD and made them available as pdf email downloads in order to slash costs and make them financially available to even the smallest organisations. At the same time we are doing our bit to reduce the use of paper and cut down on air miles from sending paper Guides around the world. Email downloads are even less expensive than the same product on CD.

Africa: A Call for Papers

Development Policy Management Forum

2008-12-03

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/52384

This is a Call for Papers on “Political Culture, Governance and the State in Africa”, to be discussed at a DPMF Conference at the end of February 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya. Papers must reach DPMF by 20th December, 2008. A review committee will select papers to be presented at the conference. DPMF will invite to the conference writers of the selected papers and will cover their fare and accommodation. Papers should be emailed to Christine Wangari at: - dpmf.nairobi@dpmf.org
DEVELOPMENT POLICY MANAGEMENT FORUM (DPMF)

A Call for Papers on
“Political Culture, Governance and the State in Africa”

To be discussed at a DPMF Conference at the end of February 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya. Papers must reach DPMF by 20th December, 2008. A review committee will select papers to be presented at the conference. DPMF will invite to the conference writers of the selected papers and will cover their fare and accommodation. Papers should be emailed to Christine Wangari at: - dpmf.nairobi@dpmf.org


African countries will continue to be bedeviled by violent conflicts (of various types), human rights violations, ineffective and personalized political parties, some form of economic growth, increasing poverty, deepening and extreme inequality and deepening aid dependency - all clearly pointing to the absence of democratic governance (regardless of the various forms of existing liberal democracies in African countries) and failed economic development. After more than forty years of post colonial self-rule, this condition and the governance system, needs serious reflection.

Clearly there is a strong relationship between the nature of society in each country with on the one hand the evolving political cultures and on the other with the nature of the African states. The forty years experience since independence indicates that Africa is still searching for its own governance system acceptable to ALL its people and not simply the political elite and a section of the “middle class”. At the beginning of independence most countries inherited the parliamentary system from the British or the Presidential system from the French. In the 1970s these were abandoned for a one party or military rule which continued to the early 1990s. Through internal and external pressure these were abandoned for a return to the multiparty system. During the past 15 years serious doubts has emerged as to the suitability of the this multi-party liberal democracy despite strong Western pressure for its retention as being the most viable and suitable for Africa as well as the claim that it is a universal governance system. These African doubts have led to an extensive discussion and discourse on the nature of the African States we have or should have.

For example do we have liberal democratic states as recommended/ required by the WB/UN/EU/US? Do South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, have liberal democratic states? Is there anywhere in Africa a socialist state as desired by Nyerere and which he attempted to create in Tanzania? Are we moving towards a developmental state as advocated by Mkandawire? Or a social state as advocated by Olukoshi, or a human rights state as supported by Mutunga? Despite the very strong Western pressure, no African state today can be considered to be a liberal democratic state as per the Western definition of such a state!(According to the title of a new book by Fareed Zakariya, Newsweek Editor, the US has what he calls Illiberal Democracy). Nor can the existing states be described as developmental, social, socialist or human rights states. These are desired states, advocated for but do not exist in reality. Essentially therefore there is considerable confusion as to the exact nature of the African state we have today and consequently the nature of the governance system in Africa. There are genuine, serious and often correct critique of the existing states – but such critique have not changed nor improved the undemocratic/authoritarian nature of most African states.

On the other hand the nature of African societies which have emerged from colonialism, are extremely diverse culturally and the post independence governments have not been able to manage this diversity by creating cohesion and national unity. Indeed the post independence states have deepened as well as created hostility between communities within the countries - hostility partly stemming from colonial divide and rule policies, but also over unequal distribution of resources and power since independence.

Over forty years of this form of development has led to the emergence of various forms of political cultures which have shaped both the states and the general governance system to be what they are. It is the nature of this political culture – its relations to society/economy and the state – which needs to be carefully studied and analyzed. For example in East Africa, the political cultures of Kenya, Tanzaniaand Uganda vary considerably despite having been ruled by the same colonial power – the British – and despite adopting liberal democracy! The differences can be related to the histories and nature of both the indigenous societies and the intensity of the colonial experience of each country.

Clearly it is necessary to carefully look at (a) the extent to which history and the indigenous social system and values of a country have generated /engendered its specific political culture, (b) what are the essential characteristics and core values of the evolved political culture whose framework has led to the emergence of large numbers of ever changing, ephemeral and personalized political parties and movements, and (c) how these parties/movements relate to and have affected the nature of both the state and the overall governance of the country.

The main challenge facing African countries as their governance system evolves, will depend on how the political elite change the political culture, particularly the way representation in the political system will relate to the nature of the diversity in society/country which will ensure “ethnic and class justice” - politically and economically. How this can be done given the entrenched market economies in African countries and the forces of globalization impacting on these economies, needs serious reflections by the researchers.

Papers are expected to make serious and detailed suggestions as to how the link between Culture and political parties can be managed or reformed to bring about a more representative political organization as well as better and more efficient states and deeper democratic governance. These suggestions should be oriented for advocacy by civil society organizations as part of the overall programmes for democratic reform in Africa. They should also be addressed to leaders of political parties, the political elite in general and to leaders of marginalized groups in society who are yearning for better representation and change.

Master's in International Human Rights Law - Oxford University

2008-11-07

http://humanrightslaw.conted.ox.ac.uk/MStIHRL/index.php

The Master's programme in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford is a part-time degree offered over two academic years. Admissions for the 2009-10 Master's programme are now open. It involves two periods of distance learning via the internet as well as two summer sessions held at New College, Oxford. The degree programme is designed in particular for lawyers and other human rights professionals who wish to pursue advanced studies in international human rights law but may need to do so alongside their work or family responsibilities.

Fahamu