Back Issues

Taking a break

Pambazuka News Editors

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/editorial/52849

This issue, Pambazuka News 413, will be the last issue to appear in 2008. We will return on 8 January 2009. We are taking a break to recuperate and recharge our batteries. We are, we know, the lucky ones: there are millions who have no option to continue their fight against oppression and exploitation, for whom there will be no respite over the holiday break. As you celebrate the coming of the new year, spare your thoughts for them. And make a new year's resolution to help Pambazuka News give voice to their aspirations and their struggles by making a regular donation. You can do so easily here.

Zimbabwe on the edge of the precipice

Mary Ndlovu

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/52784

cc. SokwaneleWith its power-sharing agreement manifestly failing, Zimbabwe is on the brink of collapse, writes Mary Ndlovu. The author argues that in the face of an entrenched kleptocratic elite, life grows ever more difficult for the country’s population, a situation markedly exacerbated by a broader political culture of selfishness undermining the development of any form of effective collective action. Without an internationally sponsored, technocratically based transitional authority to replace ZANU-PF as soon as possible, Zimbabwe may yet be spoken of in the same breath as Somalia and the eastern DR Congo, she concludes.
Soldiers go on the rampage against civilians, nurses steal medicines to sell to patients, teachers abandon their schools, the government spends money to buy judges plasma screen televisions, while the nation starves and dies of cholera. Civil servants obtain their ‘salary’ by charging for ‘services’ provided, police arrest suspects only to get the bribe required before releasing them. Groups of unidentified men, undoubtedly state agents, kidnap and abduct people from their homes and offices. And party politicians – rejected by the electorate – masquerade as ‘ministers’ issuing threats, denials and insults even as the waves of disaster lap around their feet.

Surely this is a moral crisis above all else, a crisis of leadership, a crisis of citizenship, a failure of human beings to demonstrate the human spirit in any form. Zimbabwe has joined the league of societies whose collapse demonstrates how a venal, self-interested leadership can destroy an entire nation; political structures, economic structures, families and many individuals all crooked, twisted, debilitated and dying as expressions of any positive human endeavour. And we the people have allowed our most precious institutions to be destroyed and our nation to disintegrate.

On the one side we have a kleptocratic elite sucking the oozing lifeblood out of the economy they have wounded, clinging to the corpse like leeches, and refusing to be dislodged until no sign of life remains. On the other we have a stunned citizenry, incapable of making any strategic response, and looking for individual salvation when only a collective answer will bring the change they so desire. The contest can’t even be elevated to a struggle between good and evil – evil is everywhere, but where is the good? To be sure, any form of good is difficult to recognise in the timid opposition, which has only managed, correctly or incorrectly, to present an image of self-interested ditherers. Meanwhile, the population flounders, leaderless and adrift in a life-and-death crisis.

A few years ago, when our current crisis was just developing, commentators identified a worst-case scenario: the country’s total breakdown into anarchy or warlordism, probably to be avoided, but ultimately possible. Today, this scenario is about to become a reality and a senior United Nations official has already declared Zimbabwe a failed state. We have no functioning government, little revenue, a shadow of a civil service, play money which surfaces on the black market before it reaches the commercial banks, sewage in the streets, in houses, even in clinics, and increasing numbers of ‘disappeared’.

Responsibility lies with ZANU-PF for governing solely in their own interests, using every crude tactic to remain in power when they have been rejected by the people at the polls. But the victims of tyranny have choices in how they respond. The opposition, while gaining overwhelming support, has failed to translate this backing into effective power of any kind. Civil society is divided, careerist, and as ineffective as the opposition in producing positive results from unified action. Numerous creative and competent individuals prefer to work from outside the country, distancing themselves from the people for the sake of their families and their careers. Individual choices must be respected, but there is no doubt that collectively we have failed. A failed state, a failed opposition, a failed nation, and now possibly a failed region.

Today, Zimbabweans look at each other and shake their heads. How could we have allowed this to happen? But even more critically, what can we do about it?

At first, the opposition MDC’s efforts seemed to be well placed: take the electoral route to challenge the dictator, remain non-violent, stay on the side of morality, and stay the course. When all this proved inadequate to dislodge a tyranny, instead of taking the more difficult route of mass mobilisation, they appealed to other regional governments to resolve the problem. This turned out to be a fatal blunder, at least for the Zimbabwean masses. The response from African governments was not sympathy but prevarication, stony hearts and cowardly policies. And while the MDC leadership has spent their time in negotiations in South Africa or jetting around Africa and the Western world to press their cause, they have neglected their followers at home, leaving them to face the deepening crises of hunger and disease without any hope or any direction.

In spite of their diplomatic offensive, the MDC has failed to convince African governments of what seems patently obvious, that there is not much point of an election if the loser gets to stay in power and share it – unevenly at that – with the winner. This is clearly neither democratic nor fair. But it was the best that African governments could offer. Hence we arrived at the power-sharing talks of the past five months, which have squeezed out a GPA (global political agreement) which purports to create an ‘inclusive’ government under a new interim constitution. But this African government policy has also failed because it is clear that ZANU-PF has no intention of genuine power sharing, and the opposition refuses to be led into what they perceive as a trap.

Hence we carry on at frenetic speed towards the precipice, as the negotiators dilly dally on the sidelines, becoming increasingly irrelevant to the problems of daily life. While politicians may believe they are standing on principle, people have lost faith in almost all of them. What people want is a government that functions to bring piped clean water, food, medical care, schools with teachers, banks with money that can actually buy things, and the overall decent standard of living that these represent. They want a government that serves the people instead of exploiting, oppressing and terrorising them.

There are now only two possibilities: either we fall over the precipice and crash, or someone snatches our sinking craft just before it smashes onto the rocks below. That crash would be the last final spasm bringing death to Zimbabwe as we have known it. It would herald the disintegration of all semblance of order, the descent into a free-for-all grab for food, water, medicines, and homes – any and all resources – by those who take the law into their own hands. That would be the classic finale which has come to be synonymous with Somalia – warlords and armed might in place of government and law. And no one should carry any illusion that it could be reversed without years of Herculean effort.

The other possibility is a rescue. Who would rescue us and how could it be done? Could the power-sharing agreement still be the answer? The MDC now has little choice but to participate on whatever terms they can squeeze out and attempt to make something of it. Certainly this carries a risk of becoming irrelevant, trapped in a situation they do not control. But they appear to have no other strategy to save Zimbabwe from total destruction, so they must cooperate with the regional presidents.

However, it looks highly unlikely at this point that power-sharing can work between ZANU-PF, a pernicious monster excoriated by all Zimbabweans who are not part of it, and MDC, once hugely popular but now considerably discredited after failing to match ZANU-PF’s clever manipulations. If they do reach an agreement, however unsatisfactory for the MDC and for Zimbabweans, and form something which can be called a government, will they be able to achieve anything? Will they be able to work together in any way to stem the rising tide of cholera, restart the economy, and reform the civil service?

Hardly. ZANU-PF has made it crystal clear that they will frustrate MDC at every turn. The recent spate of abductions of opposition and civil society activists leaves no doubt about their intentions. Weeks and months will go by as the players test each other out, jockey, manoeuvre, undermine and frustrate each other, while little will be done to deal with all the problems driving Zimbabweans to the borders in search of food, medicine, jobs and survival. Little will be done to rein in those who take the law into their own hands, and anarchy is likely to prevail even in the presence of a power-sharing government.

If our politicians cannot rescue us, who can? The international community? So far, they have been unwilling. But cholera is a powerful little virus. Not only can it kill, it can wake up sleeping politicians. Cholera is threatening the region. South Africa in particular has billions of rand of investment at stake – investment in the 2010 soccer World Cup, for a start. Can they allow political niceties such as ‘sovereignty’ to hold them back when cholera, which has the audacity not to respect sovereignty of nations, storms their borders? Possibly, cholera, while taking its victims, may yet be our rescuer. The South Africans have already sent personnel and materials to assist in the fight to curb the disease, a fight spearheaded by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO). But as long as they try to work with ZANU-PF we know that there will be interference, corruption and ultimately failure.

The signs are, however, that African governments, while gaining a greater sense of urgency, still appear to believe power-sharing can work and are calling for renewed negotiations while sending band aid assistance to deal with the cholera. If they believe in power-sharing, then they must make sure that they place enough pressure on ZANU-PF to ensure that ‘sharing’ does not become a dead word like ‘comrade’. They must impose deadlines for effective forward movement and insist that they will not tolerate continued prevarication by ZANU-PF. They must stop placing pressure on the perceived soft target, MDC, and learn to face the real obstacle, Robert Mugabe, and stare him down with strong words and credible threats. Even then, however, ZANU-PF is highly unlikely to change, and MDC would simply waste more time and eventually be forced to return to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) with a story of failure.

Is there an alternative to power sharing? There is, but it would require even more backbone from the regional governments. Many members of Zimbabwe’s civil society were calling a year ago for the formation of a transitional authority. They believed then that ZANU-PF should be out of the equation if the country was to stop its slide into chaos and begin to build again. Many of these members now feel that we have wasted more than a year holding elections which ZANU-PF never intended to allow themselves to lose, and trying to share power with an entity which can imagine nothing beyond their own greed. If the international community could now realise that we need an internationally sponsored, technocratically based transitional authority, and move quickly to install such an authority, we might yet be rescued. It will require cooperation on the part of the Zimbabwean opposition to stop playing power games and allow those who can do the job to move into place – doctors, nurses, engineers, administrators who can restore clean water supplies, tackle sewage and transport, while distributing massive amounts of food aid, treating the sick, and assisting farmers to prepare for next winter’s agricultural season. This technical approach must be spread to the entire governmental sphere and it must be coordinated by a temporary administration.

Such a transition would need at least two years to get underway, re-establish basic services, get food production going, and then deal with governance issues through providing a framework for constitutional reform, and elections at the end of the period.

We hear that today the UN is moving out of Kosovo after ten full years of developing an administration – can Zimbabwe not expect to benefit from at least a mere two years? Should we not demand that we should be treated with equal consideration?

But this solution requires a new understanding and a new approach by regional governments. It cannot be promoted by timid African government leaders who are afraid to stare down Robert Mugabe in a meeting, but simply bow to his bullying. It would need a no-nonsense, heavy hand to convince ZANU-PF that they have no option but to step aside, and if they refuse, the region would have to be prepared to force them. The chorus of voices calling for just that is growing and is now heard in throughout Africa.

So neither of these options looks promising, whether it be power-sharing by Zimbabwean political parties or the installation of an internationally supervised, technocratic administration, any solution requires much stronger commitment from regional governments to deal emphatically with Mr Mugabe, something we have yet to see.

Zimbabweans simply cannot understand the apparent perversity of the South African government. Why can they not see the obvious, even when they are themselves in danger? Are they blinded by the 1990s success of their own political history? Are they mistaking Robert Mugabe for another De Klerk? Or are they too absorbed in their own political survival to deflect their attentions to the north?

If effective power-sharing or coordinated international administration does not replace ZANU-PF within the coming weeks, the alternative could be calamitous for the region. We could see the increasing flight of Zimbabweans to neighbouring countries, bringing with them disease of various kinds, desperation, and crime, along with the country’s coming to resemble the eastern DRC or Somalia, with lawless bands of armed men preying on the population, disappearances rising from dozens to thousands, and a haven for all kinds of international criminal activity, including drug running, illegal diamond trading, human trafficking, illegal small arms trading, and even terrorist training. The choice seems now almost beyond the reach of Zimbabweans. Having preferred individual over collective responses to our tragedy, we have passed on the collective response to the region. If the region fails to take up the challenge to insist on effective administration, preferably by an internationally supervised transitional authority, they will also suffer the consequences. Within a few months Zimbabwe will have tipped over the edge, and the failure to intervene to prevent further tragedy will bring disaster on all of us.

* Mary Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean human rights activist.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Mamdani, Mugabe and the African scholarly community

The Africanisation of exploitation

Horace Campbell

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/52845

cc. SokwaneleConcerned scholars should revitalise their opposition to Zimbabwe’s Mugabe regime, writes Horace Campbell. While being against any form of opportunistic, external intervention in the country, Campbell argues that scholars must come to offer an effective challenge to ZANU-PF’s persistent retreat into spurious anti-imperialist discourse. Heavily critical of writers like Mahmood Mamdani for echoing ZANU-PF’s claims around the effects of economic sanctions levied against Zimbabwe, Campbell argues that blocking international payments would prove a far more efficacious means of tackling Mugabe’s misappropriation of funds.
It was most apt that on the 60th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights a group of 200 scholars at the 12th congress of CODESRIA expressed their concern over the threats of military intervention in Zimbabwe. The scholars pointed to the detrimental effects of military intervention, noting that:

‘Military interventions exacerbate political and socio-economic crises and internal differences with profoundly detrimental and destructive regional implications. We recognize that threats of military intervention come from imperialist powers, and also through their African proxies.’

These scholars were signaling their opposition to the vocal calls for the removal of Robert Mugabe by the Secretary of State of the United States and by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and the Prime Minister of Kenya, Raila Odinga, had earlier raised the call for the removal of Robert Mugabe by the force of arms.

This scholar joins with African people everywhere who welcome the alertness of our colleagues against foreign military intervention. I also welcome their concern for the appalling situation in Zimbabwe.

It is important that the Mugabe government and the spokespersons for ZANU-PF do not consider the statement by scholars as an endorsement for the appalling tragedy that has befallen the Zimbabwean poor and exploited. After all, these CODESRIA scholars termed what is happening in Zimbabwe ‘a nightmare’.

This was in the same week that President Mugabe argued that the imperialists were planning a military invasion and that the cholera outbreak had been based on biological warfare against Zimbabwe. The Minister of Information went further and in a statement in the Herald newspaper the minister claimed:

‘The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe is a serious biological chemical war force, a genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British. Cholera is a calculated racist terrorist attack on Zimbabwe by the unrepentant former colonial power which has enlisted support from its American and Western allies so that they invade the country.’

This claim by Dr Sikhanyiso Ndlovu was an insult to the intelligence of humans everywhere in so far as cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by unsanitary conditions. The key to prevention of the disease is simple: clean water.

It is because of the simple nature of the cure that the response of the Zimbabwe government to the death of more than 1,000 persons is one more callous response to the exploitation and brutal oppression of the Zimbabwean working peoples. Biological warfare is a serious matter not to be used for games of crying ‘wolf’. One world figure is already leaving the stage with the record of this kind of crying wolf in Iraq.

While this writer will oppose any form of external military intervention by imperialists, it is important that concerned and progressive scholars oppose the crude anti-imperialism of the Zimbabwean political leadership under Mugabe. This writer awaits equal concern from my colleagues over the gender violence, repression of trade union leaders, wanton destruction of lives by the Mugabe government and the brutal repression of ordinary citizens.

At the same time that the statement of concern was being signed human rights activists were calling on the Zimbabwean government to account for the whereabouts of Jestina Mukoko, director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP). Mukoko is only one of the more than 20 known human rights activists who have disappeared in the past six weeks. Mukoko’s 15 year-old child saw his mother being abducted from their home.

We must raise our collective voices against such kidnapping and abduction while opposing any imperialist plans for a military invasion of Zimbabwe. One question that immediately came to mind after reading the CODESRIA statement was whether our colleagues have become blind to the suffering of ordinary people in their struggle against the latest and more complex phase of imperialism in Africa.

MUGABE AND THE EXPLOITATION OF ANTI-RACIST AND ANTI-IMPERIALIST SENTIMENTS

The Zimbabwe government is very aware of the anti-imperialist and anti-racist sentiments among oppressed peoples and thus has deployed a range of propagandists inside and outside of the country in a bid to link every problem in Zimbabwe to international sanctions by the EU and USA. Anti-imperialists in the USA cite the Zimbabwe Reconstruction and Development Act – passed by the US Congress in 2001 – as being a source of economic woe for poor Zimbabweans. While the scholars at the congress of CODESRIA hardly resorted to the same kind of praise for Mugabe as their counterparts writing in the special issue of Black Scholar, there is not enough evidence that there was sufficient attention paid to the gross violation of basic rights. If this debate did occur at the CODESRIA congress it was not reflected in the statement.

One of the key entrepreneurs of the Zimbabwe regime, John Bredenkamp, commands considerable experience in manipulating the question of sanctions for the enrichment of those in power, both in the time of Rhodesia and now Zimbabwe. Bredenkamp started on his way to fortune by breaking sanctions for Ian Smith. Bredenkamp has been involved in the politics and economics of looting southern Africa and is one of the key props of the ZANU-PF regime. His plundering activities also tie him to the political and financial leaders in South Africa who are being probed by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in relation to the £100 million in bribes to ensure the sale of weapons to the South African government. This author is calling on members of the CODESRIA network to reveal their research findings on John Bredenkamp, Muller Conrad Rautenbach (a.k.a. Billy Rautenbach) and to recommend the arrest and charge of those involved in looting Zimbabwe and southern Africa. Both Bredenkamp and Billy Rautenbach (of the white settler forces) featured in the orgy of looting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and established long term business relationships with ZANU-PF’s leaders. John Bredenkamp had matured in the art of manipulation while aligned with Ian Smith. He exulted in this dual service to imperialism and to African nationalists with the leadership of ZANU-PF, and his expertise has been placed at the service of the crude accumulators within the South Africa’s ANC.

Instead of oversimplifying imperialist threats in Zimbabwe, those who want to see the demilitarisation of Africa must aggressively support the exposure of the arms deals that have linked Bredenkamp and Fana Hlongwane across the politics of repression in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The British arms manufacturer British Aerospace (Bae) has been involved with Bredenkamp and Hlongwane in Africa, along with corrupt elements in the Middle East. There have been calls for BAe to be prosecuted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of the USA. Such an investigation would have potentially seismic consequences for military contractors and arms manufacturers and would provide another means of opposing Western militarism in Africa.

BLAMING ZIMBABWE’S PROBLEMS ON ZIDERA

The convergence of fraud, corruption and cover-ups in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Britain render simplistic conceptions of imperialism less than useful for those who want to see peaceful change in Zimbabwe. The Mugabe government blames all of its problems on the economic war launched by the USA and Britain. For the Mugabe regime, at the core of this economic war are the targeted sanctions against Mugabe’s top lieutenants under its Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA), passed by the Bush administration in 2001.

What has been clear from the hundreds of millions of dollars of investments by British, Chinese, Malaysian, South African and other capitalists in the Zimbabwe economy since 2003 is that the problems in Zimbabwe have not been caused by an economic war against the country. Even when facing pressure from the British government, Anglo-American indicated its willingness in 2008 to invest an additional US$400 million to continue its control of platinum mines in Zimbabwe. What has been most remarkable has been the ways in which the dictatorship in Zimbabwe has destroyed the rights of workers in the mining sector in order to facilitate and welcome foreign capitalists in the diamond and mining sectors. Whole villages are being laid to waste in order to support and welcome external diamond mining interests.

If human rights activists and committed scholars were to expose the linkages between ZANU-PF arms dealers John Bredenkamp and Fana Hlongwane along with the wider linkages to international capital, then it would be clear that it is quite an oversimplification to argue that ZIDERA is at the centre of Zimbabwe’s problems. Bredenkamp had been schooled from the Smith era to blame everything on sanctions while beating the sanctions with the help of apartheid South Africa. In the present period Bredenkamp is an ally of the ANC, ZANU-PF and British imperialist arms manufacturers like BAe all at the same time. It is also important for African scholars to join the call to the South African President Kgalema Motlanthe for an arms deal judicial commission, in order to bring to the attention of the wider public the dealings of individuals such as Fana Hlongwane.

Scholars, while alerting the world against foreign military invasion, must examine the conduct of the Zimbabwe military and especially those ordering Mugabe to remain in supreme control.

It is in the interest of concerned scholars everywhere to understand the conditions of farm labourers and mine workers in Zimbabwe. What was not expected was for Professor Mahmood Mamdani to use his scholarly knowledge to repeat ZANU-PF’s sham argument that economic sanctions have aggravated the economic crisis in Zimbabwe. While the nationalists have been crude in their fawning over the ‘revolutionary’ credentials of Robert Mugabe, Mahmood Mamdani used his considerable international reputation to line up support for the Mugabe regime in a lengthy review published in the London Review of Books.

IS THERE A DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION GOING ON IN ZIMBABWE?

From the outset Mamdani located himself as a victim of forced expulsion, identifying the forced expulsion of the Asians in Uganda with the expropriation of the white setter farmers in Zimbabwe. In the process, Mamdani compared Robert Mugabe to Idi Amin of Uganda. Mamdani went on to explain the popularity of Amin’s economic war against Asians and used the word ‘popularity’ in his characterisation of the current ZANU-PF leadership. Very few would doubt the ‘popularity’ of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and other parts of Africa in the period of the anti-colonial struggles, but in the past fifteen years Mugabe has turned the victories of the people into a never ending nightmare of murders, killings, forced removal and brutal oppression. Idi Amin remains popular in West Africa, just as Mugabe is popular in West Africa and other parts of the world where there is not a full understanding of the real tragedy of what is going on in Zimbabwe. Idi Amin, like Robert Mugabe, is popular outside of his own country for the wrong reasons.

Mahmood Mamdani as a Ugandan is very aware of the extent to which the British government supported elements within the Amin dictatorship while using the British media to revile Africans in general, and Idi Amin in particular. Amin (who was promoted by the British and the Israelis in the military coup of January 1971) was useful as a propaganda tool for imperialism. As a scholar who has written extensively on Uganda and on the politics of fascism, Mahmood Mamdani is very aware of the role that Bob Astles played as an agent of US and British imperialism in eastern Africa. Bob Astles (ally and confidant of Idi Amin from 1966 to 1979) had been implicated in the scandals involving looted gold from the Congo in the 1960s and survived with Amin as a key confidant, until he left for Britain when it became clear that the Tanzanian military invasion of Uganda would succeed. Mahmood Mamdani had returned to Uganda in 1979 in the military train of the Tanzanian military and political forces. This was a case where Mamdani recognised that it required regional African intervention to rid Africa of the manipulation of the British and the brutal genocidal politics of Idi Amin.

Contrary to his research on the Ugandan dictatorship, Mamdani’s research skills seem underused while elaborating on the ‘Lessons of Zimbabwe’. Professor Mamdani has maintained that, ‘In social and economic – if not political – terms, this was a democratic revolution. But there was a heavy price to pay.’

This line of the ‘democratic revolution’ emanated from the Newtonian concepts of hierarchy that had been internalised by some who have called themselves Marxists. During the period of the Soviet Union, this discourse was used to support so-called revolutionaries such as Mengistu, the butcher of Ethiopia. Is it by chance that Mengistu has found his refuge in Zimbabwe?

Under this ‘democratic revolutionary stage’, African capitalists had to accumulate so that there would be a maturation of capitalism in Africa. Walter Rodney refuted this ‘stages’ theory in his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. In that study Rodney established the reality that there was a link between the development of capitalism in Europe and the forms of plunder, looting and genocide in Africa. Capitalism in Africa had been implanted in a very different form, and all over the continent those who supported capitalism have used the formulation of the ‘democratic revolution’ to support black capitalists. This is nowhere more evident than in South Africa, where the communist party, as one component of the tripartite alliance, has used this formulation to silence itself in the face of the crudest and fastest rate of accumulation by a fledgling capitalist class in recent history.

In his elaboration of ‘the heavy price to pay’ for this democratic revolution in Zimbabwe, Mamdani noted the impact on: (a) ’the rule of law’; (b) Farm labourers; (c) The urban poor; and d) Food production.

What was most contradictory about Mamdani’s line of argument is that while he recognises the impact of the policies of the Mugabe government on the urban poor and farm workers, he expends a great deal of his analysis on a critique of the absence of donor support for the people of Zimbabwe. Before the era of neoliberalism and the pseudo-humanitarianism of the so-called international non-governmental structure, these donors would have been called imperialists and there would have been a call for the government of Zimbabwe to use its resources to provide clean water, sanitation and healthcare for its people. Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF have selectively implemented a home grown neoliberal agenda to enrich one of the crudest of the capitalist classes in Africa while depending on international imperialist agencies to provide social services for the people. Mamdani overlooks the fact that the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange has been posting the most profitable gains under the Mugabe regime.

Mamdani is wrong.

While the discussion about whether Zimbabwe is going through a ‘democratic’ revolution can be debated, Mamdani is wrong on numerous grounds. As a scholar who has written on genocide, it is curious why he left out the close relationship between the leaders of the Interahamwe and the Zimbabwean military in the DRC. Mugabe’s military trained those had committed genocide in Rwanda to fight for Laurent Kabila. He is simply wrong to use tribal formulations to describe the sharp class divide in Zimbabwe. It is here that the consistency of the donor language corresponds to the language of ethnic divisions in Zimbabwe. In describing the manipulation of Mugabe, Mamdani noted:

‘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).’

What is this language of Shona majority? Is this not the old tribal discourse of the colonial anthropologists?

Mahmood Mamdani’s benign criticisms cannot disguise the reality that his submission has been represented as one component of the anti-imperialist intellectual support for the Mugabe regime. Despite the atrocities, killings and abductions of grassroots activists, Mamdani has managed to use the term ‘popularity’ in the same sentence while describing the current Zimbabwe leadership. Nowhere did this writer take note of the fact that this ‘popular’ government withheld the election results in March 2008 for over a month. Mamdani says there is a democratic revolution at a high price. Indeed at the price of democracy itself and in its most simple expression: the right to vote.

Writing this backhanded support for Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF as a review of a number of books on Zimbabwe, Mamdani was inordinately dependent on the scholarship of those from the Agrarian Institute for African Studies in Zimbabwe. The papers from this institute have been fulsome in their praise of the ‘land reform’ process in Zimbabwe. The authors of these papers supporting Mugabe were the very same ones claiming that the horrors of ‘Operation Murambatsvina’ (the operation to round up hundreds of thousands of citizens) were exaggerated by the Western media.

Neither Mamdani nor the scholars from CODESRIA have expressed their outrage in relation to the repression and forced removal of 750,000 people from Zimbabwe’s urban areas in 2005. If a white government had done this there would have been outrage. Current scholarly work on the displacement of Zimbabwean farm workers by Amanda Hammar will assist future scholarship focused on the reintegration of individuals scattered across Southern Africa. These citizens suffered from the xenophobic attacks against poor migrants in South Africa.

While merely recycling the scholarship of this agrarian institute, Mahmood Mamdani was careful to hedge his bets in noting that: ‘What land reform has meant or may come to mean for Zimbabwe’s economy is still hotly disputed.’

What is not in dispute is that the policies of the Mugabe government have destroyed the agricultural sector in Zimbabwe. In our examination of the fast track land seizures in the book, Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation, we exposed the reality that an examination of land reform cannot be separated from water, seeds, fertilizers and most importantly, the labour that has worked on a piece of land. It is on the question of workers and labour where one would have expected Mamdani to have drawn on the scholarship of Brian Raftopoulos and Lloyd Sachikonye. It is not too late to recommend to Mahmood Mamdani two books that will shed light on the relationship between land and labour: Striking Back: The Labour Movement and the Post-Colonial State in Zimbabwe, 1980–2000, edited by Brian Raftopoulos and Lloyd Sachikonye; and Lloyd Sachikonye, The Situation of Commercial Farm Workers after Land Reform in Zimbabwe.

IDI AMIN AND BOB ASTLES; ROBERT MUGABE AND JOHN BERDENKAMP

Qualifications on the disputed outcome of the ‘land reform’ by Mahmood Mamdani should not derail committed scholarship on what a democratic land reform process could yield in the new southern Africa when there is serious decolonisation instead of the Africanisation of exploitation. Mamdani’s analysis could not hide the reality that there is a capitalist class that is profiting from the misery and exploitation of the peoples of Zimbabwe. The present divide in Zimbabwe that is manipulated under ethnic terms cannot hide the opulence and disparity between those with power and the exploitation of millions, with hundreds dying of cholera. The billions of dollars being exported by those in the regime, along with the leadership of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, will only come to light when scholars, in general, and African scholars, in particular, support the UN Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative. African dictators from the Sudan to Equatorial Guinea and looters from Nigeria and Angola to Kenya want African scholars to be silent on the repatriation of stolen wealth. This writer opposes all sanctions against Zimbabwe (including ZIDERA) because sanctions do not work when there are experienced entrepreneurs such as John Bredenkamp and Billy Rautenbach in the service of ZANU-PF. What is far more important is a full analysis of Gideon Gono’s exportation of money at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. As a scholars in universities with the space and resources to do research, it is our collective duty in the context of an Obama administration to call on the US Justice Department to prosecute those of the British firm BAe who have been involved in corruption and fraud in southern Africa.

Additionally, African scholars and progressives must pressure the Obama administration to use the resources of the Treasury Department of the Office of Foreign Assets Control to democratise the information on the billions of dollars being stolen from Africa, and in this case, southern Africa.

As in the case of Idi Amin, imperialism can be very selective in releasing the information of the theft and export of capital by the Mugabe leadership. In the past month the Treasury Department of the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control slapped further sanctions on John Bredenkamp.

There is need for concerted research and exposure of the continued role of elements such as Bredenkamp and the alliance with those in the South African government who are profiting from the misery and exploitation of the Zimbabwean people. Is it by accident that the same forces aligned with Bredenkamp also supported the ‘quiet diplomacy’ of Thabo Mbeki? The countries of the European Union are also complicit in the looting of Zimbabwe. Decent individuals in Europe and concerned African scholars must pressure the democratic forces in Belgium to call on the Belgian Central Bank to expose the amounts of money being exported by Gideon Gono on behalf of Robert Mugabe and the dictatorship. The international banking system now relies on a network administered by Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) based at La Hulpe outside Brussels. SWIFT links 7,800 financial institutions in 205 countries, including Zimbabwe’s banks, and processes about US$6 trillions’ worth of transactions each day. Although owned by banks, SWIFT specifically falls under the control of central banks and, in particular, the control of the Belgian Central Bank. Instead of speculating on whether the Mugabe regime is exporting US$9 or US$15 billion every year, the exposure of the head of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is far more important than talks of removing Mugabe by force. Blocking international payments is far quicker and more effective than trade or other sanctions. This strategy can also be reversed as soon as its objectives are reached, without permanent damage to the economy or its infrastructure.

COMMITTED SCHOLARS SHOULD BE OUTRAGED AT WHAT IS HAPPENING IN ZIMBABWE

People are being killed and brutalised. Homophobia and virginity tests reflect the most extreme forms of patriarchy and deformed masculinity in Zimbabwe. The women who bear the brunt of this oppression have called for international solidarity. Under the leadership of the group, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), these brave fighters have exposed those who mobilise sophisticated post-modernists and anti-imperialist discourse to support Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwean workers are being assaulted every day and it is the task of concerned African scholars to defend the rights of organised and unorganised Zimbabwean workers alike.

Unfortunately for Mamdani this article defending Mugabe came out at a time when there was news of the health emergency and the more than 1,000 who have died from cholera. Already, spokespersons for the Mugabe dictatorship have begun to use the writing of Mahmood Mamdani to give legitimacy to their anti-imperialist rhetoric. Mahmood Mamdani opposed the expulsion of the Asians from Uganda. This author opposed the expulsion of the Asians from Uganda on the grounds that it was racist. Mahmood Mamdani has recognised that after the removal of Idi Amin the top Asian capitalists returned to Uganda. In order to ensure that imperialism and the white settlers are not the beneficiaries of the quagmire and nightmare in Zimbabwe, there is a need to explore new agricultural techniques rooted in the experiences of farm workers to develop cooperatives as a means of breaking the domination of the new black capitalists. It was the democratic right of the Zimbabwean people to reclaim the lands seized by British colonialists, but progressive scholars must oppose all forms of exploitation, whether black or white.

At this time, this author supports the Zimbabwean farm labourers and opposes both the settler capitalist classes in Zimbabwe and their African allies seeking to continue the exploitation of the country’s workers, poor peasants and traders.

Western imperialism understands the delicacy of the balance of forces in Zimbabwe. It is for this reason that the West is pressuring neoliberal elements in the MDC to join a government of national unity with the same group that has killed over 20,000 Zimbabweans and expelled over 750,000 urban dwellers from their places of shelter. The recent scholarship on Zimbabwe offers one avenue for those who want to interrogate the links between ZANU-PF and the immense suffering of the country’s (as reflected in the Special Bulletin of the Association of Concerned African Scholars)[1]. Mamdani is correct to draw attention to the influence of neoliberal forces such as Eddie Cross within the MDC, but neoliberalism is dead and the governments of western Europe and the USA are busy nationalising banks without democratic control and accountability. Zimbabweans who want transformation must oppose the neoliberal forces within the MDC to ensure that the suffering of working people does not continue after the ultimate departure of Robert Mugabe.

There is nothing democratic or revolutionary about what is going on in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF. African scholars and progressive forces must use all of their resources to support producers as they seek new forms of emancipatory politics in the face of the global capitalist crisis. Africans, like decent humans in all parts of the planet, want to live in dignity and with basic rights.

* Horace Campbell is a member of the African Studies Association and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.

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

[1] Timothy Scarnecchia and Wendy Urban-Mead, ‘Special Issue on Zimbabwe’, ACAS Bulletin 80, 2.

Waiting for democracy to fall from the sky: The Angolan elections

Rafael Marques de Morais

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52782

I would like to share with you a perspective on the legislative elections that took place in Angola on 5 and 6 September 2008. These elections are of profound historical significance for both the country and for Africa. For Angola because they mean, first and foremost, the strengthening of peace and stability and, second, the normalisation of state institutions following a 16-year hiatus between the country’s first and second elections.

The government of Angola, through the voices of the president and other high ranking officials, has reiterated on various occasions that these elections would and have been an example for Africa. Indeed, after the troublesome elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and given Angola’s own past experience of returning to war after the 1992 elections, these proved an outstanding case.

By referring to the official results of the 2008 elections and their organisation, I shall try to answer two questions: Were these elections about democracy? And what lessons can the Angolan elections provide in the African context?

PEACE, PROSPERITY AND EXCLUSION

The peacefulness with which people exercised their right to vote was, without doubt, the most remarkable aspect of the elections. In 1992, in spite of the looming war, ordinary people also acted with exemplary commitment to peace and democracy. They did their part.

Another important factor that greatly contributed to such a climate of peace has been, to a certain extent, the fact that the elections only took place after six years of peace, and in a context in which the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola – Partido do Trabalho (MPLA – Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola – Party of Labour) has successfully reduced the opposition to tokenism, with its existence only guaranteed by the requirements of the law.

A brief historical narrative is necessary to understand the political and socio-economic circumstances that paved the way for MPLA to win, through elections, the veneer of democratic legitimacy to continue to act as a one-party state.

In the struggle for independence, from 1961 to 1975, the call for arms encompassed all other forms of opposition to colonialism. Thus, claims to nationalism, patriotism and of service to the country had to be certified by guerrilla credentials. Guns bestowed legitimacy. The civil war that transformed Angola into a Cold War theatre, from 1975 to 1991, had no margins for dissent. On the one hand, there was MPLA’s one party state, under Marxism-Leninism, and on the other a rebel movement, União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA – National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), then backed by the West. The emergence of civil opposition parties in 1992, with the implementation of a multi-party democracy, remained purely symbolic, for the country returned to war in October 1992. This further entrenched the traditional bipolarization of the country’s politics, in which the holding of the guns decided who had the right to negotiate peace, reconciliation and the course of politics in the country. The military defeat of UNITA, and especially the killing of its leader, Jonas Savimbi, in 2002, changed the rules however. The peaceful period which has followed, the soaring global oil price and Angola’s increasing output has made it, according to the World Bank,[1] ’one of the fastest growing economies in the world’. Thus, the swelling of the state coffers and society’s longing for peace and stability, after decades of relentless war, also became contributing factors for MPLA to act at will as the victor, and a very rich one at that.

Nevertheless, a significant political move by MPLA gave a new dimension to politics. It maintained a government of reconciliation and national unity throughout the third stage of the civil war, 1998–2002. All the relevant opposition parties, including UNITA, of the 11 represented at the 1992 elected National Assembly, served in government up until early October 2008, although without decision making influence. This met that during the only period of effective peace, from 2002 to 2008, when opposition parties could have crafted a space to pose as political alternatives, they remained a mere accessory for MPLA in its ruling of the country. Consequently, MPLA felt no need to engage in either a genuine process of national reconciliation or in any form of political transition preceding the elections to effectively democratise state institutions.

With its monopoly on the state and in need of securing legitimacy through elections, MPLA circumvented the establishment of an independent electoral commission by setting up an inter-ministerial commission – made up purely of senior MPLA officials – to organise voters’ registration and handle the executive tasks of preparing for the elections. The head of the commission, Fontes Pereira – who is also the minister of Territorial Administration – also ran and won a seat as an MPLA candidate. The role of the Comissão Nacional Eleitoral (CNE – National Electoral Commission),[4] as an independent body comprised of eight MPLA appointees and three opposition members, became secondary to other parallel bodies in charge of the electoral process, as will be further illustrated.

I will now proceed to critically analyse the final results. According to the CNE, of the 8.3 million eligible voters, 7,213,281 voted, electing 220 Members of Parliament. There were 10 political parties and four coalitions in contention. MPLA returned 191 MPs, securing a landslide victory of 81.64%. As the main opposition party, UNITA obtained a meagre 10.32% of the votes, returning 16 MPs, while the Partido Renovador Social (PRS – Party for Social Renovation), clinched eight seats. The former liberation movement Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA – National Front for the Liberation of Angola) claimed three seats and a recently established coalition, Nova Democracia, heard of only during the electoral campaign, won two seats as well.[2] In line with the new electoral law, with one exception, the other contenders are to be disbanded by the Constitutional Court for failing to reach a minimum of 0.55% of the votes.

While the voting was remarkably peaceful, a number of organisational issues and final numbers merit consideration. Due to the brevity of this work, I will concentrate on four provinces: the capital Luanda, the northern province of Kwanza-Norte, and the northeastern provinces of Lunda-Norte and Lunda-Sul.

On the election day, 5 September 2008, voting in Luanda was marred by organisational and logistical chaos at polling stations. Many polling stations were in short supply of ink, ballot boxes or ballots or did not have any one of them. Voting was extended to the following day as a result and of the 320 polling stations that were officially supposed to open on 6 September 2008 only 48 ended up doing so, according to a statement made by CNE’s president, Caetano de Sousa, during a press conference at the end of the same day.[3] This meant that 242 polling stations did not receive a single vote. However, in the final results announced by the same CNE, it declared that each of the 2,584 polling stations, without a single exception, opened up and that the voters cast their ballots in every one to total a turnout of 82.42% of the capital’s registered voters. At the polls, the verification of voters’ registry had been scrapped to make it possible for anyone to vote anywhere without constraints.

A preliminary report by Luanda’s Electoral Commission sheds some light into what happened with these organisational and logistical problems.[4]

The distribution of the ballots, voting stands and all other materials at the polling stations was assigned to a private company Valleysoft in a process in which Luanda’s Electoral Commission was only a witness. The latter complained that the deliverance of such materials were ‘belated, extemporaneous and in scarcity’.

Only at 19:00, one hour after the polls officially closed, did CNE inform Luanda’s Electoral Commission that it had bought kerosene lanterns, along with one barrel of fuel, to distribute to the polling stations for vote counting. In many polling stations, electoral agents had to use their car headlights to count the votes, in others candles, and in other locations ballots were, owing to the lack of light, simply taken away for counting without due supervision.

‘There was an absence of intra-communication between the polling stations and the Electoral Municipal Commissions/Luanda Electoral Commission and vice versa’, the report documented.

The reported stated that the mapping of the polling stations in possession of the electoral municipal commissions did not coincide with that in the possession of Valleysoft, the company responsible for the supplying of voting materials to the polling stations. Thus, many polling stations did not have the material to perform their duties. Moreover, according to the report, Valleysoft belatedly delivered the ballots to the polling stations, and followed up with an un-coordinated and overdue re-supply.

In the province of Kwanza-Norte – where MPLA won 94.73% of the votes – all the 156,666 registered voters turned up to cast their ballots. With registration having taken place some two years before, this would have meant, as one national commentator noted, that not a single citizen had died, was in hospital, had travelled or was held at home or elsewhere for some unforeseen circumstances on the day of the vote. Every single one of them went to the polls.

As for Lunda-Norte, its electoral provincial commission officially reported to CNE a total of 311,684 voters casting ballots, from an initial figure of 340,330 registered. But the final results released by the national body brought that number down to 290,889, which meant lowering the turnout from 92% to 85% of the total registered voters. All other relevant numbers reveal the same disparities. In this province, irregularities amounted to the direct control by municipal and communal administrations of the electoral process, including the counting of votes, as was the case in the municipality of Kapenda-Kamulemba, according to reports I have obtained. In one illustrative case, the communal administrator of Xinge extended the voting to the following day while he served as the electoral agent in an explicit drive for people to vote for MPLA only.[5]

In Lunda-Sul province, the ruling party proceeded with an anticipated distribution of ballots to traditional authorities to make sure their communities voted beforehand for MPLA as instructed. Due to an apparent excess of zeal, some of the chiefs openly took the batch of cast ballots to the polling stations. In one polling station, coded 17.01.099, in Lunda-Sul’s capital Saurimo, where the opposition had strong representation, the electoral officers took into custody soba (chief) Abel Martins (voter registration card nº 18973), who had gone to deliver the lot of ballots he had received from MPLA operatives. There is however no record of the soba being tried.

As time progresses, more information is becoming available concerning similar situations across the country. I would not like to engage in speculation as to what would have happened in case of a more transparent process. The point is that, from the outset, MPLA had no challenge in its deeds concerning the preparation for elections. For instance, it only set up the constitutional court to oversee the legal structure of the elections and vet the participation of the political parties on 26 June 2008. This court announced on 27 July which parties had met the legal requirements to run, less than a week before the month-long electoral campaign officially started. The main consequence was that all the opposition parties were only able to receive funding for the electoral campaign days after the campaign had started. By law, the parties are funded by the state, and Article 95 of the Electoral Law (Law 6/05)[6] instructs that state funding must be made available to political parties 90 days before election day.

Nevertheless, MPLA has been able to show its ability to assign symbolic representation to the most disaffected areas of the country, specifically the oil and diamond rich provinces. For most of the provinces, MPLA claimed 100% victories. The electoral system determines that each of the 18 provinces elect, through party lists, five Members of Parliament, and in these elections only five provinces will also have opposition MPs representing them in parliament, as follows:

• In the oil rich northernmost enclave of Cabinda where a fragmented and nowadays largely symbolic secessionist guerrilla movement and the local population dispute its rule, MPLA conceded one MP to UNITA
• Likewise, in the oil-rich northern province of Zaire – where the paradox of oil aplenty and extreme poverty has not been addressed – MPLA relinquished one seat to the son of the late FNLA leader, Holden Roberto, who was born in the province and therein commanded his most loyal following
• In the central plateau, Bié province, the birthplace of Jonas Savimbi and of the current UNITA president, Isaías Samakuva, MPLA gave up one seat. In 1992, UNITA had won all the five seats at stake in this province
• For the diamond-rich province of Lunda-Sul, MPLA claimed three seats and let the Party for Social Renovation have two. This is where the top leadership of this opposition party comes from and where it claims a close knit grassroots support
• In another diamond-rich province, Lunda-Norte, MPLA conceded one seat to PRS.

The make up of the National Assembly has also been compounded by an aggressive strategy of cementing the personalised rule of the country. It also guaranteed seats for the incumbent President José Eduardo dos Santos, his wife and the first lady Ana Paula dos Santos, and his daughter Welwitchia dos Santos.

Now, in another show and distortion of power, President Dos Santos, who has been in office since 1975 and has never been democratically elected, made an announcement on 28 November 2008 on why there should be no rush to set a date for the presidential elections[7] scheduled for next year:

‘…today we have two currents of opinion, in our society, on how the president should be elected. There are those who defend that the president must be elected by parliament, and others who think that the President of the Republic must be elected directly by the citizens. The constitution will define the best way to follow and, thus, we will be in condition to set the date for [the presidential] elections.’[8]

By coincidence, the proposal for the president to be elected by the National Assembly comes from the Nova Democracia coalition, which out of obscurity claimed two seats at national level in the legislative elections. This is supposedly the other ‘current’ the president refers to in his speech.

I answer now, by way of conclusion, the two initial questions I posed. MPLA has demonstrated greater arrogance then ever in abusing power and subverting the rule of law. With absolute monopolies on the economy, from public and private sectors, as well as the media outlets with national outreach, concentrated in its hands, elections, in practical terms, signal a complete lack of political will to effectively democratise society.

After 16 years of the same parliament, periodic review of the legislative body is thus of great importance, as is a review of MPLA’s legitimised, absolute rule, for it will enable opposition parties to offer an effective challenge to the ruling party and thus avoid being merely decorative. For the next four years, people may also develop a more critical sense and hold MPLA to account for its promises of a million jobs, a million houses, and of sending students to the best universities in the world. The World Bank ranks Angola as one of the most unequal societies in the world, and evaluates the need to ensure a wide share of the oil wealth and the reduction of poverty and inequality ‘as the single biggest challenge’ in the country. How to achieve such a goal without political transformation is in itself the first challenge and one for which the World Bank offers no advice.

One of Angola’s foremost political cartoonists, the extremely witty Lito Silva, recently published a cartoon in Semanário Angolense in which a voter looks in vain to the sky with his inked index finger prominently pointed upwards.[9] In the background, two children look pitifully at him and the boy tells the girl that since that man voted he ‘stands there everyday waiting for democracy to fall from the sky’.

I think this cartoon exemplifies how Angolans are resigned to a surreal political process in the name of peace and stability as well as the lack of alternative leadership. For changes to come it will take individuals of greater courage and political skills to propose a new vision for the country and to be able to rally people towards a common goal and break the barriers of fear, clientelism and dependency on partisanship. The main challenge is to propose ways for Angolans to progress from being mere voters to fully fledged citizens in their own country.

As for Africa, these elections offer one practical lesson to the continent. Violence is not the solution to bring about democracy, for it only causes more suffering to the downtrodden, while opposing factions merely make arrangements to share the spoils of the state according to their strengths of power.

* Rafael Marques de Morais, an Angolan, is a journalist by training. He is currently studying for the MSc in African Studies and is based at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.
* A version of this paper was presented at An African Conversation on Elections in Angola, Kenya and Zimbabwe, organised by the International Communications Forum (ICF) in London, on December 1 2008.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

[1] See the World Bank’s Angola country brief here.
[2] On 17 September 2008, the state daily newspaper Jornal de Angola dedicated special coverage to the elections by printing CNE’s final official results. CNE’s website, www.cne.ao, also provides detailed information on the final results.
[3] See Lusa’s coverage of CNE president’s press conference of 6 September 2008, Angola/Eleições: CNE dá por encerrada votação e considera saldo "positivo" at http://ww1.rtp.pt/noticias/index.php?article=362093&visual=26
[4] Commissão Provincial Eleitoral de Luanda (2008) Relatório das Actividades Referente ao III Trimestre – 2008.
[5] Detailed information can be found in Relatório Síntese sobre as Eleições Legislativas 2008 de 5 de Setembro, from the Secretariado Executivo Municipal de Kapenda-Kamulemba do PRS.
[6] See Lei Eleitoral (2005) at http://www.cne.ao/pdf/lei06_05.pdf
[7] In its Article 57, the Constitutional Law, stipulates that the President of the Republic is elected by universal, direct and equal suffrage. As a matter of fact, the Constitutional Law has been transitional since 1992, and MPLA has now the absolute majority to change it solely in accordance to its or, more specifically, the president’s, own designs.
[8] See Jornal de Angola (29/11/2008), ‘Nova Constituição Estabelece Moldes para as Presidenciais’. http://www.jornaldeangola.com/artigo.php?ID=96922
[9] See ‘O Cartoon por Lito Silva’ (01/11/08–08/11/08) in Semanário Angolense, Edição n°289.

Activists slam world's ‘grotesque indifference’ to DRC

Stephen Leahy

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52777

International lust for the enormous mineral and resource riches of the Democratic Republic of 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, activists say.

‘Rape is being used as a deliberate tool to control people and territory,’ said Eve Ensler, a celebrated US playwright and founder of V-Day, a global movement in 120 countries to end violence against women and girls. ‘The rapes are systematic, horrific and often involve bands of rebels infected with HIV/AIDS,’ Ensler, who recently returned from the DRC, told the Inter Press Service (IPS).

Ensler was in Toronto to help raise funds for the Panzi hospital in the DRC's South Kivu province where many rape victims are brought. Once a maternity hospital, Panzi hospital now provides free care and refuge to 3,500 victims of sexual violence each year. Denis Mukwege leads a team of six surgeons who routinely work 18-hour days to repair women's extensive internal injuries.

Hundreds of women and children were raped yesterday, and hundreds more will be today. This is an economic war that uses terror as its main weapon to ensure warlords and their bands control regions where international companies mine for valuable metals like tin, silver and coltan, or extract lumber and diamonds, Ensler said.

Coltan is a rare and extremely valuable metal used in cell phones, DVD players, computers, digital cameras, video games, vehicle air bags, and more. It has long been implicated as both the source of funding and primary cause of the ongoing conflict and extraordinary violence against women.

‘A friend mapped the locations of the mass rapes in the DRC and they correspond to coltan mining regions,’ she said.

This ‘blood coltan’ – akin to blood diamonds – generates billions of dollars of sales every year for electronics manufacturers in rich countries and brings hundreds of millions of dollars to rebels and others who control the coltan-producing regions. Coltan is also produced in other countries, and the DRC's ‘blood coltan’ is often transported to those countries to give it a sheen of conflict-free provenance.

Over five million people have been killed in the ongoing war following the overthrow of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. The United Nations' largest-ever peacekeeping force of 17,000 has been in the DRC since 2000. However, it is a vast country the size of Western Europe, and with few roads.

Last 22 January, rebel groups signed a peace treaty with an ineffective DRC government accused of corruption and complicit in the rape of women. Despite the treaty, thousands of women and young girls in the eastern Congo have been raped this year in the region that borders Rwanda and Uganda and where coltan and other minerals are found. Large-scale fighting resumed in July, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

‘The failure of the international community has created a catastrophe in the DRC,’ said Stephen Lewis, former UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa and founder of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, a charity that supports 300 grassroots projects in Africa. Headquartered in Toronto, the foundation is a financial supporter of the Panzi hospital.

Last June, the UN Security Council, chaired by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, passed Security Council Resolution 1820 condemning the use of sexual violence against women and girls in conflict and post-conflict situations.

Lewis told IPS that while the resolution was an unprecedented agreement by the world community, ‘not a thing has happened since then. It is as if the world exalted in the fine words of the resolution and then let its intent die.’

He is also critical of the UN secretary-general's special envoy to the region, Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president of Nigeria, who is meeting rebel and government leaders but who has not met with the women of the Congo. Women must be brought to the table, Lewis said. They were also excluded during the previous peace negotiations. ‘We have to stop the raping or the war will never end,’ he said.

The UN Security Council recently voted to send an extra 3,000 peacekeepers to eastern Congo to help protect civilians affected by the fighting. By most accounts, that effort will fall far short. ‘With 50,000 UN peacekeepers, the women of the DRC could be protected,’ said Lewis.

Three years ago, the global community agreed it has a responsibility to protect people when a government is unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens from the worst violations of human rights. However, there has been widespread failure to live up to that commitment, which Lewis characterises as ‘an appalling and grotesque indifference by the world community’.

Lewis, a Canadian, is especially outraged that Canada – which championed the ‘responsibility to protect’ principle – has been ‘completely and utterly silent on the DRC’. He was hopeful that the present Canadian government modelled on the Bush neo-conservative administration would be brought down in the 2008 election and that a centre-left coalition government would bring a strong Canadian voice in support of ending the violence against women in the DRC.

The new US government headed by President-Elect Barack Obama could also be a very powerful force for change. ‘I see a real gleam of light at last,’ said Lewis. The violence and conflict in the DRC will not be easy to resolve, but is no harder than some of the other global issues like HIV/AIDS, he said.

Both Lewis and Ensler have been involved in efforts in the DRC to change things for women. Some 90 forums were held in the eastern Congo last September where women spoke out about the violence and rape. ‘No one talks about rape, there is a social stigma where the victims are shunned,’ said Ensler.

A new village for rape victims Ensler calls the ‘City of Joy’ is being built near the Panzi Hospital. She envisions it as leadership centre where rape survivors support and learn from each other, and then teach others that the larger community is responsible for rape, not the women. ‘The Congo's greatest resource is its brilliant and resilient women and girls,’ she said. ‘With a little international support, these generous and amazing women can turn this horrific situation around.’

* This article was previously published by IPS News on 3 December 2008.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at www.pambazuka.org/

Somalia and the war on terror: The third front revisited

Matthew Blood

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52778

Somalia today is approaching a cataclysm not seen since the early 1990s, and the US role has added in no small part to the misery that once again engulfs the war-weary Horn of Africa nation.

The brutal Ethiopian military occupation of Somalia that began on Christmas Eve 2006 has sustained heavy losses over the past 20 months. The conflict has strained Ethiopian resources and Addis Ababa is currently reviewing its overall strategy. What remains of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), barring a massive new foreign military intervention, teeters on the edge of collapse. In its place an already powerful Islamist insurgency is strengthening rapidly. Warlordism, criminality, and piracy are reaching new heights. All the while, the Somali population remains under siege, caught between abuses on all sides as its society literally disintegrates.

Underwriting a significant portion of the bloodshed has been a US administration engaged in expansive warfare with a preference for covert military operations. Somalia has long been of strategic interest to US policy makers. The country sits next to the strait of Bab al-Mandeb, a key oil transit waterway between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean – the second closest point between Africa and the Middle East. During the Cold War the dictatorship of General Siad Barre was the long-time recipient of generous amounts of US military and economic largesse. In 1991, after years of unrest, rebellion, and protracted drought, Barre's regime collapsed into famine, war, and chaos. George H. W. Bush ordered US forces into the country a year later in support of the United Nations relief program, culminating in the Battle of Mogadishu and the now-famous Black Hawk Down incident.

At the time of the US withdrawal and international disengagement, no single actor was strong enough to establish and maintain control. Somalia fractured along semi-permanent tribal lines and warlord fiefdoms that would come to define the country's social and political landscape. For more than a decade and a half, the territory was left to fester in ungoverned criminality and violence, only rarely making international headlines.

September 2001 and the wars in the Middle East brought renewed US focus to the Horn of Africa. For some time, a diverse group of Islamists, clan leaders, businesspeople, militia heads, and civic actors had been coalescing into what would in 2005 become the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), a heterogeneous movement seeking to establish a semblance of law and order after years of chaos.

The courts proved to be well organised, disciplined, and effective civil administrators. They were popular with average Somalis, even the less devout, all of whom were desperate for relief from the criminal gangs and brutality that had long ruled their country. The Islamists also began to challenge the weak, faction-ridden TFG – the successor to 13 previous failed attempts at creating a central government – which had been confined to the provincial town of Baidoa, headed by President Abdullahi Yusuf, closely linked to Mogadishu's warlords.

Alarmed at the Islamic Courts' growing strength and popularity, in early 2006 the CIA began supplying significant quantities of arms and money to a coalition of secular Mogadishu warlords under the name Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). The CIA programme had been a poorly conceived attempt to hunt down the small number of al-Qaeda affiliated individuals involved in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, then thought to be hiding in Somalia. But the operation failed disastrously and, according to reports, ‘the payoffs added to an anarchic situation that led many Somalis to turn to the Islamic Courts for protection’ (Washington Post, 13 May 2007).

The Islamists struck preemptively and decisively, routing the warlords and seizing control of Mogadishu within a matter of weeks. For six months in 2006, the Union of Islamic Courts proceeded to establish security and the provision of basic social services in much of Somalia for the first time in 15 years. The peace provided by the Islamists also came with more conservative social policies and a type of sharia law. For average Somalis, however, the security of the courts brought a brief respite from their usual suffering.

The Bush administration, seeing Somalia and the Islamic Courts through the lens of its war on terror and, having botched the earlier warlord programme, began stepping up aid to long-time ally and neighboring Ethiopian autocrat Meles Zenawi. Zenawi has held power in Ethiopia since the early 1990s. During a crackdown against popular protests after fraudulent elections in 2005, Zenawi's security forces massacred nearly 200 people, injured 760 more, and arrested an additional 20,000, among them opposition leaders, foreign aid workers, and journalists. Nonetheless, since 2002, Ethiopia has received nearly US$25 million in overt US military assistance while at least 100 US military personnel currently work inside Ethiopia in advisory positions as part of what the Pentagon characterises as a ‘close working relationship’ with the Ethiopian military.

Less than two weeks before the invasion, in mid-December 2006, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer publicly declared, ‘The Council of Islamic Courts is now controlled by al-Qaeda cell individuals, east Africa al-Qaeda cell individuals.’ The claim was dubious and he provided no evidence. Horn of Africa specialist Ken Menkhaus noted in February 2007 that the Islamic Courts ‘movement as a whole was far from an al-Qaeda front. Only three foreign al-Qaeda operatives were said by the US to be in hiding in Mogadishu, a number far lower than those suspected of residing in neighboring Kenya.’

Assistant Secretary Frazer warned of ‘a risk [that] Al Qaeda may take up bases in Somalia,’ but denied that the United States would take military action against the courts. Similarly, then-UN Ambassador John Bolton told reporters in early December 2006, ‘[t]he United States strongly believes that a sustainable solution in Somalia should be based on credible dialogue between the [TFG] and the UIC and we continue to work with our African and other partners toward that end.’

Behind the scenes, General John Abizaid, at the time US Central Command (USCENTCOM) commander, had already visited Addis Ababa to express some last minute reservations to Prime Minister Zenawi. The decision had been made, though, and ultimately Washington lent its support to the invasion.

The Ethiopian military crossed the Somali border on 24 December 2006 and later reports indicated that ‘CIA agents traveled with the Ethiopian troops, helping to direct operations’ (the London Independent, 9 February 2008). The United States provided important satellite intelligence and other battleground information from unmanned Predator drones. ‘A lot of what we taught them was used to fight that global War on Terror,’ observed a US military advisor who had trained Ethiopian soldiers now fighting in Somalia. In terms of weaponry, he noted, ‘They got what they needed.’

US Special Forces also conducted periodic operations inside Somali territory, possibly moving out of a rumored CIA base in eastern Ethiopia. The full extent and exact type of activity is not known, but reports of their movements have been confirmed by Somali officials. As TFG Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein explained to reporters in February 2008, ‘The presence of the CIA, the presence of [US] troops, is not a big issue. We like that they are here. But right now they don't have a permanent military presence. They come in and out.’

US warships moved into position off the coast of Somalia in anticipation of the invasion. Acting on intelligence from the ground, Washington ordered bombing raids targeting what it believed to be Islamic militants. US-piloted AC-130 gunships and cruise missiles have blasted Somali territory at least a half dozen times since January 2007. The first of these air raids killed what turned out to be 70 Somali goat herders whom the Pentagon had initially claimed were Islamic fighters. After several other attempts, in May 2008, the bombings finally succeeded in killing the leader of the al-Shabaab militia, Aden Hashi Ayro. The strike also demolished the surrounding homes, killing ten others and leading to anti-US protests.

The Ethiopian military captured Mogadishu before New Year's Day 2007. The most powerful army in the region devastated organized UIC forces. But the remaining militants fled and quickly melted back into the larger civilian population. As predicted, the collapse of the Islamic Courts and the subsequent Ethiopian occupation led to a relentless Iraq-style insurgency – one that has been rapidly gaining strength.

The insurgents have successfully used roadside bombs, hit-and-run attacks, and assassinations targeted at government officials to assault the TFG and its Ethiopian backers. Increasingly, they have routed Ethiopian and TFG military forces in direct confrontations, moving to capture and hold swathes of territory for extended periods of time.

Ethiopian and TFG forces, for their part, responded with a ferocious campaign to root out militants in Mogadishu and surrounding areas. The vicious counterinsurgency has seen the regular shelling of densely populated urban neighbourhoods. Distinctions between civilians and insurgents are often irrelevant to security forces that frequently prey on the Somali population. Looting, rape, torture, mutilation, and cutting the throats of victims are regular tactics of Ethiopian and TFG forces. These are the same methods the Ethiopian military has used to suppress another ongoing insurgency in the Ogaden desert. The most recent report from Amnesty International recounts episodes too horrific to quote here.

Thus, Somalis are caught in the crossfire between Ethiopian and TFG security forces, insurgents, warlords, criminals, and US gunships. The ‘more common complaint among ordinary Somalis,’ according to reporters however, ‘is that the Ethiopians are “indiscriminate” in their reprisals – and that this is why Mogadishu has been emptied of people.’

The human cost has been staggering. The forces of war and drought are rapidly converging on the Horn of Africa nation in a perfect storm against the Somali population. The civilian death toll since the invasion is fast approaching 10,000. More than a million people have fled their homes, including half of Mogadishu, and are now living in squalid, makeshift refugee camps.

The food and fuel crisis that has affected international markets has combined with the disruption of fighting, looting, inflation, and a failure of the seasonal rains to push Somalia to the absolute brink. The country now stands on the verge of famine on a scale not seen since the early 1990s when an estimated 300,000 Somalis starved to death. Recent UN estimates hold that more than 3.25 million people, nearly half the population, are currently in need of food aid. International officials have long been calling the situation the most horrific humanitarian disaster on the African continent.

As in Iraq, the war on terror in Somalia has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, sowing the increasing radicalisation and anti-Westernisation of an entire population of poor Third World people. In recent months there has been new evidence of foreign fighters inside Somalia – decidedly not the case when Jendayi Frazer declared two weeks prior to the invasion that Somalia was ‘now controlled by al-Qaeda cell individuals.’

While the leadership of the Islamic Courts was originally a mix of moderate and conservative Islamic actors, the insurgency no longer maintains this character. A peace agreement between the former moderate elements of the courts, now called the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, and the TFG has already concluded to no effect. The old leaders of the Courts no longer control the insurgency. Battle-hardened al-Shabaab militants, perhaps poised to succeed the Transitional Federal Government, espouse a far more radical and anti-Western Islamic ideology.

For the moment, the intervention in Somalia appears to be coming full circle. In September two Somalis in their early 20s were arrested at a German airport on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks somewhere in the West. They were released due to insufficient evidence, but German intelligence officials believe the men were arrested too early.

Somalia has indeed been a third front in the war on terror. A quiet front, but a front nonetheless. Six months after the Ethiopian invasion, Defense Department spokesperson Bryan Whitman told reporters, ‘The very nature of some of our operations, as well as the success of those operations, is often predicated on our ability to work quietly with our partners and allies.’ Now, almost two years into the occupation, few can still maintain delusions of success in the Horn of Africa. Perhaps most troubling is that the current episode must be seen against the background of the recent creation of AFRICOM and the larger militarisation of US foreign policy in Africa.

What becomes of Somalia remains to be seen. What is certain is that the US has taken a group of the world's most destitute, desperate, and brutalised people and brutalised them some more. We might expect to see angry young Somalis bringing violence to the West in the future. Whether we know it or not, we have certainly brought it to them. This is the Bush administration's legacy and it will be with us for a long time to come.

* Matthew Blood is an independent journalist who has lived and travelled in sub-Saharan Africa. This article first appeared in ZMagazine on 1 December 2008.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Media freedom in Kenya: The parliamentary circus

Cenya Ciyendi

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52780

According to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’

It is shameful that during the period of marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December and the 45th anniversary of Kenya's freedom on 12 December that the Kenyan police, in the full glare of the government, the international community and Wananchi saw the brutal arrest of and torture of Kenyan journalists protesting against draconian measures to curb media freedom.

The erosion of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration – the principal statement on media freedom around the world – marks a sad day for Kenya and a return to the pre-2002 days of impunity for the Kenyan regime. When Kenyans should have joined the world in celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration and the principles that brought the country’s freedom, the government was busy dismantling these gains in parliament while brutally and publicly attacking Kenyans during Jamuhuri day and making a mockery of the celebrations! No shame then and no remorse now in the greatest twist in history. The further brutalisation of those protesting peacefully marks a return to draconian measures and towards dictatorship and is reminiscent of the colonial and Nyayo eras when they were perfected. Curbing of freedoms of conscience, freedoms of expression and freedom to hold opinions is the first sign of desperation of a government which has wrong-footed its people. It was notable that the celebrations were marked in the stadium and not in the traditional Uhuru Park. Here, there exist fences and we now know that there are police cells as this is where some of the protestors are being held under inhumane conditions and tortured.

The pressures on Kenya now to implement the Kriegler and Waki reports to resolve the issues that brought the country on its knees, and the heat it will place on individuals, is all the more reason why the media should be protected. The constitutional process, the setting up of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and charting the road map to 2012 are all the more reasons that the media needs to be more active than ever, not less!

Kenyans are justifiably angered by the actions of the government and the mixed message they are sending; that parliament cannot be trusted to protect the people. The world and the Kenyan public cannot allow the prevailing climate of impunity to continue. Nor can the same politicians who are seeking to curb the power of the president leave such an important decision to such power when they had the mandate to vote for the principals of Article 19 and then rush to court to sue themselves (we are now a grand coalition). It makes nonsense of their demand to curb the power of the presidency when they cannot be trusted to make the right decision or to act in the interest of the Wananchi. The recent fiasco of politicians’ self-interest in refusing to pay tax and to address the plight of millions of Kenyans facing starvation – especially internally displaced people (IDPs) who are still suffering after the crisis earlier in the year – while they live in unimaginable luxury is contemptible.

In 2005, Kenya held the International Peace Institute Conference and publicly re-dedicated itself to protecting the freedom of the press in Kenya (see here. Some of the notable speakers included the then President Kibaki, the then opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta, and the then vice President Moody Awori. Each of the speakers said the right words in relation to how Article 19 was being promoted and how much the press freedom needed safeguarding, but they should more appropriately have been asked about how safe Kenyans and Article 19 were in their hands. They should also have answered questions around how successful the media would be in enhancing the very environment of freedom that was purportedly being celebrated. How far can they say that they protect the media and individuals who dedicate their lives in difficult conditions through which not only information is shared, but through whom a democratic engagement in debate and education is nurtured? What has changed between 2005 and now that should make it possible for this bill to have been reintroduced and voted for in parliament? And why were journalists and their supporters treated so shamefully?

We need to ask whether the politicians and government of a nation which is signatory to the Universal Declaration is upholding the spirit and letter of Article 19? It is not a weapon or shield for them to use against the citizen who elected them. The bill is wrong, and the actions of the police and the decision of the government are wrong.

There is no place for such a selfish, greedy and self-serving government. Those who are failing Kenyans should go and a transitional arrangement for democracy be put into place. It is not too late to redeem the spirit of independence for which so many died so that Kenyans can be free. Stepping down the best gift that they could give Kenya as we begin to painfully reflect on the tragedy that took place in our country barely 12 months ago and acknowledge that we have been had, yet again. They have turned parliament into a circus, if not a zoo.

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

Respect the Kenyan constitution and mediation process

Statement from Kenyans to the grand coalition government

Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52786

The events of the past three days compel us to evaluate the state of fundamental freedoms in Kenya, and the verdict is singularly unfavourable.

On 12 December 2008, as Kenya marked its 45th Jamhuri Day, the Grand Coalition Government signalled its definitive departure not just from the ideals of independence. It also departs from agreements reached under Agenda Item One of the mediation process, which sought to restore full fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to assembly and peaceful protest.

The President and the Prime Minister watched without comment as police forcibly detained – in one case with unnecessary violence – Kenyans seeking to protest, through the delivery of a letter and the wearing of t-shirts, at the rise in basic food and fuel prices and the refusal of parliamentarians to subject their allowances to taxation. And this in front of the crowds gathered at Nyayo Stadium and the media from Kenya and elsewhere.

By the end of the day, over 100 Kenyans had been detained in and around the country. Below is a breakdown:

· Langata Police Station – 58 people among them Mars Group’s Mwalimu Mati, Jayne Mati and Kiss 100 FM’s Caroline Mutoko and Larry Asego

· Nyayo Stadium Police Post – Bunge la Mwananchi’s Fredrick Odhiambo and 10 others

· Industrial Area Police Station – 40 held on a police lorry and another 15 on a police pickup – later released

· Garissa – 4 activists, expected to be charged in court today

· Nakuru – 3 activists later released.

The following day – well past the 24 hours constitutionally allowed for detention without charge before someone has to be produced in court – two Kenyans remained illegally detained at Langata Police Station, one in hospital in Nairobi and four in Garissa.

The unlawful arrest and detention of citizens and civil rights activists on Jamhuri Day and the subsequent violent break-up of legitimate protests in Langata and Uhuru Park in Nairobi only crown a year of the state abusing the basic freedoms guaranteed every citizen under the Constitution.

As we speak, Mr Fredrick Odhiambo Owuor, who was brutally attacked by the police and detained without access to medical attention for at least 24 hours, is still in custody. Seven civil rights activists who have been illegally detained in police custody for at least 72 hours are expected to be charged in a Garissa court for loudly petitioning government officials during the Jamhuri Day celebrations last week.

Mwalimu Mati and his wife Jayne of the Media Analysis and Research Strategies (MARS) Group have been released without charge – an indication that their arrest was unjustified and probably malicious from the outset.

The heavy-handed state response to legitimate protest and the exercise of citizens’ right to express themselves, the detention of citizens illegally arrested while attempting to peacefully petition the government on the grave issues of taxation of MPs’ allowances, the passage of repressive media laws and the rising cost of living are a shocking trespass on fundamental freedoms.

We are dismayed by the continuing erosion of fundamental freedoms in the country since December 2007. The abrogation and negotiation of fundamental freedoms to assembly, expression and of the press, as well as the freedom to petition the government, have had the net effect of turning Kenya into a police state.

These attacks on fundamental freedoms come at a time when the State appears bent on creating laws that would limit access to information rather than free it. The Kenya Communications (Amendment) Bill takes away the right to receive and disseminate information under the guise of regulating the media and making provisions for security.

Bearing in mind our Constitution’s guarantees of the rights to the freedoms of assembly, association and expression as well as the agreement under Agenda Item Two of the mediation process – that is, the restoration of fundamental rights and freedoms, we demand:

1. The immediate unconditional release of the remaining four in Garissa without charge

2. Accountability for the Police Commissioner and the minister for Internal Security for failing to respect the Constitution as well as the agreement reached under Agenda Item Two of the mediation process

3. Accountability of the President and the Prime Minister for the same.

Kenyans will not accept the continued retreat on gains believed to have been secured in 2002 in the guise of security. Kenyans will not accept that the only way to dialogue with the Grand Coalition Government is through insider strategies – non-violent, peaceful protest is also a legitimate means of voicing legitimate concerns, in this case about the rising cost of living in the face of apparent Executive and Parliamentary indifference.

Nairobi – Monday 15 December 2008

There is a YouTube video(6mins) of the events that took place at Langata Police Station prior to the release of Mwalimu and Jayne Mati.


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

Structural racism and the Obama presidency

John Powell

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52847

The racial landscape of America changed dramatically on 4 November 2008. Early that evening it became clear Senator Barack Obama would be the next president of the United States. What was not clear and may take some time to unfold is what this means in terms of racial justice in the US and the world. Some rush to claim that the election means the United States has moved past race and more particularly racism. Others argue that nothing has really changed and non-whites continue to face deep racial barriers. Both of these positions are much too simplistic and represent a naïve view of race. Racialisation is not simply an event, but a complicated process that reflects a social history and set of structural arrangements. There is a reason that we are likely to make the mistake that either nothing has changed or that everything has changed. Only a few years ago, it was all but impossible to imagine the US populace electing a black person to the highest position in the country. However, race still largely determines where we live, who we live with and how we live.

There is an increasing understanding that racialisation is largely a historically rooted social project. But we fail to take this insight seriously and continue to think of it in concrete terms. This failure does not help us to understand or anticipate how race has changed and continues to change based on social and cultural conditions. It is clear that the conditions and meaning of racialisation were very different before and after the Civil War, for example. For those who associated racialisation only with slavery, there were reasons to suggest that ending slavery would necessarily end racialisation and hierarchy. Most people did not anticipate the Jim Crow laws that mandated segregation and the rise of anti-black racism, which reached its zenith following the end of slavery from the late 1800s to the beginning of the 20th century.

During that time, the state-sponsored racial arrangement helped create what author Douglas Blackmon calls ‘slavery by another name’. Racialisation became different but essentially unfinished. The language of racism became part of the American lexicon during the 1930s when the word ‘racism’ first became popularised in the US, and explicit white supremacy was called into question. Events in the United States, Germany, Africa and Latin America and the rest of the world helped to usher in a new racial consciousness and set of practices. In the US, the poster child for racism was the southern segregationist explicitly holding on to claims of white supremacy and Jim Crow. This also became the challenge as the US fight against racism was a fight against Jim Crow in addition to the conscious expression of racial animus and hierarchy.

When lawyer Thurgood Marshall won the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which effectively outlawed racial segregation in education, he and millions of other Americans believed that racism was on its death bed. Marshall and others thought that ending segregation would necessarily end racism. Judge Robert Carter, who worked with Marshall on the Brown case, would later lament that he was mistaken in thinking segregation was coterminous with racial hierarchy. He further stated that segregation was not the cause of white supremacy but an expression of white supremacy. Thurgood Marshall would go on to serve on the United States Supreme Court, but he died with a deep sense of regret that much of his work to integrate schools was undone by de facto segregation. The failure to understand the mutating and multiple expressions of racialisation was also made by many whites. They feared that ending segregation and laws limiting interracial marriage would not only end racial hierarchy but would also destroy the white race.

It is important to note that around the time of the Brown decision, the housing market was being restructured so that whites were more likely to end up in suburbs. The Federal Housing Administration subsidized migration to suburbs and the Federal Highway Act of 1956 further facilitated the process of ‘white flight’ and disinvestment from urban areas. The segregation that resulted had a fundamental effect on the quality of education available to minorities living in low-income neighbourhoods. This connection between housing and education is one component of a broader reality that where you live determines your access to opportunity structures and your life chances.

By the 1960s, we began to understand that racialisation was not just an expression of conscious individual prejudice, but also an expression of institutional norms and practices. America was introduced to something called institutional racism. However, this insight never completely penetrated the heart of American discourse, partly because the United States is a country obsessed with an ideology of extreme individualism. This ideology is largely fiction, but it frames how people make sense of the world. It makes the work done by structures all but invisible. If there is racialisation, this position holds that it must be located in the conscious mind of the individual. There are a number of counter examples, but they simply do not stick within this narrative. For example, if non-whites are doing worse than whites and there is no conscious racist to blame, the failure must rest with the non-whites themselves.

American attitudes toward race have certainly changed, and it would not have been possible for a black person even of Barack Obama’s stature to be elected president even ten years ago. Today, much of the work that produces and reproduces racial hierarchy is done through institutional arrangement and structures. This is called structural racialisation. It does not mean that other racial dynamics no longer exist; they continue to play the same central role as before. There are still some people screaming about the demise of the white race and about losing control over the country, who are consciously hostile to non-whites. While these attitudes persist, they are not dominant, and as the election of Obama suggests, they do not represent majority opinion even among whites.

This suggests a change in racial attitudes in America, but not an end to racialisation. The meaning of race has changed, but change should not be confused with the end. In order to better understand this new racial dynamic, we must reject views of society and membership prevalent in the 1940s. As we travel further into the 21st century, we are likely to see another kind of racialisation that will be informed by a different understanding of society and people.

So what does racialisation in the United States look like today? First, we are talking about a process that is too unsettled to define with exactitude, but one in which some contours are clear. We as a society are more socially conscious and racially egalitarian than at any time in our short history. However, this improvement in the societal position on race is not reflected in either our conscious attitudes or our inter-institutional practices and policies. Recognising this gap, scholars have pointed to a phenomenon called implicit bias. There is a growing body of work that documents that Americans have implicit, unconscious biases which can be tested. These attitudes can shift to be more salient in some situations rather than others. One cannot identify implicit racial bias by simply asking an interviewee, because the individual will not be aware of it. In spite of this, implicit attitudes can impact behaviour and choices. It is interesting to note that implicit bias is a social phenomenon reflecting the collective social culture. This means that even non-whites are likely to carry some level of implicit bias, but generally not to the same extent as whites.

The second insight is that structures interact to produce outcomes that are not dependent on conscious or even unconscious intent. Consider the problem of climate change. It is not something that anyone intended, but rather a result of several interactive institutions and practices that have produced disturbing results. So why do institutions produce racialised outcomes? One reason is that people are situated differently in relation to institutional practices and arrangements. For instance, there is some indication that creating universal health insurance would likely make doctors less available in rural areas and to people of colour. This is because a system based solely on insurance would likely drive doctors away from areas where blacks are overrepresented.

Also, the current sub-prime lending problem has powerful racial overtones that continue to be largely ignored. A history of racially discriminatory housing and lending practices contributed to economic segregation and concentrated poverty of low income minorities. Discrimination was achieved through redlining which limited the availability of mortgage loans for minorities and through racial covenants that prevented minorities from living in certain areas. In the absence of traditional lending institutions, the practice of reverse redlining or predatory lending became prevalent as sub-prime lenders targeted these isolated communities. These sub-prime loans are high risk, and have much higher interest rates, fees and penalties. The racial impact of predatory lending is evident as sub-prime loans are three times more prevalent in low-income areas and five times more likely in African-American neighbourhoods than in predominately white neighbourhoods. As a result of the crisis, it is estimated that African-American borrowers will lose between $71–$122 billion dollars in wealth, while Latino borrowers will lose $76–$129 billion. The unwillingness to consider the racial component of the sub-prime crisis will lead many to continue blaming these communities for the problem and inevitably result in further marginalisation.

Structural racialisation as an analytical tool is a particular example of a systems approach. This approach recognises that causes are not linear or unidirectional, but cumulative, mutual and interactive. This model has been well developed in the areas of health and the environment. Recently, the economist Jeffrey Sachs in his work on poverty mentions a similar, albeit narrower systems approach which he calls clinical economics. His approach marks a shift away from the IMF’s structural adjustment programmes which adopted false universalism and promoted static economic solutions while neglecting the particularities of specific developing countries. Clinical economics partially corrects this, but it does not however pay enough attention to Western normative assumptions about culture that too easily dismiss and misinterpret cultural complexities. This does not suggest we adopt simplistic relativism that asserts our inability to understand one another, but rather the need to reject the hubris of racial objectivity based on underlying notions of superiority. Instead, we should recognise that our interconnectedness is based not only on our material situatedness, but also our interactions with others and others’ cultures, and the broader social and physical environment within which these interactions take place.

One important point Sachs makes is that two people with a fever may experience very different symptoms and each require a different diagnosis. Similarly, two people or groups of people who are poor may be experiencing very different situations. This point was made by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal over 60 years ago in a study entitled ‘The America Dilemma’. According to Myrdal, there was a qualitative difference between black and white poverty in the United States. He asserted that blacks suffered from a cumulative causation or mutually reinforcing constraint – a set of interconnected structures, institutions and norms that operate simultaneously to produce a negative cumulative impact.

A seemingly race-neutral approach to issues of social and economic inequality and exclusion will not only fail to address the situatedness of particular groups, but may make disparities worse. This was the consequence of many race-neutral programs adopted in the US under the New Deal and after World War II. For example, the National Labor Relations Act protected the right of unions to organise, but excluded occupations such as ‘farm worker’ and ‘maid’ typically open to African-Americans. Also, the Social Security Act which claimed to provide a universal social insurance plan excluded domestic and agricultural workers in acquiescence to demands from southern politicians. In addition, there was the G.I. Bill, which appeared to be race-neutral but proved to be problematic in two ways. Blacks had a more difficult time getting into the military in part as a result of a poor, racially segregated educational system. For those who did get into the military, the G.I. Bill gave them the same federal money for education, but they had to use it in a deeply racialised education system that locked blacks out of higher education. This further contributed to disparities between blacks and whites.

Universal programmes that are likely to be pushed using a colour-blind, post-racial frame are not likely be effective in disrupting entrenched and structured racial inequality. This is not because of racial animus, but because these programmes will be mapped onto other circumstances and conditions that will translate these efforts into new racial disparities. When this happens, the public discourse seeks to explain the continued inequality. Unfortunately, instead of seeing structures and systems at work, the rationalisation is more likely to default to a personal or culture explanation that locates the failure in the marginalised group. A universal approach will only be effective if it is sensitive to the situatedness of particular groups and to the operation of institutions and policies. We call this ‘targeted universalism’.

The failure to develop a structural understanding will not only exacerbate racial inequality, but will likely usher in a new type of racialisation. This suggests that plans which fail to understand how people are positioned in relation to institutional practices are likely to have racial impacts. For example, a plan in New Jersey assumed that making affordable housing available in a race-neutral way would still address race because blacks and Latinos were more likely to be poor. However, while poverty was the major constraint holding back poor whites, there were a number of constraints operating simultaneously against blacks and Latinos. This untargeted plan benefited whites, but only marginally impacted Latinos and did not benefit blacks at all. The end result was a racially stratified housing market with blacks becoming more isolated from opportunity. It is necessary then to take an approach that is sensitive to the work of interactive institutions on the situatedness of particular populations and to the inter-sectionality of issues such as race, gender class, and sexuality.

Neglecting the role of structures and systems will allow weak structures to impede the life chances of all and limit the ability for people to contribute to society economically and politically. The structures in place impact all groups but operate unevenly. The identification of structures should not be seen as a rejection of personal responsibility or autonomy. In the US we are too often inclined to see social structures and social responsibility in direct tension with the responsibility of the individual, but this is misguided. A healthy society requires both structures and social footing to support healthy individual expression. Also, individual responsibility requires individuals to collectively call the appropriate structures and institutional arrangements into being. Political science professor Iris Marion Young made the observation that the greater the complexity of a society and its interactions across distances, the more likely relations and opportunity within that society will be mediated by institutional arrangements.

Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the US presidency has radically changed the world. However, if we are to avoid a kind of incipient individualism that allows structures to reproduce and creates new forms of racial hierarchy, we must participate in developing an understanding of situatedness and propose remedies along the lines of targeted universalism. While it is certain that the role of structural racialisation will become more important under the Obama administration, it is not clear that this is on the radar of the new administration. It remains to be seen whether the election of President-Elect Obama will move us to a type of false transcendence of race and particularity, or if it will allow us to more robustly examine the work that structures and institutions are doing to promote or hinder inclusion for racially marginalised populations.

* Professor John A. Powell is a widely recognised authority in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties and issues relating to race, poverty, and the law in the United States. He is director of the Kirwan Institute for the
Study of Race and Ethnicity, Colombus, Ohio.

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

From great depression to deep recession

The politics of economic crises

John Samuel

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/52785

Politics and economics are twins, shaped and driven by power relations. A financial crisis does not happen within a political vacuum. Politics and policy choices often shape, make and break economies and their financial architecture, so it is important to unpack the political contexts, causes and consequences of this current financial crisis. There seems to be a clear connection between war, economic crisis and political transition.

In spite of the confident rhetoric of political leaders, the economy has not necessarily danced around to their beat. In early 2007, George W. Bush boasted that the ‘economy is powerful, productive and prosperous’, a statement that is worth to comparing with the message of President Calvin Coolidge to the US Congress on 4 December 1928: ‘Enlarging production is consumed by an increasing demand at home and expanding commerce abroad. The country can regard the present with satisfaction and anticipate the future with optimism.’ Within less than a year of that statement, on 29 October 1929 the great crash happened at the New York Stock Exchange, in arguably the most traumatic experience in the history of capitalism. The near universality of this economic crisis and its political implications are not too far to forget.

The political context of the great depression and the ongoing financial crisis are not the same. However, there is one shared context: the concentration of wealth within few hands, and the consequent increase in inequality. The prosperity of the USA in the 1920s was very fragile: 5 per cent of the population received more than one third of the country’s total income and 70 per cent had an annual wage hardly good enough for survival. The roots of the great depression can be traced back to the consequences of the First World War. And the consequences of the great economic crash in the early 1930s made enabling conditions for the rise of fascism as well as the context for the Second World War. This eventually led to the reordering of the world in the aftermath of the Second World War. However, there is a substantial difference between the political context of the great crash and that of the ongoing financial and economic crisis.

The present financial crisis is a result of the cumulative impact of the neoliberal economic paradigm and unbridled financial capitalism in the last twenty years. The globalisation of markets, the media, technology, and finance went hand in hand with the globalisation of discontent and of terror. They fed into each other with increasing virulence. Thus economic growth was accompanied by inequality, injustice and reactionary politics. George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden also fed into each other. The rise of neoliberal capitalism – driven by hyper-consumerism and economic growth – perpetuated a new addiction for oil.

This oil addiction shifted the theatre of international politics to the west Asian and Gulf Countries. The powerful countries sought to control oil and other natural resources through the power apparatus of the military and markets. This created new forms of imperialism and militarisation. The new oil economy irrigated markets, war machines and terrorism. Though the Gulf War in the early 1990s proved to be a profitable enterprise for the USA, the Iraq war proved to be a losing game in terms of economics and politics. The economy, military and unilateral power of the USA got overstretched and became increasingly brittle. In spite of the boastings of Bush, the economy began to bleed in the context of a costly war. It was estimated that around US$ 3 trillion was used to blow up Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people and making deep wounds in the world as well in the economy. The eclipse of military adventurism and casino-capitalism eventually shook the political power of the White House and Wall Street’s economic muscle.

The context of the great depression in the 1930s needs to be located in the inter-war economic and political order of the world. The crash of the New York Stock Exchange on 29 October 1929 led to a deeper universal crisis, which at that time looked like a collapse of the capitalist world economy. However, it is important to note that at that period communism was still a viable economic and political alternative to capitalism. In spite of the great depression, the economy of the USSR was less affected due to the strength of the state-controlled Soviet system. The economic and political consequences of the First World War also created a fertile ground for the rise of right-wing militant politics in the form of nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy and other parts of Europe. Though the USA emerged as an important player in the aftermath of the First World War, the country was neither a unilateral superpower nor had the dollar become the super currency of the world. Capitalism and finances were far less globalised than the preset time. The political economy of oil was still in its early stages. The world was still a big colony of the European powers.

Now the context is dramatically different. It is an irony of history that the USA blew up lots of money for its wars in the Gulf and Iraq, only for its economy to now have to depend on the money and oil from the very same Arab world. The USA has to depend on the trillions of foreign exchange reserves from the Gulf countries, along with other Asian countries such as China, Japan and India. Many of the top banks and business enterprises in the West are increasingly owned by rich Arabs through investments as well as the strategic use of the national sovereign funds of many Gulf countries. While the market in the Europe and the USA became increasingly saturated, the new power of vibrant markets shifted to emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The dramatic recession in the USA in 1930 spread to Germany and the rest of the world. The industrial production in the USA and Germany fell about a third from 1929 to 1931. There was a slump in the demand and price of primary commodities, including rice, tea, coffee, wheat and silk. Many of Asian, African and Latin America countries dependent on the export of primary commodities suffered due to the slump in demand. World trade fell by 60 per cent. The crisis resulted in the rise of massive unemployment, which varied between 20 to 50 per cent in different countries. The failure of banks and the credit-crunch led to the great stock exchange crash. By the second half of 1930, 603 banks had failed, including the Bank of the United States, which accounted for the loss of about one third of the total deposits. By January 1932, 1,860 banks had failed. Automobile production – a key sector of the economy at the time – reduced by more than 50 per cent within two years. The combined output of the world’s seven economies declined by around 20 per cent within three years between 1929 and 1932. Millions lost jobs and unemployment in the USA and Germany rose to above 33 per cent. The depression resulted in a sharp increase in tariffs and resultant reduction in international trade, with world trade almost collapsing. In fact, Great Brittan – the original imperialist masters of ‘free trade’ – abandoned the policy in 1931.

However, the immediate response in the USA to the depression was a series of half-baked, panicked policies, including protectionism, cutting deficits and a more conservative budget with less public expenditure. This made the situation worse. It took another five years of concerted effort to re-energise the economy. And as a matter of fact, the Second World War helped the USA to increase demand and production to shift the economy into a pattern of growth.

Indeed, the seeds of the Second World War proved to be in the ‘reparations’ imposed on Germany in the Versailles peace conference in 1919 for the cost of the First World War and damage done to the victorious powers. Though John Maynard Keynes, who participated in the Versailles peace conference as a young economist in the British delegation, warned against ‘reparations’ in an illuminating 1920 paper entitled ‘The Economic Consequences of Peace’, the political leaders of the day ignored his arguments. As a result Germany plunged into an economic crisis in the aftermath of the First World War, providing fertile ground for the rise of Adolf Hitler and nazism.

There is a connection between economic crisis, political turmoil and possible shifts in governance. Germany was indeed a major industrial power and when the country’s crisis was followed by the crash of the US economy, there was a much more of an impact, both economic and political. This situation gave rise to fascism in many parts of Europe. But it also gave rise to the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt in the USA, following the economic model of John Maynard Keynes. The New Deal consisted of a series of policy and economic measures to address unemployment and stimulate economic growth. The first New Deal programme (1933–35) sought to restore public confidence and resulted in a series of legislations, including one on public works and policy measures. The second phase of the New Deal began in 1935. Path-breaking social legislation included the Social Security Act (a scheme for unemployment insurance, disability insurance and old age pensions), the Wealth Tax Act, and the National Labour Relations Act. In the eight-year history of the New Deal, a total of US$11 billion was spent and provided employment for 8 million workers in the USA. The New Deal signified the role of the state in the redistribution of wealth. Though the package was a radical step in many ways, it did not help to completely address the economic crisis, as the USA again faced a recession in 1937–38. However, it did however represent far-reaching and stunning socio-economic reforms and established the role of an interventionist state, thus beginning the political legitimacy for the welfare state across the world.

The current financial crisis may lead to a deep recession and such a development will be powerful enough to shape new paradigms of policy, development and institutional frameworks in the next five years. The great depression was the beginning of a paradigmatic shift in the policy, politics and nature of the USA and indeed other countries. It may be too earl to predict the political outcome of this financial crisis, but one could see multiple shifts in the political process and governance in the years to come.

The ongoing financial recession played a very important role in shifting the politics of the USA. It is yet to be seen whether Barack Obama’s team can turn the tide of politics and economics. There is indeed a danger of conformist politics with a high doze of optimistic rhetoric. A black man in the white house may be a great political symbolism. But whether it will transform the world’s politics and economics remains a trillion-dollar question.

* John Samuel is a social activist and the International Director of ActionAid.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Education for self-effacement in Kenya

A student’s view

Wangui Kimari

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/52781

When my sister was in primary school (the school where we all were had a supposedly pious nature that was the talk of town), like all of the students within this institution she had to take a mandatory ‘ethics’ class. The title of this class appeared to us ambivalent, big and intimidating, but from what we could garner, ‘ethics’ were simply tacit rules that we needed to embody in order to live (or pretend to live) in religious harmony with each other.

One morning on our way to school in our car, the aforementioned sibling, age 13, obviously thinking of what she had learnt the previous day, informed us with uninhibited joy that during the ethics class – taught by the idolised Italian priest – the teacher focused on instructing the adolescent students how to eat a banana with a knife and fork. Obviously certain that it was a most salient lesson for these young African minds, this priest devoted over forty-five minutes to demonstrating one of the requisites of modern ‘civilised’ life. My sister’s happiness was due to the fact that she was among those who managed, although with admitted difficulty, to embrace the ‘challenges of modernity’ and perform the required feat.

I was only seven when I heard my sister relate this, and as one of the car’s occupants, I remember (even though at this age I was probably on my way to being quite a successful colonial project) being rather unsure of how to receive this news. Nonetheless, it appeared to be the most normal occurrence to the rest of the occupants, for I do not recall anyone responding with any ounce of indignation. This was in 1993, supposedly thirty years after independence.

It makes me wonder – now of course when my agitation is more articulate, and when (duly) I have much less of my childhood tolerance and when I can more clearly see the interdependent nature of life and thus have a more fervent need to deconstruct what was I was made – what exactly have we been learning and are we learning in schools in Kenya if such an ethics class was such a norm, that even adults were not be able to discern the unequivocal insinuations of such a lesson?

Later on and more than 15 years later, I am graciously offered a book entitled Kenya: A Prison Notebook, by one of my close friends, A. Shujaa. Despite years of education in this country and sufficient participation in public forum, I had never heard of the author, Maina wa Kinyatti. In reading further I am to discover the depths of my ignorance about the history of Kenya, for the experiences documented in this book – the catalyst of which, among many, was a yet imperceptible independence – were not unique to the author. I then ask myself, how many people were subject to such morbid life as Nyayoism – a word new to me – was being so severely implemented? How many people died in Kenya or were forced to leave their homeland in the early 1980s and 1990s? How many more hungry stomachs were created as we incessantly fortified a system where people have to compete for food? How many?

The answers to these questions and the experiences that generated them, I am positive, have not found their way onto the national curriculum.

So my query is, what is the purpose of school here in Kenya, if my attendance, and the attendance of my sisters, brothers, and colleagues, really just encourages and exacerbates a process of self-effacement? In their unwavering support of this type of education, are our parents and grandparents really just encouraging us to view them as persons without dignity because what we learn does not allow us to give them appropriate reverence?

We are living the consequences of this education for self-effacement.

It was a few years later after my sister’s ethics class that my cousin from my mother’s rural home picked out a stray potato leaf in a bundle of Managu leaves. Before this, I had internalised the normalised prejudice (stated or not) that I was more intelligent than this cousin as I was city-born and likely to go further then she ever would, regarding her as a mere a country girl whose future would always be limited. However, on this day I can remember thinking how much more vital her knowledge was when compared to that of the textbook I had crammed and thus could wield like a weapon. In awe of her, I marvelled.

It was perhaps at this time that I slowly began to see that, even if I could (albeit awkwardly) succeed in eating a banana with a fork and knife, the effortless natural knowledge that my cousin conveyed was more worthwhile than my extensive knowledge of the ‘sciences’. For in preservation of such wisdom, she knew a lot better than I did who she was, even if this was and would be an amalgamation of various influences. And in her knowledge of herself she would (a lot more easily than I ) and as Fanon advised the youth, ‘out of tentative obscurity discover [her] mission, fulfill it or betray it.’

It is through many follies and sometimes fancies, often in foreign lands that I have learnt the histories of many that I should have learnt whilst in my country. Luckily, slowly by slowly, I begin to perceive the true patterns of the past. Accordingly, I then become concerned about the educational priorities of this country and ask what exactly are we really learning to do?

I know many more are to pass through this enforced system, and thus if so, if this is the structure of education we have chosen, there is a great need to reconsider what is being taught in the halls of our educational institutions.

Or perhaps we would much rather continue dissecting fruit (rather awkwardly if I must say) than learn about ourselves?

If so, we can only await the further consequences of an education system that upholds our own self-effacement.

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

Ghana's electoral run-off

Nkrumah to the rescue

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/52779

Don't we all wish we were Ghanaian? They have just had universally acknowledged free and fair elections in which the difference between the two leading candidates (the flag bearer of the ruling party and that of the main opposition and former ruling party) was less than 2 per cent! Yet both groups accepted the outcome without screaming 'rigging', 'intimidation', 'torture', 'irregularities' and threatening 'no candidate = no election' , 'rivers of blood' or legal challenges. Both candidates and their parties and allies are busy preparing for the run-off.

By no means were the electioneering campaigns perfect, especially in hotly contested areas which hold the balance of the votes like Tamale and other parts of the marginalised northern region, where there was some violence. But on a scale of 'do or die' militia politics seen in many African countries – especially Ghana's neighbouring country of Nigeria – what they call violence in Ghana is perhaps less than what goes on in your average student union elections on a university campus.

Ghana is one of few countries on this continent that has an entrenched dominant two party political system. This is largely due to the personal hegemony and radical politics of the late Osagyefo (Akan for ‘redeemer’), Kwame Nkrumah. You were either for him or against him, but never indifferent. Nkrumah stood for radical nationalism and socialist pan-Africanism, while those against him generally opposed both subscribing to ethnic jingoism or a ‘little Ghana’ mentality. Of course not all those opposed to Nkrumah were reactionaries or ethnic jingoists, but generally they were allied to these negative approaches as a means of countering him.

Since that ignoble day of 24 February 1966 when the forces of local reaction and their external imperialist masters overthrew Nkrumah's regime, subsequent regimes in Ghana – whether military or civil – have been judged, consciously or unconsciously, in relation to this president. Even when the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and later other parties were banned neither the military dictatorships nor their compliant civilian regimes could extinguish the CPP or other parties from the hearts and mind of Ghanaians. This is what is generally referred to as the Danquah-Busia and Nkrumahist divide in Ghanaian politics.

Jerry Rawlings’s abortive revolution and subsequent military dictatorship of some 10 years and period of reluctant democratisation during another 10 years failed to establish a third force in Ghanaian politics. His hold on power was always mediated by both a willing and unwilling sectarian collaboration with different pro-Nkrumah forces. In the minds of many pro-Danquah–Busia elements in Ghanaian politics there is any case no distinction between Nkrumah and Rawlings (whom many radicals will call an anti-Nkrumah); they are both considered ‘verandah boys’ who incited the barbarians not just to the gates but into the castle.

President John Kufuor and the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) victory in 2000 was the first time in the history of Ghana that the Danquah-Busia tradition won a legitimate popular vote. Busia's victory in 1969 occurred largely because the military cleared the political field of the CPP and their allies and gave his long-term sparring partner Nkrumah a walk over.

The NPP's victory was partly a reaction against the long-term rule of Rawlings and the excesses of his first ten years in power. The fear that he was going to rule by proxy through his chosen successor, Arthur Mills, and the willingness of many Nkrumahists to cross the political divide gave Kufuor his victory. Kufuor's own ‘gentle giant’ personality and a series of lucky breaks, along with continuing doubts about Arthur Mills as an ineffectual Rawlings poodle and relatively stable economic growth, delivered Kufuor’s NPP an easy second term. Kufuor did not have to do anything significant to gain his victory, but was simply lucky to be at the right place at the right time to generate a 'feel good factor'. For instance, Ghana's 50th anniversary found him there, as well as the African Cup Of Nations, while numerous international meetings put Accra on the global map as a desirable location. But by 2008 things appear to be falling into a familiar historical shape. NPP rule is a class rule with all its ideological and political triumphalism. They represent the voice of privilege, the propertied classes and regionalised capital.

The presidential candidate of the NPP, Nana Akuffo-Ado, foreign minister for seven years under Kufuor, is an able individual, but his party could not deliver a broader social and political base for him to clinch the presidency on the first run. Neither could Jerry Rawlings's popularity and the increasing identification of Arthur Mills as his own man give him a 50 per cent plus majority. Hence the need for a run-off on 28 December. This stalemate has made the votes of a resurgent CPP and other Nkrumahist parties like the People's National Convention (PNC) and individuals a deciding factor. It was important that Nkrumah's daughter, Samia Nkrumah, stood and won her parliamentary seat on a CPP platform. She could become the anchor for a new generation of Nkrumahists in Ghanaian politics.

It is difficult to see how Nana could defeat Mills in the run off. People no longer see the NDC candidate as Rawlings' man but a candidate for change.

* 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/

African leaders and external landgrabbing

Owen Sichone – Pretoria University

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52936

Regarding Stephen Marks’s article China and the great global landgrab, China's (or Korea's or Britain's, for that matter) plan to secure future sources of food and raw materials for its people makes a lot of sense. What we need to figure out is the behaviour of Africa leaders who give away land, take in toxic waste by the shipload and condemn their own citizens to slave wages. What exactly are they doing?

Glorification of the Zimbabwean one-party state?

Lrak Xram

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52937

In response to scholars’ fears over military intervention in Zimbabwe at the recent CODESRIA conference, I agree with your sentiments around attempting to resolve the situation in a peaceful and democratic way. However, all this has been tried many times before in engaging with ZANU-PF. There is no need to wait for any foreign military intervention to de-humanise the people of that nation; ZANU-PF has already succeeded in that respect. As for democracy, no such luxury exists in Zimbabwe because the current regime will ensure that they will win any election at any cost. Furthermore, there will never be any ‘political process’ when faced with this kind of intransigent evil tyranny. As for peace, will this only be possible if ZANU-PF is the one and only ruling party? But then again, maybe you are in favour of one-party states? Your Marxist rhetoric referring to the intervention of ‘imperialist powers’ is, quite frankly, ludicrous. All that is necessary for evil to perpetuate itself is for good men to do nothing.

Disappointed with Mamdani

F. Kashiri

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52939

Mahmood Mamdani’s Lessons of Zimbabwe article is full of factual errors and brushed out truths, which I have numbered and will address below:

(1) Mamdani states ‘Although their strength lay in the countryside, the war vets formed the only alliance that was both independent of Mugabe and ZANU-PF’. Mugabe was and IS their patron, and is not independent at all.

(2) ‘By the late 1990s, market-led land transfers had dwindled to a trickle.’ Well, ask yourself why. After passing the Land Acquisition Act Mugabe had first refusal on every farm sale and he happily gave out 'expressions of no interest' in buying the land because he didn't care a jot whether the people had access to land or not.
(3) ‘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.’ This is completely wrong. Mugabe was forced to consider a new constitution by the action of democratic forces in civil society, in particular those of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) which the author wrongly calls the National Constituent Assembly. There was widespread anger with Mugabe’s corrupt abuse of power and his 15 (at-that-time) amendments to the constitution which had all served to give him dictatorial powers, which is why it is now so hard to have a 'power-sharing' government because according to the Mugabe-amended constitution the president has the final control of everything.

(4) The author talks of the ‘the Shona leadership of the peasant-based liberation movement’ implying that there were no Ndebele leaders, peasants, or citizens involved in the liberation. This is completely misleading.

(5) Mamdani talks of ‘Mugabe’s ferocious repression in Ndebele areas in 1986’. Actually this was ongoing and relentless between 1982 and 1987; the so-called 'unity' accord was finally agreed by Nkomo under extreme coercion in December 1987.

(6) The author says ‘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’, but doesn't explain why it distanced itself from ZANU-PF/Mugabe, again omitting those facts that show the true nature and length of the Zimbabwe people's revolt against Mugabe and ZANU-PF's corrupt oligarchy.

(7) Talking about the 2000 referendum on the constitution, the author says ‘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’, failing to mention the 15 amendments already made, as if this was the first time. By this point, yes, the Zimbabwean people generally were strongly anti-ZANU-PF, which is clearly reflected not only in the results of the Constitutional Referendum – the first time Mugabe ever lost a vote – but also in the 2000 elections in which the MDC almost achieved a majority despite widespread violence, intimidation and rigging – not alleged rigging but factually reported rigging.

(8) Then there is Mamdani comment ‘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’. Again, this is misleading. So very nice on paper, this makes it sound so rational, but in reality this was not what happened and the facts of the land 'acquisition' are well documented, meaning that there is no excuse for this misleading statement.

(9) ‘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.’ This is completely incorrect. Land 'occupations' continued in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and yes, 2008. The author should check recent reports and also the SADC tribunal's ruling on land acquisition in 2008.

(10) If ‘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’ and also that ‘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”’, then why are Zimbabweans starving today? Why is there no food? Why are the peasant farmers searching for berries and wild fruits?

(11) Mamdani’s comments on the issue of drought – ‘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’ – are also problematic. No, this year there is no drought, and last year there was no drought. There was a terrible drought in 2002–03, but it cannot be used as the main reason for starvation now. There have always been droughts in Zimbabwe and formerly in Rhodesia, but previously people had food. Why are people in all the surrounding countries able to feed themselves?

(12) The author then says that many of the people who need food aid now are ‘poor, urban residents who can’t afford imported food’, but why would Zimbabweans need expensive, imported food when the country always grew its own until the 'land reform'?

(13) Then Mamdani says that although there is no maize ‘the production of crops – sugar, tea, coffee – grown mainly by the large corporate plantations has remained steady.’ Please tell me where Zimbabweans can buy sugar then, either locally produced or imported? Nothing agricultural or economic for that matter – production, mining, nothing – has remained 'steady'.

(14) Finally, though the article is about land, is it possible to overlook the devastation of the health system, the education system, water provision, and electricity? Perhaps these are also caused by drought, the ZCTU, sanctions or perhaps the Ndebele? Meanwhile Mugabe’s clutch of cronies are building palaces, feasting on imported groceries, driving Hummers, appropriating HIV/Aids funds and looting diamonds from Chiadzwa. How can the country have no money for medicines and food when it has diamonds for the picking? Where are the diamonds going? What are Zimbabwe troops doing in the DR Congo? Carrying out another kind of 'land reform' perhaps?

This article is so very disappointing. I had, prior to reading this, deep respect for the author's views and writings, but this undermines all f that. Professor Mamdani, please, go to Zimbabwe and comprehend the utter corruption and debasement of the once-upon-a-time hero Mugabe. It is long past time for apologist theorising.

Praise for Mamdani on Zimbabwe

Michel Lafon

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52940

Mahmood Mamdani’s Lessons of Zimbabwe article presents an excellent, contextualised view of Zimbabwe. The land question is crucial for the country and the region. The MDC was initially mooted partially to diffuse it. The determined action of the West against the Mugabe regime is in part responsible for the present multifaceted crisis. The focus on formal democracy, for all its merits, hides the real issue.

Call for greater substance and logic

Musa Ntuli

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52942

Regarding Edrissa Jarju’s response to Ross Herbert’s article, A new day in America, it is a great pity and worrisome to read comments that appear to be coming from learned persons but lack substance and logic. I would be greatly relieved if our learned friends who have lost faith in Africa can cite any European country where similar events currently taking place, within South Africa, in particular, have not happened to a lesser or greater extent only without receiving anywhere near the same kind of publicity, because the media is owned by Europeans or people with their roots or patriotism placed firmly in European countries.

As a learned person one is expected, at least according to my standards, to be morally objective, logical and rational in their analysis of a situation and comments about how things can be made better, instead of comments that appear to be motivated by unpatriotic and prejudicial tendencies which our country does not need at this point in time.

Keep going the extra mile!

Rakai Health Science Program

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52941

Catherine Irura’s article Women, water and sanitation: going the extra mile is just so informative. There are things I simply took for granted, like about women during their menstrual cycle – gosh, just unbelievable yet very true at the same time. Keep up the talk on this – this article speaks out loud and clear about the water and sanitation issues in Africa.

Stop the raping of Congolese women!

Concerned Individual

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52938

Thanks to Carlyn Hambuba for her article The war in Congo: What is at stake for women? It does shed light on what is currently happening. However, at times I think that we need radical innovative strategies in order to be able to end the suffering of women in the DRC and especially in the country’s eastern side. Women have experienced 'all' forms of violence – being raped in the presence of family, seeing their own daughters/sons/husbands being raped, or simply being killed and left to die! Women and girls have been raped many times (some have lost count) and yet the perpetrators remain free! This situation must be handled differently and as a matter of urgency!

Obama's old wine in new bottles

D. Lwanga

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52943

I lament with Patrick Bond Obama's lies about change followed by a reality of ‘no change’. In fact I cried a week after the elections, because I realised that many of us who stand with marginalised, disenfranchised and chained people in Palestine, Cuba and Afghanistan were let in by too much zeal for change.

As a Ugandan, this resonates with me so well. I remember as a child of the 1980s in Uganda that people were so desperate for change. When Museveni came on board, the entire country literally embraced him, but change soon turned out into a menace and now 22 years down the road, we face a reality of ‘no change’. I hope Europe tames Obama internationally and I really hope Obama can find us some work domestically, because he and his team are now beginning to look like the old wine in new bottles.

Roads to peace are many

D. Lwanga

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52944

In response to Owen Sichone’s comments on Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem’s article, Rwanda vs. France: Who is trying whom?, I don't necessarily think all military murderers deserve to be put on trial. The roads to peace are many, not one. What happened to Charles Taylor might not have been good for Jonas Savimbi, yet the end results prove the same: peace in the countries concerned. Based on the gravity of their crimes and brutality, Nkunda and Kabila could for example be treated differently from Joseph Kony. And as I have already suggested, Kony deserves the same treatment as Savimbi.

Piracy as financial independence

Concerned for Somalis

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/52945

Regarding Sokari Ekine’s Blogging Africa piece of 26 July 2006, be glad that you have some financial freedom of choice, because people in other places, like Somalia, don't have access to such things. Somalia has been home to over ten years of near continuous civil war, and it isn't likely to let up anytime soon. Industry and development have been slow in the war-torn country, and there isn't a great deal of social mobility, unless of course you happen to be one of the local warlords.

Some citizens have found a way to make themselves a good living in these times of trouble by turning to one of the worlds' oldest professions, but it isn't one you're likely to see an ad for in the paper, and there isn't a benefits package, retirement, or even much job security, but many people have turned to it at times – that is, piracy.

Yes, Virginia, pirates. Now when most people these days think pirates, they conjure up images of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, but that isn't what pirates in the modern world are like. Modern pirates use high speed boats, AK-47s, RPG launchers, and GPS equipment. In recent months, a Ukrainian vessel carrying military equipment and a Saudi ship carrying about 2 million barrels of oil have been captured and their cargo and crews held for ransom. This is one of the primary ways for ordinary citizens to achieve some financial independence in that area, and foreign militaries are starting to send in their navies to fight off the pirates.

China returns to Africa: A Rising Power and a Continent Embrace

Book review

Stephen Marks

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/52792

China’s increasing African involvement often appears to generate more journalism than scholarship, and its coverage all too often tells us more about Western fears and myths than about Chinese intentions and African needs and priorities. African voices, and informed international scholarship are both heard too little. An initial step to remedying the first defect was Fahamu’s 2007 publication African perspectives on China in Africa edited by Firoze Manji and the present reviewer. Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira's volume goes a long way to remedying the second - though the three editors and many of their contributors are both already known for their substantial individual contributions.
China’s increasing African involvement often appears to generate more journalism than scholarship, and its coverage all too often tells us more about Western fears and myths than about Chinese intentions and African needs and priorities.

African voices, and informed international scholarship are both heard too little. An initial step to remedying the first defect was Fahamu’s 2007 publication African perspectives on China in Africa edited by Firoze Manji and the present reviewer. This volume goes a long way to remedying the second - though the three editors and many of their contributors are both already known for their substantial individual contributions.

Nonetheless it is a real advance to have so much of the serious analysis already under way brought together between two covers. As well as taking the analysis beyond the usual simplifications, one theme to emerge from many of the contributions is the multifaceted and developing character of China’s involvement.

Another is the importance of locating China’s role in its wider context. As the authors put it in their introduction, ‘China’s rapid gains on the continent, far from being a sudden “scramble for Africa” could be more adequately described as pushing on an open door, one which in any case the West had left ajar...’, not least as a result of ‘the previous decades of neo-liberal restructuring of African economies, including the removal of barriers to investment and the privatization of state-owned assets’.

Despite the conventional reduction of China’s involvement to a scramble for raw materials, since the 2006 Beijing summit there has been a shift, as the editors also point out, from resource acquisition to fields such as financial services, and agriculture - with the contentious issue of Chinese farmers in Africa as well as the development of agricultural centres across the continent, and the proposed Economic Co-operation Zones. And the much-debated $5bn DRC package, as well as including infrastructure development and mines, also promises 31 hospitals and two universities.

Political economy is rightly the starting point of the collection. Andrea Goldstein Nicolas Pinaud and Helmut Reisen, building on work they have undertaken for OECD, look at the trade implications for Africa of China’s rise; not only through the bilateral China-African relation but also through China’s impact on the global demand for African commodities. They stress the importance of ensuring that the windfall proceeds of the commodity prices boom is used constructively for diversification and restructuring rather than siphoned off by rent-seeking elites.

But how can Chinese involvement assist industrialisation rather than simply accelerate the deindustrialisation which trade liberalisation brings in its wake? Deborah Brautigam looks at two differing but equally encouraging if exceptional case studies - Mauritius and Nigeria.

In Mauritius the local Chinese community played a key role, it seems, in persuading the government to establish an export processing zone. Travelling to Asia, they established joint ventures with partners in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and later the mainland. ‘These investments exposed Mauritians [both Chinese and non-Chinese] to the intricacies of global production and export processes which led to dynamic export-oriented manufacturing growth’.

But there are untypical features. Chinese business networks were already established in Mauritius in the nineteenth century , and were establishing major local industries a century ago. Their regular contacts with relatives and associiates elsewhere in the Chinese diaspora are long-established and antedate and are independant of China’s ‘going out’ policy. And in multi-ethnic Mauritius, involvement of Mauritians of other ethnic backgrounds seems to have proceeded almost automatically.

And a local African entrepreneurial tradition was also clearly key, according to Brautigam’s account, in the ability of Nigerian traders around Nnewi to use their Chinese merchant contacts to locate suppliers in Taiwan who could supply them with automobile spare parts which they later manufactured locally, giving rise to a major Nigerian industrial cluster.

The oil industry is the major locus of the critique of China’s African role, with claims of Chinese support for repression in Sudan in defiance of international sanctions, and for corruption in Angola in defiance of Western attempts to foster good governance being the two most common items on the charge-sheet.

Ricardo Soares de Oliveira in his analysis of China’s oil investment in Africa, makes no attempt to whitewash the role of China’s oil majors. He concedes that China’s involvement will confirm existing negative trends. But he finds little in Western behaviour to justify any assumption of the moral high ground. ‘The West does have a moral dimension to its present day African policies but the oil sector...has always been, and remains, conspicuously absent from it’.

The Chinese IOCs - CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC - do not disguise their technological weakness by comparison with the Western majors. But they compensate for this by their ability to offer generous comprehensive package deals. Yes, Soares concedes, this strengthens existing non-developmental and autocratic elites - but that is the way of the industry, western IOCs included.

Western IOCs are partners with all three Chinese IOCs and if necessary embarassing involvements such as in Sudan, can be seperated out from their Western-quoted subsidiaries.

In fact, he argues, Chinese policy is no different from that of etatiste western states before privatisation and to some extent even after, as with France and ElfAquitaine, Italy with ENI or Brazil with Petrobras.

An interesting Chinese perspective comes from Professor He Wenping, Director of African Studies at CASS, Beijing. She describes the development of Chinese engagement culminating in the FOCAC declaration, in terms of the ‘win-win’ principle. But she also describes a number of the problems which have arisen in the relationship, in a way which gives an interesting insight into the degree to which Chinese scholars and policy advisers are aware of African criticisms and fears.

In particular she points to the need for greater attention to environmental impacts and the impact on and benefit to local populations in resource extraction projects. She also suggests that the negative impact of Chinese textile imports on African employment should be offset by greater Chinese assistance to restructuring in African textile industries. And she draws attention to the need for greater Chinese awareness of the extent and speed of democratic political develeopment in Africa.

‘In government documents and the daily talk of the ordinary people, words like democracy and human rights are frequently heard. The development of NGOs and civil society is also quite fast, and Africans are very proud of this’ she stresses.

Perhaps her most interesting suggestion is that the Chinese government should consider drafting a Law on Overseas Investment requiring a proportion of profits to be set aside for social programmes.

Sudan is one country in which Chinese policy has continued to evolve in recent years - though less in response to any Western pressure than as a result of African considerations, as Daniel Large explains in his chapter ‘’From non-interference to constructive engagement? China’s evolving relations with Sudan’.

He traces the history of China’s engagement with Sudan since 1959, down to the role China played in persuading Sudan to accept the AU-UN peacekeeping mission in 2007. Having originally underestimated the importance of the Darfur issue, internal debate among Chinese policymakers included a critical current concerned with the reputational damage to China’s image in Africa, as well as its implications for regional stability - especially given the interface with the situation in Chad.

Another factor influencing a contnuing evolution of China’s policy is the need to foster relations with the South, especially given the possibility of independence after the 2011 referendum. Despite the openness of Southern leaders to China, they have not forgotten China’s role in consolidating the NIF regime.

Indeed Large points out that despite the evolution of China’s policy, there is a continuity of support for the NCP, and indeed an increased dependence on Khartoum for security in the face of attacks on Chinese personnel.

Garth Shelton contributes an analysis of China’s relations with South Africa, proposing that further develeopment of the relationship should include a merger of FOCAC with NEPAD; more Chinese investment in South Africa, and an increase in tourism; and bilateral partnership on a number of global issues including a greater role for Chinese peacekeepers, restructuring of the UN and the global trading system, and better South-South co-operation.

However there is no mention of what some see as a Chinese strategy of using investment in South African companies as a way to gain access to their existing networks elsewhere in Africa - most notably as in the 2007 acquisition of a 20% stake in Standard Bank.

The collection also includes a number of fascinating case studies, from a history of the TAZARA railway to an account of Chinese medicine in Tanzania. As well as Deborah Brautigam’s study, there are also contributions on the role of local Chinese entrepreneurs in Namibia and Cap Verde.

In the concluding section Chris Alden examines the accusation of ‘Chinese imperialism’ and its three charges; that China reinforces a traditional exploitative trade pattern; that the ‘non-interference’ policy means backing repressive regimes where this serves China’s interests; and the bogy of Chinese immigrants as a ‘fifth column’, in a modern version of the ‘yellow peril’ scare.

Against the ‘imperialist’ thesis he points to the lack of any ‘civilising mission’ doctrine or other justificatory imperial ideology; to the lack of any territorial ambitions, direct or indirect, and to trade relations which are not mercantilist - though on this last point one interpetation of China’s pursuit of ‘resource equity’ could be seen as an important qualification.

Christopher Clapham sees China’s African engagement converging over time with the traditional techniques employed by its predecessors. The basic constraints affect all outside powers engaging in Africa, he insists; in particular what he terms the ‘intractability of African governmentalities’ - the fact that Africa, given its demography and geography is ‘an extremely difficult space to organise and manage’.

Over time, he argues, African elites have developed skilful techiques for managing unequal relations with outside powers to the benefit of their own interests in a type of ‘rentier statehood’ and China will end up developing the traditional techniques employed by other powers to cope with these problems.

Daniel Large’s conclusion concentrates instead on the need to develop a distinctive scholarship on the topic, as traditionally, Western academic Africanists have known little or nothing of China, and academic Sinologists have been equally ignorant of Africa. Meanwhile both were equally ignorant of the work of Chinese Africanists.

But he does consider whether those distinctive features of China’s Africa policy which he terms ‘Chinese exceptionalism’ will survive, as the West attempts to socialise China as a ‘responsible’ power.

He concludes that ‘the incremental revision or even the abandonment of exceptionalism will signal the desire to converge with other foreign actors in Africa and, concurrently, the end of the last vestige of Mao’s ideological project’.

But how, other than chronologically, can the distinctive features of this ‘exceptionalism’ be attributed to a hangover from Maoism, rather than as a set of entirely rational policy options for an emerging power without the will or the ability to mount a direct challenge to the established powers?

And even more important is the question which has arisen since this collection went to press, of how the entire framework of these international economic and political relations might be undermined or transformed by the continuing global economic turmoil.

China returns to Africa: A Rising Power and a Continent Embrace
Chris Alden, Daniel Large and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira
Hurst and Company, London 2008
ISBN 978-1-85065-885-6 casebound and -3 paperback

1926 Miles of Training

Karest Lewela

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/52783

He picked up his tenor saxophone and played from memory Coltrane’s Naima. The style was not the usual hard bop. It had an overly intense feel, filled with staccato punches as if Blakey in his prime was teaching an Art class, pure drums and no cymbal. Most critics would have said he played like an amateur whilst the ones who consistently feign some form of enlightenment would have said he was borrowing heavily from bebop. It reminded him of his many struggles, most of them hidden under his ever so cool demeanor and the social expectations that arose with his manhood without even the pretense of his consultation or training. He could hardly remember when he became a man, not in that sense at the very least. He was no fool. However, he somehow seemed to have missed an important lesson over the years. The indications were there: deep husky voice that took him away from soloist roles, stubby chin with inconsistently sprouting hairs, broad shoulders that made his life a nightmare in an overcrowded city and that very tuft of not-so-public hair that he still didn’t understand the purpose it was meant to serve and whether or not his newly acquired manly status called on him to groom it or not.
He picked up his tenor saxophone and played from memory Coltrane’s Naima. The style was not the usual hard bop. It had an overly intense feel, filled with staccato punches as if Blakey in his prime was teaching an Art class, pure drums and no cymbal. Most critics would have said he played like an amateur whilst the ones who consistently feign some form of enlightenment would have said he was borrowing heavily from bebop. It reminded him of his many struggles, most of them hidden under his ever so cool demeanor and the social expectations that arose with his manhood without even the pretense of his consultation or training. He could hardly remember when he became a man, not in that sense at the very least. He was no fool. However, he somehow seemed to have missed an important lesson over the years. The indications were there: deep husky voice that took him away from soloist roles, stubby chin with inconsistently sprouting hairs, broad shoulders that made his life a nightmare in an overcrowded city and that very tuft of not-so-public hair that he still didn’t understand the purpose it was meant to serve and whether or not his newly acquired manly status called on him to groom it or not.

As if the physiological elements were not confusing enough, there was this concept of being a man often whispered about and widely (if not dogmatically) accepted. Everyone knew what it meant to be a man. Strangely no one could explain that to him, and not because everyone had taken an oath of secrecy. In his infinite wisdom, he understood that this was one of those concepts like his father’s love for him. It was understood but never voiced. He believed it existed, but had no proof for it, other than from the angle that the father had taken his obligations as the head of the household with such piety that it would be insane not to see this amorphous, overbearing and yet invisible love for him. At times, the love would take a physical form, but such memories of a hollow bamboo cane, the pith filled with his father’s mysterious love were not happy thoughts.

As reminiscence brought bamboo to skin, again to prepare for the mantle of manhood, Naima was sounding like the beats to a Missy Elliot song with the nagging resounding clang of the Isikuti jingle that soon becomes enjoyable, especially with the sobering thought of how short life is.
You see he was beginning to figure it out. Being a man had something to do with love, and not that kind of stupid love that makes you do things you don’t want to or even enjoy in exchange for hope for something that you haven’t even defined for yourself. No, we are not talking about the one that makes you defiant to rationale like the actualization of weather forecasts. We are talking about the stable, reliable love, much like his father’s love for him. He also had this gut feeling that this manhood was linked to the form that the faith that the preacher at his church always had, more
evident when he stood to call on the offertory as opposed to the altar call. He was thanking the Lord for the broad shoulders, for the enormity of this task that mimicked faith, love and mystery was beginning to sink in. It was as at the end of a certain hour, the Universe had gone through a fundamental shift much like the tectonic movements history was debating during that era.

However, there was still an unexplained gap. When did all this happen? Why was everyone so angry with him? What is this they expected him to know and do? Oh, and whilst we are at it, what was wrong with Naima?

Naima had yelled at him today because he had missed to come in on an offbeat. He was struggling to understand the motions behind her fury. She knew very well he was a jazz player, and improvisation is what had brought the two of them together. A few years back, he had brought Naima into the band, not because she was an extraordinary singer, but because she looked good! In that period, his tenor was creamy rich, the sort of voice that sneaks generosity into the mind of the meanest wallet holder and gushes out in crisp and silent money, nothing of the percussion kind if you get my drift. So he would sing, and they would drool over Naima. Times had changed, and he had caught the grown-up disease, and his voice had become husky rendering him captive to a shoddy delivery of the sotto voce part of Mozart’s requiem mass:

Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus

The only problem was that he hated Mozart. He detested the soutenu air of classical music, as it always cut off his supply of oxygen ending in a long yawn. So he had stopped crooning altogether. Lucky for him, as his gigs became popular, Naima’s voice had grown richer. Naima had picked jazz very quick, and her agility coupled with the rich tremor of her voice (largely linked to cheap tobacco), allowed him to make her the lead singer and experiment with a rebellious sound that attracted all the geniuses and the drug addicts into The Maestro Cat Club everyday. The swell of intellectual debate, the intensity of dark poetry, the ambience of smoke-filled dim lights, the scandal of scantily clad and generously sexy foxes (none of that chicken stuff that was being foolishly predicted to come in the 21st century). Naima was a steamy fox that not only inspired his music, his band, his style but also his manhood. He would write poetry so fresh it rivaled a good cup of coffee, and late in the night as he fitted the rhymes into freshly spun rhythms, she would churn out melodies so passionate, creative and free that the score would have to be recorded the morning after. Theirs was a life of symphony in and out of bed, so powerful that when the gales of gaiety lifted it up, an improvisation on stage would create an alternative sound.

Today, he had pushed another limit on stage, he shifted partially from 4 time to 3 to 2 and syncopated on G flat at the point when she was lulling an E flat into a diminuendo. The effect was shocking and refreshing, until she paused and yelled at him. The yell was full of anguish, as if he had betrayed her. She stared at him and coldly muttered: “When will you grow up and become a man?” He had quickly looked at the score, trying to locate these lyrics – a mixture of disbelief and hope. She had run offstage, a drama queen in action, toppling the drum set. A brawl had broken out after that, as addicts struggled with harsh reality, demanding refunds from the peddlers for the inferior batch of cannabis that had been sold that night at The Maestro. Reality like, being a man, was too harsh an edict and unfathomable.

He had walked out and headed straight to the studio where he picked up his flute and did a rendition of Trane’s Naima. Naima was irritating, so was his playing of Naima. So I suggested we play Flamenco Sketches, for if feuds be in the real world, art must play its part: mimic or inspire.

Miles versus Coltrane.

Africa blogging roundup 16 December 2008

Sokari Ekine

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/52802

Sokari Ekine reviews the following blogs:
Théophile Kouamouo
Rombo
AfroMusing
Mootbox
Blacklooks
Glory O Nigeria
In a fitting end to 2008, Ivorian blogger Théophile Kouamouo created a Meme on “Why I blog about Africa”. He asks
“Do we blog for the diaspora and for the world at large, cut off from our contemporary on the continent? Is blogging about Africa done in the same way as blogging about Europe or Asia? Does the African-oriented blogosphere have something specific to offer to the world version 2.0?”

And responds to his own question

“I blog about Africa with joy because I believe that it is from our individual and mixed voices that the African renaissance will sprout, which will come as surely as Martin Luther King's dream became a reality forty years later. I read African-oriented blogs with joy because they give me a less monolithic and less doomed image of the continent and its inhabitants.”
Other bloggers who have taken up the Meme are Rombo of What an African Woman Wants

“Africa is under my skin. Africa is the voices in my head. Africa is the itch on my back that I can’t quite reach.. Africa is my “I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me.” She’s all over me like wet on water. She’s beautiful and she’s strong and she’s got so much to give, she inspires me and I love her truly madly deeply. She’s battered and bruised and sometimes broken and I love her even more. She’s always on my mind and in my heart. It’s not so much, then, that I choose to blog about Africa. It’s that I can’t not.

AfroMusing and Mootbox
“I do not blog for hungry kids or to broker peace between warring factions. My blog does not influence which African child will receive an OLPC and one that will not. Blogging about Africa is therapy for me. I have an immense interest in the development on the continent, which most likely was awakened by the trips with my father as he criss-crossed the continent in search of the next deal.”
Blacklooks blogs describes Africa as a “contrary friend who despite her faults cannot help loving her....
“I love the way she moves, her facial expressions, the taste of her food and the smell and colours of the earth but most of all I write about her because I so much want her to be OK to be right to prosper and to be in control of herself and to be confident enough to love herself!”


Glory O Nigeria

China to promote cooperation with Sierra Leone

2008-12-19

http://www.concordtimessl.com/china4cooperation.htm

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping has announced in China that his country was ready to promote bilateral ties with Sierra Leone. In a meeting with foreign affairs minister Zainab Bangura, Jinping said China would assist Sierra Leone in the area of trade, education and health, adding that diplomatic ties between the two countries started 37 years ago.

China celebrates 30 years of market reforms

Sanusha Naidu

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/52848

December 18th, 2008 marks the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic [url= ]http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4572&page=7] market reforms and economic modernisation[/url] programme. It comes at a time when the Chinese is experiencing a economy [url= ]http://www.africanews.com/site/list_messages/22221] serious contraction in its exports[/url] for the first time in seven years amidst the spiraling effects of the global financial crisis. Reuters news agency reports that the drivers of the economic model have been caught in the contagion effects of the financial crisis. Even though the China Dailyreports that China’s economic fundamentals are sound, President Hu’s administration is concerned about the economy’s ability to absorb the million new graduates due to enter the economy in 2009. To address the situation the CCP has proposed a rural graduate work programme.

In spite of the economic challenges that face the Chinese leadership and people, the last 30 years have yielded some positive outcomes. Apart from the spectacular growth rates, rising incomes, and an impressive trade surplus and foreign reserve, the reforms also created an avenue for philanthropic activities. In a special interview with Douwei News, renowned scholar and head of the NPO Research Center at Renmin University, Kang Xiaoguang, highlights that China’s non-profit sector has been a beneficiary of the reform years.

According to Kang China’s NGO sector has undergone two significant developments: first there is more acceptance of and engagement by China’s middle class and younger population in the non-profit sector and second as Chinese companies prosper, ‘wealthy Chinese flock to talk about charity and corporate responsibility, donations to Chinese NGOs from domestic sources have been constantly increasing and that has driven up the salary levels of NGO employees, attracting even more elites to join the cause’.

Kang points out that this shift in the view of the NGO sector is important in that it can assist the central government in the provision of ‘badly needed social services’. While Kang is optimistic about the future of China’s non-profit sector, he also advises that this does not mean that the CCP has completely recognized the independence of NGOs. Those with a more politically influenced mandate are viewed with caution.

While China continues to debate the impact of the financial crisis on its growth trajectory and the other structural imperatives of its economy, the African engagement still remains on the radar.

On the 14th December 2008 Kenya marked the 45th anniversary of diplomatic ties with China. The occasion was celebrated with an exchange of congratulatory messages between Presidents Kibaki and Hu Jintao. Both sides agree to continue to collaborate on issues of mutual interest.

At the same time Uganda has attracted a US$ 1.5. billion investment deal from the Chinese government to finance a trade zone near Lake Victoria. The money ‘would fund a new port and logistics centre, an airport, roads and telecoms infrastructure, facilities for manufacturing companies and financial services, an agriculture training centre and residential and entertainment areas’.

‘Paradise Investment Company of the Chinese had signed an agreement last month with Ugandan partner Kagera Eco-cities, giving it a majority share in the management of the zone ‘. About 40 Chinese companies have expressed interest in setting up operations in the zone.

But it maybe some time before the zone gets off the ground. One area of concern relates to the environmental impact assessment, especially given the large marine system in the area.

It also remains unclear whether the trade zone forms part of China’s five Special Economic Zones (SEZs) announced at the 2006 FOCAC Summit.

While Uganda was securing the investment deal with China, Angolan President, Eduardo Dos Santos, made a critical trip to Beijing to seek further financial assistance. On the back of falling oil prices and overall commodity prices [President Dos Santos is hoping to secure url=http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/84937], more credit lines [/url]to assist with the country’s reconstruction and rehabilitation project. Following an overwhelming victory in the Parliamentary elections in September, the Dos Santos government has to now deliver on the promises it has made to the electorate. But the financial crisis taking its toll on Western financial institutions with resources experiencing a dramatic decline, has created a severe constraint for Angola’s infrastructure budget.

This means that the provision of the social services programme is under pressure and the Angolan government is hoping that any new money from China would be used to finance such programmes, especially water projects. It looks likely that China will respond to Angola’s financial dilemma.

Yet, critics will be sceptical about the wisdom of Angola borrowing more money in the current climate of tumbling oil prices, thus increasing the country’s volatile credit exposure.

This brings us back to the debate of whether China poses a threat or opportunity to Africa’s development, which becomes more relevant in the current architecture of the global credit crunch. In response Dr. Henning Melber asks whether China’s engagement in Africa is more of the same, while Professor Edward Friedman seems to feel that China’s role in Africa could stimulate the continent’s economies to grow like the ‘flying geese model’.

IN OTHER NEWS…..

Illegal Chinese clothing and textiles continue to penetrate the South African market. The latest raid occurred in the China Town shopping bazaar in Ottery, Cape Town. South African revenue services found that goods were being procured through third markets like Botswana, Namibia, and Mozambique without the necessary documentation. While the raid was praised by the South African Clothing and Textile Union (SACTWU) in protecting jobs, the newly formed breakaway party from the ANC, Congress of the People (COPE) found that its ‘Proudly South African’ label for its memorabilia was actually ‘made in China’. This does not bode well for the newly formed Party’s hopes of capturing significant portions of the working class vote.

CNPC is hoping to bid for a Canadian energy company to broaden its African assets. If the deal goes through, CNPC will have acquire a 50% stake in Libya’s Ghadames Basin. This is a sought-after investment for the Chinese as they feel that Libya has immense geology potential.

Finally China has confirmed that it will deploy its naval ships in the Gulf of Aden to fight against piracy. The first deployment will be in two weeks.

* Sanusha Naidu is research director of the China in Africa Programme in Fahamu based in Cape Town.

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

China gives U.S.$100, 000 to ECOWAS Peace Fund

2008-12-19

http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=19668

The ECOWAS Peace Fund got a boost Monday with a donation of US$100, 000 from China. At a brief ceremony in Abuja, the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Xu Jianguo, who presented the cheque of the said amount to the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, said the contribution was in recognition of ECOWAS' efforts in regional integration. While describing ECOWAS as a "very important regional organization in Africa," Mr. Xu said that China and ECOWAS faced similar challenges and that China would not hesitate to assist the regional institution.

Ethiopia: ZTE set to transfer technology, strengthen people-to-people ties

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/4wec3u

A Chinese business company, ZTE, said it has been offering capacity building training to Ethiopians in a bid to enhance technology transfer and strengthen people-to-people relations between Ethiopia and China. ZTE country chief representative, Zhang Yanmeng told ENA on Wednesday that the company will offer training to 1,000 workers of the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (ETC) on ‘Code Division Multiple Access’ (CDMA) network installations.

Foreign companies still flock to China, study finds

2008-12-19

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/17/business/hkinvest.php

Hong Kong may be in a recession, and China's fast-paced growth is rapidly slowing, but that has not diminished the attractiveness of China to foreign companies. That is one of the conclusions to be drawn from the latest figures from InvestHK, the Hong Kong department that promotes the city as a place to do business. Hong Kong is a often bridgehead for those wanting to set up a business in mainland China.

China to the rescue?

Stephen Marks

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/52762

They were also said to be discussing raising the threshold of personal income tax from 2,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan a month to spur domestic consumption.

This follows the massive $586 billion stimulus package on announced on Nov 9. China needs at least 8 percent annual growth to employ the roughly 10 million people entering the job market each year.

At the same time emergency cash bailouts have been announced for China’s ailing airlines. The Financial Times reported on 10 December that China Eastern Airlines will receive a Rmb3bn ($437m) cash injection from the government, following an equal handout to China Southern Airlines with Air China, the third of China’s ‘big three’, expected to follow.

At the same time as they were promised continuing government assistance, the airlines were told to cut imports from abroad - a blow to manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus who were hoping a booming China market would help them through the recession.

Earlier, it was announced that Chery, one of China’s largest automakers, has arranged access to loans of up to Rmb10bn ($1.45bn) from the state-owned China Export Import Bank. The carmaker’s domestic sales have fallen in line with a sharp slowdown in Chinese car sales.

The news came as the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers announced a 10 per cent drop in November car sales in China, the world’s second largest market.

New figures showed China’s industrial production growing at what was said to be the weakest pace in nine years as exports slowed and the economy cooled.
.
According to the Financial Times: ‘exports fell in November for the first time in almost seven years. With demand in many of its main markets slowing sharply, Chinese exports declined 2.2 per cent from a year earlier. Imports also fell 17.9 per cent from a year earlier, according to Chinese customs figures, prompting the government to announce plans to further boost the economy.

‘The Chinese data shocked economists. The figures were far below forecasts, even in the light of sharp slumps in exports in November from both Taiwan and South Korea’.

This follows a warning from Central Bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan that China needs to prepare for a “worst case scenario” as the global slump worsens.

Exporters of toys, clothes and furniture were reported to be cutting production or closing down, triggering a surge in labour disputes and increasing the risk of social unrest.

Nonetheless some business analysts remained optimistic about China’s business prospects as the massive stimulus package begins to kick in later next year.

Gao Xiqing, vice-chairman and President of China’s $200m sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp, told the Financial Times that he will no longer risk investing in western financial institutions because of concerns about their viability and a lack of consistency in their governments’ policies.

And in a fascinating in-depth interview with ‘Atlantic’ magazine he reveals how he concluded years ago that financial derivatives are ‘bullshit’ and advises the West to ’be nice to the countries that lend you money’.

At the same time Lou Jiwei, the fund’s chairman and CEO, confirmed that China had no plans for further investments in Western financial institutions, nor did it have any plans to “save” the world through economic policies.

A similar message was delivered by senior Chinese officials as they lectured top US officials in Beijing for a top-level economic summit. As the Financial Times reported;

‘The US was lectured about its economic fragilities on Thursday as senior Chinese officials urged the administration to stabilise its economy, boost its savings rate and protect Chinese investments.

‘The message went to Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, in Beijing for the strategic economic dialogue he helped launch to discuss long-term issues between the two countries.
...Wang Qishan, a vice-premier and leader of the Chinese delegation at the two-day talks, called on the US to take swift action to address the crisis.

“We hope the US side will take the necessary measures to stabilise the economy and financial markets as well as guarantee the safety of China’s assets and investments in the US,” he said....Although China also faces a rapidly slowing economy and rising unemployment, the tone of the comments reflected an underlying shift in power.’

Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, observed: “One result of the crisis is that the US no longer holds the high ground to lecture China on financial or macroeconomic policies.”

As Associated Press pointed out, ‘Beijing owns $585 billion in Treasury debt that has helped to finance U.S. budget deficits and its holdings of other U.S. assets are growing. But the weak dollar and financial turmoil have fueled Chinese anxiety about such investments.

Nonetheless US Treasury secretary Paulson stressed that continuing US engagement with China was producing results in getting the world economy through the crisis. And his team stressed that President-elect Obama’s transition team was being fully briefed.

And it seems likely that despite campaign noises hinting at protectionism and a strong line on Tibet and human rights issues, the Obama administration will also be committed to positive engagement. As Bloomberg reported;

‘With the U.S. now officially in a recession, China holds more cards than it did even a few months ago. Washington is more reliant on Beijing- the largest holder of U.S. Treasuries -- to buy more government securities to finance deficit spending...The upside of interdependence is that the two nations should be less likely now to take punitive measures against each other, says Nicholas Lardy, an economist who specializes in China at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. There’s no incentive for China to stop buying U.S. securities; it needs a safe investment for dollar reserves, and its growth depends on the health of the U.S. economy. Congress also may hesitate before demanding trade barriers against a country that’s the main source of cheap goods for budget- conscious consumers’

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

Global: A Guide to Top 100 Companies in China

Call for Contributions

2008-12-17

http://web.rollins.edu/~wzhang/toc.htm

With more than 1.3 billion people, China has the largest population and one of the fastest growing economies in the world. While much has been written about the country’s overall economic growth, much less is known about the companies helping to generate it. Scheduled to be published by World Scientific in 2010-11, A Guide to Top 100 Companies in China will provide up-to-date and comprehensive coverage of key corporations as ranked by revenue size. Edited by Professors Wenxian Zhang and Ilan Alon of Rollins College, this reference guide will highlight the major enterprises in China, which as a gauge of the country’s overall economy have made significant contributions to the economic growth of recent years.

Global: Interview with China Foreign Ministry spokesperson

2008-12-17

http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xwfw/s2510/t525645.htm

On December 9, 2008, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Liu Jianchao held a regular press conference and answered questions on China-France relations, the Six-Party Talks, the situation in Zimbabwe, etc.

What Russia needs to do

2008-12-17

http://tinyurl.com/5aso7l

After the break in the 1990s, Russia is making a comeback to the African continent. Effective penetration into Africa requires an integrated approach. We need to make our political contacts in Africa more active. Russia has economic interests on all continents where it is encountering active competition from the United States, European Union nations, or China. Of late, the economic and political interests of these players have intersected in Africa.

Global: Chinalco bides time on Rio stake

2008-12-17

http://tinyurl.com/58nk7x

China Inc is unlikely to assist Rio Tinto with a major cash injection any time soon, despite what Chinese officials say is a top-level Government directive for state-owned companies to go out and buy international resources assets at current discount prices. Rio Tinto has announced it will slash 14,000 jobs, cut $US5 billion ($7.6 billion) in capital spending next year and accelerate asset sales to repay $US10 billion of debt by the end of 2009 as the global financial crisis curbs demand for metals.

Africa: China to train 15,000 African personnel

2008-12-17

http://www.cctv.com/english/20081207/102691.shtml

China has promised to train 15,000 African personnel in the next three years to strengthen the cooperation in human resources development between China and Africa.

Angola: KBR to build refinery

2008-12-17

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/6148672.html

KBR Inc., the U.S. engineering firm that split from Halliburton Co. last year, and Sonangol, Angola’s state oil company, signed an agreement to build a refinery in the port of Lobito, KBR said. The Houston-based company got involved in the project after Sonangol in March last year said it ended talks with China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. over the $3.7 billion, 200,000- barrel-a-day refinery project, known as Sonaref.

Kenya: More goodies from China

2008-12-17

http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/Local/More-goodies-from-China-1289.html

The Chinese government will fund major infrastructural projects to promote investment, that would see Kenya elevated into a middle level economy, Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said. Speaking during a Commemorative Scholarship Awarding ceremony in Kibera, Mr Odinga said the China African Development Bank (CADB), which runs a multi-trillion shilling investment base, has expressed interest in the construction of the Lamu-Juba standard rail-line project, whose completion would link countries in the horn of Africa to the sea port.

China's CNMC to raise $145m through bonds for Zambia, Burma projects

2008-12-17

http://www.metalbulletin.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=2063178

China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group Co (CNMC) said it is raising 1 billion yuan ($145 million) through bonds to finance its Chambishi copper project in Zambia and Tagaung Taung nickel project in Burma.

China, Kenya mark 45th anniversary of diplomatic ties

2008-12-18

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/14/content_10502291.htm

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki exchanged congratulatory messages on Sunday to mark the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. Hu said in his message that the friendly and cooperative connections between the two sides have experienced sound, steady development in the past 45 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, despite changes in the international political arena and the respective situation in the two countries.

China’s export fall worse than predicted

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/52799

With the recent sharp decline in Chinese manufacturing output, the global decoupling theory seems to have died a well-deserved death. The idea that developing countries had become less dependent on US economic conditions, and so were insulated from the US crisis, was based on a potent combination of bad analysis and wishful thinking. In fact the first stage of the crisis has primarily affected trade-deficit countries, which included many of the rich countries.
With the recent sharp decline in Chinese manufacturing output, the global decoupling theory seems to have died a well-deserved death. The idea that developing countries had become less dependent on US economic conditions, and so were insulated from the US crisis, was based on a potent combination of bad analysis and wishful thinking. In fact the first stage of the crisis has primarily affected trade-deficit countries, which included many of the rich countries. The second stage will see the crisis move to trade-surplus countries, most of which are in the developing world.

The dependence of developing countries on US demand should have been obvious from the global balance of payments data, which show the US trade deficit and developing country trade surpluses rising as a share of global gross domestic product in an almost unbroken line from 1997 to 2007. This suggests that there is a lot more of the crisis to come. To date the crisis has mainly involved adjustment among the large over-consuming countries: the US, Spain, the UK, France, Italy and Australia. In each case the credit crisis has all but eliminated the debt-fuelled consumption binge that enabled their large trade deficits. But that cannot be the end of the story. The global balance of payments must balance, and a reduction of consumption by one sector in the global balance must come with a corresponding adjustment.

There are three ways the system can adjust. One way is for the underlying global imbalances to remain in place. Governments from the US and other trade-deficit countries can borrow and spend aggressively to replace contracting household consumption. But as debt-fuelled consumption by the likes of the US has been one of the fundamental problems, simply replacing one overconsuming American entity by another cannot be a long-term solution.

The second way is for trade-surplus countries to engineer sharp increases in domestic consumption, most likely though massive fiscal expansion, that match the decline in US household consumption and so reduce the overcapacity problem. The problem with this solution is that the scale of the adjustment is beyond the capacity of most countries. A decline in US consumption equal to 5 per cent of US GDP, for example (which is a low estimate), would require an increase in Chinese consumption equal to 17 per cent of Chinese GDP – or a nearly 40 per cent growth in consumption. This is clearly unlikely.

That leaves one other way to adjust – a sharp decline in global production, with massive factory bankruptcies to end overcapacity. The burden of the adjustment will fall on trade-surplus countries, unless trade-deficit countries are willing to absorb a large part of it. But given political realities it is Asian production which is most likely to decline. The economic pain will be high and potentially destabilising.

Before this happens there is a grave risk that individual Asian countries will try to avoid the contraction in demand by increasing their ability to export overcapacity by enacting trade-related measures – export subsidies, subsidised financing, currency depreciation, import tariffs – that enable them to force the overcapacity adjustment on to their trading partners.

This was the US strategy when, under similar circumstances to China today, it was forced to adjust to the 1929-31 crisis. In 1929 it was the US that had the serious overcapacity problem. For much of the 1920s it was able to export overcapacity by running large trade surpluses, but when the 1929-31 financial crisis eliminated the ability of trade deficit countries to finance their absorption of US overcapacity, the US, as the leading overcapacity nation, faced an ugly adjustment.

The US tried to avoid the adjustment by enacting trade tariffs – most notoriously the Smoot-Hawley bill of 1930 – and in so doing force the contraction in production on to the rest of the world. Trade-deficit countries did not co-operate, with the result that international trade all but collapsed. That forced the US into adjusting domestically, which it did via a collapse in production – a process we call the Great Depression.

There is a great risk that we see a repeat of this sorry story. US overconsumption was a fundamental part of the recent global imbalance and one way or the other US consumption must decline and savings rise. But just as US overconsumption must decline, so must Asian overproduction. This can only happen with an increase in Asian consumption or a drop in production. Next year will be difficult for Asia.

* Michael Pettis is a professor of finance at Peking University
* This article appeared in the Financial Times on December 14 2008

Cholera death-toll tops 1,100

2008-12-19

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5105

The death toll from a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has soared to 1,111, the United Nations said on Thursday, adding to pressure for a quick solution to the crisis in the southern African country. South African ruling African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma ruled out military intervention and backed a diplomatic push as the way to end political deadlock and prevent a total collapse of the once relatively prosperous nation.

Ending Zimbabwe's nightmare: A possible way forward

2008-12-18

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=5822

This latest report from the International Crisis Group, argues that the inter-party negotiations to implement a power-sharing government under the Global Political Agreement are hopelessly deadlocked. The ZANU-PF regime has repeatedly violated the agreement’s premises by resuming a campaign of violence against Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters and making pre-emptive appointments.

Mbeki to meet with Zimbabwean women activists

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/52871

Zimbabwean feminists will caucus with women activists from the SADC region to break through the Zimbabwean political impasse and begin the implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA). In their meeting with SADC facilitator Thabo Mbeki, at 4pm, they will hand over their resolutions, with actions to move the current Zimbabwean question forward.
PRESS Briefing: 19 December 2008

MBEKI TO MEET WITH ZIMBABWEAN WOMEN ACTIVISTS

Today, Zimbabwean feminists caucus with women activists from the SADC region to break through the Zimbabwean political impasse and begin the implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA).

In their meeting with SADC facilitator Thabo Mbeki, at 4pm, they will hand over their resolutions, with actions to move the current Zimbabwean question forward.

During the day long meeting, prominent activists from across Africa including Liberia, Kenya, Swaziland and South Africa will give input on strategies of negotiated settlement and transitional arrangement processes.

The meeting is being held by the Feminist Political Education Project (FePEP), at Burgers Park Hotel, Cnr Van der Valt and Minnaar Street, Pretoria.

Contact:
Teresa Mugadza 072 025 7239
Thoko Matshe 082 654 0207

Mugabe dismisses African threats

2008-12-19

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7791574.stm

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has said African leaders are not brave enough to force him from power, the state-run Herald newspaper reports. He told a meeting of his Zanu-PF party that the US was encouraging African countries to oust him, but said it would not be easy to send in an army.

SADC confirms receiving torture video

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/3q3nbt

SADC Executive Secretary Tomaz Salomao has confirmed to Newsreel that it’s secretariat received documents and video evidence from the Zimbabwean government, on alleged MDC banditry training in Botswana. The revelation will outrage the MDC and other pro-democracy activists who claim several abducted activists featured in the video were tortured into making confessions about this ‘military training.’

Tsvangirai threatens to suspend talks

2008-12-19

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnJOE4BI0B6.html

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Friday he would ask for power-sharing talks with President Robert Mugabe to be suspended if the government did not stop persecuting political opponents. Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, and Mugabe agreed to form a unity government three months ago. Their accord spurred hopes the ruined nation might recover from a deep economic and humanitarian crisis.

The Zimbabwe crisis deteriorates

AU Monitor Weekly Roundup: Issue 162, 2008

2008-12-18

http://www.aumonitor.org

The 12th ordinary summit of the African Union (AU) will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia between January 26 and February 3, 2009 under the theme of ‘Infrastructure development in Africa’. According to the Centre for Citizen’s Participation in the AU (CCP-AU), the summit will likely be dominated by issues related to: peace and security in Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea and Djibouti; the union government – a topic to which a one day extra-ordinary summit is devoted; the draft social policy framework of the AU; the election of a new Chairman of the Union to replace the outgoing Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete; the impact of the global financial crisis on Africa.

In other news, the Chairman of the AU Commission said he will not consider sending troops to Zimbabwe to address the humanitarian and political crisis until all diplomatic channels are exhausted. Meanwhile, the Commission of the AU, deeply concerned over the devastating cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, has donated 100,000 dollars to the country as a contribution to tackle the epidemic.

A group of 26 countries in east, central and southern Africa launched ‘The African Climate Solution’ at the UN climate change talks in Poland that aims to reduce green house gas emissions by forest resources and carbon sequestration through agriculture, forestry and land use in Africa and throughout the developing world. Participants at the talks were negotiating a new global climate change deal to be clinched in Copenhagen, Denmark, at the end of 2009. The AU Commission signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Food Policy Research Institute aimed at strengthening food security by providing a better framework to find solutions to food security issues, poverty alleviation, hunger and malnutrition.

Meanwhile, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, at its 44th ordinary session, adopted a resolution calling on African States to observe a moratorium on the death penalty as a step towards making the AU a death penalty-free continent. In other news, the AU is planning to set up a communal fund, held by the African Development Bank and open to contributions from international donors and African governments, to pay for education, science and technology programmes on the continent.

Finally, the University of Cambridge has issued a call for papers on the theme of ‘Contemporary India-East Africa relations: shifting terrains of engagement’ as part of a collaborative project between the British Institute in Eastern Africa and the British Association of South Asian Studies.

Africa: GBV Prevention Network launches new website

2008-12-17

http://www.preventgbvafrica.org/

In response to Network member’s requests, a one stop shop for GBV Prevention information has been created! The Network’s new website features an online library with the most current GBV prevention resources and program innovations in the Horn, East and Southern Africa. Also the website connects members who will be involved in lively online discussions, be able to post their experiences, stories and events.

Egypt: Sexually harassed women begin to speak out

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/6b6yx7

A recent study by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights found that 83% of Egyptian women and 98% of foreign women experience public sexual harassment in this country dependent on Western tourists, including explicit comments, groping, men exposing themselves and assault. Nearly 97% of Egyptian women and 87% of foreigners do not alert police. But human rights activists believe that the extensive news coverage of Saleh's case may inspire more women to file complaints.

Ethiopia: A study on violence against girls in primary schools

2008-12-18

http://tinyurl.com/3kqlcd

With a focus on Ethiopia, this paper identifies and analyses the types, prevalence, major causes and effects of violence against girls in schools. It also aims to assess the availability and effectiveness of policies, rules and regulations and concludes with recommendations on ways to reduce violence against school girls. Despite the legal provisions and efforts to reduce and eliminate violence against children, particularly girls, violence and abuse seem to be widespread in Ethiopia - taking place at home, in schools, and in the community at large.

Global: The struggle against sexism & racism

31 January-8 February 2009

2008-12-18

http://www.globalwomenstrike.net/internationalgathering2009.htm

Five major events are planned to take place over 10 days with speakers from: Bolivia, Canada, England, Guyana, Haiti, India, Iraq, Ireland, Palestine, Peru, Spain, Tanzania, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, US, Venezuela. These events are organised by the GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE and INTERNATIONAL WOMEN COUNT NETWORK. All are welcome.

Kenya: Battle for land fought over women's bodies

2008-12-19

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81998

Margaret Sichei*, 37, discovered she was HIV positive during a routine antenatal check-up. The pregnancy, as well as the HIV infection, was the product of a gang rape deep in the forests of Mount Elgon in western Kenya, perpetrated by members of a self-styled militia calling themselves the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SDLF).

Kenya: Rape probe falters after lawyers drop out

2008-12-19

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3857/context/cover/

By now Ester, a 51-year-old grandmother of six, has grown tired of the people who come to scribble notes about what happened to her on the evening of Jan. 30. On that date, men kicked in her door and beat her and her sister down to the ground, tore away their clothes, and raped them. That, she says, is how she became infected with HIV.

Mauritania: Child marriage tradition turns into trafficking

2008-12-19

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=81891

Marrying off Mauritanian girls as young as six years old to men in Gulf states is turning into a profitable trafficking enterprise as a typically rural marriage practice migrates to the city, according to urban families. “It used to be widespread in the rural milieu, but now child marriages are more developed in urban areas as a new business,” said Sidi Mohamed Ould Jyyide, a sociologist in the capital Nouakchott.

Morocco: Government retracts CEDAW reservations

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/4lqoum

Morocco has retracted its reservations on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), King Mohammed VI announced during a speech on Wednesday (December 10th), the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Tunisia: Interview with Sanaa Benachour

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/4y4nkb

The Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD) defined three main goals during its last conference in October, said new president Sanaa Benachour: addressing the deteriorating economic condition of women in Tunisia, promoting equality and confronting religious extremism.

West Africa: ERNWACA appoints new regional coordinator

2008-12-17

http://www.ernwaca.org/web/spip.php?article185

Following the resignation of Mr. Pierre Thizier Seya from the position of ERNWACA Regional Coordinator, the Board of Directors has appointed Prof. Djénéba Traoré as next ERNWACA Regional Coordinator for a renewable 3-year term, starting from April 1, 2009. Mireille Massouka will be the acting Regional Coordinator until the new Regional Coordinator takes over.

Global: Journal of Human Rights Practice

2008-12-19

http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/jhuman/

Practical application of and academic interest in human rights has grown exponentially over the last decade. Activism – its ethical imperatives, its particular constituencies, its social and political impact, and even its organisational structure - has become the subject of rigorous scrutiny. This journal aims to capture learning and communicate the lessons of practice across professional and geographical boundaries, within and beyond the human rights mainstream, and to provide a vehicle for innovative national and local practitioners world-wide who currently lack a platform for sharing their expertise internationally.

Rwanda: Genocide jailing hailed

2008-12-19

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7791231.stm

Survivors of Rwanda's genocide and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have welcomed the life sentence given to its mastermind Theoneste Bagosora. Bagosora and two co-defendants were found by a UN tribunal to have led a committee that plotted the massacre of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Mr Ban said the sentences were a "major step in the fight against impunity".

Sudan: 'Thousands' enslaved in Darfur: charity report

2008-12-17

http://tinyurl.com/5kwn5a

Sudanese government soldiers and militia have forced kidnapped men, women and children into labour and sexual slavery in the war-torn region of Darfur, a coalition of African charities has said. The Sudanese military said the allegations were not worthy of comment and a government spokesman was not reachable for further response.

Sudan: Statement on plight of human rights defenders

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/52773

Following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, ending more than 20 years of conflict in South Sudan, the peace building processes in Sudan remain challenging. In addition, this is in contrast to the expectations and hopes invested in the 2005 Sudan National Interim Constitution. Individuals and organizations working and advocating for human rights across the country continue to face multiple risks to their activities and lives.
Sudan Human Rights Defenders Forum (SHRD- Forum)

(Khartoum, 12 December 2008)

Following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, ending more than 20 years of conflict in South Sudan, the peace building processes in Sudan remain challenging. In addition, this is in contrast to the expectations and hopes invested in the 2005 Sudan National Interim Constitution.

Individuals and organizations working and advocating for human rights across the country continue to face multiple risks to their activities and lives.
It was shocking for all of us, as Human Rights defenders (HRD), the arrest and torture of our colleagues Osman Hummaida , Abdelmonim El Gak and Amir Suliman.

Hummaida and El Gak were subjected to severe torture by Sudan National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS). These undertaking by the Sudanese authorities is a clear setback from the possibilities of democratic transformation and peace in Sudan.

We would like to emphasize here, according to the International declaration for Human Rights Defenders provided by the United Nations General Assembly, the entitlement and right of Sudanese people to defend human rights and stand against human rights violations as it is the obligation of the state to protect human rights defenders and not to endanger their lives and work.

The strong solidarity and support shown by human rights defender in Sudan and around the world was evident on the legitimacy and importance of the work of human rights defenders.

Therefore, as Sudanese organizations and individuals working in the field of human rights in Sudan, we have formed the Sudan Human Rights Defender Platform. The Platform will work to enhance and support HRDs work across the country to reduce/end human rights violations in collaboration with Sudanese and International Human Rights defender groups and individuals.

The founders of the Sudan Human rights Defenders call upon, all individual defenders and organizations to join the platform and work for its success. The Platform will initiate links with all regional and international HRD networks around the world.

1. Sudan Human Rights Monitor.
2. Khartoum Center for Human Rights and Environmental Development.
3. Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA).
4. Babkeri Badri Scientific Association for Women.
5. Gender Center for Research and Training.
6. SALMA Women Resource Center.
7. Alkhatim Adlan Center for Enlightment and Human Development.
8. Darfur Bar Association.
9. Muta’aqwenat Group.
10. DIAR Association .

Africa: Dangerous trek to Israel for African refugees

2008-12-17

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/06/MNS3144AOV.DTL

Sadiq Sahour Abkar paid human traffickers $750 to smuggle himself, his 28-year-old wife, Hajja Abbas Haroun, and their infant daughter Samar over a remote border crossing in the Sinai Desert into Israel last year. The smugglers, however, dropped them along with four pregnant women, eight men and numerous children - all Sudanese refugees - several miles from the border. As the African migrants neared the frontier, they heard a patrol of Egyptian border guards and lay down quietly on the ground, waiting for them to pass. Suddenly a baby in the group began crying.

Africa: Swap aid for migrants - the French way

2008-12-19

http://www.ipsterraviva.net/europe/article.aspx?id=6877

Should the amount of aid that African countries receive from Europe be linked to their efforts to prevent their nationals moving to this continent? France, the outgoing holder of the EU's rotating presidency, has suggested that it should. During recent discussions involving both African and European governments, the French have advocated a two-year cooperation programme that would simultaneously try to encourage legal migration -- normally that involving skilled or highly-educated professionals, whose services are desired by European firms -- and curb 'irregular' movement.

DRC: Concern as aid worked killed in N. Kivu

2008-12-19

http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/4947e0d02.html

The UN refugee agency on Tuesday condemned an attack on a vehicle carrying staff of an Italian aid agency that left one person dead and another injured in the strife-torn Congolese province of North Kivu. "UNHCR deplores the cold-blooded murder of a staff member of the Italian NGO, Voluntary Association for International Service (AVSI)," a spokesperson said, adding that armed men had on Monday ambushed the vehicle near Rutshuru town, which is located some 70 kilometres north of the provincial capital, Goma.

DRC: Rebels "pressuring" displaced to return

2008-12-19

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29328

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said it is very concerned about reports that rebels are putting pressure on those displaced by the deadly fighting in the far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to return to their villages.

DRc: Stars join forces to help

2008-12-19

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29335

Actor-director Ben Affleck and Rolling Stone singer Mick Jagger have released a short film to help raise $23 million for United Nations efforts to pay for clean water and emergency aid kits for 250,000 people driven from their homes by renewed fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The film – “Gimme Shelter” – set to the Rolling Stones’ song of the same name, was shot last month in North Kivu province, epicentre of the latest surge in fighting.

Global: French detention centre highlights mistreatment of migrants

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/5353ye

Men, women, children and infants are piled on mats in overcrowded cells. Food is strewn all over the kitchen and the toilets are overflowing. Children dig in rubbish bins. Yellow biohazard bags are piled high just outside the door, suggesting serious medical issues and there's no sign of proper medical facilities. Conditions in the centre amount to inhuman and degrading treatment.

Kenya: UNHCR appeals for $92 million to assist Somali refugees

2008-12-19

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/UNHCR/cfad0630380acf0c09983eb4249bacb7.htm

UNHCR is seeking $92 million to ease the plight of nearly 250,000 Somalis in one of the world's oldest, largest and most congested refugee sites amid growing fears of even more arrivals as the situation in Somalia deteriorates. The emergency assistance to Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, focuses on relieving dramatic overcrowding in three adjacent camps that are now three times their initial capacity, with thousands more people continuing to arrive each month.

South Africa: Abahlali AGM

Speech by S'bu Zikode

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/52843

We have often said that as the poor our only strength is in our discipline. Our numbers mean nothing if we are not organized and we cannot be organized without being disciplined. Our discipline has never been about taking orders from above. Our movement grew out of a rejection of the top down politics of the councillors, the ward committees and the branch executive committees. We have always rejected top down politics in all its forms - including those NGOs that want to remote our movements.
14 December 2008
Post Annual General Meeting Speech by S'bu Zikode
Delivered to Abahlali baseMjondolo at the Blue Lagoon, Durban

AEC Note: S'bu Zikode had originally declined to stand for re-election as president of the movement. After all of the more than 200 delegates at the AGM unanimously voted in a secret ballot for his return to that position, S'bu took a few weeks to reconsider his decision. S'bu delivered the following speech to Abahlali in which he accepted the position for one more year.

Introduction

Comrades, as you all know we have come from a very unique AGM of our beloved Movement, a Movement whose unique strength has enabled so many shack dwellers to stand together and to be very strong in defending and protecting ourselves, our communities and our right to the cities.

Our 2008 AGM held in the Kennedy Road Hall on 23 November was as successful as all the others that we have held since the launch of our movement in October 2005. Our movement is still growing and all of our branches and affiliated settlements elected their representatives and the hall at Kennedy Road was overflowing. Everyone was free to say what ever they wanted to say. The voting went well and it was wonderful to have our comrades from the Poor People's Alliance with us. But, as you all know, I took a decision not to stand for another term. As I explained my intention was always to remain strongly committed to the movement but it seemed clear to me that all positions at all levels of leadership in our movement need to be shared, that the burden of leadership in a movement of volunteers needs to be shared, that I need time for my family and to be able to read and to think about what we have achieved with our living politic – a politic that was always based on us thinking carefully about our lives and our struggles. We have to change ourselves before we can change the world and, without time to think, that change becomes difficult.

We have often said that as the poor our only strength is in our discipline. Our numbers mean nothing if we are not organized and we cannot be organized without being disciplined. Our discipline has never been about taking orders from above. Our movement grew out of a rejection of the top down politics of the councillors, the ward committees and the branch executive committees. We have always rejected top down politics in all its forms - including those NGOs that want to remote our movements. Our discipline has been about discussing things carefully at our meetings, thinking together at our meetings and then taking decisions that we are all committed too. Our discipline is a shared responsibility. It is not about some people disciplining other people. It is about us sharing responsibility together. For this reason our movement is built around the meetings. All of our meetings are always open. Anyone can put any issue on the agenda. Anyone can speak. If comrades have questions or worries they must come to the meetings in their settlements or the meetings of the Women's League, the Youth League or the Abahlali baseMjondolo secretariat. This is the space for questions to be asked and for worries to be coughed out. It is also the space where we share the work that must be done. If we continue to respect this space our movement will continue to be strong.

Leading this movement is not an easy task. It is a task that demands a leader who is humble enough to listen to everyone but strong enough to never compromise people's lives by not standing up when that becomes necessary. The task demands political creativity because we have to invent our struggle as we wage it. The task demands respect for all age groups within the Movement - it demands a better understanding of what Abahlali Youth is like, Abahlali Mama's, Gogo's, Baba's and Mkhulu's are like. It calls for a leader who is willing to learn and who is prepared to be led as the Vice President of Abahlali, Lindela Figlan, likes to puts it. This willingness of all our leaders to learn and to be led is very important in our Movement's work of defining itself and knowing itself before someone else from somewhere else defines our Movement. We can never know our enemy and our world without knowing ourselves; we can not understand all the challenges lying ahead of us and their possible solutions if we do not understand ourselves.

As a disciplined member of Abahlali baseMjondolo I have always admired how members of our Movement have shown such trust in me in this very high and very demanding Task to lead such a growing Movement. And I still ask myself as to what wonders or qualities of leadership I have demonstrated to Abahlali that you can elect, re-elect and then re-elect me again in this challenging task. As you all know this year I did not stand and no one else stood for the position of president and so the ballot paper for the position of the president was empty. And yet you all wrote my name on the empty ballot papers. It was a very emotional day for all of us.

Comrades I have noted how you asked me to reconsider my decision at the AGM. I have noted the views of the new secretariat and the outgoing secretariat. I have noted all the views of those of you that have come to the office and to my home to ask me to reconsider.

Comrades I have also noted how our comrades from all the organizations that make up the Poor People's Alliance have stood strong for my return as your leader, these comrades have come with a smile to us as they come from a mile to strengthen our course as their course. I can not stop reading sms's and it has been their call that has finally prompted my decision to accept the trust that you placed in me at the AGM. I refer to comrades from the Landless People's Movement in Gauteng, the Anti-Eviction Campaign in the Western Cape, Abahlali baseMjondolo in the Western Cape and the Rural Network in KZN. I salute their commitment for a just society. I salute their commitment to the principle that the poor should think and lead their own struggles. I salute their courage over the years. There is a long road ahead but we will walk it together.

Oppression

We declared 2005, the year in which we formed our movement, as the Year of Action. How we marched that year! Last year was the Year of No Evictions and we were successful in stopping every eviction that threatened our settlements that year. We declared 2008 the year of Land and Housing. But instead it became the year of the Red Devil in Jondolos (Matt Birkinshaw 2008). Kennedy Road, Jadhu Place, Foreman Road, Emmause, Motala Heights, Arnet Drive, Emagwaveni, Ash Road in Pietermaritzburg and QQ-Section in the Western Cape were all affected by the plague of fires. This was also another year of rats attacking our children. A baby was killed in Kennedy Road and more babies were bitten afterwards. This was also a year in which shack dwellers in Durban were still denied official access to electricity and suffered assaults and even shootings in the armed and violent de-electrifications in settlements like Kennedy Road, Pemary Ridge, Emagwaveni-Tongaat and Arnet Drive. And while we are denied official electricity and attacked for making our own life saving electricity connections the government leaves live wires dangling from the pylons above our settlements. We all know that this would never happen in Westville or Umhlanga Rocks. People who are denied official electricity and attacked when they connect themselves have still been shocked to death by these dangling wires from the high pylons in places like eMagwaveni and Kennedy Road. This has also been a year of floods (Ash Road-Pietermaritzburg) and it has been a year of threats of massive eviction in Arnet Drive, Emagwaveni in Tongaat, Motala Heights in Pinetown, Siyanda C-Section and eMacambini in the northern part of the province of KwaZulu-Natal.

This year was also the year, the terrible year, in which people born in other countries were attacked all over South Africa.

It has also been the year of the notorious transit camps.

And it has also been the year of the equally notorious Slums Act.

It has also been a year of talks, slow dragging talks, but talks nevertheless. We have been in talks with the Project Preparation Trust (PPT), the eThekwini municipality, Ricky Govender of Motala Heights, Mr Moolan of the Emagwaveni land and even the Land Invasions Unit and the police.

It ended as a challenging year where the highest post and task in the movement remained vacant for more for more than twenty days after the Annual General Meeting.

Victories in 2008

The life of the poor is not easy in this world and it is not easy in this country. I have already mentioned some of the threats that we have faced this year.

But we must remember that we have achieved a lot in 2008. As much as it has been the year of the Red Devil, the year of the transit camp and the year of the attacks on people born in other countries it has also been the year of negotiations.

We have continued with all our ordinary work this year. We have worked to build the structures in the branches and affiliated settlements, to connect water and electricity, to defend our land, to ensure the safety of our communities, to ensure the continued power of women in our movement, to start and run gardens and crèches, to continue with the university of Abahlali baseMjondolo including training in computer skills, to run a library, to hold camps where we can discuss and be together through the nights, to care for each other in times of trouble, to support the struggles of other communities when they have asked us for solidarity and to take our own struggle forward in the settlements, in the streets and in the courts. Some of our branches and affiliated settlements are full of life – their spirits are always high and they are full of energy, creativity and courage. Some are only highly activated in times of crisis but seem to go to sleep a little when threats recede and to assume that others will keep the growing movement strong for them. Our movement ends this year much bigger than it was at the end of last year. We have many more members in many more settlements than ever before. But as the movement grows the work that must be done grows too.

Through the negotiations that we have been involved in all year our voice became louder and louder as the City was forced to sit down and listen to Abahlali. These talks were very carefully facilitated by PPT. Along the way we had to ensure that representatives from all our settlements could participate, that we kept the right to be political and to be critical and that we kept our intellectual autonomy by ensuring that we did not send all of our most committed comrades to the negotiations and that the delegates to the negotiations reported to our Abahlali meetings.

We are finalizing the details of the MOU that commits all parties to providing specified services to 14 settlements and to upgrading three settlements with on site housing. All kinds of very important breakthroughs have been achieved already including the right for shack dwellers to get services while they wait for houses, the right for shack dwellers get houses where they are living and the right to genuinely participatory and democratic urban planning.

We have already finalized the Abahlali Settlement Plan for Kennedy Road which will enable Abahlali and the city to acknowledge injustices and to find a common ground on which to respect the needs and the voice of the shack dwellers while upgrading the settlement where it is. The threat of forced removal that has been hanging over Kennedy Road since 1995 has now lifted.

In all of our negotiations we stuck to the principle of one house for one family against the one house for one shack system. In all of our negotiations we stuck to the principle that no one will left homeless by development. In all of our negotiations we stuck to the principle that an injury to one is an injury to all. We withdrew from the negotiations when any of our settlements were under threat. We have won the right to bargain collectively. We have won the right to include new settlements in our negotiations as they join us. The history of our relationship with the eThekwini Municipality has been painful. Many of us have suffered arrests and beatings. But although we have agreed that we disagree on some issues, like electricity, we have, by negotiating directly with officials and leaving out the politicians, come to a common understanding that is a good platform for the future. As we leave this year we enter a new era in the history of Durban and in the history of our movement.

When the attacks on people born in other countries began in Johannesburg in May we committed ourselves to shelter and defend our comrades born in other countries. There were no attacks in any of our settlements and we were able to stop attacks in some nearby settlements where we do not have members. We offered sanctuary to everyone that asked for our help. A very high position in our movement was held by a person born in another country and living here without papers. We made contact with many refugee and migrant organizations.

Once again we conducted a Clean up Campaign in Kennedy Road to try and reduce the infection of rats. It was not easy but it was successful.

In previous years the city and the media ignored the people left homeless as result of shack fires but during this year Abahlali has forced the city to provide at least the building materials after shack fires, or even those tin houses when that is the will of the affected communities and families. We have been clear that people have the right to choose or to reject the tin houses after fires. The City has accepted this.

As always we have strongly rejected all forms of forced relocation. Right now we are fighting this battle in Siyanda where people face forced removal by the Provincial Department of Transport for the construction of MR577 Freeway. This battle has also been fought very hard in Motala Heights and in Arnet Drive through political means and on legal terms. A very huge victory was won by Arnet Drive in the Durban High Court this year and, although the year is not quite over, we can say that we have successfully stopped every eviction threatened against our members, old or new, during this year. This is the second consecutive year in which we have won every single battle against eviction. The last time an Umhlali was evicted was in December 2006. We are determined that it will never happen again.

We have also fought the notorious KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Slums Act outside and inside the court of law. We are waiting for the verdict of the judge. If we are not successful in the High Court we will continue onto the Appeal Court and then the Constitutional Court. We will never accept the Slums Act. Now that the City is treating us with respect we will force the Province to do the same. When the Province has been forced to accept our humanity we will, with our comrades in the Poor People's Alliance, take on the national government.

The Movement has also managed to host the very big National Events such as the Unfreedom Day that we hold every year on 27 April at which the organization weighs its strengths and reflects on freedom. The freedom celebrated in the stadiums is, in fact, not the freedom that we all fought for.

In December 2006 we formed the Action Alliance with the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. Some of the left NGOs did not take that declaration of our autonomy very well. They have continued to lie about our December 2006 protest against their top down style to try and show that we are too stupid to think our own struggles. This year we expanded the alliance to include the KwaZulu-Natal Rural Network and the Johannesburg Landless People's Movement and formed the Poor People's Alliance. We are now a movement that is in the cities and on the farms. We are now a movement that is in Johannesburg, Pietermaritzburg, Pinetown, Durban and Cape Town. We are determined to make this alliance a strong voice of the poor, by the poor and for the poor. We held two national meetings of the Poor People's Alliance this year.

At the November meeting of the Poor People's Alliance we took the decision to continue to refuse the domination of certain NGOs and to develop our own position and campaign on the elections and to continue to build a living politic in our communities that can take up our issues and be answerable to us. We have decided to boycott the 2009 elections under the banner of 'No Land! No House! No Vote!'We are currently working on a statement to announce and explain this boycott to the world.We will continue to refuse all attempts by NGOs to buy movements by offering money to individuals. We will continue to refuse party politics. Our aim is to build the power of the poor and to reduce the power of the rich.

On 16 June this year our Youth League became official in operation. On 9 August we also managed to launch our own Women's League in which women will support women to continue to play a leading role in the struggle of Abahlali baseMjondolo. In September, the heritage month in South Africa, a Mass Prayer was held to commemorate all those who had suffered and passed away in shack fires and rat attacks. In this month, again for the first time in our history, a City wide Shack fire Summit was held and attended by number of community organizations, NGOs, Church Bodies and the Poor Peoples' Alliance all working together to strengthen our partnership against all forms of oppression including the red devil.

Kennedy Road Settlement and Arnet Drive and Pemary Ridge have, finally and after years of struggle, been earmarked for upgrading. This is a major victory. But up until the houses are actually built, and up until all other settlements are also catered for with decent housing in the cities, we will have to continue to stand together and to stand strong. On the 10 December comrade Zodwa and I set a meeting with Mr. Moolan, who owns the land on which the Emagwaveni Settlement has been built. We actually met. He has shown some great respect and concern for this community and made it clear that he had made an offer to release 50% of this land to the community provided that the city meets his conditions contained in the proposal that we yet to see. We will work with Mr. Moolan and the City to develop a solution for Emagwaveni.

The Way Forward

Our movement is founded on the politic of equality. We start from the recognition that we are all equal. We do not struggle to achieve equality. We struggle for the recognition of the equality that already exists. Our Movement therefore demands that we face and confront any element that seeks to undermine our humanity as ordinary citizens. Today I wish to remind comrades that we are also all equal and deserve equal treatment with in our Movement regardless of our positions and tasks. This is the Movement of the poor. It is not an NGO. The movement is not here to save you. You are the movement. You hold its future in our hands. You must decide its future. The movement only has one program – to be guided by its members.

We are all volunteers and we should all fully participate in all activities of the Movement without any fear or betrayal of one by another. We should all act together, collectively and responsible. Our Movement demands that we are honest to ourselves before others, and our Movement demands that we fear shame, disgrace and any form of evil. We are thus expected to be very humble and courageous to face what must be faced as we defend the future of our own children. If our growing Movement only places this burden and all its challenges on a handful of people then we can not win the war against oppression and injustices. If and only if we, today, all commit ourselves to working harder at all levels in the movement and to being decisive and responsible in sharing the burdens of responsibility then I recommit myself in leading the comrades as requested by you.

We must all demand change and transformation from with in ourselves before we can walk outside and make new demands. What I can guarantee to my comrades is my commitment to work with you and not for you, to be led by you and not to lead without you. There will be nothing for you without you. In all these commitment to both myself and to Abahlali I wish to express my deepest, heartfelt gratitude to the elderly mothers of our Movement who have stood very strong next to me and my family through prayers, calls and visits when the dark cloud of my attack gathered over me. I will always salute that love and warmth through all difficult times. I urge you all to offer the same support to Mzonke Poni, our chairperson in the Western Cape, who was subject to a similar attack late at night by an unknown group of young men.

In conclusion I wish all Abahlali baseMjondolo members, all shack dwellers, all Abahlali friends and supporters and all the marginalized and the oppressed a Happy Christmas and Just and Peaceful New Year that is free from evictions, disconnections, mysterious attacks in the dark of night, police violence and all the other evils that we must confront as we take on and defeat the war on the poor.

Amandla!!!

Statement from Kenyans to Grand Coalition

2008-12-17

http://kenyastockholm.com/

The events of the past three days compel us to evaluate the state of fundamental freedoms in Kenya, and the verdict is singularly unfavourable. On December 12, 2008, as Kenya marked its 45th Jamhuri Day, the Grand Coalition Government signaled its definitive departure not just from the ideals of independence. It also departs from agreements reached under Agenda Item One of the mediation process, which sought to restore full fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to assembly and peaceful protest.

Africa: Rejecting the disloyal opposition?

2008-12-19

http://www.gsdrc.org/go/display&type=Document&id=3098

Why are many African states dominated by one political party? Why are ineffective leaders often re-elected by willing African publics? This research from Michigan State University published by Afrobarometer analyses attitudes to political parties in 18 African countries. It finds a significant gapin public trust of ruling and opposition parties, at least in part because Africans value respect for leaders

Global: Elections in fragile states: Between voice and violence

2008-12-19

http://www.gsdrc.org/go/display&type=Document&id=3087

What factors generate election-related violence in fragile states? How can the international community address these? This study from the University of Denver suggests that social structure, political competition, the competence of the electoral administration and the degree of professionalism in the security sector contribute to election-related violence. International influence at mid-rank levels among the perpetrators of violence is limited.

Kenya: Post-election tribunal to be set up

2008-12-19

http://www.afrol.com/articles/32033

Kenyan leaders have endorsed the preparation of a new Statute for the Special Tribunal bill to pave way for the establishment of the special tribunal for the post election violence, state media has reported. The tribunal, would seek justice for victims of the 2007 post election violence which killed more than 1,500 and displaced thousands between December 2007 and January 2008.

Somalia: Ethiopia misses deadline

2008-12-19

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7791371.stm

Ethiopia has missed the deadline set out in a peace deal to withdraw its forces from Somalia, but has promised to go by the end of December. The recent agreement between the transitional government and Islamist opposition set Friday as the deadline. A BBC reporter in the capital says the troops are still in their bases. "Our total withdrawal... will be by the end of this month, the prime minister has made it very clear," Ethiopia's London ambassador told the BBC.

Somalia: Somalis divided over government

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/52m7bg

Members of the Somali parliament allied to Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the president, have said that they are in hiding after they received death threats. The group said on Thursday that they were in Baidoa, in south-central Somalia, after militia men and soldiers entered parliament.

Zimbabwe: Mugabe asks Tsvangirai to take up PM post

2008-12-19

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LJ634268.htm

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe announced on Friday he had invited rival Morgan Tsvangirai to be sworn-in as prime minister in a shared government, but expressed doubt whether he would accept. Opposition leader Tsvangirai, meanwhile, threatened to ask for a suspension of power-sharing talks if the government did not stop what he called the persecution of political opponents.

DRC: Government arrests foreign businessmen for embezzlement

2008-12-19

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnJOE4BI0D6.html

Authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo have arrested eight foreign businessmen, accusing them of embezzling around $40 million intended for public works projects, the justice minister said on Friday. The men, including Belgian, Italian, French and Lebanese nationals, had received public funds to build roads and schools after winning tenders in 2006.

Africa: Ministers seek billions for water infra-structure

2008-12-19

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29341

Delegates attending a pan-African ministerial conference have welcomed a proposal attempting to secure billion-dollar commitments for building critical hydropower and agricultural irrigation systems across the continent, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has announced.

Global: We Are Hungry - Report on food riots

2008-12-18

http://stuffedandstarved.org/drupal/node/450

This report by Mindy Schneider of Cornell University looks at food riots around the world, government responses, and states of democracy in 2008.

Sierra Leone: Still last on human development index

2008-12-19

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82018

For the second consecutive year Sierra Leone has come last in the UN Development Programme ranking of human development indicators of 179 countries. Some analysts say Sierra Leone is nonetheless advancing in some areas and that the impact of the country’s 11-year civil war must be taken into account for a full measure of progress.

Tanzania: Generating power and money

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/4zckho

The introduction of solar power systems to rural communities in East Africa is providing new business opportunities, as well as affordable and safe electricity supplies. Johari lives in the Iringa region of Tanzania. She used to work as a manual labourer, breaking rocks and selling the stones for building material. But now, after a short training course, Johari is assembling and selling small solar panels that can be used to power radios and recharge batteries for lamps and mobile phones.

West Africa: Gas pipeline comes online

2008-12-19

http://www.bicusa.org/en/Article.10989.aspx

Meanwhile, people displaced by the project finally receive monetary compensation, nearly four years after being impoverished through a resettlement process that denied them the option of the land compensation they were entitled to. Reuters reports that the World Bank-supported West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP) at last delivered its first gas to Ghana on December 11.

Zambia: Dam among IFC’s first casualties of the financial crisis

2008-12-19

http://www.bicusa.org/en/Article.10986.aspx

Plummeting copper prices have caused investors to shy away from the $1.5 billion Kafue Lower Gorge Dam, which is designed exclusively for use by foreign mining companies. According to Reuters, the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), reports that the proposed $1.5 billion Kafue Lower Gorge Dam in Zambia has been put on hold, as many investors shy away from major commitments in light of the financial crisis.

Africa: Portable lactate test is reliable and accurate

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/4mry72

A portable, hand-held device can provide quick and accurate measurements of blood lactate levels, investigators report in the December 1st of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. Antiretroviral treatment programmes in resource-limited settings often include d4T (stavudine). Possible side-effects of d4T include increased lactate levels or lactic acidosis, a rare but potentially fatal condition.

Africa: Tell us more – Children call for sex education

2008-12-19

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81930

Children in sub-Saharan Africa want to know more about sex and how to protect themselves from HIV, but taboos surrounding children's sexuality can mean life-saving information is kept from them, according to an international NGO. Children in the region say they need access to sex education that is comprehensive, practical, and free from moral judgment, according to the report Tell Me More! by Save the Children Sweden (SC-S).

Global: Keeping the Promise - An agenda for action on women and AIDS

2008-12-17

http://gender.developmentgateway.org/Content-item-view.10976+M5cd3b290404.0.html

AIDS is affecting women and girls in increasing numbers: globally women comprise almost 50% of people living with HIV. Nearly 25 years into the epidemic, gender inequality and the low status of women remain two of the principal drivers of HIV. Yet current AIDS responses do not, on the whole, tackle the social, cultural and economic factors that put women at risk of HIV, and that unduly burden them with the epidemic’s consequences.

Kenya: A question of life or death - New report

Treatment Access for Children Living With HIV in Kenya

2008-12-18

http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/16/question-life-or-death-0

In this 100-page report, Human Rights Watch documents how the government's HIV treatment program has failed to get lifesaving drugs to the majority of children who need them. If untreated, half of all children born with HIV will die before their second birthdays. Yet, many local health facilities do not ensure that children have access to HIV tests and rarely offer antiretroviral treatment for children.

Kenya: Hiding from the cruellest cut

2008-12-19

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81994

Hundreds of girls between seven and 17 are seeking refuge in church compounds in western Kenya to avoid the ritual removal of their clitorises, a practice that remains common despite its illegality. "Local authorities must ensure that these girls are not ostracised by the community and that their education is not disrupted," Andrew Timpson, a senior protection officer for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Kenya, told IRIN on 16 December.

Malawi: Power relations and policy on equity in access to ART

2008-12-18

http://www.equinetafrica.org/bibl/docs/DIS69POLsimwaka.pdf

The national ART scale-up plan contains several measures to promote equity, considering also that there are insufficient resources to cover everyone who is eligible. Thus study focused on four of these covering ART enrolment on an open ‘first-come, first-served’ basis; targeted gender-sensitive health promotion of ART, measures to overcome specific geographical barriers to access for remote populations and prioritisation of people already on ART, pregnant women and young children.

Tanzania: Evaluating the implementation of the National Voucher Scheme

2008-12-18

http://www.equinetafrica.org/bibl/docs/DIS67komba.pdf

In 2004, the Tanzanian government launched its Tanzania National Voucher Scheme (TNVS). The scheme aimed to subsidise the cost of anti-malaria nets for pregnant women and children across the country. But has the implementation of the scheme so far been equitable? This study used a case study approach to analyse the power relations between key implementers of the scheme and the mothers served in four rural district health facilities in Namtumbo and Mbinga districts.

Zambia: Consolidating processes for community-health centre partnership and accountability

2008-12-18

http://www.equinetafrica.org/bibl/docs/PRAequitygauge2008.pdf

This report has been produced within the capacity building programme on participatory research and action (PRA) for people centred health systems in EQUINET. It is part of a growing mentored network of PRA work and experience in east and southern Africa, aimed at strengthening people centred health systems and people’s empowerment in health. The report presents the work and outcomes from the follow up action research building on a pilot in 2006 that aimed to strengthen community-health centre partnership and accountability in two districts in Zambia.

Sudan: A Kenyan curriculum with a Southern Sudanese twist

2008-12-19

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82013

Nosa Abdalla Anglo, 19, was only a year away from joining a secondary school in Khartoum in 2005, but is still in primary school four years later and worries about her chances of going to high school in 2012. Anglo, a returnee to the state of South Kordofan after fleeing the North-South war, which ended with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, was in an Arabic-medium school in Khartoum but is now enrolled in an English-medium primary school in her village of Karkaraya, on the outskirts of Kadugli, the main town in the state.

Global: This Alien Legacy

The Origins of "Sodomy" Laws in British Colonialism

2008-12-19

http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/17/alien-legacy-0

This 66-page report describes how laws in over three dozen countries, from India to Uganda and from Nigeria to Papua New Guinea, derive from a single law on homosexual conduct that British colonial rulers imposed on India in 1860. This year, the High Court in Delhi ended hearings in a years-long case seeking to decriminalize homosexual conduct there. A ruling in the landmark case is expected soon.

Africa: Information key to climate change adaptation, say small farmers

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/3o7ae5

One of the first studies to explore what persuades small farmers to adapt to climate change has found that access to information and technical institutions are the most important factors. A survey of 1,000 Ethiopian cereal crop farmers, carried out by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the Nile River basin, Ethiopia, found that poor access to technology and weak informal networks are also hampering farmers' ability to adapt.

Egypt: Stakeholders debate West Delta project

2008-12-19

http://www.bicusa.org/en/Article.10985.aspx

On November 23, civil society groups convened a high-level meeting in Cairo to discuss the West Delta Irrigation project, which is financed in part by a $145 million World Bank loan. The project supports the construction of an irrigation system that will divert water from the Nile to supply modern, export-oriented farms on reclaimed desert lands that have severely depleted groundwater sources.

Global: A Gathering Storm: New climate change videos

2008-12-19

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81856

As the Poznan Climate Change conference enters its final days, IRIN, with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is pleased to announce the launch of eight short videos exploring the human cost of climate change in Africa.

Global: United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznań, Poland

2008-12-18

http://www.iisd.ca/vol12/enb12395e.html#REPORTOFCOP14

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznań, Poland, was held from 1-12 December 2008. The conference involved a series of events, including the fourteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 14) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and fourth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP 4).

East Africa: Tanzania opposes proposed land reforms

2008-12-19

http://www.thisday.co.tz/News/4969.html

Tanzania has reiterated that the proposed land reforms being vigorously pursued by Kenyan politicians that seek to allow foreign citizens to own vast tracts of land within the country are totally out of the question. The Deputy Minister for East African Co-operation, Mohammed Aboud, told reporters in the Ugandan capital Kampala that Tanzania is not ready to adopt the controversial issue of cross-border private land ownership within the region.

North Africa: Proper land policies crucial to development

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/3kpzbz

Land is at the heart of all economic activity and a subject that has gained prominence the world at large since the 1990s - Land policy reform. Though the challenges vary considerably across regions and countries, the last decade has seen a tremendous increase in the demand for policy advice on land use.

Africa: Journal of African Media Studies

2008-12-19

http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals.php?issn=17517974

The Journal of African Media Studies (JAMS) is a new interdisciplinary journal that provides a forum for debate on the historical and contemporary aspects of media and communication in Africa. It hereby aims to contribute to the on-going re-positioning of media and cultural studies outside the Anglo-American axis.

Burkina Faso: IFJ condemns arrest of demonstration leaders

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/52801

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the arrest by the security forces in Burkina Faso of four organisers of a big demonstration marking the 10th anniversary of the assassination of investigative journalist, Norbert Zongo, in Burkina Faso. The four are leading members of the Coalition Against Impunity which organised the demonstration in the capital, Ouagadougou, last Saturday, in support of the call for a fast-track inquest into Zongo’s murder.
December 15, 2008

IFJ Condemns Arrest of the Leaders of the Demonstration Marking 10 Years Since Norbert Zongo’s Murder

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the arrest by the security forces in Burkina Faso of four organisers of a big demonstration marking the 10th anniversary of the assassination of investigative journalist, Norbert Zongo, in Burkina Faso.

The four are leading members of the Coalition Against Impunity which organised the demonstration in the capital, Ouagadougou, last Saturday, in support of the call for a fast-track inquest into Zongo’s murder. The demonstrators renamed Nation Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares of Ouagadougou, Norbert Zongo Avenue. This morning (15th December) the four – Chrysogone Zougmoré, President of the Coalition, Tolé Sagnon, Vice-President, Bénéwendé Sankara and Jean Claude Meda – were arrested and questioned by the gendarmerie about the demonstration and as to why they have renamed Nation Avenue, Norbert Zongo Avenue.

“We consider these arrests by the Burkina authorities as an act of intimidation aimed at preventing the inquest from shedding light on the assassination of Norbert Zongo” said Gabriel Baglo, Director of the IFJ Africa office. “President Blaise Compaoré must show his commitment to bring the killers of Norbert Zongo to justice and to put an end to impunity in Burkina Faso”.

Zongo, an investigative journalist and editor of the weekly L’Indépendant, was found dead on December 13th, 1998. His charred body, and that of three friends, was discovered in his car at Sapouy, a town 100 km south of the capital. Zongo was at the time investigating the death of David Ouédraogo, driver of the brother of the President of the Republic Blaise Compaoré. David died after being allegedly manhandled by the presidential guards following his arrest on charges of stealing money from his employer, François Compaoré.

Jean Claude Meda, one of the leaders of the coalition and president of the Burkina Faso Journalists Association, AJB, said “The demonstration brought thousands of citizens into the streets calling for an end to impunity in Burkina Faso. This is perhaps why we were released so promptly after the arrest. We must however be alert as we don’t know what Colonel Martin Zambo Zongo, who conducted our interrogation, may recommend to his superiors. ”

The IFJ is urging the government of Burkina Faso to stop all harassment against the protesters, to guarantee an impartial judicial process on the killing of Norbert Zongo and to put an end to impunity in Burkina Faso.

For more information contact the IFJ at +32 2 235 2207

Cote d'Ivoire: IFJ calls for release of editor

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/52850

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called for the release of Ebenezer Viwami editor of Alerte Info an independent news agency based in Abidjan the capital. Viwami was arrested last Saturday for allegedly publishing false news on a riot that sparked the very at the prison in Abidjan. "This arrest looks contradictory with the promise of President Laurent Gbagbo not to jail journalists for libel" said Gabriel Baglo the Director of IFJ Africa office. The IFJ calls for the immediate release of Ebenezer Viwami.

Gambia: IFJ and FAJ Call for independent investigation into death of Deyda Hydara

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/52818

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has reechoed its stance on the need for the Gambia Government to allow independent investigation into the murder of Deyda Hydara, in order for the perpetrators of this heinous crime to be brought to justice. “It has now been four years since the callous murder of Deyda Hydara and yet still no one has been charged for this grave crime against humanity” said Gabriel Baglo Director of the IFJ Africa office.
Media Release

December 15, 2008

Four Years After Journalist’s Murder, IFJ and FAJ Call for an Independent Investigation into the Death of Deyda Hydara

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has reechoed its stance on the need for the Gambia Government to allow independent investigation into the murder of Deyda Hydara, in order for the perpetrators of this heinous crime to be brought to justice.

“It has now been four years since the callous murder of Deyda Hydara and yet still no one has been charged for this grave crime against humanity” said Gabriel Baglo Director of the IFJ Africa office. “The Government of The Gambia has not demonstrated enough commitment in investigating Deyda’s murder. The initial investigations conducted by the Police and later the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) were too watery and no doubt extremely below international standards. Hence the need to allow independent investigators into the matter, as it has become evident that The Gambia cannot make headway in this case.”

The Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), which is the African Regional Organisation of the IFJ, also expressed today its deep sadness at the murder of Deyda Hydara. Marking the fourth anniversary of Deyda’s death, FAJ has called upon the Gambian authorities to fulfil their international and domestic legal obligations to guarantee freedom of expression and the safety if its citizens.

“Deyda Hydara was a highly respected and courageous journalist who gave hope to his colleagues and ordinary people in the Gambia. He was targeted for murder because of his work as a prominent journalist who championed freedom of expression. We urge the Gambian Government to end impunity and the violence perpetrated against journalists.” said Omar Faruk Osman, President of FAJ.

Deyda Hydara, the editor and co-proprietor of the private newspaper, The Point, was brutally shot dead on December 16, 2004 while he was dropping off two of his workers after celebrating the thirteenth anniversary of the paper. His killers are still at large. Deyda was very critical of the government’s repressive media laws, most especially the Media Commission Bill, which he and some of his colleagues challenged in court.

Journalists and media organisations in the Gambia continue to face attacks, threats and intimidation, including death threats. For the past decade, the media in The Gambia has been subjected to a relentless wave of suppression and repression by the government, characterised by the torture of journalists, arbitrary arrest and incommunicado detention, forced exile, arson attack on media houses, forceful closure of media houses and disappearances. “We received credible information from our colleagues on the ground about serious threats made against them in order to silence them” said Gabriel Baglo.

“We call on the Gambia Government to uphold the rights of all citizens of The Gambia and to allow a thorough, impartial and independent investigation into the murder of Deyda Hydra, and that the findings of the investigation made public and the perpetrators brought to justice in accordance with international standards” declared Omar Faruk.

Attacks on independent journalists illustrate the risks under which they work in The Gambia. “Four years after the murder of Deyda Hydara, no one has been arrested or charged. Deyda’s murderers are still at large and there have been no independent or credible investigations into this callous act” said Omar Faruk.

IFJ and FAJ call on the authorities to clearly and indisputably speak out in defence of Gambian journalists who are now struggling to work professionally and independently and respect their will to talk openly about the current situation in The Gambia. “Our colleagues must be able to carry out their activities in safety and without fear of harassment or intimidation” Omar Faruk said.

Furthermore, IFJ and its African Regional Organisation will continue to follow the case closely and will relentlessly continue to call for the protection of journalists in The Gambia. “We deplore impunity that is prevailing in this country and thus cannot continue to remain mute when our colleagues are killed and maimed for simply reporting the truth. These grave onslaughts on Gambian journalists are just unacceptable. The Government of the Gambian must show tolerance to the media and create the conducive environment for the media to play its role.

For more information contact the IFJ at + 221 33 842 01 43

Global: Metropolis TV starts in January

2008-12-19

http://www.metropolistv.nl/?page_id=8&lang=en

Metropolis TV is an innovative global media project that is about discovering similarities and differences between people and cultures in a globalizing world. A network of more than 50 correspondents from all over the world contributes to
The project on a weekly basis. Until now, Metropolis TV has explored 25 world wide themes and more than 200 reports have been produced from countries such as Nicaragua, Bolivia, Kenia, Zambia, Iran, India and Indonesia.

Kenya: Communications Bill - Lettr to the President

PEN International Kenya Chapter

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/52796

Kenyan citizens and members of PEN International Kenya Chapter, condemn in the strongest terms possible the pattern of unconstitutional and insane legislation playing out in Parliament with the blessings of your Government. By passing your Government’s repugnant Kenya Communications (Amendment) Bill, 2008, Parliament has infringed on both our God-given human rights, and on our constitutionally recognised civic rights to representation and to freedom of expression, association, assembly, thought, communication, and even of dress.
PRESS STATEMENT

Dear President Emilio Mwai Kibaki, we, Kenyan citizens and members of PEN International Kenya Chapter, condemn in the strongest terms possible the pattern of unconstitutional and insane legislation playing out in Parliament with the blessings of your Government. By passing your Government’s repugnant Kenya Communications (Amendment) Bill, 2008, Parliament has infringed on both our God-given human rights, and on our constitutionally recognised civic rights to representation and to freedom of expression, association, assembly, thought, communication, and even of dress.

The rights of all poets, essayists, novelists, playwrights, journalists, artists and historians who form the PEN membership in Kenya, and those of citizens who depend on their work, are threatened by this bill, and the creeping culture of dictatorship that it represents.

Yesterday we were supposed to celebrate the 45th anniversary of our becoming a republic. Instead, your Government treated us to the most horrendous acts of harassment and abuse of both our human and civic rights. Barbaric, overzealous and mindless State apparatchiks serving your self-serving regime brutalised and detained innocent citizens who included prominent media and civil society personalities in a desperate but futile attempt to intimidate the nation. You cannot shut us up!

PEN Kenya and PEN International, jointly with all free people in the world, demand the immediate and unconditional release of Mr. and Mrs. Mwalimu Mati, Mr. Frederick Odhiambo, and all those arrested yesterday, and at any other time, for expressing themselves. We stand together in solidarity with all writers and creative minds of the world in condemning this absurdity.

Further, we demand that you exercise the power to assent to bills responsibly by rejecting the obnoxious Bill. That power was donated and entrusted to you by the sovereign people of Kenya for our protection, not destruction.

Hence, Mr. President, you must reject the retrogressive and draconian Bill, which is meant to convert the Republic of Kenya into a dominion of kleptomaniacs.

We are unequivocal that the 10th Parliament has lost all sense of direction and has no moral authority to legislate in the Republic of Kenya because its very existence is an assault on the republican foundations of the Kenyan Nation.

Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, with an emphasis on liberty, rule of law, popular sovereignty and the civic virtue practised by citizens. Republicanism always stands in direct and firm opposition to any form of dictatorship, corruption, or tyranny in the political realm. More broadly, it refers to a political system that protects liberty, especially by incorporating a rule of law that cannot be arbitrarily ignored by the government, group, or individual. As John Adams put it, a republic is a government of laws, and not of men.

It is this spirit of republicanism, under which the Republic of Kenya is established, that we now invoke.
Signed on December 13, 2008

1. Okiya Omtatah Okoiti - Chair Writers in Prison Committee
2. Philo Ikonya – President PEN Kenya
3. Onduko bw’ Atebe – Vice President
4. Kingwa Kamencu – Deputy Secretary General.
5. Jacob Otieno – Member
6. Kwamchetsi Makokha – Member
7. Mudamba Mudamba – Member

Kenya: The ICT Bill, freedom, and democracy

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/4vvxch

A free and fair media is a necessary element in any democracy. The press is the watchdog of the government. They ensure that the truth be told. The government should have no power in a democracy to control news outlets. If the bill is signed the government is essentially stealing the voice of the people so they will be able to declare a "state of emergency" when it is convenient for them. Giving the government a gag hold on the media's ability to report the truth.

Madagascar: Government closes TV station owned by political rival

2008-12-19

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/99379/

Reporters Without Borders condemns the government's closure of Viva TV on the night of 13 to 14 December 2008, after the station broadcast a message by former president Didier Ratsiraka. The authorities accused the station, owned by the mayor of Antananarivo, of broadcasting statements liable to "disturb public order and security." Ratsiraka has lived in exile in Paris since 2002.

Zimbabwe: Third reporter abducted in 10 days

2008-12-19

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/99416/

Reporters Without Borders is very disturbed by the abduction of freelance photojournalist Shadreck Manyere and attempted abduction of Obrian Rwafa, a reporter with the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), in separate incidents on 13 December 2008. The incidents took place just 10 days after the kidnapping of journalist and human rights activist Jestina Mukoko, who is still missing.

China set to launch naval mission in Gulf of Aden

2008-12-18

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/17/asia/18pirates.php

In what would be the first active deployment of its warships beyond the Pacific, China appears set to send naval vessels to help in the fight against hijackers in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden. A vice foreign minister and a leading naval strategist were quoted in Chinese state media on Wednesday as saying that Beijing is close to mounting a naval mission in the gulf.

DRC: Peace talks resume

2008-12-19

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29362

United Nations-backed talks between the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a main rebel group, aimed at finding a peaceful resolution to the strife-ridden country’s brutal armed conflict, resumed today after a week-long break. This round of negotiations is slated to end on 20 December when the two sides are set to adopt a framework for substantive dialogue attempting to end the conflict that has been plaguing the eastern part of the vast DRC.

DRC: U.S. & British flly fuels conflict- UN Report

2008-12-19

http://friendsofthecongo.org/Blog.php

The United Nations published a report by its expert panel that supports what the Congolese people have known and been saying for the longest. Now that the world has acknowledged the nature of the 12 year conflict in the Congo, we may finally start to see policy prescriptions that reflect the truth and include what the Congolese have argued for some time now.

Global: What role for NGOs in DRR?

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/52x3xl

Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) has emerged as a pre-eminent tool for states emerging from intra-state conflict. Much research on the subject has focused on the specifics of ‘DDR design’ and its applicability as part of wider ‘political’ processes - the authors of this paper claim there is little recognition of their potential value as implementers of the process. Surely NGOs, as representatives of civil society, are ideally placed to play a vital role in post-conflict society rebuilding?

Niger: A war for what is beneath the desert

2008-12-18

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/14/africa/niger.php

Until last year, the only trigger Amoumoun Halil had pulled was the one on his livestock vaccination gun. This spring, a battered Kalashnikov rifle rested uneasily on his shoulder. When he donned his stiff fatigues, his lopsided gait and smiling eyes stood out among his hard-faced guerrilla brethren. Halil, a 40-year-old veterinary engineer, was a reluctant soldier in a rebellion that has broken out over an improbable - and as yet unrealized - bonanza of riches in one of the world's poorest countries.

Niger: Tuareg rebels seize UN envoy?

2008-12-19

http://www.ww4report.com/node/6538

A Niger guerilla faction led by dissident Tuareg insurgent leader Rhissa Ag Boula announced Dec. 16 it had abducted Canadian UN special envoy Robert Fowler, who disappeared with an aide while driving some 30 miles northeast of the capital Niamey. The vehicle was found abandoned. In a posting on its website, Ag Boula's Front of Forces for Rectification (FFR), which split from the Niger Justice Movement (MNJ) in May, said it was holding four people, including Fowler.

Rwanda: Sweden suspends aid

2008-12-19

http://www.afrol.com/articles/32047

The Swedish government has suspended 80 million kronor in aid to Rwanda following the United Nations report accusing the country of supporting armed rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, International Development Cooperation Minister Ms Gunilla Carlsson said.

Somalia: Obama may have to deal with longterm crisis, including pirates

2008-12-18

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/mz0788_12_05.asp

Barack Obama’s incoming administration could be stuck on the horn of a security dilemma in the strategic but unstable horn of Africa. A widening Somali crisis which has variously challenged both George Bush I and the Clinton Administrations, with disastrous consequences, now confronts Obama with the specter of “Blackhawk down” in Mogadishu.

Global: Open Access for development

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/4ngjv2

Open Access (OA) refers to the immediate and free access for any user to full text online scientific and scholarly material, primarily research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Open Access means that any user who has access to the Internet, may link, read, download, store, print-off, use, and data-mine the digital content of that article. An Open Access article usually has limited copyright and licensing restrictions.

South Africa: Government says ICT industry is racist

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/3nkpcc

Black economic empowerment (BEE) is not the reason SA has a skills crisis, but rather institutionalised racism and unwarranted, exorbitant price demands by ICT professionals. This is the message from government and industry commentators, in reaction to the outcry that followed the release of the Department of Labour's (DOL's) national master scarce skills list last week.

Tanzania: Building a wireless network

2008-12-19

http://tinyurl.com/5yx9c4

Tanzania Telecentre Network (TTN) builds a wireless internet network in Sengerema. It is the first wireless community network in Tanzania, making internet available and affordable to a large number of people living in rural areas. In the first phase, the wireless network connects six community organisations to the internet. In phase 2 and 3, it aims to connect all wards in Sengerema District.

Global: Fellowships for Threatened Academics

2008-02-08

http://www.scholarrescuefund.org/pages/posts/srf-fellowship-announcement69.php

The Institute of International Education's Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF) provides fellowships for established scholars whose lives and work are threatened in their home countries. These fellowships permit professors, researchers and other senior academics to find temporary refuge at universities and colleges anywhere in the world, enabling them to pursue their academic work and to continue to share their knowledge with students, colleagues, and the community at large.Application Deadline: January 31st, 2009.

Global: Two-year Georg Zundel PhD Research Grant available

Berghof Foundation for Conflict

2008-12-19

http://www.berghof-center.org/std_page.php?LANG=e&id=9

Berghof Conflict Research (BCR) is offering opportunities for supervised PhD social science research starting in 2009, on topics related to BCR's programme areas. Applications, including a research outline (maximum 6 pages), references, CV, and supporting documents should be sent to researchgrant@berghof-center.org by 31 March 2009. Please note that due to the forthcoming holidays we will be able to reply to your requests by 12 January 2009 at the earliest.

Global: Visiting Fellows from developing countries - CGD

2008-12-17

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/52774

The Center for Global Development (CGD), an independent Washington-based think tank, invites applications from leading scholars in developing countries for a visiting fellows program sponsored by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The program offers one-year sabbatical support for a senior researcher from a developing country on leave from his or her host institution.
Center for Global Development Seeks Visiting Fellows from Developing
Countries

The Center for Global Development (CGD), an independent Washington-based think tank, invites applications from leading scholars in developing countries for a visiting fellows program sponsored by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The program offers one-year sabbatical support for a senior researcher from a developing country on leave from his or her host institution. The ideal candidate will be engaged in policy research in at least one of the areas of CGD focus: aid effectiveness, trade, private sector development, financial markets, global health, or migration. S/he will be expected to participate in all facets of CGD’s activities.

The successful candidate will possess the following qualifications:
• Doctoral degree or equivalent in economics, political science or another relevant social science
• Proven track record of applying quantitative research to practical, real-world policy problems
• A distinguished record of publications
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Current employment at a university or research institution based in a developing country

Candidates will be judged on the substance of their proposed research project and the likelihood of completing a major project during the one-year period of support. The Visiting Scholar will be offered: a competitive salary; full benefits package; a part-time research assistant; travel budget, including round-trip airfare for travel to/from home country, and assistance with visa procurement.

Applicants should send a short cover letter, CV, and a brief statement about proposed research (maximum: two pages), with information organized under the following headings: Research Question; Research Approach; Anticipated Outputs; Potential Policy Impact.

Please send application materials to Ellen Mackenzie at hrjobs@cgdev.org by February 15, 2009 and indicate whether they are applying for the 2009/10 or 2010/11 academic years. CGD is committed to attracting and maintaining a diverse and dedicated workforce. Please use the title “IDRC Visiting Fellow” in all e-mail correspondence. No phone calls please.


For more information about the Center for Global Development, see
http://www.cgdev.org <http://www.cgdev.org>

Genocide: The future of prevention

9th - 12th January 2009 - The University of Sheffield

2008-06-12

http://www.shef.ac.uk/history/research/conferences

The International Network of Genocide Scholars together with the Centre for the Study of Genocide and Mass Violence (SGMV) at The University of Sheffield/UK will dedicate the 1st Global Conference on Genocide, Sheffield, to sustainable genocide prevention for the 21st century. "Genocide: The Future of Prevention", the inaugural event in INOGS' biannual series of Global Genocide Conferences, will take stock of Genocide Studies and move on to develop new ideas about prevention.

Global: 2009 Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP)

Application Deadline in One Week!!

2008-10-15

http://hrcolumbia.org/hrap/

The Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) at Columbia University is designed to prepare proven human rights leaders from the Global South and marginalized communities in the U.S. to participate in national and international policy debates on globalization by building their skills, knowledge, and contacts. The Program features a four-month residency at Columbia University in New York City with a structured curriculum of advocacy, networking, skills-building, and academic coursework.

Global: Governance for Development in Africa Initiative

Residential School, Dakar, Senegal, 30 March- 04April 2009

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/52788

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation in association with SOAS and the Centre of African Studies-University of London is organising a Summer School in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2009 on the topic of ‘Governance and Development in Africa’. The residential school is for 25 participants who are policy makers, academics, or civil society representatives from any African country who will gain, through this training, new ideas and experience on the wide issue of good governance and development. We welcome applications from a wide range of backgrounds. Deadline for applications: 20th January 2009.
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Residential School 2009

Governance for Development in Africa Initiative

To be held in Dakar, Senegal, 30 March - 04 April 2009

Funded and supported by:

Mo Ibrahim Foundation
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
CREPOS, Dakar, Senegal

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation in association with SOAS and the Centre of African Studies-University of London is organising a Summer School in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2009 on the topic of ‘Governance and Development in Africa’.

The residential school is for 25 participants who are policy makers, academics, or civil society representatives from any African country who will gain, through this training, new ideas and experience on the wide issue of good governance and development. We welcome applications from a wide range of backgrounds.

Applicants should have proven research and/or professional experiences in fields relevant to the theme of Governance and Development in Africa.

All costs for successful applicants, including economy flights, accommodation, and subsistence, will be covered. The school will run from March 30th to April 3rd, 2009.

Applications should include:

1. CV (including email address for correspondence)
2. Official transcripts of courses/degrees/professional qualifications
3. two reference letters
4. Proposal of max 1500 words outlining research interest and professional background and how the applicant will benefit from attending the Summer School


Deadline for applications: 20th January 2009

To be sent electronically or by postal mail to:
Angelica Baschiera
Centre of African Studies
SOAS-University of London
Thornaugh street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
Email: ab17@soas.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 (0) 207 898 4370

Kenya: Call for Papers: Kilifi conference on Public Health

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/52866

This conference will reflect on the diverse and changing notions of ‘the public’, in relation to the production of medical knowledge and health in contemporary Africa. We hope that an improved understanding of this basic social and political concept will help strengthen the connection between public health and social progress and confront the power imbalances in global medical research and health care delivery.
THE PUBLICS OF PUBLIC HEALTH:

On politics, ethos, and economy of 21st century African Bioscience

KILIFI, KENYA: 7th-11th DECEMBER 2009

This conference will reflect on the diverse and changing notions of ‘the public’, in relation to the production of medical knowledge and health in contemporary Africa. We hope that an improved understanding of this basic social and political concept will help strengthen the connection between public health and social progress and confront the power imbalances in global medical research and health care delivery. Extending conversations begun at a previous conference in Kilifi on the ethnography, history and ethics of ‘clinical trial communities’, this forum will consider the other spaces in which medical knowledge is debated, negotiated and put to use.

Underlying this conference is the observation that the relationship between medical science and the public – in terms of ideas and intentions, as well as institutional realities – has changed in recent decades, along with changes in government and health. This is especially true in Africa. At around the time of independence, public institutions like universities and ministries produced scientific knowledge largely with public funding. The assumption was that the public would participate in this research as a civic duty, and benefit from its findings through the workings of a nation state that, in principle, represented the public, and that extended welfare policies to its citizenry. There was therefore a widely shared ideal of science and government working hand in hand, with inputs from citizens, to produce a healthy society. In this situation ‘public health’ was an integral project of nation-building.

Over the past few decades, this ideal vision of public health has been affected by alterations of all three constitutive elements – science, government and health. Science is increasingly led by global organisations relying on advanced technology and intensive funding; it tends to be at least partly privately funded by charities and the pharmaceutical industry, and its practices have become modeled upon those of ‘clinical trials’; most governments have suffered dramatically decreased funding for health systems and for national scientific institutions and universities; and health and bodies have changed as HIV, violence and other emergencies have become more important in African people’s experience and in global political priorities.

The consequence of these changes is that the public takes on new spatial, material, and temporal dimensions. It retains its’ association with notions of ‘population’, ‘citizenry’ and ‘society’, but the state no longer provides the obvious frame of scientific production, discussion and policy. The public now includes a diverse range of publics operating at communal and international scales, respectively smaller and much larger than the nation.

Call for papers

We believe that analytical attention is needed on the changing notion of the public, and the implications this has for global public policy, medical research practice, and international protocols of medical and scientific public accountability. We call for innovative papers to contribute to this discussion. We are hoping for a diverse range of papers - empirical reports, theoretical arguments, historical accounts or critical studies of policy – based on diverse theoretical frames and from different disciplinary backgrounds. There will be a shared concern with the links between individuals, society, states and health. Examples of potential topics include:

- The changing nature of health systems, epidemiologies or interventions;
- The effects of (economic and political) liberalisation on scientific research and public health;
- Past and present roles of public academic and scientific institutions, and their collaborations;
- New and old forms of expertise, learning and (de)professionalisation;
- Roles of private industry, charity and other non-governmental interests;
- Rationales underpinning new ways of engaging with ‘publics’ in science or heath delivery (e.g. media, community participation);
- Shifting interactions between international, national and local forms of knowledge and institutions in addressing health issues;
- Issues of trust in relation to health services;
- Concerns with authority – scientific and political – and its standards;
- Reports and proposals concerning efforts to promote a globally democratic science.

Please send us your 3-400 word abstracts, a description of your work, a CV, and an indication of what kind of material support you would require. We will make an effort to provide some support to suitable applicants whose institutions lack means, and would therefore be most grateful if those in better resourced institutions would fund their own participation, or apply for external support.

Organised by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Department of History, University of Nairobi and KEMRI/Wellcome Trust Programme; in collaboration with The ESRC STEPS Centre, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University; African Studies Centre, Cambridge University, and British Institute in Eastern Africa (Nairobi). Core funding provided by the Wellcome Trust.

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Please send inquiries and applications before 1.2. 2009 to: Linda.Amarfio@lshtm.ac.uk

Kenya: Contemporary India-East Africa relations conference - Call for papers

Contemporary India-East Africa relations: shifting terrains of engagement 27 - 28 April 2009

2008-12-18

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/52798

This conference forms part of a collaborative project between the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) and the British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS). Compared to the rapidly proliferating work on China in Africa, India, the other great 'Asian Driver', has been rather neglected in academic and policy circles. This event will bring together a series of papers on India's changing relations with one region of sub-Saharan Africa.
CALL FOR PAPERS

Contemporary India-East Africa relations: shifting terrains of engagement

27 – 28 April 2009

The British Institute in Eastern Africa
Laikipia Road, Kileleshwa, Nairobi, Kenya

This conference forms part of a collaborative project between the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) and the British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS). Compared to the rapidly proliferating work on China in Africa, India, the other great ‘Asian Driver’, has been rather neglected in academic and policy circles. This event will bring together a series of papers on India’s changing relations with one region of sub-Saharan Africa. Many parts of East Africa have a long South Asian diasporic heritage, yet India’s engagement with the region has moved beyond these historic links in recent years. As India increasingly challenges existing architectures of economic and geopolitical power, Africa has become an important and interesting arena for Indian ambitions. The influx of Indian aid, capital and personnel, moreover, has potentially profound developmental consequences for the plethora of East African nations, as well as for their South Asian diasporic communities.

We invite papers on all aspects of contemporary India-East Africa relations. Topics of particular (but not exclusive) interest are:

Geo-political engagements
Development aid
Foreign Direct Investment
Trade
Civil society interactions
‘Good governance’ and human rights discourses
Diasporic issues
Cultural interactions
Peacekeeping and military encounters
Reactions to Indian engagement amongst different African actors

Scholars from African and South Asian nations are particularly encouraged to attend. Modest funds are available for some travel expenses and accommodation to this end.

Abstracts for papers (approximately 300 words in length) and any enquiries should reach Dr Gerard McCann, Department of Geography, Downing Place, University of Cambridge, CB2 3EN or gm246@cam.ac.uk by 30 JANUARY 2009. Notification of acceptance of abstracts will be forthcoming by 13 FEBRUARY 2009.

We intend to edit a collection of papers for a special issue of an academic journal [TBC] following the conference. Articles will be subject to independent peer review. Please indicate if you would be interested in submitting your paper for publication.

Emma Mawdsley & Gerard McCann, University of Cambridge

South Africa: Administrator - AIDC

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/52855

The Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) has recently concluded a merger with Amandla! Publishers and embarked on a new programme under the theme "Dialoguing Alternatives for Social Justice". The programme aims to strengthen movements for social justice through the production of alternative knowledge and by enhancing the institutional capacity of community media organizations and the communication capacity of progressive civil society organizations that facilitates a dialogue giving voice to the poor and marginalized locally and internationally. We are growing our committed and dynamic team and invite applications for the position of Administrator.
The Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) has recently concluded a merger with Amandla! Publishers and embarked on a new programme under the theme "Dialoguing Alternatives for Social Justice". The programme aims to strengthen movements for social justice through the production of alternative knowledge and by enhancing the institutional capacity of community media organizations and the communication capacity of progressive civil society organizations that facilitates a dialogue giving voice to the poor and marginalized locally and internationally. We are growing our committed and dynamic team and invite applications for the position of Administrator.

Responsibilities:

· Manage events including all logistics
· Provide administrative support to all departments
· Manage account payments and petty cash
· Manage organizational correspondence
· Ensure distribution of media productions
· Maintain contact management system
· Manage subscription system and invoice subscribers


Requirements:

· Experience and knowledge of administration and event management
· High levels of computer literacy
· A valid drivers license

AIDC is committed to social justice and redress. We encourage people from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply. Interested applicants should send a cover letter and detailed CV with 3 references to editors@amandla.org.za The closing date for applications is 8 January 2009. Only short listed candidates will receive a response from AIDC.

South Africa: Capacity Building Facilitator - AIDC

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/52853

The Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) has recently concluded a merger with Amandla! Publishers and embarked on a new programme under the theme "Dialoguing Alternatives for Social Justice". The programme aims to strengthen movements for social justice through the production of alternative knowledge and by enhancing the institutional capacity of community media organizations and the communication capacity of progressive civil society organizations that facilitates a dialogue giving voice to the poor and marginalized locally and internationally. We are growing our committed and dynamic team and invite applications for the position of Capacity Building Facilitator.
The Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) has recently concluded a merger with Amandla! Publishers and embarked on a new programme under the theme "Dialoguing Alternatives for Social Justice". The programme aims to strengthen movements for social justice through the production of alternative knowledge and by enhancing the institutional capacity of community media organizations and the communication capacity of progressive civil society organizations that facilitates a dialogue giving voice to the poor and marginalized locally and internationally. We are growing our committed and dynamic team and invite applications for the position of Capacity Building Facilitator.

Responsibilities:

· Coordinate and maintain various capacity building projects
· Facilitate and/or train capacity building events
· Develop capacity building material
· Coach participants in capacity building programmes
· Develop and maintain relevant networks
· Facilitate the development and updating of the Best Practice Website
· Contribute to a monthly newsletter

Requirements:

· Experience and knowledge of training and capacity building, media production, project management, the community media sector, and/or organizational communication
· High levels of computer literacy
· A valid drivers license and a willingness to travel

AIDC is committed to social justice and redress. We encourage people from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply. Interested applicants should send a cover letter and detailed CV with 3 references to editors@amandla.org.za The closing date for applications is 8 January 2009. Only short listed candidates will receive a response from AIDC.

South Africa: Journalist & Coach - AIDC

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/52852

The Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) has recently concluded a merger with Amandla! Publishers and embarked on a new programme under the theme "Dialoguing Alternatives for Social Justice". The programme aims to strengthen movements for social justice through the production of alternative knowledge and by enhancing the institutional capacity of community media organizations and the communication capacity of progressive civil society organizations that facilitates a dialogue giving voice to the poor and marginalized locally and internationally. We are growing our committed and dynamic team and invite applications for the position of Journalist & Coach
The Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) has recently concluded a merger with Amandla! Publishers and embarked on a new programme under the theme "Dialoguing Alternatives for Social Justice". The programme aims to strengthen movements for social justice through the production of alternative knowledge and by enhancing the institutional capacity of community media organizations and the communication capacity of progressive civil society organizations that facilitates a dialogue giving voice to the poor and marginalized locally and internationally. We are growing our committed and dynamic team and invite applications for the position of Journalist & Coach.

Responsibilities:

· Investigate and write material for various media productions
· Assist with editing material for various media productions
· Ensure the Amandla! website is regularly updated
· Write popular versions of selected articles
· Contribute to capacity building by coaching as appropriate

Requirements:

· Experience and knowledge of the South African political and developmental environment
· Experience as a journalist
· A wide range of sources and networks across South Africa
· High levels of computer literacy
· A valid drivers license and a willingness to travel

Audio and/or video production skills will be an advantage

AIDC is committed to social justice and redress. We encourage people from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply. Interested applicants should send a cover letter and detailed CV with 3 references to editors@amandla.org.za The closing date for applications is 8 January 2009. Only short listed candidates will receive a response from AIDC.

South Africa: Operations Manager- AIDC

2008-12-19

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/52854

The Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) has recently concluded a merger with Amandla! Publishers and embarked on a new programme under the theme "Dialoguing Alternatives for Social Justice". The programme aims to strengthen movements for social justice through the production of alternative knowledge and by enhancing the institutional capacity of community media organizations and the communication capacity of progressive civil society organizations that facilitates a dialogue giving voice to the poor and marginalized locally and internationally. We are growing our committed and dynamic team and invite applications for the position of Operations Manager.
The Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) has recently concluded a merger with Amandla! Publishers and embarked on a new programme under the theme "Dialoguing Alternatives for Social Justice". The programme aims to strengthen movements for social justice through the production of alternative knowledge and by enhancing the institutional capacity of community media organizations and the communication capacity of progressive civil society organizations that facilitates a dialogue giving voice to the poor and marginalized locally and internationally. We are growing our committed and dynamic team and invite applications for the position of Operations Manager.

Responsibilities:

· Managing the Administration Unit
· Develop and maintain a human resource system
· Develop and oversee the project management system
· Maintaining the organization’s calendar
· Develop and manage the contact management system
· Ensure financial and narrative reporting, including the Annual Report
· Prepare and distribute a monthly newsletter
· Responsible for overall office management
· Oversee the distribution of various media productions
· Facilitate the sale of advertising for Amandla! Magazine
· Serve as part of overall management team for the organization.

Requirements:

· Experience and knowledge of Human Resources, finance and project management
· Experience in a management position
· High levels of computer literacy and a valid drivers license

AIDC is committed to social justice and redress. We encourage people from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply. Interested applicants should send a cover letter and detailed CV with 3 references to editors@amandla.org.za The closing date for applications is 8 January 2009. Only short listed candidates will receive a response from AIDC.

Fahamu