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Obama and US policy towards Africa

Horace Campbell

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/53257

cc. Soldiers Media CenterAs Obama takes over the presidency of the United States, Horace Campbell contextualizes an Obama presidency in the realities of Africa and the ongoing global finance crisis. He argues that “capitalism should not be reconstituted and rebuilt on the backs and bodies of Africans." For Campbell, the crisis is not simply a cyclical crisis of capitalism; it is a fundamental shift in the global political and economic order. In light of this fast changing world, Campbell is also interested in the possibilities and our responsibilities in bringing about change in and for Africa.

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Writing at the end of September 2008, the chief policy adviser to the candidate Senator Barack Obama spelt out the foreign policy goals as they related to Africa in this way:

“Barack Obama understands Africa, and understands its importance to the United States. Today, in this new century, he understands that to strengthen our common security, we must invest in our common humanity and, in this way, restore American leadership in the world.

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has engaged on many African issues. He has worked to end genocide in Darfur, to pass legislation to promote stability and the holding of elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to bring a war criminal to justice in Liberia and to develop a coherent strategy for stabilizing Somalia.”

From this broad outline the adviser (who had been trained in one of the elite African Studies Centers in the United States) went on to outline three goals of the candidate:

One is to accelerate Africa's integration into the global economy.

A second is to enhance the peace and security of African states.

And a third is to strengthen relationships with those governments, institutions and civil society organizations committed to deepening democracy, accountability and reducing poverty in Africa.

THE REALITY

The contradictions between the goals and the stated strategic objective of “investing in a shared humanity” brings to the fore the tensions and contradictions between the campaign of Senator Obama and the mindset of the thinking behind achieving goals for the United States and for the peoples of Africa. Between the time of the statement of this adviser in September and the elections in November, the realities of the global capitalist crisis had become very clear for the citizens of the United States. Citizens of Africa were always aware of the exploitation, hunger and death that came with capitalist relations of production. When Julius Nyerere had called for a revolution embedded in the African values of Ujamaa and self reliance, there was a political and ideological war against the peoples of Tanzania and any society in Africa that dared to be independent. Nationalization of the people’s wealth to ensure equal opportunities was rubbished by US policymakers.

Yet, in ten weeks between September and November 2008, the US government moved to nationalize banks, insurance companies and to invest billions of dollars (to bail out) the automobile industry. When the campaign ended and Senator Obama became President-elect Obama, it became clearer that neo-liberalism was dead or was dying. Neo-conservatives and the gurus of market fundamentalism were on the retreat, but in the Obama transition, there was no real break from the old mindset of US policymakers in relation to Africa. From the names and institutions that appeared in the transition process it was clear that the transition to an Obama Presidency will not, in the short term, reflect the kind of change that was promised in the election campaign. Instead of a future of sustainable peace and transformation, one saw a re-emergence and recycling of the same militarists such as Susan Rice emerging as a top official of the US foreign policy establishment. Lawrence Summers, who wrote the memo that it was more economical to dump toxic waste in Third World Countries, emerged as a major economic adviser.

A clear reading of five subject areas with international relations components in the transition team process indicates that Africa in general is likely to be a minor area of focus in their research process. These areas are:

1. State Department and Foreign Policy

2. International Economic Policy (USAID, World Bank, IMF, Treasury, Commerce, US Trade, OPIC, Ex-IM Bank, Agriculture)

3. Health/Human Services (HIV-AIDS)

4. National Security (DoD, AFRICOM and War on terror)

5. Energy (African oil)

In terms of operation, the team took its findings from each department and developed the Obama’s administration’s first internal white papers for each branch of government. Outside groups and entities with long-term interest in African resources were also submitting white papers on individual subjects into the transition team process. Hence, the final papers of the transition represented a product of both internal research and external contributions.

WHO TRAINED THESE POLICYMAKERS?

From the website of the transition process and the public relations web page of the Obama, one can see that the individuals and organizations that have been involved in the formulation of foreign and domestic policies were the same ones complicit in the think tanks, corporations, governmental agencies and Universities that devalued the lives of Africa. Of the eight major teams for the transition, this author zeroed in on the five areas of the transition that were directly related to the formulation of US policy under Obama.

The same lack of confidence that there will be a changed relationship with Africa emerges from the Cabinet choices that have been made by Barack Obama subsequent to the clarification of the road from transition to assuming power. Not even the African Americans who are touted to be the internal brains trust inspire confidence that there will be a change. The New York Time has reported that three persons- Valerie Jarrett, Martin Nesbitt and Dr. Eric Whitaker- are the closest advisers of Barack Obama.

While transition team operatives maintained that US policy towards Africa was at present a low priority (insofar as the US is preoccupied with the crisis of the economy and the questions of war and peace in Iraq and Afghanistan) there is no let up on the ground in Africa in the promotion of US ‘national interests’ through the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Treasury Department, the Department of Energy and a multitude of groups who are supporting AID projects. The day-to-day operations of the US bureaucrats continue to promote the neo-conservative and neo-liberal policies of the western imperial ideation system.

Examples of where these policies are being pursued include: The full speed attempt to militarize Africa under the guise of the so called war on terror. This is manifest in the transition pledge to continue the establishment of the US Africa Command and a US led international naval force off the coast of Somalia.

The second area where this is clear is that despite the fact that neo-liberalism and the market fundamentalism has been discredited in the USA, these policies are still being promoted by the IMF, the World bank and the host of US agencies that are now operating in Africa. In September 2008, when this global capitalist crisis was becoming evident to the world, Alan Greenspan testified before Congress. He said, “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

What Grenspan was politely saying was that the thinking behind the neoconservative oriented economic policies that had been promoted in the United States and overseas is wrong. During the hearing, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), was not satisfied by the use of the word ‘flaw.’ Waxman wanted a stronger term. He then asked Greenspan to clarify his words:

“In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

This admission that for forty years the underlying assumptions, rationales and thinking which served as the foundation of the economic policies of the United States in the USA and overseas was wrong, must be discussed at every level in Africa. Will African governments be comfortable with accepting this statement that they were being bullied into adopting wrong policies? Or will African intellectuals, trade unionists, policy makers and ordinary citizens redouble the efforts to end the domination of the International Financial Institutions over the lives of the people?

Obama’s policy towards Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) particularly regarding medicines will be important. Already, Democrats in the Congress led by Charles Rangel have said that the USG should not put the interests of IPR holders in US trade agreements, over the human health interests in poor nations.

Will Obama push that position further or will he fight against it?

It now devolves to the oppressed in Africa to join forces with others in the Global South to push for the dismantling of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The dollar as the currency of World Trade is coming to the end of an inglorious period. It is not in the interests of the people of Africa for the Euro and for the European Union to be the beneficiary of the collapse of US capitalism. It is the task of Africans to work for the overthrow of capitalism in Africa and beyond. Capitalism should not be reconstituted and rebuilt on the backs and bodies of Africans. This crisis is not simply a cyclical crisis of capitalism; it is a fundamental shift in the global political and economic order.

While progressive African peoples at home and abroad were excited about the election of Barack Obama, it was clear that the alternatives to US government policies for Africa had to emerge from the combined efforts of the social forces within Africa who had a vested interest in making a break with the plunder and looting of Africa. From the actions and activities of the dominant groups in the United States that interact with the elites of Africa, the emphasis is on the ‘strategic’ resources of Africa, without a real consideration for the quality of lives of the people. Walter Rodney had identified this class of Africans who were allies of imperialism in the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Since the era of neo-liberalism and IMF structural adjustment, the conception of ‘underdevelopment’ and ‘exploitation’ has been replaced by the language of ‘donor agencies’ partners for development and ‘democratic governance.’ The brightest from the institutions of higher learning were seduced into the multi billion dollar aid sector called the ‘humanitarian’ and ‘non-governmental organization’ sector. Many of these international NGO workers in Africa are now caught at a crossroads where there is fear that ’donor funds’ will be drying up because of the global capitalist crisis.

It is urgent that the progressives on both sides of the Atlantic call for a full exposure of the ‘other flawed’ policies of the United States such as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Under the Bush administration the apartheid health policies associated with the conservative ideas about reproductive rights have been trumpeted as a success in Africa. So tenacious has been the propaganda about the health policies of the Bush administration in Africa that even within the Obama transition there is an acceptance that the PEPFAR of Bush has been beneficial for Africa. For those who want to continue to accept propaganda that “the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), holds a unique place in the history of public health for its size and scope,” I would only want to urge a read of the book, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.

Health and peace are inextricably linked in all parts of the world, The African traditional healers, cultural workers and caregivers are joining the mass of 6 billion citizens of the planet earth who are calling for investment in caring, not killing. It is a major contradiction to trumpet the support for the recovery of health delivery services in Africa while supporting the remilitarization of Africa.

Will progressives accept that the US policies were’ flawed’ or symbolic of the structural relations of US imperialism in Africa? One of the by-products of the neo-liberal discourse was the reality that the understanding of imperial exploitation and plunder had been replaced by the new ‘humanitarian imperialism’ that was presented behind the international non-governmental infrastructure. Can the Obama administration justify an Economic Recovery program for the United States of over US $700 billion while advocating the use of ‘market forces’ to shelter the plunder of African resources?

OBAMA MUST REPUDIATE THE PLANNED US AFRICA COMMAND

If the economic and diplomatic policies of the USA prior to Barack Obama had been ‘flawed’, then one needs an appropriate formulation to properly describe the US security policies towards Africa. In December 2008, Larry Devlin joined the ancestors. Before he departed this land, Devlin wrote a book entitled, Chief of Station, Congo: A Memoir 1960-1967. This was a book celebrating the role played by Devlin while he was the Chief of the Station of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There was no remorse in this book about the role of the United States in the destabilization of the Congo subsequent to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the support for Mobutu for thirty five years. If anything, Devlin was celebrating the work of the US military and economic agencies. In his logic, everything that the US did during the Cold War was justified in the name of fighting communism.

This logic of Devlin is the same logic of the intellectual institutions of the United States. Peace and conflict resolution centers abound in order to promote the distorted logic of Larry Devlin or other writers who then complain about state failure in Africa. Progressive African Intellectuals must begin to document the criminal actions that perpetuated war and instability in every region of Africa. Not only did the USA support destruction and apartheid under this logic, but today there is support for private military contractors who are operating to protect the oil companies that are polluting Africa’s rivers and communities.

Today the peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are reaping the full harvest of the long term investment in militarism and destruction. Yet, instead of a full retreat from the history of military engagement, the members of the US foreign policy establishment continue to call for the establishment of the US Africa Command. It would appear from the public statements of those around the Obama team that the question of change does not apply to Africa and Africans.

RESIST AFRICOM AT HOME AND ABROAD

This is not to suggest that there are no forces within the United States working to dismantle the plans for the US Africa Command. There is such a force within the broad alliance of activists who are pledged to ensure that the Obama administration abandon the plans for the Africa Command. Thus far, the Resist Africom forces in the United States have not been able to achieve their objective of scrapping the Africa command, but the work to end militarism in Africa is tied up with the domestic opposition to militarism and the prison industrial complex in America.

It should be repeated that the foreign policy of a state is a reflection of the domestic political structures of the state. Up to the present, the domestic policy of the United States has been to oppress and exploit Africans and peoples of color. It then stands to reason that one could not expect the foreign policy of the United States toward Africa to be different from the domestic policy of institutionalized racism.

From the period of the transatlantic slave trade, the leaders of the United States have viewed Africa as a treasure trove to be plundered. In this enterprise of looting and plunder, the US experts on Africa thus far had an alliance with the rulers in Africa. This intervention is to link with those forces in Africa who want to turn the global capitalist crisis into an opportunity for strengthening the social classes in Africa with a vested interest in making a break with the traditions of looting. Every region of the world now sees Africa as the place where there are real resources. Hence China, India, the European Union, Brazil and the United States have all embarked on new ventures to ”accelerate Africa's integration into the global economy.”

IMPERIAL RIVALRIES IN AFRICA

The irony is that each of these societies seeks to embark on larger economies of scale while working to undermine efforts at continental unity among the peoples of Africa. The leaders of the European Union have been the most active in their plans to intensify the exploitation of Africa. From North Africa, France promises to further weaken and divide Africa with a planned Mediterranean Union. Libya opposes this plan by France and, in order to compete with France, the USA is strengthening its ties with Libya. Progressives in the Pan-African world must oppose the French plan, but they must also oppose the opportunism and cynicism of the US foreign policy ‘forward planners.’ Cooperation and competition between the USA and Europe is intended to weaken the African Union. In the past, US policy makers have identified client states such as South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda as partners. It is in the interest of the peoples of Africa and the peoples of the United States that a government that wants to move beyond the imperial past engage with the continent as a whole and strengthen the progressive forces who arre working for the establishment of the African Union.

In the past year, there have been open editorial campaigns for the US and the EU to form an alliance against China in Africa. Centers for strategic studies in the USA continue to blow hot and cold as to whether the USA should cooperate with China in Africa or confront China in Africa.

It is well known that capitalist competition leads to war. In the present crisis of global capitalism, there are policymakers in both the United States and Europe who are overtly calling for a military confrontation in Africa. The frontline for this proposed war against China is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In this enterprise of seeking a pretext for war, the western imperialists have willing allies in Eastern Africa in both Rwanda and Uganda. Thus far, the drumbeat for this confrontation is being hidden under the call for the expansion of the United Nations monitoring forces in the DRC.

Sustainable peace in Africa and a transformation of the militarized institutions that have been established in Africa since the colonial era requires a break with the old US security policies. This author has joined in the forces of peace who are working to build a new Pan Africa peace infrastructure for Africans and peace loving peoples all over the world. Such an infrastructure project must break with the pre-occupation with strategic minerals and energy that is based on the extraction of petroleum resources. Peace and transformation in Africa is inseparable from a break with environmental destruction in Africa. Just as how there is now an understanding in the USA that the society needs an Economic Recovery program that is based on the ‘Green collar economy’, there is also an understanding in Africa that African economic transformation must be built around the provision of food, clothing, shelter and health care for the peoples of Africa.

REPARATIONS AND JUSTICE

It is on the question of reparations and the building of a strong Union of the peoples of Africa where the progressive forces in the United States will have to pressure the new Obama administration to support reparations and sustainable peace in Africa. Already, Bishop Desmond Tutu has called on Obama to apologize on behalf of the American state to the peoples of Iraq for the invasion and destruction caused by the neo-conservatives of the past Bush administration. This author wants to support that call for reparations along with calling on representatives such as John Conyers to revive the legislation for reparations and reparative justice. On the website of one of the most senior lawmakers in the USA there is the declaration that:

In January of 1989, Mr. Conyers first introduced the bill H.R. 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. He has reintroduced H.R. 40 every Congress since 1989, and will continue to do so until it's passed into law.

This author is calling on all progressives to join in the call to extend this assertion by Conyers so that, in the short run, the government of the United States re-engages with the process of the World Conference against Racism, when it convenes in Geneva in April 2009.

FAILURE, FLAWS OR CRIMES IN AFRICA

It is now clear from the transition team of Obama that there is no new thinking on Africa. On the web site of the Obama election campaign, the adviser on Africa boasted that Obama:

“As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has engaged on many African issues. He has worked to end genocide in Darfur, to pass legislation to promote stability and the holding of elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to bring a war criminal to justice in Liberia and to develop a coherent strategy for stabilizing Somalia.”

Who will be able to educate the Obama Presidency that the road to peace in Darfur and in the DRC is linked to demilitarization globally? Obama cannot continue the duplicity of the Bush administration that continues to have security and intelligence sharing with the government of the Sudan while maintaining that it is working to end the genocide in Darfur. Peace in Africa and demilitarization in the United States are two sides of the same coin.

Barack Obama is the son of a Kenyan immigrant. His father met an early demise from the deformed politics of division and manipulation in Kenya. Obama is going into the White House with a keen sense of the realities of the impoverishment of the people of Africa. It is the same Obama who understands that change can only come through organization. After all it was Senator Obama who campaigned on a pledge:

"I don't want to just end the war," he said early this year. "I want to end the mindset that got us into war."

Africans at home and abroad must inspire a new mindset so that all of the differing agencies, foundations and academic institutions in the USA can move to a new vision of relating to Africans as full human beings. By every measure, the victory of Obama is historic. Obama will either be a great President moving the society beyond the traditions of militarism and support for dictators or be another imperial President who happens to have a father from Kenya. The choice is not up to Obama. The choice is dependent on the extent to which the progressive forces use the opening provided by the election of Obama to bring about the change we want.

*Horace Campbell, is professor of African American studies at Syracuse University, and author of Rasta and Resistance, from Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney, and Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Black American politicians vote for War on Gaza

Glen Ford

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/53256

cc. Black AgendaFor Glen Ford, it is hard to believe that a generation ago, the Congressional Black Caucus was known as "the conscience of the congress, a political and moral high ground long deserted by the current CBC, which has utterly collapsed under Israel-lobby pressure for the second time in three years. Yet, today, all but two Black lawmakers voted either "Yes" or "Present" on a Resolution that absolved Israel for its crimes against humanity in Gaza - placing all blame on Hamas. Glen Ford further argues that by hypocritically turning their backs both on Black public opinion and on the work of Dr. King, , the CBC has put itself "out of the anti-war business," and well outside the mainstream of Black opinion on the Israel-Palestine question.
Only two members of the Congressional Black Caucus mustered the courage to oppose a House Resolution in support of Israel's savage assault on Gaza, last week. An additional seven CBC members sought cover by voting "present." The remaining 30 Black lawmakers (the delegates from Washington, DC and the Virgin Islands cannot vote on the House floor) gave their assent to a statement that could have been written by the Israeli government - and probably was.

The Resolution, similar to one passed by the Senate on a voice vote, is a blanket condemnation of Hamas, the political party that won Palestinian Authority elections three years ago, and which Israeli leaders vow to "destroy" before leaving Gaza. The destruction of a mass political party requires massive civilian deaths. Destroying Hamas in Gaza is like stamping out Democrats in The Bronx - with 1.4 million people, about the same size as the Palestinian enclave. The document blames Hamas for "the breaking of the ‘calm' and for subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza." In other words, Israel is absolved for all the men, women and children it has burned, eviscerated, blasted into dust, sliced in pieces or melted like wax.

In addition to the usual nonsense about the U.S. maintaining an "unwavering commitment to the...State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (as if a settler state based on race-ethnicity can be democratic) with secure borders (Israel is the only state in the world that refuses to say where its borders are), the Resolution invokes the United Nations and its Charter (Israel is the unchallenged world champion violator of UN Resolutions, dating from shortly after its declaration of independence, in 1948).

"Israel was racist South Africa's closest ally, godfather to its nuclear bomb project."

Could it be that Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Milwaukee's Gwen Moore are the only Black Caucus members who remember that Israel was racist South Africa's closest ally, the apartheid regime's hi-tech weapons quartermaster and godfather to its nuclear bomb project? Do the seven members that voted "present" - Donna Edwards (MD), Keith Ellison (MN), Hank Johnson (GA), Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI), Barbara Lee (CA), Donald Payne (NJ), Diane Watson (CA) - believe that by refusing to take a position on Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza, they somehow salvage the Caucus's claim to be the "conscience of the Congress?"

Where has John Conyers' conscience disappeared to? In July of 2006, when the House passed an equally noxious Resolution in support of Israel's systematic destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure, killing over 1,000 people and displacing one million, Conyers and fellow Detroiter Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick were the solitary CBC members to vote "Nay." (Oakland's Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters voted "present.") Then came the Democratic victory in the midterm congressional elections and Conyers' chance to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee - at Speaker Nancy Pelosi's pleasure. Conyers picked a fight with Jimmy Carter over the former president's book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Conyers objected to Carter's use of the term "apartheid" in the book's title, saying it "does not serve the cause of peace, and the use of it against the Jewish people in particular, who have been victims of the worst kind of discrimination, discrimination resulting in death, is offensive and wrong." Translation: Not just Israel, but Jews are off limits to criticism.

It appears the old John Conyers has left the scene without those of us who used to know him having had a chance to say goodbye. The Israeli lobby has that kind of effect on erstwhile progressives and anti-war folks. The Zionist ideology, and especially the chilling effect of Zionist power, is probably the second-greatest impediment to creation of a sustained American peace movement - the first obstacle being the ideology of American Manifest Destiny, which is in practice quite compatible with Zionism.

"The Congressional Black Caucus is terrified of offending Israel's innumerable political hit men."

However, African Americans are least susceptible to the Manifest Destiny/Zionist Mythology combo. Both ideologies wreak of racism, and most Black people know it. The Congressional Black Caucus knows it, too, but they are terrified of offending Israel's innumerable political hit men.

Zionist power helped knock off two CBC members who refused to tow Tel Aviv's line, in 2002. Georgia's Cynthia McKinney and Alabama's Earl Hilliard found themselves heavily outspent and ultimately unseated by otherwise puny challengers in Democratic primary contests. AIPAC bragged of its ability to shut down independent-minded Black politicians who fail to understand that U.S. foreign policy is shaped by whatever is deemed good for Israel. Bullying works, especially against the meek. Except for Maxine Waters and Gwen Moore, the Congressional Black Caucus is out of the anti-war business.

That also goes for the Congressional Progressive Caucus which, with 71 members, claims to be the "single largest partisan caucus" in the U.S. House, but whose members voted overwhelmingly in support of Israeli barbarity. About two-thirds of the voting members of the Black Caucus also belong to the Progressive Caucus - meaning, they are members of two defunct organizations, and doubly useless to the cause of peace.

*Glen Ford is the executive editor of Black Agenda Report (www.blackagendareport.com) where this article first appeared.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

After the invasion: Building the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign against Israel

Kali Akuno

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/53205

cc. Amir Farshad EbrahimiIn response to Israel’s continued action over Gaza, Kali Akuno argues for the intensification of the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. In a bid to properly contextualise the current developments, the author contends that events must been seen as part of a longer history of assault on the Palestinian people, a history that will only begin to be put to bed through an international solidarity movement aimed at restoring Palestinian rights.
People of conscience all over the world are asking themselves and others, what can we do to stop the genocidal assault on Gaza? Although it sometimes seems that the Israeli military – financed by at least $3 billion a year of US dollars—is unstoppable, there is plenty we can do to weaken the Zionist Project.

We can and must build a genuine anti-imperialist movement that, over the long-term, cuts Israel from its US imperialist benefactor. Until now, in the political mainstream and, indeed, among too many progressives, US political and financial support for Israel has been virtually unquestioned. It is our responsibility to add another 25% to the 41% of people in the US who oppose Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, and to deepen their understanding so they not only reject the latest Israeli atrocity, but also the entire Zionist project in the shape of the continued colonial occupation of Palestine.

We must intensify the international campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). The central goal of BDS must be to target corporations, investment entities, and other institutions that financially and politically support the Israeli government, especially the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). This movement must also seek to challenge and eventually end all US aid and material support to the IOF and intelligence forces, illegal settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank, subsidies to settlers, and the construction and maintenance of the illegal apartheid wall and related infrastructure. Furthermore, it should also seek to isolate a number of African, Arab, Asian, and Latin American governments that are complicit in the dispossession and inhumane deprivation of the Palestinian people, such as the Egyptian, Turkish, and Jordanian governments via their self-serving collaboration with Israel and the US government to negate Palestinian self-determination.

To understand these proposals, we must put this invasion in its proper historic and strategic context. This latest assault on Gaza is not simply an attempt to eliminate Hamas – Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya – or the Islamic Resistance Movement, it is first and foremost an assault on the Palestinian people and the people’s movement for national liberation. It is simultaneously an assault on the other forces of resistance to the Zionist, Western, imperialist, and neoliberal projects of domination and absorption in west Asia and north Africa (that is, the Middle East). These forces include Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Islamic Brotherhood, trade unions, and the re-emerging left and civil society in Egypt, the broad array of resistance forces to the US occupation of Iraq, the Ba'athist government in Syria, and the Islamic government in Iran and their varying acts of defiance to US and Israeli domination of the region.

The heroic Iraqi resistance to the US occupation begun in 2003, Hamas's surprising electoral victory in 2006, and Hezbollah's stunning defeat of the Israeli army in July–August 2006 all seriously challenged the domination of the US and Israel in the region. Despite the overwhelming asymmetry that remains between the imperialist forces and the forces of resistance in the region, the forces of resistance, as the record shows, have made some significant gains.

The assault first begun on Saturday 27 December 2008 represents a blatant attempt to permanently erase these gains. The US and Israel aimed to establish the terms of what the US and Israel hope(d) to be the final surrender of the Palestinian people of their right to national self-determination. This, they hope, is the final strategic phase in the 60-year-plus war of Zionist colonial aggression against the Palestinian people. The main Zionist objectives are threefold: 1) To ethnically cleanse Gaza by annihilating its entire infrastructure and rendering it uninhabitable; 2) To achieve ‘politicide’ against Hamas; and 3) To force the Palestinian people to accept terms of surrender which would utterly negate their human rights, specifically the right to return and to national self-determination.

By giving Israel the green light for the Gaza invasion, US imperialism is also seeking to accomplish several additional objectives, which include consolidating a fully compliant Palestinian authority, isolating Hezbollah, tightening the noose on Syria and Iran, fortifying the neocolonial rule of the client Arab regimes – particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and reconsolidating its strategic military positioning relative to Africa (particularly around the Horn region to address fundamental crises in Somalia, Sudan, and the Central African Republic) and central Asia (to address the crises in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the central Asian republics).

The timing of the invasion reveals a great deal about the critical shift in US and Israeli thinking. Two critical factors determined the timing of this invasion, neither of which have anything to do with the bogus claim that Hamas broke what was basically a one-sided ‘truce’ with Israel. The first factor is the relative stabilisation of the Iraqi occupation in 2008. Although the people’s resistance in Iraq is far from being pacified, the surge and buyoff strategies have weakened it considerably. This weakening has created more operational space and capacity for the US to inflict uncalculated pain on non-compliant forces should the need or desire arise. Secondly, the transition in the US chain of military command between President George W. Bush and President-Elect Barack Obama affords US imperialism a considerable degree of flexibility – tactically, legally, and potentially, morally. Although crushing Hamas was to be one of the parting legacies of the Bush regime, the strategic aim was for Obama to finish what Clinton started and Bush advanced in consolidating the process of Palestinian negation initiated with the Oslo Accords. At the time of writing, this may all come undone as a direct result of Hamas's hold-out manoeuvres, coupled with Hezbollah's potential threat of military solidarity and the tremendous pressure exerted by countless international demonstrations against the invasion.

Despite Obama's frequent duck, ‘we only have one president at a time’, he and his administration will soon have to take a public position on Gaza and Israeli aggression. It is our responsibility to put as much pressure as possible on Obama to force him to disavow the ongoing crimes against humanity committed by Israel. Obama, unlike many of his predecessors, has the opportunity to recognise the rights of the Palestinian people to real self-determination. He must start by cutting the US$3 billion in annual aid provided to Israel, or be similarly charged for crimes against humanity for the death and dispossession this aid sponsors against the Palestinian people.

And this is where we come full circle. Although undoubtedly the present situation looks bleak, it is not hopeless. An international solidarity movement, directed by the multifaceted Palestinian movement, built on firm anti-imperialist principles, and focused on a dynamic, but strategic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign can help stem the tide of US and Israeli imperialism and end the ongoing cleansing occurring on our watch.

* Kali Akuno is an organiser with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
* Visit the following websites for information on how to get involved in the International Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign for Palestine: BDS Movement, Stop the Wall, BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, and The Electronic Intifada.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Guinea and democracy in western Africa

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong

2009-01-14

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/53195

cc. BBC World ServiceDecrying the culture of coups serving as transition points between two dictators, Kofi Akosah-Sarpong traces the current crisis in Guinea to Sekou Toure and the failure of liberation politics to create viable state and economic institutions, choosing instead isolation and authoritarianism. Guinea has to join the rest of Western Africa on the path to democracy, or risk becoming a pariah state.
The suspension of Guinea by ECOWAS for the overthrow of a constitutional regime by its military signals the fact that the West African region takes democracy, as a development and stability vehicle, seriously.

Ever since the military coup in Mauritania last August and the coup attempt in Guinea Bissau, the issue of democratic consolidation in West Africa has become central. In this regard, the December 7 and 28 and January 2 general elections in Ghana, viewed as the region’s democratic star, were seen as a test case for the West African region where stability and democracy are still suspect.

Democracy may not be consolidated yet in the region but the ECOWAS move is ennobled by the sordid realization that the long-running suffering of Guineans at the hands of frightening military juntas and dreadful one-party systems have to stop and tie Guinea, a black-sheep, to the region’s emerging democratic ethos.

As part of black-sheeping Guinea, the African Union had also suspended Guinea – as have some members of the international community. Even in a West Africa where for long military coups and one-party systems held sway, almost all the countries are on the democratic path of some sort. But Guinea, for the past 50 years, refuses to wean itself from the military junta and one-party mentality, scurrying the country on perpetual instability, misgovernment, and worsening poverty.

Why should a President Lansana Conte dying lead to the military staging a coup, throwing any constitutional procedure to resolve transition issues away? It doesn’t matter whether Guinea has weak institutions, of which it has; the rule of law has to take its cause as a matter of stability. It may sound heartbreaking but that’s Guinea, where for the past 50 years, it hasn’t seen anything democratic. The Guinean event isn’t African; it’s noticeably Guinean with its own eccentricities. Guinea, like a kid, refuses to grow up and join the West African democratic trend. The era of where what happens in one African country is viewed as indicative of the rest is no more.

Guinea is politically a sick country and needs to be cured by Ecowas, the AU and the international community by forcing it to take the bitter medicine of the rule of law and democratic freedoms. Like one suffering from autism, Guinea has been repeating the same primitive political behaviour again and again for the past 50 years as if it’s entrapped in a crab hole. Ecowas is cutting Guinea off as part of its cure in a region that for long is known as the sick spot of Africa and the poorest region in the world.

This brings to mind not necessarily Guinea and West Africa but more narrowly Guinea and Ghana – they virtually started on the same path, and are viewed as brothers. Ghana is increasingly growing democracy, freedoms, the rule of law, and garnering global respect. Some may ask, but Guinea and Ghana are pals. Yes, they are but Guinea hasn’t weaned itself from the disorderly politics. While Ghana is rightly growing democracy and freedoms, Guinea hasn’t, and instability, dreadful one-party systems, threatening military juntas, unfreedoms, fears, harassment, threats of civil war, and collapsing institutions are still dangling above its messed-up head.

While Ghana is progressively learning from its years of misgovernment, Guinea appears held back and should be seen simultaneously in its own environment and its leaders/elites, who lack confidence and common sense. This is despite starting on a promising note on October 2, 1958, at the cost of the immediate termination of all French assistance. This is when President Ahmed Sékou Touré took a famous exceptional path and called the bluff of French President Charles de Gaulle’s referendum giving French colonies the choice between immediate independence or retaining their colonial status.

With independence, Guinea pursued a mixture Soviet-type radical socialism and Pan Africanism without any hint of flexibility in its development process. Ghana had done so but has quickly moved on big time. While Ghana experienced 21 years of military juntas and 6 years of one-party systems and has moved on, driving enviable democratic culture, Guinea is still enmeshed in almost 50 years of military juntas and one-party systems with the shocking December 23, 2008 military coup that enlarges its misgovernment at a time when democratic and reformist trends are observable in West Africa.

Toure effectively shut Guinea out from the rest of world’s progress. Practically, that started Guinea’s befuddled state under the brutally tyrannical grip of Toure who suppressed democratic aspirations and effectively asphyxiated progress. Disturbing ethnicity became the order of the day, and is still smoudering, deflating Guinea’s Pan-African image, and finding Toure, a Mandingo, effectively killing and scattering the increasingly progressive Fulah ethnic group, who form about 40 percent of the Guinean population.

Till he died in 1984, Toure didn’t demonstrate any understanding of Guinea despite his pretensions. There was virtually no institutional growth and the country, for the past 50 years, was increasingly decomposing in the face puny leaders/elites. Guinea endangered itself, the country mired in some sort of perpetual chaos. In development-speak, from scratch, Guinea was paralyzed, its soul choked, its development engines jammed. For long, Guinea has been a depressed nation, its innate pride and “African Personality” ruined, and now-and-then Guineans struggled to free themselves from this state of suspended animatronics.

It may sound surreal but such growing puzzlement saw Toure blinded from appropriating the global prosperity ideals to develop its vastly endowed mineral wealth (bauxite, oil, gold, diamonds, iron ore, uranium, among others) and its remarkable agricultural potential. With corruption endemic and rule of law suppressed, Guineans become all the more poorer, as local and foreign investor became scared of the country, and reached the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index – ranked 167th rank out of 179 countries.

Those who came after Toure were failures, showing greater misunderstanding and fright, and failing to learn from Toure’s failures and Guinean conventional values. In the face of misapprehension after the death of Toure, Lansana Conté, a military general and a Soussou (who make up 20 percent of the population), assumed power in 1984, in a military coup and explosively mixed free market policies with unfreedom, brutal dictatorship and tribalism. Conte became Roman Emperor Nero, dancing through his deadly delusions, as Guinea burned behind him.

There have been multi-party elections beginning since 1993 but they are a veneer. Expectedly they had a negative effect on Guinea. This saw intermittent threats against the Guinean state from sections of the military, attempted rebel invasions, and deadly bickering from the opposition parties. Under Conte, Guinea had the highest number of military mutinies and violent demonstrations in West Africa. That’s scary in a region already mired in long-running instabilities.

The country became addicted to instabilities – even at certain points some prime ministers and state ministers were running away from their own country in a climate of heightened insecurities. Ministers and other state officials were wheeling around Conte like buzzing insects in a state of instability. One day you are hired, the next day you fired in a rapid succession – Guinea becoming intellectually and spiritually feeble, its citizens sinking deeper into poverty and political hopelessness.

In 2005, Prime Minister François Lonseny Fall resigned and sought asylum with his family in France, citing corruption and increasing interference from Conte. Fall’s successor, Cellou Dalein Diallo, was sacked on April 2006, in the face of crippling nation-wide strikes, mass demonstrations, unfreedoms, military coup attempts, and food shortages. State institutions were deteriorating against the backdrop of unfreedoms, deaths, scrawny elites, and, as the Greek thinker Thucydides would say, democratic stasis, where there were symptoms of perpetual disturbances of Guineans and the Guinean state.

Despite Conte’s on-again, off-again agreeing to opposition demands for broader democratic reforms, he reverted to his old primordial tricks. On February 13, 2007, Conte appointed Eugene Camara as prime minister but yet Guinea was boiling under insecurities. On 26 February 2007 Conte appointed Lansana Kouyaté as prime minister but he was fired on May 23, 2008. Kouyate was replaced by Ahmed Tidiane Souaré who has been prime minister since May 2008. You’ve to be magician to understand all these entire rapid never-ending wheeling and dealing in Conte’s State House.

Really, a confused nation plagued by dictatorship. No country develops under such circumstances of near-permanent confusion. No doubt, Guinea has been failing for the past 50 years, riddled in an immense psychological and spiritual crisis.

Perplexed, Conte imposed martial laws – it was part of his political diet. Like neighbouring Sierra Leone and Liberia, the fears have been that Guinea would explode into civil war – all the ingredients have been there for self-destruction. In its long smouldering civil unrests, government buildings and properties throughout the country were either looted or destroyed by angry Guineans who saw nothing good in Guinea. Guineans unequivocally called on Conté's to resign. Conte survived assassination attempts in the interim. He became used to such dangers, turning them into a healthy political game strangely surviving them till being knocked down by diabetes on December 23, 2008.

Conte’s long “illness” should have let him transit power smoothly for the good of Guineans to avoid crisis, but he did not, suffering from Africa’s “Big Man” syndrome. This is against African tradition. It reveals Guinea’s long shadow of insecurities even at the point of Conte’s death. Conte didn’t believe in Guineans and the fact that they a civilized lot. Once again, like what happened after the death of Toure, the military took over, dismissing the normal constitutional process to resolve transition issues. Guinea remains uncivilized 50 years on, stuck in the past. Under the Guinean constitution, Aboubacar Somparé, the Speaker of Parliament, was to assume the presidency of the republic and a new presidential election was to have been held within 60 days.

You don’t say this to a long disordered country and a country whose institutions are tumbling, its elites feeble, and its mindset screwed up over the past 50 years. Nevertheless, six hours after the announcement of Conté's death, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, announced a coup d'état, saying that “the government and the institutions of the Republic have been dissolved… as well as political and union activity.”

You shouldn’t be surprised, that’s Guinea displaying its antique mindset. Guinea is still psychologically and spiritually insecure, and may need superb retooling, part of which Ecowas, the AU, the EU, United States and others are doing, as a tranquilizer.


* Kofi Akosah-Sarpong is a journalist with the Expo Times Independent Sierra Leone. This article first appeared in Modern Ghanaon 12 January 2009.

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

Censorship crisis in Kano

Arrests and fines for Hausa-language film industry figures

Carmen McCain, Nazir Ahmed Hausawa and Ahmed Alkanawy

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/53222

cc. PaulkFollowing a spate of arrests of prominent industry figures on charges of alleged indecency and failure to register new films, Carmen McCain, Nazir Ahmed Hausawa and Ahmed Alkanawy discuss the decline of the previously thriving Hausa-language film industry in Kano, Nigeria. Highlighting the authorities’ efforts to crack down on ostensibly illicit and immoral material under the rubric of sharia law, the authors survey the arrests, detentions, fines, and shop closures endured by those involved in the industry.
Nigeria's northern city of Kano was until last year the home of a thriving film industry in the Hausa language. Hausa language ‘video-films’ are similar to the larger ‘Nollywood’ Nigerian film industry, but are stylistically different from their southern cousins, with most films including song and dance sequences influenced by Indian films and hip-hop music videos. In August 2007, a sex scandal involving a leaked cell phone video of a Hausa film actress Maryam ‘Hiyana’ Usman having sex with her boyfriend Usman Bobo instigated a change in the leadership of the Kano State Censorship Board. The board had been instituted in 2001 after the implementation of Islamic sharia law as a compromise measure between the filmmakers and the government. The censorship board enabled the films to continue being made but with some restrictions on dress and interaction between male and female actors. (The Kano State Censorship Board is a separate entity from the National Film and Video Censor's Board, which files and gives ratings to all films made in Nigeria. Hausa filmmakers are required to submit their films to both bodies if they want to sell their films in Kano State.) The scandal exploded onto an already tense atmosphere. Earlier in the year, four actresses had gone into hiding after hisbah, sharia police, had interpreted a party in their honour as a ‘polygamous lesbian wedding,’ and in June, before the ‘Hiyana’ scandal broke, A Daidaita Sahu, a Kano state agency for the ‘reorientation’ of society, organised several book and film burnings.[1]

Following the sex scandal, the new director general of the Kano State Censorship Board, Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, formerly commandant of the hisbah, was appointed in August 2007. Since this administrative change, there have been multiple arrests and acts of intimidation against the film industry and related entertainment businesses in Kano.[2] Actor, musician, and director Adam Zango was arrested and sentenced to three months imprisonment and a fine of N100,000 (naira) in September 2007 for releasing a music video CD, Bahaushiya, without first submitting it to the Kano State censorship board.[3] In October 2008, widely popular Hausa comedian Rabilu Musa ('dan Ibro) and his colleague Lawal Alhassan Kaura were arrested and sentenced to two months in prison by a mobile court. Their were arrested on two counts: 1) For ‘indecent dancing’ in the films Ibro Aloko and Ibro K’auran Mata, films which had been released before the change in administration of the Censorship Board and which possessed a certificate of approval from the board; and 2) for supposedly operating a production company without registering with the board. Musa and Kaura denied the charges but less than an hour after they had been arrested and brought to the mobile court were convicted and sentenced to two months in prison with no option of a fine.[4] The November 2008 issue of Fim Magazine points to speculations that the arrests were political as the satirical song ‘Mamar Mamar’ in Ibro Aloko, which made fun of a striped cloth often worn by Governor Shekarau of Kano State, was being used by critics to mock the governor.

In another rumoured political move, Hamisu Lamido Iyan-Tama, one of the pioneers of the Hausa film industry, was arrested in May 2008 after his film Tsintisya, sponsored by the US embassy, won an award for best ‘Social Issue’ film at the Zuma Film Festival in Abuja. The actor, director, producer, and 2007 gubernatorial candidate was accused of not registering his company with the Kano State censorship board and for releasing the film Tsintsiya in Kano without passing it through the state censorship board. Iyan-Tama has receipts for his registration with the board (now uploaded to http://freeiyantama.blogspot.com) and had publicly stated that the film was not for sale in Kano State, though a copy of the film, which an actor claimed was a personal copy, was confiscated from a desk drawer in a video shop during a police raid. Although on bail while the court case was ongoing, he was again arrested and detained for a week in August 2008. Most recently, on December 30th and after a police witness who had been subpoenaed did not show up in court, the judge refused to reschedule the court date as the defence and prosecution had agreed and went ahead with sentencing Iyan-Tama to 15 months in prison and a fine of N300,000, saying, according to Leadership reporter Abdulaziz Ahmad Abdulaziz, that ‘justice delayed is justice denied. Justice is three way traffic; justice to the accused, justice to the state and justice to the prosecution.’[5] On 12 January an appeal was struck down because the court was not satisfied with the way it was prepared. Iyan-Tama is currently serving his sentence in the Goron Dutse Prison, Kano.

In addition to these prison sentences, there have been many other acts of intimidation against studios and lower profile film industry workers, including a requirement that each participant in the film industry, from actor to editor to video seller, register individually with the censorship board. So far, according to Ahmed Alkanawy, director of the Centre for Hausa Cultural Studies, over 1000 youths involved in the film industry and related entertainment industries ‘have been arrested in the name of shari’a and sanitization.’ Among those arrested are ‘download and transfer business’ workers who have been convicted for using cell phones for transferring Hausa music, audio and video, those who sell traditional medicine for advertising their wares over a loudspeaker and displaying graphic photographs or drawings to illustrate their cures, and those who run video gaming centres and football viewing centres without registering with the censorship board.[6] Though sharia law is invoked, most ‘censorship’-related cases are being tried in a state magistrate court, a mobile court on Airport Road presided over by magistrate Mukhtar Ahmed. Defendants are often arrested and convicted within an hour, without the benefit of legal representation. Some are given prison sentences while others are given the option of paying a fine.

One case, which did not make it to court, involved a hisbah raid on the home of Hausa film actress Zainab Umar and her sisters in March 2008. According to witnesses interviewed by reporter Nasir Gwangwazo, they were accused of living ‘in a house without suitable relation,’ detained food and water and kept overnight in a cell with men, propositioned by police, and warned not to speak with the media.[7] More recently, in November 2008, there was a sweep of arrests of industry workers. Following a mass protest by film actresses who publicly changed political affiliation from the party of the governor, the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), to the majority political party People's Democratic Party (PDP), police raided studios along Zoo Road, where most studios are located, closing them and arresting 21 studio managers and other studio workers.[8] Those who could not produce certificates of registration with the censorship board in the mobile court were given large fines. The November edition of Fim Magazine reported that Rabo had said there were specific film practitioners the court particularly wanted to catch and the magazine printed a list of 32 practitioners ‘in danger’ of being arrested. (On the list were two of the co-authors of this report: Ahmad Alkanawy and Naziru Hausawa).[9] In December 2008, according to Fim Magazine and with additional information from Ahmed Alkanawy, Director Rabi’u Ibrahim of HRB studio – whose name was on the list printed by Fim – was arrested and fined N80,000 for selling a DVD compilation with an ‘indecent cover’ of the American television series Desperate Housewives in his shop. His shop was closed and sealed for three days. When the authorities came to re-open the shop three days later, they saw the remaining copies of Desperate Housewives and the recently banned film Ibro Aloko, and he was taken back to court and given another N60,000 fine. He has not been allowed to re-open his shop since that time.[10]

* Carmen McCain is the director of the Hausa Home Video Resource Center, Bayero University. Nazir Ahmed Hausawa is the manager of the Golden Goose Studio. Ahmed Alkanawy is the director of the Centre for Hausa Cultural Studies. The authors may be contacted at hausahomevideoresource@gmail.com.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

NOTES

[1] The information in this report comes from oral testimonies and the following news articles: Al-Amin Ciroma, ‘Hiyana’s Sex Scandal,’ 19 August 2007, and Mansur Sani Malam, ‘Kano Reels out New Censorship Laws,’ 24 September 2007, Leadership www.leadershipnigeria.com; ‘Nigeria 'lesbian wedding' denied,’ BBC News, 28 April 2007, news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6603853.stm; the following articles from Film Magazine publisher Ibrahim Sheme’s blog: ‘Hiyana - Tsiraici a fagen shirin fim,’ 12 August 2007; ‘Nude Video Causes a Stir,’ 13 August 2007; ‘Censoring Movies and Books in Kano,’ 25 September; ‘Film Burning in Kano,’ 26 September ibrahim-sheme.blogspot.com; Ahmad M. Sarari. ‘Press Release: Brief report on the state of film industry in Kano State, Nigeria’, 28 February 2008, en.afrik.com/article12615.html; Lamara Garba Azare. ‘Rabo is our problem—Sani Mu’azu’ New Nigerian. 20 April 2008, www.newnigeriannews.com/movies.htm;Sani Maikatanga. ‘Shekara 1 da Mallam Rabo a Industiri: Ci Gaba ko Koma Baya?’ Fim. January 2009. pp. 33-42.

[2] In 2008, the censorship board began a campaign against Hausa novelists as well. For an overview see the following articles: Maryam Ali Ali. ‘Kano Government is Using Religion to Kill Literature. Daily Trust. 2 August 2008. allafrica.com/stories/printable/200808040546.html; Sumaila Umaisha. ‘Kano censorship crisis: Far from over (report) Everything Literature Blogspot www.everythinliterature.blogspot.com/; Amina Koki Gizo. ‘We Will Write About Them’
Interview with Hausa novelist Sa'adatu Baba.’ IPS News. 6 September 2008. ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=43816 Amina Koki Gizo. ‘Writers, Film-makers Defy Censors’ IPS News, 12 September 2008,ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=43857; Muhammad K. Muhammad. ‘Kano Writers Call off Strike.’ Daily Trust. 24 August 2008. www.dailytrust.com/content/view/16676/75/

[3] Yusha'u Adamu Ibrahim, ‘How Adam A. Zango Ended up in Prison,’ Weekly Trust, 1 October 2007, allafrica.com/stories/200710011384.html

[4]Mansur Sani Malam. ‘Hausa Actor, Ibro Sentenced to Two Month Imprisonment’ Leadership 7 October 2008. allafrica.com/stories/200810070348.html; Nasiru Muhammad. ‘Dan Ibro goes to prison for 2 months’ Daily Triumph. 8 October 2008. www.triumphnewspapers.com/dan8102008.html; Nasiru Muhammed. ‘Prison controller refutes Ibro’s release rumour.’ Daily Triumph. 16 October 2008. www.triumphnewspapers.com/prion16102008.html; Sani Maikatanga and Ibrahim Musa Giginyu. ‘Rabo Ya binne Ibro a gidan yari’ Fim. November 2008. pp. 10-14.

[5] Jaafar Jaafar. ‘The travails of Kano entertainer, Iyantama’ Sunday Trust. 4 January 2009.www.dailytrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2102&Itemid=49; ‘Alk’ali Ya D’aure Iyan-Tama Kafin Kammala Sauraron Shaida’ Leadership Hausa. 2-8 January 2009. p. 14;
Adamu Abuh. ‘Court jails CNPP chief over illegal films.’ Guardian. 31 December 2008. odili.net/news/source/2008/dec/31/13.html;‘No Justice: Iyan-Tama Jailed by Corrupt Officials’ Free Iyan-Tama blog, 31 December 2008. freeiyantama.blogspot.com/2008/12/no-justice-iyan-tama-jailed-by-corrupt.html; Ibrahim Sheme. ‘Iyan-Tama: Another Case of Injustice: An Open Letter to Governor Ibrahim Shekarau’ ibrahim-sheme.blogspot.com/2009/01/another-case-of-injustice.html; Abdulaziz Ahmad Abdulaziz.‘Filmmaker, Iyantama Sentenced to 15-month Imprisonment,’ The Musings of a Young Journalists. 31 December 2008. abdulazizfagge.blogspot.com/2008/12/filmmaker-iyantama-sentenced-to-15.html; Sani Mai Katanga ‘Iyan-Tama a Kejin Rabo’ Fim. June 2008. pp. 49-55.

[6] Muhammad A. Muhammad. ‘Kano Censorship Board and contemporary challenges.’ Daily Trust. 5 December 2008. www.dailytrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=432&Itemid=14; Sani Maikatanga . ‘Shekara 1 da Mallam Rabo a Industiri: Ci Gaba ko Koma Baya?’ Fim. January 2009. 33-42. Nasiru Muhammad. ‘KNSG bans sale of film on Jos crisis.’ Daily Triumph. 12 January 2009. www.triumphnewspapers.com/knsg1212009.html; Mansur Sani Malam. ‘Kano Bans Film on Jos Crisis.’ Leadership. 12 January 2009. leadershipnigeria.com/news/149/ARTICLE/5330/2009-01-12.html

[7] Nasir Gwangwazo. ‘The War Against Film-making.’ Leadership. March 2008, www.leadershipnigeria.com/product_info.php?products_id=25209

[8] Please note that while the Leadership article cited below says that 10 studios were raided and 9 people were arraigned. Baba Karami in a personal communication on 9 January 2009 stated that 21 people were taken before the mobile court. Mansur Sani Malam. ‘Nigeria: Emir Bayero Donates N2 Million to Qur’anic School.’ Leadership. 22 October 2008. allafrica.com/stories/200810220784.html

[9] ‘Wad’anda Rabo ‘zai kama’’ Fim. November 2008. p. 13.

[10] ‘Abin da yasa aka kama Rabi’u H.R.B.’ Fim. January 2009. p. 53

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THESE ONGOING EVENTS, SEE THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES:

‘No Justice: Iyan-Tama Jailed by Corrupt Officials’ On the Free Iyan-Tama blog, freeiyantama.blogspot.com/2008/12/no-justice-iyan-tama-jailed-by-corrupt.html

‘Kano Bans Film on Jos Crisis.’ By Mansur Sani Malam in Leadership. 12 January 2009. leadershipnigeria.com/news/149/ARTICLE/5330/2009-01-12.html

‘The travails of Kano entertainer, Iyantama’ by Weekly Trust reporter Jaafar Jaafar
Weekly Trust, Sunday, 4 January 2009
www.dailytrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2102&Itemid=49

‘Iyan-Tama: Another Case of Injustice: An Open Letter to Governor Ibrahim Shekarau’ by Ibrahim Sheme, editor of Leadership Newspaper and publisher of Fim Magazine, ibrahim-sheme.blogspot.com/2009/01/another-case-of-injustice.html

‘Court jails CNPP chief over illegal films.’ by Guardian reporter Adamu Abuh. 31 December 2008. odili.net/news/source/2008/dec/31/13.html

‘Filmmaker, Iyantama Sentenced to 15-month Imprisonment,’ by Leadership reporter Abdulaziz Ahmad Abdulaziz, 31 December 2008, abdulazizfagge.blogspot.com/2008/12/filmmaker-iyantama-sentenced-to-15.html

‘Nigeria: Hausa Actor, Ibro Sentenced to Two Month Imprisonment’ by Mansur Sani Malam in Leadership Newspaper: allafrica.com/stories/200810070348.html

‘Writers, Film-makers Defy Censors’ by Amina Koki Gizo on IPS News, 12 September 2008, ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=43857

‘The War Against Film-making’ by Nasir Gwangwazo, Leadership, March 2008, www.leadershipnigeria.com/product_info.php?products_id=25209

‘Press Release: Brief report on the state of film industry in Kano State, Nigeria’ by Ahmad M. Sarari (National Vice President MOPPAN) , 28 February 2008, en.afrik.com/article12615.html

‘Taking on Nigeria’s Islamic Censors’ by Andrew Walker, BBC. October 2007. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7024630.stm

‘Censoring movies and books in Kano: text of press release by Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim’ 25 September, 2007, ibrahim-sheme.blogspot.com/2007/09/censoring-movies-and-books-in-kano.html

Trampled grass as two elephants wrestle

Lessons for South Africa from Zimbabwe

Mphutlane wa Bofelo

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/53202

cc. SokwaneleCiting the absence of viable political alternatives to ZANU-PF and the MDC, Mphutlane wa Bofelo laments the deadlock continuing to grip Zimbabwe. Considering a broader history of continental political developments and the entrenched dominance of particular parties within post-colonial African states, wa Bofelo discusses what lessons Zimbabwe’s experience offers for a South Africa approaching new general elections.
In a vintage case of the grass getting trampled when two elephants wrestle, Zimbabwe is under threat of completely disintegrating into ashes as the jostle for political power between Zimbabwe National Unity-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) creates an impasse around the already minimal progress that has been achieved towards a government of national unity. The Zimbabwean situation is a typical example of the problem posed by a parliamentary system dominated by only two political parties in a nascent African multiparty democracy. In most instances in post-colonial Africa – where one-party state dictatorship has been the norm – it has been difficult for political forces with no historical link to the anti-colonial struggle for independence to break the hold of the ‘party of liberation’ on state power and popular support. The trend thus far has been that real opposition resulting in the peaceful electoral deposing of the party ruling since independence has often emerged as a consequence of fractures, dissent and divisions within that party, or an organic process of a labour and civil society movement breaking ranks with the ruling party to constitute itself into an alternative political group.

Often when this happens, the animosity between the two parties involved becomes so deep-seated that they are most of the time in deadlock, putting the contest for political power above the collective interest of the nation. The lack of civil society activism coupled with a weak and inefficiently organised social movement literally leaves society at the mercy of two strong parties who are very hostile to each other. Often the hostility is such that the two parties are so obsessed with upstaging each other for seizure and/or control of state power that there are minimal opportunities for any form of cooperative governance that would prioritise national unity and national interests above party interests. In the absence of other parties with enough electoral strength, popular currency and lobbying, advocacy and mass action capacity to be significant role-players and stakeholders in the political arena, you have a situation where a one-party dictatorship is replaced by the dominance of two parties preoccupied with nothing but showing their prowess against each other in the political kraal.

This is the scenario playing itself out in Zimbabwe, where the endless tug-of-war and political chess game between ZANU-PF and MDC has put the hopes and possibilities of political reconstruction and economic recovery in the once affluent country at bay. The absence of other powerful parliamentary and extra-parliamentary voices outside of ZANU-PF and the MDC reduces the chances of breaking the deadlock between the two parties. Here you have a formidable party with strong ‘struggle’ credentials locking horns with a party that has its roots in the labour and civil moment and has a swelling membership in the urban areas. While the former has a history of entrenching its rule through a combination of populist anti-imperialist, Third World nationalism rhetoric, tight control of the military, civil service and all state apparatus, and repression of private press and political dissent, the latter's Achilles' heel is the stigma of having strong and loudly pronounced backing from Western powers.

Zimbabwe holds powerful lessons for South Africa as the Congress of Democrats presents the opportunity of a strong opposition party with the leadership with enough struggle credentials and grassroots support to seriously contest for state power in the years to come. For many years, socio-political critics, commentators and analysts have been alarmed by the fact that South Africa is quickly falling into one-party state dominion, and that the current official opposition party's association with elite corporate and white minority interests, as well as its lack of ‘struggle’ credentials, does not have the capacity to become a formidable opposition party, let alone a serious contender for seizure of state power. With the South African National Civic Organization (SANCO) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) effectively representing the ANC on the ground and the ANC in labour respectively, you have a situation where, other than the emergent social movement, there is no powerful people's watchdog or well-organised civil society voice outside government. A politics of patronage and opportunism has also seen to it that private business becomes a consort of government where kickbacks such as tenders and hefty black economic empowerment (BEE) deals are commonplace. The corporate media is becoming increasingly a lapdog, echoing his master’s voice and keeping corporate interests are intact, while the public broadcaster is effectively a mouthpiece of the government and the ruling party. These are conditions very conducive for a one-party dictatorship to thrive, even behind the veil of liberal representative constitutional democracy.

For many analysts the resolution of the crisis of one-party domination lies in the emergence of a strong opposition party, which the Congress of the People (COPE) promises to be. Already pundits have proposed that in this year's national general elections there will be only two real players. To use a soccer metaphor, the rest belong in the junior league. Already COPE is said to be planning a labour federation alternative to COSATU, and SANCO is divided between ANC and COPE supporters.

This will imply that both within and outside parliament, the main choice will be between COPE and ANC. As already indicated by the Zimbabwean situation, it will be a mistake for voters to pin their hopes on one powerful opposition party. It might be a smarter move to consider boosting rather than depleting the electoral strength of political parties other than the ruling party (ANC), the current official opposition in the Democratic Alliance (DA), and COPE. This will help to widen the possibilities of having as varied and many as possible watchdog, conscientious, and alternative voices within parliament. At the moment chances are high that COPE's prominence will eat into the support base of parties like the United Democratic Movement, the Independent Democrats, Azanian People's Organization, Pan Africanist Congress, Socialist Party of Azania and others. If this happens, these parties might be weakened with the weakest among them even facing the possibility of marginalisation or even their complete disappearance from the political scene.

The country and its citizens will benefit far more from having as many strong and articulate political alternatives as possible than they could from a political landscape dominated by only two parties. In addition to as many powerful voices as possible within government, democracy also flourishes where there is a vibrant and articulate civil, social and labour movement.

It might therefore be prudent for those who wish to see a sustainable and flourishing democracy to invest in improving the resources and capacity of smaller parties and in defending the independence of the civic movement, the social movement and the labour movement. The unfortunate reality is that often it is the very forces and institutions that loudly pronounce on democracy that are quick to scuffle smaller alternative voices, while befriending and patronising those who hold political power. This produces a situation where the private sector simply funds the dominant and established parties, while the media focuses its attention only on the powerful, deliberately snubbing independent, alternative voices. These institutions uphold such a situation at the peril of wider society, as it can ultimately only lead to a one-party dictatorship or two-party junta.

* Mphutlane wa Bofelo is a writer-activist with a passion for using creative education, literature and theatre as tools for transformation and development.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Of mutual benefit: Obama and normalising US–Cuba relations

Mwandawiro Mghanga

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/53206

cc. Álvaro HerraizIn solidarity with Cuba and the Cuban people, Mwandawiro Mghanga argues that Barack Obama should rescind the US’s continued blockade on the Caribbean country as a demonstration of his commitment to fulfilling his campaign promises of more egalitarian policies towards the world’s poor. Cuba’s successes through socialism and its continued efforts to export healthcare support and education around the world in spite of its own constraints, the author contends, merit recognition in the form of normalised trading and diplomatic relations with its rich neighbour.
The Cuban people, together with people all over the world who desire a peaceful, just and progressive new world, are celebrating fifty years of the Cuban revolution. But while celebrating the achievements of socialism in the land of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, we are also reminded of the sad reality that the year 2009 also marks fifty years of the USA’s economic, financial and commercial blockade against Cuba.

2009 also will mark, in a few days’ time, another significant event in world history. Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the USA’s first ever black president. This youthful, charismatic president of the most powerful country on earth – who happens to have ethnic roots from my own country Kenya – campaigned for this power on a platform of reforming the economic and social system of the US in favour of the poor and the oppressed people of his country, and indeed for peace, justice, democracy, human rights and social progress in the entire world.

These are noble and sacred ideals, especially in light of the history of successive Republican presidents in the shape of Bush junior and Bush senior, presidents who spearheaded a world bedeviled with wars, terrorism, injustice and reactionary economic policies and ideas that have led to the current US and global economic recession. I wish Obama a successful inauguration and hope that as a president he will not only carry out the progressive reforms he promised the people of his country but that he will also steer the US foreign policy towards working for a just, peaceful and progressive new world order.

We cannot afford, however, to become overly optimistic. To expect that a single individual elected as president could overnight succeed in changing the system of capitalism and imperialism institutionalised in his country for centuries is to expect too much. Yet we are hoping against hope that Obama will, among other expectations, be the most positively courageous president of the USA and fully capable of departing from the imperialist policies of his predecessors. A measure of this would be how he relates to his small but also politically and morally powerful neighbour, Cuba.

Obama should normalise relations with Cuba and end the economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by his country upon the people of Cuba for fifty years hitherto. There are several reasons why he should do this, but I will mention only a few of them.

In the first place, the majority of the countries of the world, including his father's country Kenya, have voted against the blockade. Should he therefore opt not to abandon this shameful and reactionary political relic condemned worldwide, he will remain haunted and embarrassed throughout his presidency while being accused of hypocrisy and double standards. Besides, the prestige of the US in the eyes of the masses of the world will continue to fall.

Secondly, the US blockade against Cuba is unjustified, illegal according to international law, and a brutal, sadistic, violation of human rights. The blockade continues to sabotage Cuba’s economy, imposing difficulties, and impeding the execution of development plans and the provision of essential social services. Although the Cuban revolution has led to immense economic and social achievements – especially in education and health, the levels of which are comparable to those of developed countries – it could have achieved even more were it not for the US economic blockade, a blockade that is estimated to have cost Cuba’s economy trillions of dollars. Surely Obama would not wish to continue with such oppressive, barbaric and revengeful policies that serve no logical purposes.

Thirdly, the US blockade against Cuba is not only unpopular outside the US, it is also fully opposed by citizens of the US inside the country who desire peace, friendship, trade and mutual cooperation with their island neighbour and an end to discredited, unjust policies. It would, for example, cost Cuba far less to import food and other goods available from nearby Florida than to import them from thousands of kilometres away in Vietnam, China and Europe. Many US tourists would wish to enjoy the nearby sunshine at Cuba's beautiful beaches at destinations that would likely be cheaper than other Caribbean Islands. Removing the economic blockade would therefore be of mutual benefit to the US and Cuba alike and therefore should make political and economic sense to Obama.

Fourthly, the US blockade against Cuba is a violation of one of the basic principles of international relations, the right of nations big or small to self-determination. Without the adhering to this principle, peace cannot be observed in the world. Since 1959, the Cuban people have decided to pursue the socialist system for the development of their country. This is their inalienable right as a nation and a people. In fact, 50 years of the policy of the US of trying to impose capitalism upon the Cuban people has not only proved to be unworkable and unjustifiable, but also totally unacceptable to the people of Cuba, who themselves consciously chose socialism.

Cuba has one of, if not the most, educated and informed populations in the world. The Cuban people follow and analyse world events that reach them through their own media and that of the world. They are fully aware of the harsh realities of capitalism, and the poverty and suffering among the majority of the people, exploitation and oppression, unemployment, tribalism and racism, conflicts and violence, inequality, economic stagnation and loss of national freedoms and sovereignty that can characterise such a system. The Cuban people understand that socialism as a system is not only historically and morally superior to the capitalist system, but also that despite objective and subjective economic difficulties, socialism has provided them with tangible guaranteed social rights in the form of employment, health and educational services, food and the right of all to participate in creating and sharing of the wealth of the country. Not to mention the fact that the socialist revolution has restored and sustained the freedom of their nation.

Socialism has done away with conditions leading to conflicts, class, race and gender inequality and has produced a popular leadership committed to the interests of their people and country, a leadership that is respected throughout the world. I have been to Cuba three times and I know that the Cuban people will continue to implement the necessary political, social and economic reforms of the welfare of their revolution, and will never succumb to pressure to abandon socialism for capitalism. That is why 50 years of the US blockade has not succeeded in destroying the Cuban revolution. Obama is, therefore, better advised not to continue with hegemonic policies against Cuba; he should instead accept to meet the Cuban leadership face to face and solve any differences between the two countries amicably. The talks should not be done under conditions of carrot and stick, but through mutual respect and recognition of each country's national sovereignty.

Fifthly, Obama will find dealing with the Cuban leadership intellectually and morally uplifting. Cuba’s is one of the most progressive and educated leaderships in the world and is also sincere, humble, humane and genuinely committed to the welfare of humanity and the world. Despite its own difficulties, Cuba continues to share the social and economic benefits of its revolution with other people of the world, including those of the US. There are thousands of students from all over the world living and studying in Cuba free of charge. Cuba does not export weapons and war; instead it exports friendship, peace, progressive ideas and solidarity to the world. There are thousands of Cuban doctors, medical practitioners, teachers and other professionals working as volunteers all over the world, mostly in developing countries. Whenever and wherever there are natural disasters in the world, Cubans offer their technological and material support irrespective of a country's political and social system. Thousands of Cuban people shed their blood in southern Africa and helped to liberate the world from apartheid. Ideologically, Cuba offers ideas of making the world a better place for all human beings to live in a safe, happy, peaceful, just, and developing world that conserves cultural diversity and the environment for the present and future generations. For a US statesman who wishes to make positive contributions to his country and the world, making friends with the leadership of his neighbour Cuba would represent a really good beginning.

All this being said, I wish President Barrack Obama and the US people success in all ways as they embark on implementing positive political and economic changes within their country and abroad. Let the normalisation of US relations with Cuba be part of the success.

* Mwandawiro Mghanga is chairman of Kenya’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Kenya Cuba – Friendship Society (KCFS).
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

African democracy through Obama: Time to strengthen the continent’s politicians

Nii Akuetteh

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/53254

cc. barakobamadotcomBarack Obama’s election is a political earthquake, and one whose tremors will be felt strongly in Africa, writes Nii Akuetteh. Under George W. Bush, the rhetorical support for democracy in Africa was not matched by deeds, but Obama will be better able to understand the problems of Africa and push for democracy effectively, the author contends.
Barack Obama’s capture of America’s 44th presidency was a hard-to-believe political earthquake. Six weeks later, it still has not sunk in. As Craig Robinson, Obama’s brother-in-law, stated, it feels like a dream, a joke with the punch line about to be delivered. The Obama victory is that stupendous.

For this tremendous accomplishment, Obama deserves all the accolades thrown at of him: ‘rare human being’, ‘potential Mandela’, ‘potential Lincoln’.

But some credit must also go to the American voters, remembering that Obama is by choice a member of a 10% minority, a minority despised and abused for almost four centuries – and counting. Above all, Obama’s victory demands that we appreciate how exceptionally democratic America is – especially among the world’s powers. This is not to say the US is perfect; it is not. The country was created with a shocking ‘birth defect’ in its system of slavery, and still displays persistent flaws. But its democracy is impressive. For nearly a decade now, an old, low-intensity debate has been heating up: What is an empire? Are empires good things? And, crucially, is America an empire? While they rightly point out that empires are by nature evil, violent and stratified, I have been disappointed that respected progressive thinkers (some of whom, like Dean Makau wa Mutua in Buffalo, NY, are good friends of mine) have concluded that America is an empire. I am less sure. Because the American state was ‘conceived in liberty’, because it was born as a high-risk rejection of the British empire, because it is dedicated to achieving equality, and because its first leader rejected being made a king and instead set the enduring example of a term-limited, elected president, I believe America differs from previous empires. It is not Rome. And it certainly is not the British empire, whose heirs still take pride in the subjugation of a global expanse on which the sun never sets while rejecting any responsibility for countless enduring crises sowed everywhere. I lean toward the view, in other words, that a true democracy cannot be an empire, and vice versa. Consequently, it was music to my ears that the very first public sentences Barack Obama uttered on the night of Tuesday, 4 November 2008, were, ‘If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.’ So my third piece of the credit for President Obama’s election goes to democracy and to the fact that America, though imperfect, is a pretty good democracy.

Elections – transparent, free, fair and repeated – are indispensable for democracy, without of course being sufficient. Elections are the sound infrastructure of a democracy, but they are insufficient in the same way that foundations and walls alone do not make a grand mansion.

If African countries must hold peaceful, transparent, clean and regular elections and if in other ways they must become more democratic – and they must – what policies should the Obama administration pursue to incentivise, encourage and reward them? And how high a priority should the promotion of democracy in Africa be for Obama? In other words, in Africa, should Obama continue President Bush’s freedom agenda? Should he terminate it? Or should he alter it? If so, in what way?

Bush is not the first American president to extol democracy’s promotion. But by far, America’s 43rd president has been the loudest and most persistent. Bush has exceeded all his 41 predecessors with his passion, frequently stubborn and even religious tones in advocating democracy. Bush’s evangelisation of democracy’s promotion started even before he became president. On 11 October 2000, during the second debate against then Vice-President Al Gore, Bush said, ‘Now we trust freedom. We know freedom is powerful – a powerful force much bigger than the United States of America.’

Then in February 2003, while attempting to direct public opinion in favour of the invasion of Iraq, Bush argued at the American Enterprise Institute here in Washington, DC, that democracy’s promotion is both an American and international obligation that creates stability.

In autumn 2003, once he had ejected Saddam Hussein but found no weapons of mass destruction, he used a speech to say even louder that democracy’s promotion had motivated his invasion.

I believe that for American presidents fortunate enough to get re-elected, the second inaugural address represents the most important speech (with the obvious exception of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s, who won four consecutive presidential elections and therefore delivered second, third and fourth inaugurals). On 20 January 2005, President Bush devoted his second inaugural entirely to the ‘freedom agenda’. Among many arresting passages, he said, ‘All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.’ Minutes later he invoked America’s greatest president, ‘The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.’ But the climax had to be when President Bush declared democracy’s promotion as the number one goal of American foreign policy, eclipsing even his own global war against terrorism: ‘So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.’

Five months later, Condoleezza Rice – Bush’s closest confidant, foreign policy tutor, and the new Secretary of State – went even further. In Cairo on 20 June, she bluntly stated that during the Cold War, all American administrations had made a naïve and dangerous mistake by backing dictators instead of promoting democracy. Her precise words, ‘For sixty years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East – and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.’ Reportedly, this particular statement infuriated General Colin Powell, Rice’s immediate predecessor, and many other foreign policy experts across the US. One book claims that the following colourful language is how General Powell expressed his expressed his annoyance: ‘With that one sentence, she just crapped on eight presidents.’

From mid-2005 in Cairo, fast forward three and a half years to late 2008 in DC. Twelve days ago Mr. Bush himself repeated the Rice charge, albeit with a very interesting, revealing revision. On 5 December at the Brookings Institution, the president said, ‘With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the primary threat to America and the region became violent religious extremism. Through painful experience, it became clear that the old approach of promoting stability is unsuited to this new danger – and that the pursuit of security at the expense of liberty would leave us with neither one.’

The six instances I have cited above are only a sample, the small tip of a mountainous iceberg: Bush and his aides have passionately advocated democracy’s promotion in dozens of capitals on every continent and in every world region. All these add up to one thing: no other American president has come even close to the forcefulness and stubbornness with which Bush has argued for democracy’s promotion. Being a strong believer in democracy, I am elated that President Bush has been so clear, passionate and persistent about the virtues and need for democracy. I am especially glad when he consistently rejects the claim that non-white cultures are incapable of democracy. So I give him an A for speaking about democracy.

Nevertheless, speeches are one thing and actual implemented policy is quite another – even for the world’s most powerful politician. So how good is the Bush administration’s record on democracy’s promotion, especially in Africa?

My short answer: abysmal. In terms of grades, a big fat F. So in my class, President Bush gets an A for talking the talk, and an F for failing to walk the walk.

To understand my assigned grade, we must start with a brief comparison of Bush’s policy toward democracy in Africa with those of his predecessors since the continent’s independence. We must keep in mind that the 1960s – when Africa wrestled back her independence – was the height of the Cold War. Consequently, every American president (from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush) used anti-communism as the acid test for separating good African leaders and regimes from bad. Following this single criteria, they categorised Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba, Kenneth Kaunda, Sékou Touré, Amílcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, and even the saintly Nelson Mandela, as bad, dangerous communist sympathisers or worse. Each had to be emasculated or destroyed. In contrast, Washington branded African dictators such as Joseph Kasa-Vubu, Moise Tshombe, William Tubman, Jomo Kenyatta, Siad Barre, Samuel Doe, Hissène Habré and most notoriously, Ian Smith in Rhodesia, the apartheid regimes in Pretoria, and Mobutu Sese Seko in Kinshasa, trustworthy leaders to be supported and protected. Put another way, Bush and Rice are right with respect to Africa: during the Cold War, across Africa, Washington sacrificed democracy for the sake of anti-communism.

Given that anti-communism ceased to be an American foreign policy goal after the Soviet Union disappeared in 1989 and the Cold War ended, and given that he has harshly condemned his predecessors’ support of dictators, Bush must have shunned African dictators, right? Wrong, dead wrong. Where his Cold War predecessors used a single big excuse, anti-communism, to sacrifice democracy and embrace African dictators, Bush has found many big excuses: the global war on terrorism, oil, and neoliberal economic globalisation that favours American corporations. Using these criteria, the Bush administration remains very friendly to, or actually props-up, several notorious African dictators: Hosni Mubarak in Egypt; Yoweri Museveni in Uganda; Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia; Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Somalia; Paul Kagame in Rwanda; Macías Nguema Obiang in Equatorial Guinea; Idriss Déby in Chad; and the latest, Muammar Gadhafi in Libya. Even Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, though committing genocide, has been spared Washington’s full wrath because he has been assisting in Iraq and Bush’s war on terrorism.

Given the above evidence, hypocrisy would not be an unreasonable charge against the Bush administration. It has been practicing the very thing – support of African dictators – that it has loudly been preaching against. The conspicuous Bush refusal in Africa to walk the walk on democracy’s promotion is my biggest reason for giving his policy a failing grade. But it is not my only reason.

There are two other reasons, found outside Africa. First, even in the one country where Bush seemingly attempted to implant democracy, he used abysmal methods. Yes, I am referring to the bungled attempt to impose democracy through the mouth of a gun in Iraq.

Setting a bad example is the third and final reason. In the running of his own government in the US, Bush repeatedly flouted the normal pillars of democratic governance. Instances of this include the signing of statements appearing to say that the president would be above the law, the rendition and torture of terrorist suspects, the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, indefinite detention of terrorist suspects at Guantánamo Bay, unauthorised wiretaps of American citizens and the use of prohibited political criteria in the hiring and firing at the Justice Department.

To summarise and re-iterate, over eight years, President Bush has eclipsed all his predecessors in talking a great, passionate game: democracy’s promotion, the freedom agenda, and liberty. Those terms all advocate, imply, and promise to terminate the long US habit of supporting dictators, tyrannical regimes and policies, while opposing those with significantly greater democratic credentials. Bush did not deliver on this promise however; he has failed dismally to turn his talk into actual policies and accomplishments. On Africa, our continent, the Bush administration is even now cuddling up to seven or so African dictators. In Iraq he has tried to impose democracy through invasion and occupation, resulting in death and chaos. And while running the US, he has flouted many, many democratic conventions.

Before Bush, for over 60 years, American presidents, especially during the Cold War, sacrificed democracy and propped up ‘friendly-tyrants’ who claimed to be anti-communists. Bush vehemently condemned this practice. And yet despite his talk, his own promotion of democracy has been abysmal. The question then is, what should President-Elect Obama do about the existing policy of democracy’s promotion that he will inherit from Bush? Which of three options must he select?

As a first option he could choose a complete copy of Bush’s substance and style of democracy’s promotion. Specifically this would mean talking passionately and unceasingly about the sacred value of democracy, freedom and liberty and promising that the US would promote democracy everywhere. But this mere copycatting of Bush would mean betraying this promise in three broad categories. To put my value judgement upfront, such copycatting would be an unforgivable blunder on Obama’s part. It should not happen. Fortunately, it is unlikely to. Obama has publicly committed to breaking radically from Bush in two of the three areas: winding down the Iraq war and doing a much better job of respecting the US constitution and democratic norms by closing Guantanamo, ending rendition and torture, and by reining in the vice-president.

President Obama’s second choice would be a return to what its proponents call the ‘policy of realism’. In honest English, realism would have Obama radically tone down the evangelical fervour of Bush’s democracy talk while making no noticeable improvements in the third policy area, that is, while continuing to prop up dictators and to shun or even undermine their democratic opponents and activists. Like the first, this second choice too, in my opinion, would be a mistake. I detect worrying signs that Obama might possibly select this choice. One such sign is the intense and near-unanimous disdainful hostility which greeted Bush’s second inauguration, a sentiment that has not really disappeared since January 2005. Another is press stories claiming that many Obama aides are itching to throw democracy’s promotion overboard. Still another sign is the realisation that global threats (such as terrorism, economic depression, oil shortage, climate change, regional instability, war, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction), Africa-specific challenges (such as improving health and education, reducing poverty, and preventing conflict) as well as domestic US interest-group politics could make democracy’s promotion seem an unaffordable, or at least a postponable, foreign policy luxury for Washington. I believe that, particularly in Africa policy, seeing things this way has been and continues to be a tragic mistake because with commitment and creativity, democracy could be made the most effective weapon for fighting the threats and meeting the challenges. The ‘friendly-tyrant mindset’ is the most worrisome sign. Depressingly, this mindset seems deeply entrenched among opinion leaders and within both parties in the US and other Western democracies. To repeat, I would advise and hope that the Obama administration resists the temptation and advice encouraging the second choice of reducing the talk of democracy and continuing to support dictators, especially in Africa.

That then leaves the third option as my recommendation. Specifically, I strongly urge President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, where Africa is concerned, to take these steps: First, to maintain Bush’s passionate rhetorical support for democracy. Second, to quickly wind down the current Bush support for dictators in Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, and Equatorial Guinea (and perhaps even Egypt). Third, to make every single African regime understand that expanding and deepening its own democracy is, in President Obama’s judgment, the most reliable, preferable means to improve health and education, reduce poverty and prevent conflict. Of course many African dictators will likely retort – even if only under their breath – that they know their societies better and democracy must take a backseat to other challenges. At which point President Obama must insist that advancing democracy is the price he demands of African regimes that want friendly relations with his administration.

Happily, I detect four signs that President Obama could be amenable to promoting democracy vigorously in Africa. The first obvious one is that while his loyalty is 100% with the US – and rightly so – and while his duty is to advance US interests, he clearly understands and cares for Africa more deeply than any previous American president, more deeply than any of this year’s presidential candidates, and more deeply than any members of Congress. Africa, after all, is big, not just within his DNA but within his consciousness as well, as his brilliant memoirs attest. Second, during his formative Indonesian years, Obama witnessed first hand the harmful consequences of the ‘friendly-tyrant’ policy. Both his own mother and step-father – even he himself – suffered under the undemocratic rule of the brutal Suharto regime, a regime that America supported to violently overthrew the Sukarno government and to hang on to power. Third, as a senator and presidential candidate, Obama pointed out more than once that President Bush’s strong support for Pakistani tyrant Pervez Musharraf was a dumb and counterproductive approach to fighting terrorists and radicals. Finally, in July 2007, Obama, a superb writer, wrote very clearly his belief that US policy must first and foremost make helping countries become democratic its priority, after which such democratic countries can achieve their other national goals: ‘We need to invest in building capable, democratic states that can establish healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth.’

There is currently an unfortunate conventional wisdom spreading within US foreign policy circles. Created by uncritical reporting and encouraged by the Bush White House, it holds that Bush’s Africa policy has been a great success since he boosted aid for fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria. This implies that the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and related programmes are the sum total of Bush’s Africa policy. They are not. They constitute only one among seven elements. (The other six are trade and investment policy, including the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA); development policy, especially the activities of the Millennium Challenge Corporation; Africom; military training in the Sahel and in East Africa; the general war on terrorism; and democracy’s promotion.) Admittedly, the health programmes have been very successful, but at the very least we must weigh them against the Bush administration’s unspeakable role in the destruction of Somalia.

The point here is that the US’s Africa policy has many elements. So even if the Obama administration takes my advice, what priority must it assign to democracy’s promotion compared to the other six Bush elements (not to mention any new Obama elements)?

In my opinion, democracy’s promotion must be a top priority, a bedrock of the Obama administration’s Africa policy. Put another way, democracy must become Obama’s vehicle for achieving other Africa policy ends as such as expanding bilateral trade and investment, improving health and education, reducing poverty, and preventing conflict.

Politics is Obama’s chosen profession. Once his law school brilliance captured attention, he was pressured and tempted with visions of serious and quick wealth, fame and influence if he opted to serve the one-year apprenticeship in the Supreme Court and then become a corporate lawyer. He declined. Shocked by this rejection, his many enticers accused him of lacking ambition. His explanation strikes me as a gem: ‘Making money is fine. But I believe if your ambition is just to make money, then you are not ambitious enough.’ It is delicious irony that today, pundits now describe his ambition as ‘searing’. The next tempting offer that he become a full-time, career law professor Obama also rejected. Finally his wife Michelle hauled out the ‘anything but politics because it is dangerous and corrupting’ argument. Also to no avail. The point is that Obama is not an accidental politician but rather someone who is in his chosen element. And he is a stunningly good politician, but still a politician. (For me, ‘politician’ is not a dirty word and Obama has my admiration.)

To paraphrase a friend, ‘All politicians are weather vanes; they point according to the direction of the strongest wind.’ This implies that for Obama to vigorously promote democracy in general and clean elections in particular, in Africa, American constituencys and pressure groups must strongly push him. Someone must hold Obama’s feet to the fire. I know of one group whose sacred responsibility it is to force President Obama to promote democracy in Africa. That group is us: first and second generation African immigrants across the US. As my good friend Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem paraphrases Nkrumah every week, ‘Don’t agonize, organize.’

Specifically, we – African immigrants in the US – must do serious foreign policy organising in four stages. First and foremost we must find a way to create a united front, a way to overcome our divisiveness and atomisation and work together. Next we must create at least one very serious foreign policy NGO in Washington, DC. Six months after being registered, it must be competing successfully, as a professionally run think-tank, with TransAfrica Forum, Africa Action and IPS. And in six years it must challenge and even beat Cato, Brookings, and CSIS. As a third stage, our foreign policy think-tank must support and commission the thousands of African intellectuals on American and Canadian campuses to produce policy analyses, ideas and proposals that clearly are superior to anything coming out of these other Washington think-tanks, out of Congress, out of the White House and out of the State Department. Fourth, we must persuade and mobilise the entire African immigrant community. The purpose would be to put effective pressure on the Obama administration, on members of Congress, and on state and local officials to push democracy’s promotion and to make other improvements in US Africa policy that we want.

So there is a ton of work to be done, both by African leaders so that their own Obamas can emerge and by the Obama administration to incentivise these very same leaders. But we African immigrants have the responsibility for starting and for forcing these others to assume their part. It is a sacred duty and it is ours – yours and mine. Let us therefore get to work. Immediately.

* Nii Akuetteh is an Africa policy analyst, activist and non-profit executive now based in Washington, DC. He is also founder of the Democracy and Conflict Research Institute (DCRI).
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Sekwanele! (Enough is enough!): Post-apartheid land and housing struggles

From racial to class apartheid

Toussaint Losier

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/53204

cc. Andre Pierre Highlighting the efforts of the Abahlali baseMjondolo social movement to draw attention to persistent governmental indifference towards the plight of Durban shack dwellers, Toussaint Losier sets the shack fires endured by locals within their broader political context. Directly equating the absence of adequate housing, water and electricity with the early 1990s informal negotiations between the ANC and corporate leaders, the author argues the shack dwellers’ marginalisation to be a direct consequence of South Africa’s post-apartheid neoliberal leanings and the unwillingness of the ANC to make good on its original aims of equitable social redistribution.
Amabhulu anyama

Asenzeli iworry

[The black capitalists

Are making us worry]

– Chorus of a contemporary protest song, sung in Xhosa

In the predawn hours of Saturday 13 September 2008, a devastating fire tore through the thousands of wood and zinc shacks that make up the Foreman Road informal settlement in Durban. Sparked by an unattended candle, the fire spread quickly and raged for hours.

With only one water tap serving nearly 8,000 tightly packed residents, there was little people could do but warn their neighbours and move to safety to watch their houses burn. It would take several hours to put out the fire. Among the smouldering debris, residents would later find the body of Thembelani Khweshube, 30, who had been asleep when his shack caught fire.

‘I wish that somebody could save us from this misery,’ lamented Funeka Nokhayingana to a local reporter from the Durban Mercury amidst the charred zinc and the damp ash. ‘I have lost everything in the fire – my identity document, my children's birth certificates, uniforms and school books. It hurts me to raise my children in such conditions, but I don't have a choice because I have nowhere else to go.’

Far from a rare occurrence, these shack fires have become an increasingly frequent phenomenon in post-apartheid South Africa, as the numbers of shack settlements have continued to grow. There has been an average of 10 shack fires a day over the past five years, with someone dying in a shack fire almost every other day. In the eThekwini municipality where the Foreman Road settlement is located, there is roughly one shack fire a day.

Not long after the wreckage had finally begun to cool, the residents of Foreman Road held a community meeting to collectively assess their situation. Rather than accepting the city's offer of relocation, residents resolved to immediately begin rebuilding their shacks using whatever materials could be salvaged from the ruins. Working with other members of Abahlali baseMjondolo (Zulu for shack dwellers), a social movement based in more than 40 shack settlements, residents put out a press statement the same day, calling for emergency food, temporary shelter and building materials. At the same time, their statement also placed the destruction of more than 70 per cent of their settlement in a broader political context:
‘Shack fires are a crisis. They are not something normal. The government must stop blaming the victims every time there is a fire. We have to treat the fires as a crisis. We have to act against the real causes of the fires. The main cause is that people don't have electricity. Other causes are that people don't have enough taps or any fire hydrants to fight the fires. The short-term solution is to electrify the shacks and provide taps, fire hydrants and access roads. The real solution is to upgrade the settlements with proper brick houses.’

But far from assisting in rebuilding efforts, municipal officials instead arrived at the settlement with bulldozers the following day. In response, the Foreman Road AbM mobilised to halt the municipality's plans, threatening to blockade the entrance to the settlement road and calling on legal advocates to halt the unlawful action. ‘Foreman Road is our home,’ reiterated AbM after threatening to destroy any bulldozers that entered the settlement. ‘We are urbanites. We live and work and school here. We will not be moved. If the City will not give us building materials we will rebuild the settlement ourselves. This land is ours.’

FROM RACIAL TO CLASS APARTHEID

In many ways, AbM's successful response to the threatened demolition of Foreman Road is rooted in a longer history of South Africa's liberation politics. From the land occupations organised by the squatter movements of the 1940s to the rent boycotts coordinated by the civic movements of the 1980s, urban land struggles have figured prominently in popular opposition to apartheid, and before that, racial segregation and settler colonialism. Yet, AbM's calls for adequate housing and land redistribution are also very much linked to recent developments that continue to make South Africa the most unequal country in the world, despite of the end of apartheid.

In 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the leading patron of the African National Congress's (ANC) armed struggle, provided a moderate faction of the apartheid state with the opportunity to seek a negotiated solution to the impasse created by domestic unrest, international isolation, and prolonged economic crisis. The subsequent release of Nelson Mandela and the revoke of the ban on the ANC and other liberation forces initiated a protracted process of public negotiation with the apartheid Nationalist Party, a process that would ultimately lead to the creation of a fully democratic constitution.

Parallel to these negotiations, however, were a series of informal negotiations on economic issues between key ANC members and corporate leaders. To ensure a political settlement with the apartheid regime, ANC leaders ultimately abandoned their professed commitments to wealth redistribution and conceded to the corporate sector's call for a neoliberal macroeconomic approach to economic development as the best solution to the problems facing the country's poor.

‘The terms of this settlement,’ argues economist Sampie Terreblanche, ‘were such that the poorest half of the population has [since 1994], become entrapped in a new form of oppression: a state of systematic exclusion and systemic neglect by a democratically elected government and the modern sector of the economy respectively. It is therefore not surprising that the situation of the poorest half of the population has deteriorated over the past eight years.’

POLITICAL LIBERATION OR ECONOMIC LIBERALISATION

On the eve of the 1994 elections, which would sweep Nelson Mandela to power as the first black president of South Africa, the non-white majority of the country was facing dreadful living conditions. Whether they were in hostels or mine compounds, shack settlements or dilapidated township housing, they were often far from the cities and their places of work. With up to 13.5% of all households living in shack settlements, the country faced an estimated backlog of 3.3 million homes, impacting 15 million people. Moreover, this need for housing was growing at a rate of 200,000 units per year.

In response, the ANC-led alliance of worker and civic organisations proposed a variety of solutions, most prominently the 1993 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). In addition to other issues, the RDP called upon the government to play a key role in a massive housing program that would not only meet basic needs, but also create jobs, redistribute land, and drive economic development. RDP proposed spending at least 5% of the national budget on the construction of 350,000 houses per year to eliminate the backlog over a 10-year period.

But once elected, the ANC government failed to live up to its campaign promises, as commitments to neoliberal trade agreements and the paying-off of apartheid-era debt quickly overruled its social democratic proposals. In 1996, the ANC reiterated earlier agreements with South African capital and the International Monetary Fund by formally adopting the Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy as its economic programme.

Reflecting a neoliberal approach to development, GEAR has promoted market deregulation, fiscal discipline, wage restraints, and the privatisation of government services. In place of redistributive policies, GEAR relies on foreign direct investment and integration into the world market to 'trickle down' benefits to the poor and working class. As a result, the government has largely relied on bank-financing and private construction firms to meet the vast housing backlog.

Under GEAR, the provision of housing has gone from a central element of economic development to a marginal social service. In just the first five years of ANC governance, housing has become less of a priority, dropping from 3.4 to 1.6 per cent of total budget allocations. Moreover, the reliance on the private sector for low-income housing construction has meant that while the government has approved 2.4 million state subsidies for low-income housing construction, most of the homes that have been built have failed to meet the government's own standards.

Following his April 2007 tour of South Africa, the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Miloon Kothari, concluded that new homes ‘have been hastily constructed, poorly planned, and designed without any consultation with local authorities and residents. These houses were unfortunately inadequate to meet the housing needs of their inhabitants.’ Efforts by residents to raise concerns with their local officials have consistently proved fruitless, while increasingly militant housing protests have resulted in mass evictions and arrests.

The social effects of this market-oriented approach can also be seen in government efforts to increase access to other basic services. Access to electricity and clean water has been expanded to much of the poor black majority since the country's first democratic elections, but at the same time services that were once provided to the white population through public utilities have now been either contracted out to foreign companies under a for-profit model. Not only has this led to high service charges, but also the use of prepaid water and electricity meters, and mass disconnections for those unable to pay.

POPULAR RESISTANCE

Over the past decade, these neoliberal policies have sparked waves of popular revolt, often during the months leading up to elections. In 2004–5, for instance, there were an average of 16 protests per day, roughly 13 per cent of them illegal. In addition to raising community grievances, independent researcher Richard Pithouse notes that these protests ‘were aimed at trying to subordinate local party structures and representatives to popular power’, challenging the top-down control asserted by the ANC and other political parties.

When these protests have been channelled outside of party structures, they have, at times, provided opportunities for the development of grassroots social movements. In 2000, for instance, the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) was founded in response to water and electricity disconnections. Later that year, a series of violent evictions and water cut-offs in the Coloured and African townships on the outskirts of Cape Town led to the growth of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC).

Inspired in part by Brazil's Landless Workers Movement, South Africa's Landless Peoples Movement (LPM) was established in 2001 to mobilise the urban and rural poor for substantial land reform. Similarly, Abahlali baseMjondolo emerged out of a 2005 road blockade by residents of the Kennedy Road informal settlement protesting their local councillor’s repeated failures to provide them with formal housing.

Based in poor and working class communities, each of these movements have had to negotiate their reliance on more well-resourced individuals and NGOs, and the attendant efforts to control the movement's agenda. In spite of their differences, each of these movements has made use of both legal and illegal action as a means to build power, not only to force a change in policy, but also radically reorient the logic of post-apartheid governance back to the bottom-up approach promised during the course of the liberation struggle.

BUILDING A POOR PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT

Several weeks prior to the massive fire in Foreman Road, AbM released a new research report, ‘The Big Devil in the Jondolos: The Politics of Shack Fires.’ Confirming what residents had long known, this report cast settlements like Foreman Road as ‘poor people's solution to a lack of affordable housing, especially in cities.’ In the eThekwini municipality, for instance, a third of the population, roughly 920,000 people, live in shacks. Across the country, roughly one in six of all South African households live in shacks.

In addition, the Shack Fire Report listed the lack of security of tenure, use of cheap but highly flammable building materials, limited access to water, and reliance on candles and paraffin lamps as factors contributing to the crisis of shack fires. The report also noted that since 2001, the municipality's refusal to electrify shacks has heightened the risks.

Furthermore, the report noted that the municipality had pursued a campaign of armed de-electrification against settlements, particularly targeting communities mobilising behind AbM. For instance, when AbM convened a mass march again Durban Mayor Obed Mbala for basic services like electricity in 2007, police violently broke up their protest using rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons. Five months later, when AbM announced its plans to challenge the legality of the KwaZulu-Natal province's Slums Act, police entered the Kennedy Road settlement and cut more than 300 electricity connections. Two days after this mass disconnection, a fire in Kennedy Road destroyed 15 shacks and left 25 people homeless, demonstrating links between electricity disconnection shack fires.

On 22 September 2008, AbM convened a City Wide Shack Fire Summit in Kennedy Road, a last minute change of venue from Foreman Road. While municipal officials failed to attend, shack dwellers from all over Durban participated as well as delegates from the AEC, the LPM's Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal branches, the Rural Network, and the eThekwini region of the South African National Civic Organizations (SANCO).

Reiterating the need for the government to address the rash of shack fires as a national emergency, those in attendance also rejected the top-down approach of NGOs, academics, and municipal officials as undemocratic. Poor communities, they agreed, must be able to debate their own solutions and determine their own future. Calling for a solidarity among poor people across the country, delegates resolved to take suggestions for regular marches and a national defiance campaign against illegal electrification back to their social movements.

At the end of the summit, AbM, AEC, LPM, and the Rural Network also announced their formation of a Poor People's Alliance to coordinate their joint actions. In many ways, this new partnership is an outgrowth of a two-year-old Action Alliance between the AEC and AbM.

Formed in response to their shared concerns over the dominance of left-wing academics and NGOs in social movement politics, this alliance has provided these two movements with a base from which they have deepened their politics of popular participation and mass action from below and to the left. In July 2008, for instance, these two movements joined together to help launch an AbM Western Cape movement to directly address the concerns of residents of Cape Town's numerous informal settlements. ‘We are calling it the Poor People's Alliance so our people can identify with it,’ explained AEC Chairman Ashraf Cassiem. ‘It is a solidarity alliance. If there is an action in one place, [we] will carry it forward in another area. It must be people-orientated. It must be action-based, as opposed to an NGO that sits in the office.’

This new alliance is also an outgrowth of the principled stance these movements have taken against party politics and electoral participation. In late 2003, the AEC joined the LPM's initial call for a nationwide ‘No Land! No Vote!’ campaign calling for a moratorium on evictions and immediate land redistribution. Grounded in widespread frustration with the limited change achieved during 10 years of full democracy, the campaign called for a return to mass action in place of reliance on political parties.

In spite of the repression with which the state has responded to them, AbM joined the AEC's election boycott, helping to develop it into a ‘No Land! No House! No Vote!’ campaign during the months prior to the 2006 municipal elections. When AEC members held an Election Day march in Cape Town, the AbM sponsored an UnFreedom Day celebration, now an annual event held on the holiday marking the country's first democratic elections.

‘The community has realised that voting for parties has not brought any change to us - especially at the level of local government elections,’ explained AbM President S'bu Zikode in 2006. ‘At [the] local level, whoever wins the elections will be challenged by us. We have been betrayed by our own elected councillor. We have decided not to vote.’

Even though there has been no formal decision as to whether this new alliance will provide the structure for a boycott of the upcoming 2009 presidential election, these new partnerships should provide for a greater connection of urban land struggles with movements for sustainable rural development.

GOVERNMENT BETRAYAL

While controversial in the eyes of ANC allied-civic organisations and trade union coalitions, these election boycotts have tapped into tangible feelings of betrayal within poor communities, while strategically undermining the ANC's political dominance in highly competitive elections in Durban and Cape Town. Moreover, these campaigns draw on a long tradition of mass non-participation in the institutions of the apartheid system to directly implicate the ANC government's adoption of the corporate sector's neoliberal agenda.

This neoliberal agenda remains largely intact in spite of the upset election of former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma as ANC president in the party's December 2007 elections. Emerging largely unscathed from his 2006 rape trial, Zuma had been able to garner support from key constituencies within the ANC, including the ANC Youth League, the SA Communist Party, and the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU). While some of his supporters have used his bid for the party presidency to push for more redistributive economic policies, Zuma's control of the ANC has been overshadowed by continued power struggles between himself and Mbeki over control of the party.

These power struggles have continued in anticipation of Zuma's upcoming corruption trial, culminating in a court judgment dismissing the case on a technicality, Mbeki's forced resignation as South African President in September 2008, and his replacement by Zuma's deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe. In response, supporters of Mbeki have left the ANC to create a new party, Congress of the People (COPE), to challenge the ANC under Zuma in the upcoming presidential elections in 2009.

‘For us, it is of no concern that the ANC has split up,’ Ashraf Cassiem of the AEC argues. ‘It doesn't have any direct effect because the policy and procedure of the government remains the same. It doesn't matter what platform they use, because everything remains the same. Our communities will still have to be dealing with these policies the same way we have in the past.’

Yet, the changing political landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for South Africa's militant poor. After the Foreman Road fire, local officials restricted emergency aid just to those with ANC cards. Increased partisanship threatens to further divisions among communities and co-opt local leaders. Nevertheless, LPM and AEC have already taken advantage of the installation of new pro-Zuma provincial officials to push for an increased provision of housing.

Moreover, it is unclear whether these power struggles will create openings for a shift away from the current trend of relocating shack dwellers to permanent settlements, termed Temporary Relocation Areas (TRAs), on the urban periphery, towards the upgrading of settlements and adequate public housing demanded by these movements. And with South Africa's hosting of the 2010 World Cup serving as further pretext for the creation of cities that meet the desires of the rich, the need for popular struggle grows greater each day.

* Toussaint Losier is a Chicago-based writer, artist, and activist. He is currently researching the history of mass incarceration at the University of Chicago. Many thanks to Kerry Chance, David Jenkins, and Raj Patel for their input on this article.
* This article was originally published in the current issue of Left Turn magazine in the USA.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

The Shikota faction: Dare South Africa hope?

Sanusha Naidu

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/53207

cc. Open Democracy With the newly formed Congress of the People (COPE) seeking to displace the ANC as South’s Africa leading working-class party, Sanusha Naidu considers new party’s prospects in the upcoming general election. Though arguing that COPE could well make a significant dent in ANC’s existing two-thirds majority in parliament, the author argues that the party still has much to do to differentiate itself from the ANC and convince voters of its sincere concern for South Africa’s disadvantaged masses.
The newly formed Congress of the People (COPE) is making a controversial entrance into South Africa’s political landscape. Most would have thought that the African National Congress’s (ANC) 2007 Polokwane national conference, which culminated in the succession battle reaching its final crescendo with the election of Jacob Zuma as president of the party, would be the bitter end for President Mbeki’s administration. But this was not to be.

The mandarins of Zuma’s court had a wily plan to remove Mbeki, a plan initiated with the appointment of the ANC Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe as a member of the cabinet. Assisted by Judge Nicholson’s, Zuma’s Camelot became a reality when the National Executive Council (NEC) of the ANC took the decision to recall Mbeki from office, and appointed Motlanthe as president until the 2009 national elections. Those who felt that this marked the end of the tumultuous road to Polokwane and the subsequent fractures in the party were sharply reminded that the stakes were too high to concede defeat.

The resignation by a series of ministers, premiers and policymakers that followed suit reflected the fact that the ‘Battle for the soul of the ANC’ could no longer be contained as an internal affair, becoming a public contestation of ignominious tirades and intolerance played out in both the streets and media.

The breakaway faction led by former defence minister, Mosiou Lekota and subsequently, Mbhazima Shilowa, the previous premier of the Gauteng province, pushed forward with their opposition, an opposition premised on the ideals that South Africa’s hard-fought democratic dividends were being compromised by the bigoted populism of the new ANC leadership and its allied partners. As much as upholding the principles of our young democracy became the mantra for the Shikota faction, it was also apparent that the intention was to demonstrate that the dissatisfaction and fissures in the ANC ran deeper than was being projected.

With branch structures like the Western Cape in disarray, and defections and apathy setting in among party cadres from the bottom-up, South Africa’s body politic has reached an interesting crossroads. Whereas previously the ANC’s electoral hegemony remained insulated, this time it is assumed that such insulation will be harder to maintain, especially given that COPE will be contesting the same arena as the ANC. But does COPE have the ability to make significant inroads into the ANC’s electoral space?

By contrast there are predictions that COPE will take about 20% of the votes away from the ANC. Yet the critical question is: who are these voters? At present it must be understood that COPE appeals to a broad-section of voters who are as diverse in their interests as they are in their backgrounds. What holds them together is their overarching class base, their objection to Mbeki’s resignation and the need to distinguish themselves from the grassroots populism that has captured the ANC, a populism which has evolved into banal attacks underlined by an arrogant tone.

The class dynamic amongst African voters is going to be an interesting factor in this year’s national elections. And this is where COPE and the ANC will probably fight their fiercest battles. What it also entails is that the ANC’s historical elite roots have broken ranks with the party and are seeking to demonstrate their resolve by going for an electoral victory on their own.

But the class factor could also extend to other racial groups who feel that COPE is perhaps the viable opposition they have been searching for. With political commentators maintaining that viable opposition can only emerge from within the ANC, it may be that some sections of the electorate will see COPE as filling that space and taking up the call.

The real test for COPE, however, is to expand itself into the working class and economically marginalised communities of South Africa. So far there is has been little said about how COPE will do this and what strategies are in place to appeal to those sections of the population worst affected by the impact of the global financial crisis on South Africa’s economy. Though ‘poverty reduction’ has become a catchphrase for political parties when canvassing for votes, this is not enough. How COPE will protect the interests of the underclass and the policies the party will implement is critical if it is to make any significant inroads into the ANC’s working-class base. For the moment the ANC can still rely on garnering support among this section of the population, particularly as its allied partners rally the voters around the call ‘Only the ANC can’.

Perhaps a more fundamental question still is how will new voters respond to this electoral landscape. With the ANC challenging COPE’s right to use the historical symbols and logos associated with the formation of the Freedom Charter, we should be asking whether young voters will be moved by the rhetoric of the liberation struggle, or whether they will instead be more concerned with how their material interests are best represented. The greatest challenge to this disaffected group is unemployment, and the party that best addresses this challenge will likely achieve much.

As much as COPE may have injected fresh impetus in South Africa’s multi-party electoral landscape, its leadership still has much to do in convincing South African voters that their mandate is different from their previous public positions and, more importantly, that they are genuinely concerned about the plight of the disadvantaged. Borne out of what was a reaction to the Mbeki debacle and the populist trajectory of the ANC, the leadership of COPE needs to transform their image and demonstrate whether they can become a viable opposition party that asks awkward questions and shines light in dark places. This type of democratic competition and pluralism is healthy for our young democracy and reflects a step towards consolidation, and could well dent the ANC’s two-thirds majority in parliament. But I fear that this could be meaningless as the current battle is really about power and position, a reality which runs the risk of undermining our democratic institutions and compromising the effective policies that we are still waiting for to stimulate people centred development.

While Obama-mania has set the precedent that change is possible – and it is comforting to note that the US’s first voter-registration process yielded a successful turnout with more than 1.6 million new voters registering – it remains to be seen what effect this will have on next year’s election in South Africa and how COPE will cope.

* Sanusha Naidu is an independent political analyst based with Fahamu in Cape Town.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Pambazuka News 83: We are all Palestinian!

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/summaryfr/53253

Israel sets a new Bench-mark in Barbarism
Demba Moussa Dembélé, 2009-01-09

Demba Moussa Dembélé condemns the attacks carried by Israel on Gaza since December 27. He accuses Israel of failing to respect any accords that have been signed in the past while continuing to subject the population of Gaza to endless atrocities and crimes against humanity. He singles out the complicity of the United States and Europe in supporting Israeli actions, and failing to condemn what is going on, and calls for worldwide support and Solidarity for the people of Gaza.

Saving Guinea and Rethinking Africa
Hamadou Tidiane Sy, 2009-01-09

Recent events in Guinea bring about a need to rethink principles of sovereignty and non-interference, as espoused by the erstwhile Organization of African Unity (OAU), and the subsequent stance taken by its successor, the African Union (AU) in 2000, which emphasizes interdependence and more active engagement. Hamadou Sy blames the AU of duplicity in the case of Guinea, reacting now to condemn the coup while not having spoken out in 2003 when then president Conté changed the constitution. As demonstrated by the support of the Guniean people for the coup, there is a need for the continent’s institutions to reinvent themselves in order to serve, first and foremost, the African people.

Guinea: A Double-faceted Coup-d’Etat
Tidiane Kassé, 2009-01-09

Tidiane Kassé does a roundup of news and views about the recent coup in Guinea, which attest to the multiple and opposing views of the change in power. Coups-d’Etat on the continent dating back to the 60s have seen a slide away from democracy intro despotic and oppressive military rule. However, the Mali in 1991, Mauritania in 2005 and now Guinea, have bucked this trend, ushering new and more responsive regimes in these countries. This has stirred a debate between democratic purism that sees military rule as antithetical to its principles, and a more pragmatic view that takes into account the will and the welfare of the people.


Zimbabwe: Mugabe: the Renegade and the Scape-goat
Aminata Dramane Traoré, 2009-01-09

Aminata Dramane Traoré takes on the detractors of Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe. She takes issue with condemnation of Mugabe by the global powers who in her view have no moral standing to do this, accusing them of turning a blind eye their own crimes. She accuses them of throttling the economy of Zimbabwe and causing great suffering in the country, under the guise of pushing for democracy. Nothing in her view, can justify the humiliation of Mugabe and the suffering of his people.

The Africa that pushes back

Mukoma Wa Ngugi

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/53201

I have been asked many times a variation of the same question: ‘Why do Africans wait until it is too late?’ For most Westerners, Africa is hunger, war, despotism, AIDS and poverty – full of Africans who are either helpless victims, or who choose to sit on their hands, only lifting them up to accept Western handouts.

But there’s another side of Africa, the one that pushes back. This side is comprised of political and social organisations and activists, school teacher organisations, journalists, and health professionals, as well as women, worker, and youth organisations that patiently chip away at Africa's problems usually with no funding, media coverage, or national and international recognition to speak of.

These Africans work against great odds to prevent famine, war, human rights abuse, the spread of AIDS, and a host of other urgent issues. When tragedy strikes, they work hard to ameliorate the effect. But even when they aren’t facing political persecution, they are under-funded and without the protection that comes with media coverage. They are the unseen, under-supported and unrecognised pillars of African societies.

When I was in South Africa last summer attending a conference, the Centre for Civil Society at KwaZulu-Natal University organised a Durban Reality Tour to counter the ‘be happy, don't worry’ tourist tours of beaches, cultural dances, and national wildlife parks. We went to one village where we found little children with discoloured feet because of playing barefoot in contaminated fields – chemicals having seeped into their playfields from nearby factories owned by the new black elite. The reality tour took us to visit with shack dwellers living in fields after being forcefully evicted from their homes by the South African government.

Meet Abahlali baseMjondolo, the South African shack dwellers' movement that has been at the forefront of organising the residents against evictions. The work of Abahlali baseMjondolo is all the more complex because the poor from neighbouring Zimbabwe and Mozambique also trickle into the poor settlements to compete for already scarce resources. When South Africans attacked other Africans in poor townships and settlements in May 2008 killing over 50 immigrants, Abahlali baseMjondolo rose to the defence of the African immigrants. They declared, ‘A human being cannot be illegal.’

While the rest of the world this past July was celebrating Mandela's birthday, giving millions of dollars to pet causes and celebrating the fall of apartheid, Abahlali baseMjondolo trudged on fighting evictions and xenophobia, under-funded and unrecognised.

Then there is the AFRICA 15% NOW! Campaign that is pushing African governments to commit at least 15% of their annual budget to health issues. In a continent where thousands die daily from preventable and treatable diseases, this is an urgent and worthy campaign. If they are successful in making African governments take responsibility for the health of their citizens instead of leaving it to international NGOs, millions of lives over generations will be saved. Yet in the West, the AFRICA 15% NOW! Campaign is absent from any discussions on the short- or long-term solutions to the health crisis.

Meanwhile in Kenya, women from Kibera, the slum worst hit by the political violence following the flawed elections early last year, formed an organisation to deal with police and ethnic violence. The organisation, Kibera Women for Peace and Fairness, has over the last few months evolved to deal with issues of AIDS, violence against women, and other social justice issues.

Then there are several US based organisations such as TransAfrica and Africa Action that work shoulder to shoulder with these courageous African NGOs. These organisations have been involved in practically every issue affecting the continent, from AIDS drugs patents that benefit pharmaceutical companies at the expense of the dying to the crises in Zimbabwe, Darfur, and the DR Congo.

With an Obama presidency on the horizon, activists in the United States and Africa have formed, Resist-AFRICOM. The US African Command Center seeks to coordinate US military operations in Africa, but activists see this as a further militarisation of US–Africa relations. Better equal trade than more guns and bombs.

So the question isn’t whether Africans sit on their hands waiting for Western handouts. Rather, the question is why it is much easier for us to listen to philanthropists talk about what is wrong with Africa rather than the serious and dedicated political activists on the ground. Why are we not helping those who are helping themselves?

We love glossy packages that promise big bangs and super solutions. Take the Bill Gates Initiative, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa that promises super seeds for super plants to end famine in Africa. A simpler and more long-lasting solution lies in organic African farming, growing more food crops over cash crops, the diversification of African agriculture, and the depoliticisation of food and other basic human necessities.

The point is that every little bit of support counts and it can come in many forms – moral solidarity, awareness-raising, or financial support. But this help should not be afraid of the Africa that pushes back, or come at the expense of long-term solutions. One helping hand should not kill dreams with the other.

* This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus on 24 December 2008.
* Mukoma Wa Ngugi, author of Hurling Words at Consciousness, is a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, and a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Viva Pambazuka!

Tshireletso Motlogelwa

2009-01-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/53182

I am a desk editor in a newspaper in Botswana and from my experiences I would say everyone involved in the media especially at editor level should read Pambazuka as often as he/she can.

Pambazuka's analyses and features give an intellectually engaging account of our continent and the African diaspora in a way that not any other freely available source ever does. And it has a particularly African Point of View which is paramount because in these challenging times of information overload, sifting through all data and synthesizing out a particularly African position takes time, it helps to find a website like Pambazuka which gathers all useful writings in one place.

We appreciate it my people. We really do. Keep it up

Victory at Cuito Cuanavale!

Langalibalele

2009-01-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/53177

Thank you Horace Cambell for your great analysis of this important battle against racism and colonialism in your essay, Cuito Cuanavale=. Viewers can see one great video on the battle at: http://vodpod.com/watch/1005624-fidel-castro-on-angola-and-africa?pod=mbantunyankompong.

I am sure it clearly repudiates the half-wits who claim the author is uninformed and out of touch; sadly, the video on the downed aircraft and destroyed artillery of the SADF is no longer available.

On solidarity and shame

Joackim Kasonde

2009-01-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/53178

I totally agree with Mukoma Wa Ngugi’s comments especially on solidarity in the essay, Reflections on African responses to Israeli Gaza invasion. However, I would like to express my disappointment with the double standards the West especially USA has continued to show about human rights.

Imagine it was another country carrying out that genocide in Gaza! To us in the developing worlds this is all the more reason why we need solidarity. The Western world is not for us, the signs are there to see ranging from trade agreements and now to extermination.

The Gaza invasion is a shameful failure of our generation and it will be with us in time come like the Nazi brutality. Who knows may be the Israelis want to inherit Hitler but whatever the case the Israeli leaders are worse than Mugabe.

COPE: A carbon copy of the ANC

Patrick Burnett

2009-01-13

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/53181

In response to Mphutlane wa Bofelo’s Will the poor COPE? South Africa and the Congress of the People: It's a good point that the same ANC office bearers who have failed dismally in service delivery at local government level are likely to be back in their positions in COPE T-shirts - with similarly disastrous consequences. The same thing can be seen in the Western Cape. It IS an important point which gets buried beneath the argument that South Africa will no longer have a one party monopoly on power and that this will be good for democracy.

It may be, but how does it help if SA moves from one party power to two party power, both of whom can't deliver the goods? COPE by and large doesn't seem to be tapping into a new, inspirational leadership - instead its leadership face is made up of those who have held positions elsewhere previously. Nor is it offering inspirational policies.

Making Strategic Plans Work: Insights from Indigenous African Wisdom

By Chiku Malunga

2009-01-16

http://www.adonisandabbey.com/book_detail.php?bookid=119&currency=

Making Strategic Plans Work introduces an innovative and creative approach to understanding the theory and practice of strategic planning. Based on proverbs and folktales, the book provides detailed analyses of the stages of the strategic planning process - preparation, formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

Three-Letter Plague By Jonny Steinberg

Africa shows how medics have to build trust

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/8p57qy

The village in South Africa’s Eastern Cape where Jonny Steinberg decided to study Aids has no television or internet access. Indeed, it has no electricity. The people believe in divine healers and fear the consequences of treating their ancestors badly. Yet as I read Three-Letter Plague, Mr Steinberg’s revelatory and beautifully crafted book, I was struck by the universal nature of his story.

From Africa to Haiti to Gaza: Fidelity to humanity

Jacques Depelchin

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/53200

First, not quite, but we have to start somewhere,
There were the Arawaks, the Caribs and the Amerindians
Then their land became known as Hispaniola,
As Saint Domingue, as the economic jewel
Of French overseas possessions
Thanks to Africans kidnapped, chained, shipped
Processed, codified, stamped as property
While always knowing they belonged
To no one but humanity
And through fidelity to humanity
Turned Saint Domingue into Haiti
Fraternity, equality and liberty
Their only motto
Defeating the obscurantist
Philosophers of the Enlightenment
For thirteen years, 1791–1804
Without support
From humanitarian abolitionists
Defeating the most powerful armies of the day
Spain, England, France
Fidelity to humanity
Their only prescription

Plan B was out of the question
Humanity had to prevail
But its sworn enemy had a plan B:
With lethal vengeance
Napoleon reinstated slavery
Take no prisoners, his motto
Severe, if necessary, capital punishment
Against the trespassers of
Nascent capital yet to be named
Capitalism the crusher of humanity

With exemplary brutality
Long before the birth of Gaza-upon-Mediterranean
Haiti was turned into the poorest nation
– Gaza-upon-Atlantic –
For having dared simply
To challenge and obsoletify
The Black Code of Louis XIV
Rules of engagement against/for
Slaves balancing terror, torture, fear, death
Ensuring the endurance of slavery
Beyond the monarchy
Thanks to a self-proclaimed emperor
Napoleon Bonaparte the impostor

Plan B prospered so well beyond
Napoleon’s dreams of restoring slavery
We may all ask, maybe naively
Had he known his treatment of Africans
Would later inspire Hitler’s
Holocausting of the Jews
Would he have seen Africans
As humanity and not as property?

Not every French was/is a fan of slavery’s restorer:
Taubira Law of 2001 declares
Slavery a Crime Against Humanity
Could it be that France might
Be restoring Fidelity to Humanity?

But could it be too late when
Humanity or those who pretentiously
Speak for it refuse to know
The distinction between
Might and right
Right and wrong
Charity and solidarity

Could it be too late when
Survivors and/or their descendants
Of an unthinkable crime think
The best way to stand up for humanity
Is to slaughter/bomb humanity as deliberately
And brutally smart as possible?

Could it be too late when
Slaughtering humanity
Can be done with impunity
Thanks to a genocided past
As if anything can be traded, erased,
Commodified, genetically modified
To fit a globalised paradise
Where no one will know
The difference between
Gaza-upon-Atlantic
Haiti-upon-Mediterranean
Except for those who vowed
Fidelity to humanity

Can’t we see the obvious consequences of
Relentlessly violating humanity
Now Palestinians, then Africans centuries ago
Today displaced, refugees, best fodder
For humanitarian missions
The modernized version of abolitionists
On a mission which has not changed:
Violate humanity,
Eradicate it if too vocal
But Sabra, Shatila can still be heard

Palestinians are full members of humanity
Homelessed in their homeland, denied existence
By all means, constantly searching
For the ultimate way
Of getting rid of them
Their annihilation will not be called
A Crime Against Humanity because,
By definition, it has been repeated forever,
It only happens at Auschwitz, and other
Concentration camps in a World War

Palestinians are like Native Americans
Whose land was taken, whose genocide
Refuses to be called a genocide
Palestinians, Africans interchangeable destinies
Torn from their land, thrown into ships,
Refugeed in strips of land
Enslaved, imprisoned, less than property
Therefore not fit to come under
A Crime Against Humanity

Palestinians, Africans, in the same boat
When the unending story of negating humanity started
Like Africans they are being processed and branded
Fit to be fodder for humanitarian crisis because what is being done
Must not be called
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

No one dares to call the slaughter of civilians
In Gaza by its proper name
A Crime Against Humanity

For fear of trespassing which taboo?

From the times of the Arawaks
Violating, torturing, liquidating
Humanity with impunity
Has led to greater and greater
Crimes against humanity
Franchised differently
Preparing the biggest holocaust
Humanity has ever known and,
When that unfolds, as before,
We shall hear the usual
Shameful lame lie
‘We did not know’.

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

Overheard Over S.E. Asia

Shailja Patel and Denise Levertov

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/53199

Drawing parallels with Israel’s current action in Gaza, Shailja Patel introduces the poem Overheard Over S.E. Asia by the British poet Denise Levertov. Published in her 1972 collection entitled Footprints, Levertov’s poem concerns the US’s use of white phosphorus during the Vietnam war.

"White phosphorus, white phosphorus,
mechanical snow,
where are you falling?"

"I am falling impartially on roads and roofs,
on bamboo thickets, on people.
My name recalls rich seas on rainy nights,
each drop that hits the surface eliciting
luminous response from a million algae.
My name is a whisper of sequins. Ha!
Each of them is a disk of fire,
I am the snow that burns.

I fall
wherever men send me to fall–
but I prefer flesh, so smooth, so dense:
I decorate it in black, and seek
the bone."

* Denise Levertov was a British poet strongly opposed to the Vietnam war.
* Shailja Patel is a Kenyan poet, playwright and theatre artist, whose blog can be found here.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Boundless terror

Dennis Brutus

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/African_Writers/53208

This is terror
that surpasses words
that extends
the bounds of terrorism
beyond inexpressible
beyond unimaginable
beyond inconceivable

Unspeakable
unutterable
inexpressible

That they who endured so much
should, themselves, inflict so much
should inflict so much pain on others

Anguish beyond words

Israel
Palestine

Palestine

* Dennis Brutus is a veteran of the South African liberation struggle, a leading figure in the global justice movement and a world-renowned poet.
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

A Review of African Blogs – January 15, 2009

Dibussi Tande

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/blog/53198

HIV in Kenya does a comparative analysis of the AIDS epidemic in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and concludes that the solution to the crisis lies in devising long-term strategies:

“The people of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania may well need HIV education, but they are in far greater need of teachers and affordable, accessible schools. HIV health programmes are great, but only where there is an affordable, accessible health service. There is little point in educating people about sexual health and behaviour while ignoring reproductive health, sanitation, nutrition and other aspects of health.

As long as HIV is seen as a short term (or even medium term) crisis that will be resolved by crisis measures, it will continue to spread. Small gains may be made here and there, but without ensuring a healthy, well educated, secure population, HIV will never be conquered.

The conditions that allowed HIV to take hold and reach high levels in so many countries have been around for a long time and the HIV community seems to have allowed itself to be distracted by crises and crisis measures. It is the long term issues that need to be resolved, the same problems of poverty, exploitation and underdevelopment that have been around for as long as anyone can remember.”

Kenyan Poet announces that the Boys choir from Kenya will perform at the Obama inaugural:

“The choir, which has travelled to the USA for performances three times this year, will hold Kenya’s flag high during the event. The Boys have been invited by the US government through the Government of Kenya to perform during the auspicious event. It will be the only African choral singing team to perform in the historical event where the first African American will be named President of the United States of America.

According to the group’s founder and artistic director Joseph Muyale, the group leaves for Washington on January 15. They have prepared a special repertoire of African choral music to remind Mr. Obama of his African roots. The group’s performance will accord Kenya a special mention by reminding the world that Mr. Obama’s roots are in Kenya.”

What An African Woman Thinks writes about privacy concerns in a world where new technologies constantly encroach on personal space.

“Somebody went onto Google Maps and unveiled a satellite image of their compound for the Parents.

The Father was way blown way. Awesomeness, in his book. The Mother was spooked that you could see the roof of her compound and the canopy of her beloved trees. She wanted to know who would go to such lengths and why, and what was the point, exactly? She declared that it was a little too much information about her and hers to put out there—definitely an invasion of her privacy. She wondered what’s next, really?

… who’s making the rules and who’s enforcing them and, if she cares to, where does the little woman go to fight against the big corporate giant who’s sticking his nose into her canopy of trees?”

Omoluwabi Okebadan laments about the absence of visionary leaders in his native Nigeria, and presents the profile of the type of leader that Africa and Nigeria nees in the 21st century:

“In Nigeria where I live we have had many leaders who are in the mainstream of the Neo-colonial awakening that has had us in thrall since independence… I remember that in 2004 while jogging to Barack Obama's DNC speech my heart told me that this was the future President of the United States. How I wish I have the same view of any Nigerian in Public life. To be fair Governor Fashola represents a bridge to this role but I suspect we will not know fully till his second term. He has been bold and resolute, disciplined and focused which is a rarity amongst our public office holders. He deserves quite a lot of support but we need more than one person and we need a movement. The median age of Nigerians is 17 we need a generation of leaders imbued by the spirit and competencies of this time. They need not be saints but must be obsessed by the need to transform our society in a sustainable way. Nothing less will do.”

Sierra Eye announces that former Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington has become an official citizen of Sierra Leone, making him the first African-American man to gain citizenship in the African continent based solely on DNA:

“The Texas-born actor has spent several months working with Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma for his nationwide initiative that seeks to raise $250,000 to help improve the lives of one million children in Sierra Leone. The Reach One Million campaign was created by Washington after he discovered through DNA that his roots sprang from the Mende tribe of Sierra Leone. The mission of the campaign strives to "engage and educate everyday Americans on the plight of the children of Sierra Leone, where 47% of the country's children under the age of 5 are afflicted with malaria and 28% percent (sic) of the population are unable to meet basic food requirements.

Taking interest in spending more time in Sierra Leone to learn in the land of his heritage, Washington fought to secure dual-nationality and celebrate his family's links to the African country.”

Naija Pikin, comments on the military coup in the Republic of Guinea:

“Let’s not be deceived. Guineans are happy with the junta because they were frustrated with Lansana Conte's government which for 24 years suffocated them down with poverty and oppression. They yearned for fresh air. In stepped Camara.

Lansana came into power in 1984 via a military coup. Camara is only threading a familiar path. Seize power, the whole world will condemn you. You promise to conduct elections in the soonest possible time. The world relaxes its pressure. Two years time you conduct a 'democratic' election with you as the main or only candidate. You win a landslide. We know this song too well.

My fear now is that any group of ambitious military officers might just borrow a leaf from the Guinean coup plotters and with ease truncate existing democratic structures. The already misruled, disenchanted, frustrated and hopeless citizenry will definitely support such an intrusion.”

* Dibussi Tande, a writer and activist from Cameroon, produces the blog Scribbles from the Den

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

A Chinese 'Marshall Plan' or business?

2009-01-16

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/KA14Cb01.html

The commitment by China last year of US$9 billion for investment in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has made Beijing one of the most influential players in the Congolese economy almost overnight.

Billions pulled out of China banking system in a few days

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/84r3ka

Royal Bank of Scotland has warned it may become the fourth big investor in just a few days to pull billions of dollars out of the Chinese banking system, fuelling fears that China’s faltering economy could be hit by massive capital outflows in coming months. Reports indicate the British bank, now controlled by the U.K. government, has been in talks with Chinese regulators for the past few days to sell down its 4.3% stake in Bank of China worth $3.7-billion.

China in 2009: a year for surprise

2009-01-16

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/china-in-2009-a-year-for-surprise

The first weeks of 2009 find China consumed by the same anxiety as the rest of the world. No one in Beijing's top leadership wants a repeat of 2008's high-wire ride (the Beijing Olympics) and lows (the Tibet protests, the Sichuan earthquake, the contaminated milk-powder scandal). But the year of quiet development and consolidation that it might hoped for is not in prospect, for China shares with other leading players such as the United States and the European Union the predicament of a global economy in deep crisis.

China starts buying South African arms

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/9j9k78

China has had a number of dealings with South African weapons manufacturers over the past decade, most of which have not resulted in actual weapons purchases. However, several recent Chinese-made military technologies bear suspicious resemblances to their South African counterparts.

China’s annual New Year African safari

Sanusha Naidu

2009-01-15

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/africa_china/53255

In the usual start to its New Year diplomatic calendar, Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jeichi, has embarked on a four nation African tour. Landing in Rwanda, as the first stop of his visit, the foreign minister was invited to officially open the Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, which was funded by the Chinese government to the value of US$8.9 million. As a goodwill gesture the Chinese Embassy in Rwanda ‘donated over Rwf39 million to the Presidental Fund which supports projects for disadvantaged communities.
In the usual start to its New Year diplomatic calendar, Chinese foreign minister, Yang Jeichi, has embarked on a four nation African tour. Landing in Rwanda, as the first stop of his visit, the foreign minister was invited to officially open the Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, which was funded by the Chinese government to the value of US$8.9 million. As a goodwill gesture the Chinese Embassy in Rwanda ‘donated over Rwf39 million to the Presidental Fund which supports projects for disadvantaged communities. Apart from this China also has funded other projects across Rwanda totaling US7.8 million just in 2008 alone.

The visit by the foreign minister is significant because in the latter half of 2009 the 4th Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Summit will be hosted in Cairo. Part of the visit is to assess progress made on the eight measures announced by President Hu Jintao at the 2006 FOCAC Summit, notwithstanding the urgency to expedite those projects that are still to be initiated. This was emphasized by the Foreign Minister in an interview with Chinese television CCTV ‘Next year [2009] will be crucial as its will be the last year for the implementation of these eight measures. We will make utmost efforts to ensure the success of these’.

Seen from this context, the visits to Uganda, Malawi and South Africa will also combine viewing existing Chinese projects with the possibility of assessing prospects for future investments and projects. But it should also be borne in mind that amidst the financial crisis the visit by the foreign minister could be interpreted as setting a more tempered tone for the upcoming Summit, especially in terms of African expectations. With reports looming about the possible exodus of some Chinese mining firms from African markets like Zambia and DRC, it would be interesting to see what commitments the foreign minister makes to the countries he visits. Although it must be added that this does not seem to have put a damper on China’s willingness to extend development assistance and infrastructure projects to Kenya and Mauritania.

In Kenya, President Kibaki applauded China’s investment to build a hospital in the Eastlands of Nairobi. The hospital project should be seen as one of the eight measures to build 100 hospitals. In addition Beijing has also committed itself to finance the construction of several by-pass roads in Nairobi to the value of US$145 million.

Mauritania, on the other hand, has managed to bag a hefty investment from the Chinese to expand the port at Nouakchott. Termed the ‘Port of Friendship’ the Chinese are going to fork out US$280 million to extend the deep water port by 900 metres. For Mauritania this investment comes at a time when other development partners have either scaled down or halted development assistance or investments following the political coup by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, while the AU is working towards sanctioning the military rulers. China, however, has retained its relationship with the West African country. Some may argue that China is positioning itself in Mauritainia’s energy market. In 2006 CNPC began drilling for oil ‘after paying more than US$8 million for a 65% of an onshore and gas block’. And with Mauritania producing almost 75 000 barrels of oil daily and proven crude reserves of one billion barrels, China remains the country’s erstwhile investor with nearly US$700 million worth of projects that includes water supplies, telecommunications, agriculture and construction.

The Sudanese Issue not to be overshadowed….

It is worth mentioning that while FOCAC will be the mainstay of the Foreign Minister’s discussions, the Sudanese issue will be one of the focal topics for consideration. Early in the week, China’s special envoy for African Affairs, Ambassador Liu Guijin, called on ‘AU officials to adopt an African supportive stance to Sudan’s efforts in resolving the Darur issue’. This follows closely on Beijing’s discomfort with the International Criminal Court’s charges against the Sudanese President – a point that Amb. Liu reiterated during his three-day visit to Sudan early in the New Year. The Chinese authorities (notwithstanding other Arab and African countries) believe that an ICC indictment would derail the efforts of a UN-AU sponsored peace process. With both countries celebrating the golden jubilee anniversary of relations, it seems that finding a peaceful resolution to the situation in Sudan is imperative, not least because it appears that the north-south peace process seems to be underscored by a series of political squabbles that may undermine the 2011 referendum.

Talking of celebrations…

This year will also see Djibouti and China celebrating 30 years of diplomatic ties .

The India Factor

While China forges ahead with its 2009 African agenda, it seems that India is also quietly devising plans of its own for its African engagement.

Between 22-24 March the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) will host the 2009 Conclave Meeting of the India-Africa Project Partnership in New Delhi. The conclave meeting provides an important platform for African and Indian investment deals as well as project collaboration. It is also a significant showcase for strengthening Indo-African commercial ties.

With this on the horizon, India has already begun to attract interest from Kenya. Recently Prime Minister Raila Odinga attended a Global Investment Summit in Gujarat where the Prime Minister met with business investors who wanted to learn more about Kenya’s policy on Public and Private Partnership in order to determine how to enter the Kenyan market, especially in the infrastructure sector .

At same time the Kenyan PM encouraged Indian investors to explore opportunities in Kenya’s road and rail sectors and gas and oil markets.

In a similar vein, the Indian ambassador expressed the hope that Sierra Leone will be a beneficiary of India’s expansive Pan Africa e-network in the fields of tele-medicine and tele-education . Using the network to strengthen ties with the West African country is also a way for India to leverage its footprint in West Africa where it has been trying to consolidate its presence.

But Indian companies have also become aware that non-delivery on projects could undermine the Indian government’s West African policy. Such is the state of affairs with regard to the ONGC-Mittal energy project in Nigeria. Nigeria has cautioned the joint venture company OMEL to fulfill its infrastructure commitments as part of the US$6 billion deal to explore for oil and gas inked in 2005.

Delivery on the infrastructure projects is critical if India is to secure its energy projects outside the Middle East. Moreover Indian companies need to understand the fluidity of the African market and that there are investors in the wings willing to step in and take over such projects with the necessary resources.

Has India's military diplomacy come of age?

2009-01-16

http://indiapost.com/article/perspective/5142/

The Sino-Indian 'Hand-in-Hand 2008' military exercise that concluded recently at Belgaum in Karnataka may have hit headlines, but is no revelation to those who have observed India's military diplomacy in recent times. China apart, India has engaged many countries this year alone, under the rubric of military diplomacy. While the Navy led the show, with many bilateral and multilateral exercises, the Air Force and the Army too engaged themselves in significant joint exercises.

India to build Cameroon power units in $250 mln deal

2009-01-16

http://in.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idINLE62521420090114

Indian engineering firm Angelique International will build two hydro power plants in Cameroon as part of a 125 billion CFA francs ($251.5 million) aid deal, the central African country said late on Tuesday. State-owned Export-Import Bank of India will loan the money to Cameroon, the second such deal signed between the Gulf of Guinea nation and Angelique in the past two months.

Navies of the world uniting

2009-01-16

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KA16Ad03.html

The world's eyes are on the Middle East, but due south, in the Horn of Africa, Somalia is flaring up once again. The good news is that Somali pirates, who had given the world's navies a lesson in intransigence after brazenly attacking 111 merchant vessels in 2008, have released a Japanese-operated South Korean-owned bulk carrier, as well as a three other ships this week.

Human rights activist seized on eve of UK demonstration

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/zimbabwe/53287

A leading Zimbabwean political activist in the UK campaigning for human rights in Zimbabwe has been taken into detention and told he is to be deported on Thursday. Luka Phiri (40) was helping organise a demonstration in London for Tuesday 13th January calling for Zimbabwean failed asylum seekers to be allowed to work in the UK.
A leading Zimbabwean political activist in the UK campaigning for human rights in Zimbabwe has been taken into detention and told he is to be deported on Thursday. Luka Phiri (40) was helping organise a demonstration in London for Tuesday 13th January calling for Zimbabwean failed asylum seekers to be allowed to work in the UK.

Phiri is on the management team of the Zimbabwe Vigil, which has been demonstrating outside the Zimbabwe Embassy in London every Saturday for the last six years. He is also a leading member of the Zimbabwe Association, a charity looking after Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the UK.

Phiri entered the UK in 2003 on a Malawian passport and it is apparently for this reason that the Home Office wishes to expel him. At present the government is not enforcing deportations to Zimbabwe because of the situation there but feels free to send people back to Malawi.

Vigil Co-ordinator Rose Benton said “There is no doubt that Luka is a Zimbabwean but the Home Office wants to send him back to Malawi, a firm supporter of Mugabe. Malawi will send him on to Harare where he will face retribution from the Mugabe regime.”

She said Luka was a high profile campaigner in the UK and would be well-known to the authorities in Harare. “He has given many outspoken interviews to the media on behalf of the Vigil.” She added that he’d been detained in the UK in 2006 but had been released while his asylum case was considered. New evidence had been submitted but it appears that this had not been taken into account.
Mr Phiri’s MP, Mr Stephen Timms (Labour, East Ham), has been asked to intervene with the government.

Rights gorups lash out at African leaders

2009-01-16

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news150109/iba150109.htm

Three of the world’s leading human rights organisations have lashed out at African leaders for failing to take action in Zimbabwe, in the strongest criticism yet of the ongoing support for Robert Mugabe. The International Bar Association (IBA), Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have this week all released strong statements condemning the continued inaction of African leaders in the Zimbabwe crisis.

SADC leaders to meet Mugbe, Tsvangirai

2009-01-16

http://zimbabwejournalists.com/story.php?art_id=5176

The presidents of regional powers South Africa and Mozambique will meet political parties in Zimbabwe on Monday, in a new regional push to break a deadlock in power-sharing talks, South Africa said on Thursday.

Tsvangirai to return on Saturday

2009-01-16

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news150109/mttoreturn150109.htm

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has announced he will be returning to Zimbabwe on Saturday, after leaving on November 10th last year. Speaking at a press conference in South Africa on Thursday, Tsvangirai said he remained committed to forming a new inclusive government but is lacking a ‘willing partner’. He also demanded the unconditional release of political detainees, before a power-sharing deal can be implemented with Robert Mugabe.

Kenyan peace summit takes place in February

AU Monitor Weekly Roundup: Issue 164, 2009

2009-01-15

http://www.aumonitor.org

Former African leaders will attend a peace conference in Nairobi, Kenya under the theme ‘The Kenya we want’ to discuss the political transformation of the country from an ‘ethnic-divisions-ridden state’ into a more tolerant democracy in the region as well as to learn from other countries’ experiences in order to strengthen on-going efforts in national reconciliation and inter-group harmony. Elsewhere, the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) is holding a three-day seminar on reforming the security sector by initiating dialogue between the policy makers, civil society organisations and international stakeholders and identifying the role of ECCAS in promoting security in the region. Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States, following a similar move by the African Union (AU), has suspended Guinea’s membership to the regional body, in accordance with the provision of the 2001 regional Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance, until the return to constitutional order in the country following a military takeover in December 2008. Still in peace and security related news, United States President elect Barack Obama is likely to face challenges in dealing with the United States African Command (Africom) because many African leaders perceive the command as an instrument meant to benefit the United States rather than being a ‘diplomatic, economic and humanitarian aid, aimed at the prevention of conflict’ as touted by U.S military and diplomatic officials.

With the aim of strengthening their effective participation in the AU, UNIFEM organised a consultative and planning forum for regional and sub-regional women’s networks and organisations to increase, among others, knowledge of AU policy and institutional frameworks and to enhance effective participation in policy formulation and implementation by these stakeholders. Meanwhile, the Women’s World Summit Foundation is calling for submission of nominations for its 16th annual edition of the prize for women’s creativity in rural life.

Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, will host the 12th ordinary session of the AU heads of State and Government under the theme ‘Infrastructure Development in Africa’. As African ministers adopted the continent’s Mining Vision 2050, regional economic communities have realised that well managed mineral and mining resources are essential for the continent’s economic growth and have begun to harmonise their mining regulations frameworks.

Africa: Call for CEDAW Stories

2009-01-16

http://www.stories-of-cedaw.net/Home.html

To mark CEDAW’s 30th birthday, we want to celebrate. We want to gather and share stories, testimonies and reflections about CEDAW to inspire women the world over. Tell us your stories of change that show how CEDAW has been used to address injustice and to open up pathways of women’s empowerment. And tell others about us, so they can contribute too.

Morocco: Helping outcast single mothers

2009-01-16

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7818384.stm

Khadija's baby Noha is almost one year old and is her mother's greatest joy. But in deeply religious and conservative Morocco, Noha is also Khadija's greatest problem. Khadija was not married to her child's father - and Moroccan society finds it very difficult to accept children born out of wedlock.

Senegal: Seeking legal, social tools against sexual violence

2009-01-16

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82350

As Senegal's parliament prepares to debate possible changes to rape laws, civil society groups say legislative reforms will not be enough to combat sexual violence against women and children. “It is not enough to put rapists in prison and change the laws," Adama Sow of the Senegalese NGO Action Group Against Child Rape (GRAVE) told IRIN. “That is needed, of course...but we also need to change mentalities. If not we will never overcome this problem.”

Togo: Can microcredit turn FGM/C cutters to new trades?

2009-01-16

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82105

For years, the Togolese government and its NGO partners have been trying to convince women who perform female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) to trade in their knives for microcredit loans and agricultural equipment. Despite a 10-year-old law in Togo that criminalises FGM/C some ethnic groups in Togo still report clandestine cuttings.

Uganda: FGM can be defeated by joint effort

2009-01-16

http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/14/667148

Some 500 girls were circumcised in Sebei region over the Christmas period! This is an alarming rise in Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) because the number of mutilated girls stood at 90 in the previous circumcision season. The ritual involves the removal of the clitoris and the entire labia. Why is this done? It is only through the FGM that a woman becomes a full woman and commands respect in society.

Global: 2009 World Report: Obama should emphasize human rights

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/7z7x53

The incoming Obama administration will need to put human rights at the heart of foreign, domestic, and security policy if it is to undo the enormous damage of the Bush years, Human Rights Watch said in issuing its World Report 2009. US leadership in promoting human rights will be vital, Human Rights Watch said, because at present the most energetic and organized diplomacy addressing human rights is negative - conducted by nations trying to avoid scrutiny of their own and their allies' abuses.

Mauritania: Former slaves struggle in new home

2009-01-16

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82368

Two years after more than 100 former slave families left their village in southern Mauritania to create their own community away from slave-owners, members of the group told IRIN they are still struggling to adapt to an independent life. Ramadan Ould Semette, one of those breaking away from the village of Lefrewa - where the families were slaves for generations - got his long-awaited new beginning but little else. “We have nothing but our muscles to survive by and we keep struggling in the desert.

Senegal: Free Aids activists

2009-01-16

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/09/senegal-free-aids-activists

The sentencing in Dakar on January 6, 2009 of nine men who were involved in HIV-prevention work, on charges of "indecent and unnatural acts" and "forming associations of criminals," shows how laws against homosexual conduct damage HIV- and AIDS-prevention efforts as well as the work of human rights defenders, Human Rights Watch has said.

Sudan: Opposition leader in solitary confinement

2009-01-16

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/-/1066/515538/-/13sg9ssz/-/index.html

An influential Sudanese opposition leader is being held in solitary confinement after calling on the president to hand himself in to the International Criminal Court, family members said on Friday. Hassan al-Turabi was arrested on Wednesday days after urging President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to surrender to the Hague-based global court, whose judges are considering whether to indict him on charges of orchestrating war crimes in Darfur.

Zimbabwe: Free activists unlawfully held

2009-01-16

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/14/zimbabwe-free-activists-unlawfully-held

The Zimbabwe authorities should immediately free 32 opposition party members and rights activists unlawfully detained and disclose the whereabouts of 11 others, Human Rights Watch said today. Many among those whose status has been revealed by the government have reported being tortured in detention.

Kenya: Wounds slow to heal

2009-01-16

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/12/2008122683452981333.html

Thousands of Kenyans who fled their homes following a wave of violence triggered by the disputed general election last year are still languishing in temporary camps. More than 1,500 were killed and another 300,000 displaced in post-election clashes fought predominantly between members of Kenya's two main tribes - the Luo and the Kikuyu.

Africa: Fourth Citizens’ Continental Conference on the African Union Summit

Addis Ababa, 16 – 17 January 2009

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/socialmovements/53288

After three successful Citizens’ Continental Conferences held in Ghana, Ethiopia and Egypt ahead of the last three African Union Summits, the Centre for Citizens’ Participation in the African Union (CCP-AU) is organizing the 4th Citizens’ Continental Conference on the African Union Summit to be held on the 16th and 17th January 2009 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
What? After three successful Citizens’ Continental Conferences held in Ghana, Ethiopia and Egypt ahead of the last three African Union Summits, the Centre for Citizens’ Participation in the African Union (CCP-AU) is organizing the 4th Citizens’ Continental Conference on the African Union Summit to be held on the 16th and 17th January 2009 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The Conference will create a platform for structured debates and collation of views among stakeholders across the continent focusing mainly on the situation of peace and security in Africa, Justice, a continental social policy framework, the financial crisis as well as Citizens’ engagement with the African Union.

The Continental Conference will issue a communiqué including Citizens recommendations to be presented to country delegations that will attend the 12th African Union Summit to be held in Addis Ababa from 26th January 2009.


Who? The Conference will be organized by the Centre for Citizens’ Participation in the African Union (CCP-AU) a pan-African network with the support of various other organizations including Oxfam International, Action Aid International, Trust Africa, Open Society Institute, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Darfur Consortium, International Refugee Rights Initiatives, Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Federation Internationale des Droits de L’Homme (FIDH).

More than 60 African citizens and civil society representatives from all 5 African geographical regions and the Diaspora will be participating in the conference.


When? Friday 16 and Saturday 17 January 2009 from 9AM to 6 PM. A media briefing and interview will be held on Friday 16 January at 10 AM at Beshale Hotel, Addis Ababa – CMC Road..

Where? Beshale Hotel, Addis Ababa – CMC Road; Tel.: 011 647 81 81


Note for journalists and editors: Experts on peace and security, social issues and citizens’ participation will be available for interview in English, French, Arabic Ahmaric and Swahili. Contact: +251 (0) 911 43 56 73 or +252 (0) 911 20 83 32..

West Africa: Nigerians return home with sense of hope

2009-01-16

http://justiceinnigeria.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/the-struggle-continues/

The Nigerian witnesses and plaintiffs send you their thanks and regards from the Niger Delta. After nearly three months in the San Francisco Bay Area during the human rights trial against Chevron, all of the Nigerians are safely and happily back at home. Although the U.S. jury did not hold Chevron accountable for its actions, it was never refuted in the Northern California District Court that Chevron paid and transported the Nigerian military to the platform in May 1998 and that two people were killed and several others injured by the military and police.

Cote d'Ivoire: Patchy progress in pre-poll unity talks

2009-01-16

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE50F0GJ20090116

Ivory Coast held ceremonies to mark northern rebels officially returning local tax collecting and administrative powers to the central government on Thursday but true reunification and post-war polls remain elusive. Thursday's deadline was the latest test of a troubled process aimed at reuniting the world's top cocoa grower, which was once the region's most stable country but has endured years of crisis since it was divided by a 2002-2003 war.

Guinea: Government announces mining reforms

2009-01-16

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7831850.stm

Guinea's military government has announced reforms which they say will include a review of mining contracts. Guinea has one of the world's biggest reserves of aluminium ore, and is a major exporter. The government says it has created a new committee to examine and revise mining contracts in the country.

Kenya: Graft: Kibaki urged to call crisis talks

2009-01-16

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/514968/-/u19sah/-/index.html

President Kibaki has been urged to convene a crisis meeting following a wave of corruption scandals in the country. Officials from the National Anti Corruption Steering Committee said the proposed meeting with all agencies tasked with fighting graft should provide leadership in resolving these scandals.

Rwanda: Genocide fund officials sacked for mismanagement

2009-01-16

http://www.afrol.com/articles/32167

Rwandan government has dismissed senior officials working for the Fund for Support of Genocide Survivors (FARG) for alleged misappropriation of millions of government funds targeted for survivors of the infamous 1994 genocide, local media has reported. Since 1998, the government has reserved 5 percent of its annual budget to create a fund to aid the survivors with education, housing, social rehabilitation and general support.

South Africa: Zuma to appeal on court decision

2009-01-16

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7829272.stm

The leader of South Africa's governing party, Jacob Zuma, is to appeal against a court ruling which resurrected corruption charges against him. Mr Zuma's lawyer said he would approach South Africa's highest court to have the charges dropped. On Monday, the appeals court quashed an earlier ruling that threw out charges in connection with a 1999 arms deal.

Zambia: Two steps forward, two steps back

2009-01-16

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=45420

Zambia's Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) received more than 2,000 corruption complaints from the public for 2008, the ACC yearly report states. "The commission investigated a number of cases last year. Arrests were effected and cases brought before the courts of law where sufficient evidence was established," ACC acting director Rosewin Wandi told IPS. "Between 60 and 70 percent of reported complaints were against government officials, while about 20 percent were against officials in the private sector."

Africa: Continent braces for worst economic crisis as global trade falters

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/7rnk6l

The United Nations has warned that the global fin ancial turmoil has sparked a crisis in the global trading arena, whose impact would affect the growth of African economies which have for a long time depended on export-led growth. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) announced Thursday in its World Economic Prospects 2009 that African economies would feel the severe effects of the sliding global trade prospects and the falling cost of oil prices.

Congo: Plans to devleop eco-toruism

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/98yo3r

The Congolese authorities are to seek funds from the Leadership for Conservation in Africa (LCA) for the development of ecotourism around the Odzala-Kokoua (PNOK) national park, situated in the north-western part of Congo, official sources in the Congolese capital told PANA.

Ghana: Death sentences commuted - time for abolition

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/7c7rns

The outgoing President of Ghana, John Kufuor, commuted all death sentences in the country. Amnesty International welcomed the action and urged the new President of Ghana, John Atta Mills, to seize the moment and take immediate steps to abolish the death penalty in law.

Uganda: Oil discovery expanded

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/7dlosb

A rapid succession of oil strikes in western Uganda are increasing the likelihood that Tullow Oil and its joint-venture partner Heritage Oil are sitting on the largest new on-shore oil field in Africa. Heritage, which operates and half-owns two exploration blocks around Lake Albert in Uganda, built on previous discoveries on Tuesday when it announced its largest strike to date at the Giraffe well in Block 1.

Zambia: Government to invite exploration bids

2009-01-16

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/71e9f3f8-e336-11dd-a5cf-0000779fd2ac.html

Zambia plans to invite bids to explore for oil within six months in the hope of capitalising on what it says is “huge potential” to strike black gold beneath the soil of one of the world’s poorest countries.Already Africa’s biggest copper producer, Zambia’s parliament has approved a legal framework for exploration and the government has held preliminary talks with oil companies ”mainly in Europe and some in Africa”, Kalombo Mwansa told the Financial Times late last year in his last interview as mining minister before switching to home affairs in a new government.

Africa: Some signs of progress

2009-01-16

http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=45367

The latest UNAIDS Report estimated that 33 million people around the globe are living with HIV; 22 million in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Around 2.7 million new HIV infections occurred worldwide in 2007. However, encouraging new data suggests there have been significant gains in preventing new infections in several African countries with high prevalence rates.

CAR: Alone in a fight against Aids

2009-01-16

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82344

The inhabitants of Sam Ouandja, an isolated diamond mining town in the northeast of the Central African Republic (CAR), were exposed to their first ever HIV awareness campaign in 2007. The focus was on HIV testing, but more than a year later, those who tested positive are still waiting for the arrival of HIV/AIDS services.

DRC: Alert over Ebola virus

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/83pmca

At least 13 people have been killed in a southern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by what aid groups say is an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus. Francois Dumont, the spokesman for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), said tests had so far confirmed the virus in four people and all of those had survived.

Kenya: Sharing ARVs puts patients at risk of resistance

2009-01-16

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82423

June and Paul Nyangweso*, a married couple living in the Kuria district of Nyanza Province in western Kenya, both tested positive for HIV recently, but only June visits the hospital to collect her monthly supply of antiretroviral medication, which she brings home and shares with her husband. "I do not want people to know that I am sick, so we just use her drugs and wait until it is time for her to go for another round," Paul told IRIN/PlusNews at their home.

Sao Tome & Principe: Saturday night fever, with condoms

2009-01-16

http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82116

The new hit being sung by everyone in São Tomé and Príncipe goes like this: "Bleguê Bleguê ... A mi na mecê Bleguê, anda com bebê..." The lyrics, in São Tomé's Forro language, have two simple but important messages: when you go out, always take condoms with you, and when you have sex, always use a condom.

Togo: School fee-waiver creates budget shortfall

2009-01-16

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82393

This year’s first-time fee waivers for primary and pre-school students in Togo have swelled enrolment, raising questions about how schools will fund additional classroom space, teachers and school supplies. Education experts said the government should have planned better before lifting school fees. Until this year, male students paid up to US$4 per year and female students about half that.

Senegal: Health leaders call on senegal to release 9 gay men arrested

2009-01-16

http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=senegal&id=2023

The Society for Aids in Africa (SAA) and the International Aids Society (IAS) call on Senegalese government to immediately release and drop charges against 9 men sentenced recently for 8 years each in prison based on sexual orientation. Among those arrested work towards providing critical HIV prevention, care and treatment services among men who have sex with men (MSM).

Ethiopia: Poverty hampers climate change adaptation, says PM

2009-01-16

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82409

Poverty poses a major obstacle for farmers in Ethiopia to adapt to climate change, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said. "The poor do not have the necessary technology and resources, in terms of money and so on, to be able to change and adapt," Meles told a national climate change conference in Addis Ababa.

Gabon: RFUK calls for release of activists

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/9zvdmb

The Rainforest Foundation UK demands the immediate release of the detained civil rights activists and journalists, arrested without charge by the Gabonese judicial police. On December 31, the Gabonese judicial police arrested the environmental and civil rights activist Marc Ona Essangui, president of Rainforest Foundation UK's partner organisation, Brainforest, and coordinator of the Publish What You Pay Coalition in Gabon.

Angola: Lonrho secures rice land deal

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/land/53309

Lonrho, the pan-African conglomerate listed in London, has secured leasehold rights to 25,000 hectares of rice paddies in Angola and is negotiating two bigger land deals in Mali and Malawi, in another sign of investor appetite for African land. David Lenigas, Lonrho’s executive chairman, said the group has agreed to a 50-year lease of the rice fields in the Uige province of Angola, which were abandoned during the country’s long civil war that ended in 2002.
Lonrho secures rice land deal in Angola
Financial Times FT.com
By Tom Burgis in Johannesburg
Published: January 16 2009 01:52 | Last updated: January 16 2009 01:52

Lonrho, the pan-African conglomerate listed in London, has secured leasehold rights to 25,000 hectares of rice paddies in Angola and is negotiating two bigger land deals in Mali and Malawi, in another sign of investor appetite for African land.

David Lenigas, Lonrho’s executive chairman, said the group has agreed to a 50-year lease of the rice fields in the Uige province of Angola, which were abandoned during the country’s long civil war that ended in 2002.

The deal would use up the bulk of $6m planned spending on agricultural projects this year, and would be leveraged with Angolan financing. The company would re-develop the land in collaboration with state agencies and pay royalties on food produced.

Mr Lenigas said the two further deals under negotiation – one on the inland delta on the Malian stretch of the Niger river, another on the shores of lake Malawi – would bring total land in Africa under development by Lonrho’s agricultural subsidiary to 150,000 hectares.

This is small compared to Daewoo’s troubled initiative to farm 1.3m ha in Madagascar to meet demand for food in South Korea, or a former Wall Street banker’s deal with a warlord in south Sudan for control of a 400,000 ha site.

But it still represents one of the most ambitious land buy ups yet on the continent and in contrast to many recent deals designed to serve export markets, will focus initially on domestic African consumption.

“We are focusing on domestic production for domestic consumption,” Mr Lenigas said, adding that the conglomerate would work closely with state agencies.

The Angolan government is striving to diversify its oil dependent economy and is seeking $6bn in agriculture investment over the coming five years.

To date the country has relied mainly on state coffers to drive rural development.

Mr Lenigas hopes that by selling initially into local markets Lonrho will avoid some of the outcry associated with other deals on a continent still unable to feed itself.

The Malian government, for instance, has informed him that it has a 400,000 tonne shortfall on its food needs each year; Angola imports all its rice.

“This is just the start,” he said of his plans to rebuild the pan-African assets divested at the start of the decade by the conglomerate that was once known as the London and Rhodesian Mining Company.

“We want Lonrho to become one of the biggest agricultural groups in Africa again as soon as possible.”

That will not be easy. “There are no good examples of this happening on a large commercial-scale in Africa,” said Carl Atkin, head of agri-business research at Bidwells, a UK consultancy.

In Angola’s diamond fields, campaigners have documented forced removals. Mr Lenigas acknowledged that the Angolan and Malian projects would require small-scale farmers to be relocated, though he said the company would seek to keep this to a minimum.

Global: How are biofuels impacting poor people's access to land?

2009-01-16

http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/resource-guides/agriculture&id=37581&type=Document

The policy debate about the merits and demerits of biofuels is growing and changing rapidly, with concerns being voiced over their effectiveness for mitigating climate change, role in recent food price hikes and social environmental impacts. This study contributes to these debates through examining the current and likely future impacts of the increasing spread of biofuels on access to land in producer countries, particularly for poorer rural people.

South Africa: Evictions in Gugulethu: Family left homeless

2009-01-16

http://antieviction.org.za/2009/01/15/evictions-in-gugulethu-family-left-homeless/

Bongani Goniwe said the eviction order that took them by surprise was received on the 25 of November last year. Goniwe said they did not know what to do as they were still pondering the next step. “In our understanding even though the house is in her name according to the “will” she still can’t sell the house because we regard council houses especially in the townships as family houses,” he said.

South Africa: The right to the city

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/9nsu95

Governments around the world tend to force poor people off well located and therefore valuable urban land and into peripheral ghettoes. From New Orleans to Bombay and Johannesburg the story is the same. One motivation for this is to transfer valuable land from the poor to the rich to create a subsidy for elite development at the direct expense of the poor.

Cameroon: Call for release of journalist

2009-01-16

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29931

Reporters Without Borders today condemned a three-year prison sentence handed down to Lewis Medjo, managing editor of the weekly La Détente libre, and urged the authorities to allow him bail. He has been in Douala central prison in the west of the country since 22 September 2008.

DRC: Editor freed

2009-01-16

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29582

Reporters Without Borders notes that Nsimba Embete Ponte, the editor of the biweekly L’Interprète, was released on completing a 10-month prison sentence for “insulting” President Joseph Kabila by referring to rumours about his health in a series of articles.

Togo: Government increases assistance to private press News

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/8qdfdt

The Togolese government has increased assistance to the private press to 350 million CFA francs this year from 75 million CFA francs in 2008. The government said on Thursday the assistance would help the press improve performance through several components, namely training and equipment.

DRC: Obasanjo briefs UN Security Council

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/a6gchb

UN Special Envoy to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, has stressed the need for continued political and material support to bring durable peace to the DRC. In an address to the council on Thursday, Obasanjo said: “The DRC, the region, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa and I will need your support (UN Security Council) and that of your governments in this peace process.”

DRC: Villagers take up arms against LRA

2009-01-16

http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE50F0OC20090116

Congolese villagers are forming self-defence groups to protect homes and families from Ugandan LRA rebels. LRA rebels have killed 567 people and displaced 115,000 in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo's Oriental province since September, U.N. refugee agency UNHCR says. Attacks surged after Ugandan forces spearheaded an anti-LRA offensive in December.

Kenya: Govenrment seeks Sh32bn food aid

2009-01-16

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/515550/-/u1aefp/-/index.html

The Government requires Sh 32 billion to meet the shortfall caused by a poor harvest, among other things until the end of August. When making the appeal, at Kenyatta International Conference Centre, President Kibaki said an assessment from Kenya Food Security Steering Group indicates that Kenya requires Sh37 billion to meet all the needs of the current food emergency.

Liberia: Uneven progress in security sector reform

2009-01-16

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5867&l=1

This latest International Crisis Group report, says despite real progress since the civil war ended in 2003, much more is required to counter public dissatisfaction with the police that has resulted in increasing resort to mob justice. The lack of an agreed strategic concept for use of the new security structures, including the army, means no one knows who would defend the country if a new insurgency broke out or instability spilled over its borders from neighbours.

Somalia: Thousands cheer Ethiopian pullout

2009-01-16

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7833250.stm

Tens of thousands of Somalis have gathered at the football stadium in Mogadishu to celebrate the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from the city. The stadium was a former Ethiopian base and Islamist and clan elders called for Somalis to solve their own problems and not resort to more violence.

Africa: Nigeria rolls out first FTTH network

2009-01-16

http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/current1.html#internet

21st Century Technologies looks set to lay claim to being the first Sub-Saharan operator to roll out a Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) network. It plans to target 10,000 homes in the capital Lagos and has chosen Ericsson as the equipment vendor to deploy the network. The company has ambitious plans to become a Triple Play operator.

Global: Ubuntu's Launchpad to be opensourced

2009-01-16

http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3887

Ubuntu’s open source project-hosting service Launchpad will release its underlying code as open source software on July 21. The announcement comes via the Launchpad News. The most recent Launchpod podcast talks with Launchpad Ombudsman Karl Fogel about the decision.

Global: UN Launches eLearning Initiative

2009-01-16

http://www.elearning-africa.com/newsportal/english/news150.php

A new UN eLearning initiative, launched on December 6th in Berlin, will offer developing countries opportunities to draw upon a rich array of training and capacity-building resources. Sixteen UN agencies, meeting at a forum organised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) during Online Educa Berlin, agreed to establish UNeLearn – a UN-wide network on technology-supported learning to share information and expertise, and to collaborate on the sustained deployment of eLearning.

Malawi: SMS to fight malnutrition

2009-01-16

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=82346

For the first time in years, John Phiri*, a health extension worker in Malawi's central Salima district, does not have to fill in a stack of forms during his monthly round of collecting data to monitor nutrition levels in the community. Now he whips out his mobile phone and texts the data, including the height and weight of the children in the area, while covering his beat.

Global: Citizen Media Outreach

Rising Voices seeks micro-grant Proposals

2009-01-16

http://tinyurl.com/9x8oj4

Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices, is now accepting project proposals for microgrant funding of up to $5,000 for new media outreach projects. Ideal applicants will present innovative and detailed proposals to teach citizen media techniques to communities that are poorly positioned to discover and take advantage of tools like blogging, video-blogging, and podcasting on their own. Application Deadline: January 18, 2009.

Global: ERNWACA Grants Call for proposals

2009-01-16

http://www.ernwaca.org/grants2009/en/index.htm

Young researchers, doctoral students, education specialists, administrators living in one of the ERNWACA member countries are invited to participate in the ERNWACA Grants Programme for interdisciplinary Education Research

Global: Journal of Muslim Mental Health - Call for papers

Special issue on refugees and forced migrants

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/53280

The purpose of this thematic issue is to generate refugee-centered scholarship on theory development, research, education, practice, program development and policymaking. JMMH seeks empirical and conceptual articles related to forced migration of refugees and IDPs in their own countries, countries of first asylum, or in resettlement countries.
CALL FOR PAPERS #2

Journal of Muslim Mental Health

SPECIAL ISSUE ON REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRANTS

Issue Co-editors:
Fariyal Ross-Sheriff, Ph.D., Altaf Husain, Ph.D., M. Taqi Tirmazi, Ph.D.


Purpose of the Special Issue

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are 67 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide, of whom 16 million are refugees and the remaining 51 million are internally displaced persons (IDPs) as a result of conflicts and natural disasters (UNHCR, June 2008). Unlike many immigrants who voluntarily migrate seeking a better life, refugees and IDPs migrate involuntarily and often do not control their displacement. Being forcibly uprooted from one\'s homeland poses tremendous and complex hardships on multiple levels to these men, women and children.

The purpose of this thematic issue is to generate refugee-centered scholarship on theory development, research, education, practice, program development and policymaking. JMMH seeks empirical and conceptual articles related to forced migration of refugees and IDPs in their own countries, countries of first asylum, or in resettlement countries. Although there are news stories that shed some light on the lives of the refugees and internally displaced populations, often the media and the public allow them to fade into the background after the initial reports of outbreaks of violence or mass movements of people within or across national borders. There is a need for research reports as well as documentation on practice based individual or community level interventions with refugees and IDPs.

Due to recent political and economic instability, poverty, and war, the number of Muslim refugees around the world has increased; over 70% of the world\'s refugees are Muslim. In recent years, the United States has received and resettled more Muslim refugees than at any other time in its history and 15% of refugees entering the USA from 1988 to 2003 were Muslim (Maloof and Ross-Sheriff, 2003). Several Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Lebanon have provided refuge to refugees from their neighboring countries. Muslim refugees struggle with unique adaptation challenges in acquiring shelter, income, education, health, and security. They share their faith with local residents in countries of first asylum, which tend to be Muslim. However, in many countries of resettlement, such as USA, Canada and European countries, they are a religious and ethnic minority. There they face challenges from negative perceptions related to Muslims as a result of the war on terrorism in the post September 11th, 2001 world. However, their experiences, as well as the mental health of the impact of forced migration, are seldom documented in the research literature. Moreover, many predominantly Muslim countries such as Syria and Egypt are sheltering an increasing number of refugees of Christian and diverse faiths, and the research literature has not adequately examined such experiences.

This request for papers is for empirical research and papers that discuss or evaluate interventions, programs, and policies for refugees and IDPs worldwide including, but not limited to the following topics:

Broad Topic Areas

Definitions, designations, and data on refugees and IDPs
Theoretical frameworks
Psychosocial wellbeing of refugees and IDPs
Consequences of lives in limbo, i.e. warehousing
Integration of refugees in countries of first asylum or resettlement countries
Refugee and IDP repatriation and the right of return

Additionally, articles related to this theme are requested for the regular Journal sections:

Case studies: clinical case studies following the DSM-IV Cultural Formulations format, especially relevant for clinicians
Faith-based practice: articles exploring the role of faith in the lives of refugees, as well as the interface between spirituality and practice with refugees, especially relevant for religious leaders
Book reviews

About the Journal

The Journal of Muslim Mental Health (JMMH) is an interdisciplinary refereed journal providing an academic forum for the exploration of social, cultural, historical, theological, medical, and psychological factors affecting the mental health of Muslims globally. Information about the Journal can be found at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/15564908.asp

Submission of Manuscripts

Interested authors should submit a 1-2 page abstract by February 1, 2009 to Dr. Ross-Sheriff at fross-sheriff@howard.edu Please submit electronic versions of the abstracts as an e-mail attachment. The editors will review the abstracts and respond to the authors of the suitability of submitting a full-length paper for the special issue.

The deadline for full-length papers will be March 31, 2009. Manuscripts should be written according the guidelines of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition). Papers will be peer-reviewed following the policies of the Journal.

Inquiries may be sent to Dr. Ross-Sheriff (address below). Limited inquires may also be sent to Dr. Husain (ahusain@howard.edu) or Dr. Tirmazi (taqi12@yahoo.com).

Fariyal Ross-Sheriff, Ph.D. School of Social Work, Howard University, 601 Howard Place, NW, Washington, D.C. 20059. Tel: +1 202 806-7300; Email: fross-sheriff@howard.edu

Global: WWSF 2009 Prize for Women's Creativity in Rural Life

Call for Nominations

2009-01-16

http://www.woman.ch/women/1-introduction.php#5

The Women's World Summit Foundation WWSF cordially invites you to submit nominations for its 16th annual edition of the PRIZE for women's creativity in rural life, honouring creative and courageous women and women's organisations working to improve the quality of life in rural communities around the world.

Kenya: 2009 Amani Lecture

Somalia: To Move Beyond the Failed State

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/53299

The International Peace Support Training Centre is pleased to announce the forthcoming lecture by Daniela Kroslak. Daniela Kroslak is the Africa Program Deputy Director at the International Crisis Group. She has experience as both a practitioner and a researcher in the field of peace and security and has previously worked in such positions as Political Analyst with the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Program Officer with the United Nations Population Fund, and Researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
The International Peace Support Training Centre is pleased to announce the forthcoming lecture by Daniela Kroslak. Daniela Kroslak is the Africa Program Deputy Director at the International Crisis Group. She has experience as both a practitioner and a researcher in the field of peace and security and has previously worked in such positions as Political Analyst with the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Program Officer with the United Nations Population Fund, and Researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. She holds a PhD in International Politics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and is currently working from Nairobi, Kenya.

During her lecture, Daniela Kroslak will present the details that are contained in the International Crisis Group Africa Report No 147 – Somalia: To Move Beyond the Failed State (23 December 2008). Her presentation will focus on the issues associated with the current Transitional Federal Government, the opposition and insurgency, the humanitarian and economic crisis, the peacekeeping response and the Djibouti negotiations. An executive summary has been attached to this announcement and a full copy of the paper may be found on the International Crisis Group website (www.crisisgroup.org).

Following her lecture, participants will be invited to stay for a “Happy Hour” (cash bar) and to mingle with Daniela Kroslak and the other guests.

The Amani Lecture Series is an initiative of the Research Department at IPSTC. The intent of the series is to stimulate intellectual discussion on topics of relevance to regional peace and security initiatives. Lectures will be conducted approximately once each month and invitations are extended to all in the Nairobi area peace and security community.
For more information on this lecture or on the series, please contact the Head of Research at IPSTC, Jason A.M. Steeves (jason.steeves@ipstc.org).


Somalia: To Move Beyond the Failed State
International Crisis Group - Africa Report N°147
23 December 2008

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Since 1991 Somalia has been the archetypal failed state. Several attempts to create a transitional set-up have failed, and the current one is on the brink of collapse, overtaken yet again by an Islamist insurgency, despite the support of an Ethiopian military intervention since December 2006. Over the last two years the situation has deteriorated into one of the world’s worst humanitarian and security crises. The international community is preoccupied with a symptom – the piracy phenomenon – instead of concentrating on the core of the crisis, the need for a political settlement. The announced Ethiopian withdrawal, if it occurs, will open up a new period of uncertainty and risk. It could also provide a window of opportunity to relaunch a credible political process, however, if additional parties can be persuaded to join the Djibouti reconciliation talks, and local and international actors – including the U.S. and Ethiopia – accept that room must be found for much of the Islamist insurgency in that process and ultimately in a new government dispensation.

The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has failed in four years to create a broad-based government and now is non-functional, existing almost only in name. President Abdillahi Yusuf has marginalised large parts of the population and exacerbated divisions. The latest confrontation with parliament and the prime minister has underlined that Yusuf hampers any progress on peace, has become a liability for the country’s survival and should be encouraged to resign.

Ethiopia’s attitude has hardened over the last few months, and the mood in certain circles in Addis Ababa has become almost hostile to the TFG leaders, in particular Yusuf. The intention to withdraw reflects this frustration, as well as unwillingness to continue to accept considerable losses in a war against the insurgency that is going badly. Opposition to the Ethiopian occupation has been the single issue on which the many elements of the fractious Islamist insurgency could agree. When that glue is removed, it is likely that infighting will increase, making it difficult for the insurgency to obtain complete military victory, or at least sustain it, and creating opportunities for political progress.

For now, however, the Islamist fighters are gaining ever more ground. All major towns in south-central Somalia have been captured by one faction or another except for Mogadishu, where TFG control is ever more contested, and Baidoa. The Islamists already dominate nearly as much territory as they did before the Ethiopian invasion, and a takeover of the entire south seems almost inevitable.

While the Djibouti peace process did initiate new dialogue, it has accomplished little in its eight months, not least because the parts of the Islamist insurgency that have the most guns and territory are not participants. The key aim of its architects was to create a powerful political alliance, capable of stabilising the country, marginalising the radicals and stemming the tide of Islamist militancy. This was quickly made unachievable by splits within the insurgent Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) as well as the TFG, and the rapid advance by the parts of the opposition, in particular radical militias like Al-Shabaab, that reject the process. The ARS faction located in Asmara (ARS-A) and its controversial leader, Hassan Dahir Aweys, also have stayed away from Djibouti. Those around the table – the ARS faction based in Djibouti (ARS-D) and the TFG – control very little territory. In addition, Yusuf has continuously undermined the process, as he believes Djibouti is ultimately a strategy to oust him.

Despite the reluctance of the international community to engage with the Islamist opposition, there is no other practical course than to reach out to its leaders in an effort to stabilise the security situation with a ceasefire and then move on with a process that addresses the root causes of the conflict. Support for the process from countries with moral authority or influence on the militias, such as Eritrea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, will need to be sought.

Timing is vital. The African Union peacekeeping mission (AMISOM) originally sent to Mogadishu to relieve the Ethiopians is far too small and weak and will be at increasing risk from insurgent attacks following the Ethiopian withdrawal. But it would be a bad idea to try to send a UN peacekeeping mission in now, as the U.S. is urging the Security Council to do, when there is no viable peace process and sufficient troops cannot be found. The priority must be the political settlement, after which UN peacekeepers will have a vital, traditional monitoring role to play.

There is no guarantee that a political settlement is achievable. The militias that have carried the fight to the TFG and the Ethiopians and now control most of the territory will be reluctant to negotiate just when they have reason to believe that they have defeated their enemies and can take what they want with guns. But there is no good alternative to making the attempt. One way or the other, Somalia is likely to be dominated by Islamist forces. It makes sense for the international community to use the incentive of international recognition and extensive support for such a regime to ensure that it draws in a wide spectrum of militia elements, including not only ARS-A but also Al-Shabaab elements; respects the territorial integrity of its neighbours, including Ethiopia, and the internationally guaranteed rights of its people; and renounces any relationship with terrorists.

Consultations should be pursued with Muslim countries from outside the region (Morocco, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh) about troop pledges so that the UN could swiftly introduce a peacekeeping operation to support implementation of a serious ceasefire agreement, the first step toward a genuine political settlement. If hard-core elements reject negotiation and either press on to establish a more extreme regime or fall into conflict with each other, however, Somalia will become an even more chaotic and dangerous place. No conceivable peacekeeping force could reasonably be expected to bring order. Parallel to the urgent efforts needed to reform and re-energise the political process, therefore, contingency planning should be started so that AMISOM can be swiftly evacuated if the security situation deteriorates further, and it is repeatedly attacked. Planning will also be needed on how such a Somalia might be cordoned off in a way that minimises its ability to export instability and per-haps terror to the region and even beyond.

Nairobi/Brussels, 23 December 2008

Pambazuka News: Editorial Assistant

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53361

Are you able to work under pressure and to tight deadlines, and still come up smiling? Do you have a sharp eye for detail? Are you able to help writers turn their articles into clear English. Are you highly organised and efficient? And do you have excellent access to the internet? Are you a team player? Do you want to work for Africa's leading social justice newsletter? If so, we'd like to hear from you. Contact fahamujobs@googlemail.com

Africa: Advocacy Officer - FEMNET

2008-11-07

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/51802

The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) is looking for a suitable candidate to fill the position of Advocacy Officer. This position will offer the position holder an opportunity to work on very exciting advocacy initiatives and campaigns in a very stimulating, multicultural and dynamic environment. The position will involve considerable travel within Africa and other parts of the world.
VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT
The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) is looking for a suitable candidate to fill the position of Advocacy Officer. This position will offer the position holder an opportunity to work on very exciting advocacy initiatives and campaigns in a very stimulating, multicultural and dynamic environment. The position will involve considerable travel within Africa and other parts of the world.

Purpose of the Position
The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) focuses primarily on advocacy around regional and international policies relevant to the development, equality and the human rights of African women. FEMNET’s advocacy and representational work during regional and international policy negotiations needs to be backed up by research and the dissemination of strategic information before, during and after such regional and international policy negotiations. FEMNET uses different fora to identify the pertinent issues that would contribute significantly to the improvement of the quality of lives of women in Africa.

This is particularly so given that expectations of FEMNET in this respect have grown—both among FEMNET’s constituencies and its partners.
The Advocacy Officer in collaboration with the Program Officer and Communication Officer initiates continent wide advocacy campaigns intended to mobilize women from all walks of life to be active citizens in democratic processes in their countries and communities that contribute to improving the status and quality of life of women in Africa.

Responsibilities will include:
• Enabling the African women’s movement to develop and use regional and international law and policy in advocacy for the development, equality and other human rights of African women;
• Encouraging research on the mainstreaming of the African women’s movement’s concerns in regional and international law and policy;
• Raising awareness about and maintain effective communications with FEMNET’s constituencies on advocacy issues that support African women’s development and empowerment, gender equality and the promotion of women’s human rights at national, regional and international levels;
• Enhancing the African women’s movement’s capacity to influence governments and inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) to develop and implement policies that promote the rights of African women as provided for in national, regional and international human rights instruments.
• Providing specialist advice and skills to support cross country learning.
• Managing the advocacy programme’s projects, particularly those on the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and the African Union (AU);
• Undertaking and/or commissioning research in support of the advocacy programme’s projects;
• Coordinating and facilitating the advocacy and lobbying activities on behalf of
FEMNET’s constituencies at the regional and international levels;
• Liaising with the Communication Officer to sustain communication with FEMNET’s constituencies on the developments within the advocacy programme;
• Conceptualising new projects for the advocacy programme in consultation with the
Executive Director and Program Officer;
• Working closely with the Program Officer to mobilize resources for the Advocacy
Programme and projects;
• Coordinating the planning and implementation of the Advocacy Programme’s training activities organized at regional or sub- regional levels;
• Monitoring, evaluating and reporting on the Advocacy Programme and its projects on a quarterly basis and as may be otherwise required by the Executive Director or the
Executive Board;
• Advising the Executive Director as to any needs relating to the Advocacy Programme.

Qualifications, experience and other requirements
• A degree in social sciences and a masters degree in a relevant field will be an added advantage;
• Knowledge of and experience in conducting research and organizing advocacy initiatives at the regional and international levels that promotes women’s rights and women’s empowerment in Africa;
• Analytical, creative, strategic and problem-solving skills;
• Ability to simplify, summarise and communicate complex information, including presentation skills in both English and French;
• Good communications, interpersonal and networking skills, including the ability to work with a diverse range of people and organisations at the national, regional and international levels;
• Diplomatic, lobbying and political skills, including knowledge of the differing political contexts within Africa (anglophone, arabophone, francophone and lusophone);
• Pro-activeness and self-motivation with the ability to work very well within a team environment;
• Good time management skills, including the ability to work towards deadlines;
• Computer literacy, including electronic networking skills;
• Programme/project development, fundraising, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and report-writing skills.

Remuneration
• This position is a regional position and compensation is competitive with attractive benefits depending on the qualifications and experience of the candidate and the FEMNET’s salary structure.

Please submit, by February 28, 2009, a letter of application, together with a Curriculum Vitae (CV), copies of relevant supporting documents and at least three references to:

The African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET)
Behind KUSCCO Centre, Kilimanjaro Avenue, Off Mara Road
P O Box 54562, 00200 Nairobi, Kenya
Email: admin@femnet.or.ke

Southern Africa: HIV and AIds Care work Manager - GEMSA

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53276

The Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA) Network manager seeks the services of a senior policy and advocacy expert for its regional campaign on making care work count. The successful candidate will be expected to: Conceptualise and design research projects and model policies; Manage research projects; Analyse data; write and edit reports; Work with a team of facilitators across the region; Monitor and evaluate the impact of research and use this in refining future strategies
HIV AND AIDS CARE WORK MANAGER

The Gender and Media Southern Africa (GEMSA) Network manager seeks the services of a senior policy and advocacy expert for its regional campaign on making care work count.

Tasks: The successful candidate will be expected to: Conceptualise and design research projects and model policies; Manage research projects; Analyse data; write and edit reports; Work with a team of facilitators across the region; Monitor and evaluate the impact of research and use this in refining future strategies

Skills required: the successful candidate will be expected to have a Masters Degree in a relevant social science discipline; At least ten years experience managing gender related research; especially in the media, governance and justice sectors; A thorough knowledge of the Southern African region; Excellent verbal, written and management skills.

Competitive remuneration will be offered, commensurate with silks and experience. More information on GEMSA can be found on http://www.gemsa.org.za/ or by phoning Pinky Magau on 011-622-6597. Please submit a letter of motivation CV, references, and at least two samples of your work to admin@gemsa.org.za by 06 February 2009. Late applications will not be considered. Only short listed candidates will be contacted for interviews.

Uganda: Legal Officer - Refugee Law Project

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53281

The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of Legal officer in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of Legal officer in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.

Description
The Legal Officer will work within the Legal Aid Department under the supervision of the Head of Legal Aid and Counselling with the following duties:
• Provide legal advice to refugees and asylum seekers on matters concerning refugee protection
• Provide legal representation to refugees and asylum seekers before various organisations working with refugees and in courts of law.
• Write reports that include statistical analysis of pattern of problems received by the department.
• Participate in field visits to the various refugee settlements in the Country.
• Be in charge of one of the special projects within the department.
• Identify issues that require field research.
• Facilitate trainings in Refugee Law and Human Rights.
• Any other duties that may be assigned to him/her.

Qualifications
• A Bachelor of Laws Degree and a Diploma in Legal Practice from the Law
Development Centre
• Must be an enrolled advocate of the High court of Uganda.
• At least 2 years experience in the human rights field or an LLM focusing on Human Rights or Refugee Law
• Knowledge of French and/or Swahili is highly desirable
• Ability to work under pressure with minimum supervision
• Good computer skills and excellent interpersonal skills

Applicants must submit an application letter, curriculum vitae, copies of relevant academic documents to:
The Finance & Administration Manager,
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, MUK
Plot No. 9 Perryman Gardens (Opp. Old Kampala Primary School) Old Kampala P. O. Box 33903, Kampala Email applications should be sent to recruitment@refugeelawproject.org Deadline for receipt of applications is 12.00 Noon EAT 23rd January 2009.

Uganda: Legal Volunteer - Refugee Law Project

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53282

The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of Legal volunteer in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of Legal volunteer in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.


Description
The Legal Volunteer will work within the Legal Aid Department under the supervision of the Head of Legal Aid and Counselling with the following duties:
• Opening files and taking testimonies for clients.
• Conduct legal research on various issues.
• Participate in field visits to the various settlements within the country.
• Support legal officers in working on clients’ cases.
• Participate in work on special projects.
• Follow up clients’ cases with the Police, UNHCR, OPM e.t.c.

Qualifications
• A Bachelor of Laws Degree from a recognised university
• Must demonstrate strong commitment to human rights issues
• Knowledge of French or Swahili
• Good Computer & interpersonal skills and ability to work under pressure

Applicants must submit an application letter, curriculum vitae, copies of relevant academic documents to:
The Finance & Administration Manager,
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, MUK
Plot No. 9 Perryman Gardens (Opp. Old Kampala Primary School) Old Kampala P. O. Box 33903, Kampala Email applications should be sent to recruitment@refugeelawproject.org Deadline for receipt of applications is 12.00 Noon EAT 23rd January 2009.

Uganda: SGBV Counsellor - Refugee Law Project

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53283

The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of SGBV Counsellor in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of SGBV Counsellor in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.

Description
The SGBV Officer will work within the legal aid and counselling department and report to the Senior Counsellor with the following duties:
• Management of the Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) Project
• Develop the work plan for the project.
• Plan, develop and implement client care and communication strategies.
• Conduct research and prepare reports on SGBV in the settlement and urban refugee environments.
• Represent RLP and provide advocacy on SGBV matters to external and partner organizations.
• Perform other duties as required.

Qualifications.
• A Bachelors degree in a relevant field from a recognised university.
• Extensive Knowledge on issues on sexual and gender based violence.
• Knowledge of refugee experiences.
• Experience in working in programs for GBV/SGBV
• Knowledge of French and/or Swahili is essential
• Strategic thinking and planning ability.
• Excellent operational, organizational and communication skills.
• Team work
• Strong computer skills.

Applicants must submit an application letter, curriculum vitae, copies of relevant academic documents to:
The Finance & Administration Manager,
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, MUK
Plot No. 9 Perryman Gardens (Opp. Old Kampala Primary School) Old Kampala P. O. Box 33903, Kampala Email applications should be sent to recruitment@refugeelawproject.org Deadline for receipt of applications is 12.00 Noon EAT 23rd January 2009.

Uganda: Volunteer social worker - Refugee Law Project

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53284

The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of volunteer Social worker in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of volunteer Social worker in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.

Description
The Volunteer Social Worker will work within the legal aid and counselling department and report to the SGBV Officer with the following duties:
• Assist in developing and implementing the client care and communication.
• Assist in researching and preparation of reports.
• Assist in designing managing and growing the client database.
• Managing referrals and making follow-ups.
• Perform other duties as required.

Qualifications.
• A Degree in a relevant field.
• Knowledge of contemporary issues on sexual and gender based violence.
• Knowledge of refugee experiences.
• Experience in working in programs for GBV/SGBV
• Knowledge of French and/or Swahili is essential
• Strategic thinking and planning ability.
• Excellent operational, organizational and communication skills.
• Team work
• Strong computer skills.

Applicants must submit an application letter, curriculum vitae, copies of relevant academic documents to:
The Finance & Administration Manager,
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, MUK
Plot No. 9 Perryman Gardens (Opp. Old Kampala Primary School) Old Kampala P. O. Box 33903, Kampala Email applications should be sent to recruitment@refugeelawproject.org Deadline for receipt of applications is 12.00 Noon EAT 23rd January 2009.

Uganda: Volunteer counsellor - Refugee Law Project

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53285

The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of volunteer counsellor in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, Makerere University is announcing the vacancy of volunteer counsellor in its Legal Aid and Counselling Department.

Description
The Volunteer Counsellor will work within the legal aid and counselling department and report to the Senior Counsellor with the following duties:
• To provide individual and family counselling that responds to a wide range of issues affecting refugee children ranging from trauma, blended families, behavioural problems, parental problems, divorce and abandonment, sexual and domestic violence and child abuse.
• To promote safety planning and risk assessment for refugee children.
• To make referrals to appropriate medical, psychiatric and social resources.
• To develop and facilitate programs and services that are prevention based including presentations and activities for children and parents.
• To develop and maintain proper statistics on child clients.
• To establish a database of childcare organizations.
• To carry out any other activities as required.

Qualifications.
• Honours degree in Counselling or Education with a bias in child counselling.
• Knowledge of the special issues in providing counselling to children and families.
• Knowledge of family violence and abuse dynamics.
• Ability to understand be sensitive and relate to children who are clients as well as the other family members.
• Knowledge of documentation requirements.
• Ability to intervene in crisis situations using sound judgement, ethical practice and common sense.
• Knowledge of French and/or Swahili is essential
• Hands on knowledge and understanding of problems of children in refugee situations.

Applicants must submit an application letter, curriculum vitae, copies of relevant academic documents to:
The Finance & Administration Manager,
The Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, MUK
Plot No. 9 Perryman Gardens (Opp. Old Kampala Primary School) Old Kampala P. O. Box 33903, Kampala Email applications should be sent to recruitment@refugeelawproject.org Deadline for receipt of applications is 12.00 Noon EAT 23rd January 2009.

Egypt: Editorial Assistant - Journal of Muslim Mental Health

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53286

The Journal of Muslim Mental Health has an opening for an Editorial Assistant in Cairo, Egypt, who will work closely with the Editor-in-Chief for 12 hours per week for a period of one year starting February 1, 2009. The selected candidate will be considered a research assistant or research associate at the American University in Cairo and will be listed as an Editorial Assistant on the inside leaflet of the print journal and most promotion materials. THIS IS NOT A FULL TIME JOB.
CALL FOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

About the Position

The Journal of Muslim Mental Health has an opening for an Editorial Assistant in Cairo, Egypt, who will work closely with the Editor-in-Chief for 12 hours per week for a period of one year starting February 1, 2009. The selected candidate will be considered a research assistant or research associate at the American University in Cairo and will be listed as an Editorial Assistant on the inside leaflet of the print journal and most promotion materials. THIS IS NOT A FULL TIME JOB.

The Editorial Assistant will work with the Editor-in-Chief on the following tasks:
· Pairing under-resourced and underprivileged scholars with translators, editors, and other manuscript development supports
· Promotion and publicity for the journal
· Developing a standard copy editing protocol
· Generating topics for thematic issues and supporting guest editors. [Note: upcoming thematic issues are Refugees & Forced Migrants; Marriage & Family; Mental Health Services in the West]
· Soliciting manuscripts
· Coordinating the peer review process for a few manuscripts; coordinating the internal copy editing and publisher proofs for accepted manuscripts
· Responding to letters of inquiry and other journal correspondence
· Participating in organizational meetings with the international Editorial Board and Advisory Board

The editorial assistant will become intimately familiar with the workings of a rapidly expanding peer-review journal, including issues related to finances, legalities, indexing, peer-review, editing, formal publishing, and marketing. Additionally, this is an excellent opportunity to be exposed to academic writing and qualitative & quantitative research designs, develop networks with professionals and graduate students around the world, and develop leadership and management skills.

Requirements for the position:
· Located in Cairo and can meet weekly with the Editor at the AUC New Cairo campus
· Masters degree or equivalent (or candidacy for masters degree)
· Excellent spoken and written English
· Excellent spoken and written second language, preferably Arabic or Farsi
· Previous experience with research
· Excellent skills with Microsoft Word and Excel; excellent Internet and e-mail skills
· Motivated, reliable, energetic, creative, and takes initiative

The ideal candidate will have the following characteristics:
· Specialization in a mental-health related field or knowledge of mental health issues
· Previous publications in peer-reviewed journals
· Interest in an academic or research career
· Interest in cross-cultural, multicultural, and interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g., sociology, psychology, nursing, medicine, public policy, etc.)
· Skills in advanced database programs (e.g., MS Access)
· Website development skills

Application Procedures

Please submit a CV/resume and cover letter that highlights your interest and how you meet the above characteristics to chiefeditor@muslimmentalhealth.com Please include the names of three references. If considered for the position you will be asked to submit writing samples and your references will be asked to complete a form. The application process will continue until the position is filled.

About the Journal

JMMH is an international, interdisciplinary, refereed journal published by Taylor & Francis/Routledge, one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious distributors of academic journals worldwide. It is the only journal that focuses on socio-cultural aspects of mental health for Muslim minorities and communities residing in predominantly Muslim countries. The journal has published leading studies on discrimination and mental health post 9/11, Iraqi mental health service policy within the context of the war, service utilization among Muslim minorities, and culturally-sensitive measure development. As a result of this cutting-edge work, the Journal has been featured in the New York Times and USA Today.

Only in its third year of publication, JMMH has already been approved for abstract/indexing in Scopus (the largest citation database worldwide), PsycINFO, EBSCO, ASSIA, and other databases. The journal rejects approximately 65-70% of manuscripts received. With an international focus, studies have been published by researchers from different parts of the globe including North America, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and Australia. The official website is: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/15564908.asp

Kenya: Director - Amnesty International

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53341

As the holder of this new and high profile role at the Nairobi Office, you will be central in driving AI’s human rights and growth agenda in Kenya. You will be responsible for providing strategic and political advice to the movement and lead AI’s work in Kenya in conjunction with colleagues at the International Secretariat in London and the Regional Office in Kampala.
As the holder of this new and high profile role at the Nairobi Office, you will be central in driving AI’s human rights and growth agenda in Kenya. You will be responsible for providing strategic and political advice to the movement and lead AI’s work in Kenya in conjunction with colleagues at the International Secretariat in London and the Regional Office in Kampala. You will manage a complex project focused on Human Rights Education, youth mobilization, building partnerships with NGOs and CBOs to promote active participation of people in Nairobi's poor people’s settlements as part of AI's Dignity Campaign focused on poverty and human rights. A proven track record of using rights based approaches, leadership and management experience, public representation, innovative networking skills and proficiency in Kiswahili are essential for this position.

For more information or job descriptions, person specification and application form, contact James Nduko on e-mail jnduko@yahoo.com

Duly filled applications should be sent to the address indicated on the application form to reach Amnesty International on or before January 26, 2009. Note that CVs alone will not be accepted. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted for interviews to take place in the first week of February 2009.

Kenya: Campaign organizer - Amnesty International

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53342

You will work as part of a Project Team and in collaboration with partner NGOs and CBOs lead on the design and delivery of campaigns and actions of the Kenya Growth Project, particularly initiatives to ensure active participation of people in Nairobi’s poor people’s settlements to secure housing rights by ending forced evictions as part of AI's Dignity Campaign.
You will work as part of a Project Team and in collaboration with partner NGOs and CBOs lead on the design and delivery of campaigns and actions of the Kenya Growth Project, particularly initiatives to ensure active participation of people in Nairobi’s poor people’s settlements to secure housing rights by ending forced evictions as part of AI's Dignity Campaign. Substantial experience in capacity building, community organizing, advocacy, mobilizing people for social change at grassroots level and proficiency in Kiswahili are essential for this position.

For more information or job descriptions, person specification and application form, contact James Nduko on e-mail jnduko@yahoo.com

Duly filled applications should be sent to the address indicated on the application form to reach Amnesty International on or before January 26, 2009. Note that CVs alone will not be accepted. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted for interviews to take place in the first week of February 2009.

Kenya: Youth coordinator - Amnesty International

2009-01-16

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/53343

You will work as part of a Project Team and in collaboration with youth focused civil society organisations in Kenya you will mobilize young people nation-wide for human rights activism and grow a Youth Network linked to wider AI's Africa Youth Networks.
You will work as part of a Project Team and in collaboration with youth focused civil society organisations in Kenya you will mobilize young people nation-wide for human rights activism and grow a Youth Network linked to wider AI's Africa Youth Networks. Substantial experience of leadership development, mentorship, capacity building and mobilizing young people for social change and proficiency in Kiswahili are essential for this position.

For more information or job descriptions, person specification and application form, contact James Nduko on e-mail jnduko@yahoo.com

Duly filled applications should be sent to the address indicated on the application form to reach Amnesty International on or before January 26, 2009. Note that CVs alone will not be accepted. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted for interviews to take place in the first week of February 2009.

Fahamu